Making Separate Equal: Integration of Black and White School Funds in Kentucky

Abstract

On August 6, 1882, Kentucky voters approved by a 54-46 margin a referendum proposal to increase school property taxes for whites by 10 percent in order to triple state-level educational expenditures for black children. Passage of the measure equalizing state spending, which accounted for about 64 percent of the total amount allocated to public primary and secondary schools in Kentucky in the 1880s, was, according to state school superintendent Joshua Desha Pickett, "the most remarkable fact in the school history of Kentucky."

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