Colleges and universities, established and conducted by the Freedmen's Bureau and Northern churches and societies, sprang up like mushrooms, and the teachers, ignorant, fanatical, without self-poise, proceeded to make all possible mischief.
It is irrational, cruel, to hold the Negro, under such strange conditions, responsible for all the ill consequences of bad education, unwise teachers, reconstruction villainies, and partisan schemes." * Quoted in "Proceedings of the Montgomery Conference on Race Problems" (1900), p.

128.
Education was to be looked upon as a handmaid to a thorough reconstruction, and its general character and aim were determined by the Northern teachers.

Each convention framed a more or less complicated school system and undertook to provide for its support.

The Negroes in the conventions were anxious for free schools; the conservatives were willing; but the carpetbaggers and a few mulatto leaders insisted in several States upon mixed schools.

Only in Louisiana and South Carolina did the constitutions actually forbid separate schools; in Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Arkansas the question was left open, to the embarrassment of the whites.