These are probably fairly typical of the rural negro schools throughout the South, and better than some. As a matter of fact, thousands of negro children have no opportunity to go to school, because the commissioners simply refuse to provide school in their district; perhaps because the number of children is thought too few; perhaps merely because they do not wish to spend the money. In a town with perhaps 2,000 Negroes there is sometimes only one negro teacher. Here comes in the effect of the separate school system which prevails in every Southern state, in the District of Columbia, in Indianapolis, and in parts of New Jersey. The system was inaugurated just as soon as the Whites obtained control of the Reconstruction government after the Civil War, and it goes all the way through: separate buildings, separate teachers, separate influences, separate accounts. The reasons for it are: first, the belief of white parents that negro children, even the little ones, have a bad influence on the white children; second, the conviction that mixed schools would break down the rigorous separation of races necessary to prevent eventual amalgamation; third, the blacks are niggers. In cities and towns it adds little to the expense to keep up separate buildings and corps of teachers, but in rural districts, where the number of children is small, the expense of double schools may be a serious matter. One reason why the schools are poor is that the pupils are irregular, and one reason why they are irregular is that the schools are poor. The wretched facilities of the rural schools, both white and negro, tend to drive children out; and the incompetent teachers do not make parents or children fonder of school. For the white schools a supply of reasonably intelligent young men and women is now coming forward. As to the Negroes, with few exceptions, every teacher is a Negro, though appointed by and supervised by some white authority; it is doubtful whether half the negro teachers have themselves gone through a decent common school education. Many of them are ignorant and uneducated. The superintendent of the town schools at Valdosta, Ga., says: "There are to-day outside of the cities, not more than one half dozen teachers in each county in the state, upon an average, who can honestly make a license to teach. The custom in most counties is to license so many as we are compelled to have to fill the schools from among those who make the most creditable show upon examination. School commissioners do not pretend to grade their papers strictly. If they did three-fourths of the negro schools would be immediately closed."