1. “Certificate of Incorporation of Negro Rural School Fund,” November 20, 1907, Folder 1924, Box 202, General Education Board Archives (Rockefeller Archive Center: Sleepy Hollow, NY); hereinafter RAC-GEB.

2. President Taft was a trustee of the fund, and its officers in 1911, all of whom attended, included James Dillard (president); Walter Hines Page (vice president, journalist), George Foster Peabody (treasurer, banker and philanthropist), and Robert Russa Moton (secretary, president of the Hampton Institute). Members of the fund's executive committee and finance committee who attended the meeting included David Crenshaw Barrow, Jr. (chancellor of the University of Georgia), Andrew Carnegie (steel magnate and philanthropist), Hollis Frissell (principal of the Hampton Institute), Samuel Chiles Mitchell (president of the University of South Carolina), W. T. B. Williams (black educator and reformer), Booker T. Washington (president of the Tuskegee Institute), James Carroll Napier (black lawyer, politician, and member of the National Negro Business League), and Robert L. Smith (former deputy marshal and banker). Trustees who could not attend the annual meeting included Belton Gilreath (coal operator and Tuskegee trustee), George McAneny (prominent New York City civil servant), and Talcott Williams (journalist and educator). Napier replaced Abraham Grant (bishop of the African Methodist Church), who had recently died.

3. Malczewski, Joan, Building a New Educational State: Foundations, Schools, and the American South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 24Google Scholar.

4. Steffes, Tracy, School, Society, and State: A New Education to Guide Modern American (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 3–5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7. For a description of the associational synthesis see Balogh, Brian, The Associational State: American Governance in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Balogh, A Government out of Sight, 353.

8. Eisenach refers to these intermediary institutions as “parastates.” See Eisenach, Eldon, “Liberal Citizenship and American National Identity,” Studies in American Political Development 13 (Spring 1999): 206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. This period is referred to as the beginning of the “classic period of American foundations.” For a history of philanthropy and the American foundation, see Hammack, David C. and Anheier, Helmut K., A Versatile American Institution: The Changing Ideals and Realities of Philanthropic Foundations (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2013)Google Scholar. Other scholars have similarly characterized this era of foundation work as distinctive, referring to it as a period of “state centered philanthropic activism.” See Henderson, Mark, “Steering the State: Government, Nonprofits, and the Making of Labor Knowledge in the New Era,” in Politics and Partnerships: The Role of Voluntary Associations in America's Political Past and Present, ed. S., Elisabeth Clemens and Doug Guthrie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010)Google Scholar. See also the discussion of Gilman, Daniel Coit in Zunz, Olivier, Philanthropy in America: A History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 10Google Scholar.

10. Hammack and Anheier, A Versatile American Institution, 43–47.

11. “Report from the Bureau of Investigation and Information of the Southern Education Board,” in Proceedings of the Conference for Education in the South, the Sixth Session (New York: Issued by the Committee on Publication, 1903), 45.

12. Proceedings of the Fourth Capon Springs Conference for Education in the South, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1901 (Southern Education Board: Washington, DC), 11.

13. Eisenach, Eldon, “Liberal Citizenship and American National Identity, Studies in American Political Development 13 (Spring 1999), 206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In a longer discussion about these national efforts, Eisenach describes the role of progressive ideology as it played out through institutions as a regime in its own right. See Eisenach, The Lost Promise of Progressivism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994), 8–31 Google Scholar. For more information about the role of schooling in progressive reform, see Steffes, School, Society, and State, 11; Ring, Natalie, The Problem South: Region, Empire, and the New Liberal State, 1880–1930 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 19–20 Google Scholar.”

14. “Report of Professor Bailey of Mississippi for March, 1909,” Folder 829, Box 93, Series 1.1, RAC-GEB, 2–3.

15. Steffes, School, Society, and State, 11.

16. Ring, The Problem South.

17. Hays, Samuel, “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 55, no. 4 (October 1964): 157–69Google Scholar. Their interest in municipal reform also provided a foundation for General Education Board (GEB) public health initiatives in the South. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission found most state public health agencies inadequate to meet the demands of a rigorous campaign to battle the hookworm, a parasite estimated to have infected as much as 40 percent of the Southern population in the early twentieth century. Ettling, John, The Germ of Laziness: Rockefeller Philanthropy and Public Health in the New South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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19. “The New South,” in The Complete Orations and Speeches of Henry W. Grady, ed., Shurter, Edwin DuBois (New York: Hinds, Noble and Eldredge, 1910), 7Google Scholar. Grady believed that economic prosperity could be achieved through “new conditions, new adjustments and … new ideas and aspirations,” for which education would be a central component.

20. Balogh, A Government out of Sight; Johnson, Kimberly S., Governing the New American State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

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22. Balogh acknowledges the innovative relationships that existed between organizations and elements of civil society in forging the twentieth-century associational synthesis, but these were particularly difficult to achieve in the case of rural black education. Balogh, The Associational State, 8. Novak points out that the U.S. infrastructural power allows for a penetration of the state through civil society. Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State”; Balogh, Government out of Sight, 9.

23. Pierson, Paul, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Soss, Joseph, Hacker, Jacob, and Mettler, Suzanne, Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010)Google Scholar.

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25. Clemens’ discussion of the “Rube Goldberg” state provides an example, acknowledging the array of administrative structures required to build the modern state. Clemens, “Lineages of the Rube Goldberg State,” 187–215. However, these arrangements are not necessarily inclusive of nonelite actors. Carpenter describes the way in which state agencies engaged in complex efforts, including coalitions with groups in civil society, to seek bureaucratic autonomy (The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy). Christopher Loss acknowledges the role of institutions, like higher education, in playing a mediating role between the state and civil society. Loss, Christopher, Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

26. Steffes, School, Society, and State; Balogh, The Associational State, 4–5.

27. In her exploration of marginalized groups in the Progressive Era, Clemens explicitly excludes rural blacks as being too marginal. Steffes includes rural black schooling in her analysis of schooling as a state-building project, but as part of a broader study of school reform across the United States. Steffes acknowledges in her work that African Americans in segregated Southern schools were usually left behind in the project of school building because resources were disproportionately provided to white schools first. Clemens, Elisabeth S., The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 92–93 Google Scholar; Steffes, School, Society, and State.

28. Balogh, The Associational State, 12.

29. Parmar, Inderjeet, Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Industrial education, a curriculum intended to train rural blacks for agricultural and domestic labor in the South, became a defining feature of foundation support and its limitations were clear. It promoted the idea that hard labor was a principle of civilized life. Samuel Chapman Armstrong established the Hampton Institute in 1867 to promote education for the freed blacks. Booker T. Washington, a graduate of Hampton Institute, was chosen to be the founding principal of the Tuskegee Institute. Both institutions promoted a strict industrial training curriculum that sought to cultivate black citizens who would dignify labor and contribute to the South's prosperity. See Du Bois, W. E. B., Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (1935; New York: Free Press, 1992)Google Scholar. Citations refer to the 1992 edition; Anderson, James D., The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoffschwelle, Mary, The Rosenwald Schools in the American South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006)Google Scholar. The GEB, which provided funding for both black and white education, provided significantly more for white reform. For example, in 1910, the GEB provided $24.69 million in general education appropriations, with $2.46 million of those funds designated for black education. However, while the disparities have been documented, this research illustrates that the method of giving rather than the amount is possibly more relevant in analyzing foundation efforts in the South. For an overview of funding amounts, see Anderson, Eric and Moss, Alfred, Dangerous Donations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 219–21Google Scholar.

31. O'Connor, Alice, “Bringing the Market Back In: Philanthropic Activism and Conservative Reform,” in Politics and Partnerships: The Role of Voluntary Associations in America's Political Past and Present, ed. Clemens, Elisabeth and Guthrie, Doug (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 128Google Scholar.

32. Proceedings of the First Capon Springs Conference for Christian Education in the South, Capon Springs, Virginia, 1898, 1899, 1900 (Washington, DC: Southern Education Board), 3–66.

33. Ibid., 34–36.

34. Proceedings of the Third Capon Springs Conference for Christian Education in the South, Capon Springs, Virginia, 1898, 1899, 1900 (Washington, DC: Southern Education Board), 23–27.

35. Balogh, A Government out of Sight, 16.

36. “Report of the Commissioner of Education,” in Reports of the Department of the Interior for Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1911, Volume II, Table 20 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1912), xxxii; Digest of State Laws Relating to Public Education in Force January 1, 1915, Department of the Interior Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1915, No. 47 (Washington, DC, 1916), 628. See also Harlan, Louis, Separate and Unequal: Public School Campaigns and Racism in the Southern Seaboard States, 1901–1915 (New York: Atheneum Press, 1958)Google Scholar.

37. Malczewski, Building a New Educational State, 61–66.

38. “Report of the Commissioner of Education,” xxxiii. These disparities are also well documented in the literature. For a discussion of comparisons beginning with Reconstruction, see Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, chap. 15. See also Margo, Robert A., Race and Schooling in the South, 1880–1950: An Economic History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; LeLoudis, James, Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina 1880–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South.

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40. Hoffschwelle, The Rosenwald Schools; Ascoli, Peter, Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Werner, M. R., Julius Rosenwald: The Life of a Practical Humanitarian (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1939)Google Scholar.

41. There were other philanthropists who also contributed significant amounts of money in the South, and to education reform on a national level, but whose work was relatively more independent, even if there was some overlap between efforts. Some of the foundations active in Southern education were modeled on the work of the Peabody and Slater Funds, established in 1867 and 1882, respectively, and active in a variety of projects that focused on Southern education well into the twentieth century. The Peabody and Slater Funds merged with the Jeanes Fund and the Virginia Randolph Fund in 1932 to become the Southern Education Foundation. Other philanthropists were also active in the South, including Anson Phelps Stokes and Andrew Carnegie in the North, or the Dukes in the South. However, while they may have conferred with trustees of the three foundations discussed in this research, they operated outside of the interlocking directorate that was defined by the GEB.

42. The General Education Board: An Account of its Activities, 1902–1914 (New York: General Education Board, 1915), 183Google Scholar.

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44. Bensel provides a detailed discussion of the ways in which reform impacted the structural capacity of national confederacy and union administrative systems during the Civil War, which have provided a useful framework for thinking about the ways that bureaucratic reforms can affect governance. See Bensel, Richard Franklin, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 110Google Scholar.

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48. Margo, Race and Schooling in the South.

49. Malczewski, Building a New Educational State.

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58. Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line, 29.

59. Jeanes Fund Report of President, 1914. Folder 2125, Box 222, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB.

60. Pierson, Politics in Time.

61. Minutes of a Meeting of the General Education Board, January 24, 2011, Folder 3651, Box 353, RAC-GEB, 1. The GEB was influenced in developing such a spirit of cooperation by Wallace Buttrick, who served as the first secretary and executive officer of the board. Buttrick had originally served as a field agent for the Slater Fund and shared suggestions to the Slater Fund that reflected 20 years of experience in the South. This included an explicit recommendation to cooperate with the public school authorities in developing a free school system for Southern blacks, which required support by taxation. “Outline of Suggestions to the Slater Board,” October 7, 1903, as attachment in W.W. Brierley to James Dillard, April 20, 1926, Folder 9, Box 27, Southern Education Foundation Archives (Atlanta, GA: Robert W. Woodruff Library at Atlanta University Center); hereinafter SEF-AUC.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy.

65. Skowronek, Stephen, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administration Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 47–85 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; For more information about the extent to which local government in the South was determined by party affiliation throughout the nineteenth century, see Powell, Lawrence, “Centralization and its Discontents in Reconstruction Louisiana,” Studies in American Political Development 20 (Fall 2006): 105–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66. Lieberman describes three important aspects to the administrative structure for successfully delivering race-based social policy in the New Deal, which have similar characteristics to foundation efforts in promoting universal education. The first is the level of government involved, whether federal, state, or local. The second is the political permeability, defined as the position that the policy occupies in the government and the extent to which it is open to political influence. The third is the policy environment, which includes the array of institutions that produce the policy. See Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line, 17–18.

67. Minutes of the General Education Board, January 24, 1911, Folder 3651, Box 353, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB.

68. For a discussion of funding models, see Malczewski, Building a New Educational State, 65–66; Malczewski, Joan, “Weak State, Stronger Schools: Northern Philanthropy and Organizational Change in the Jim Crow South,” Journal of Southern History 75, no. 4 (November 2009): 986 Google Scholar. For an example of similar efforts in the present, see Hess, Frederick M., ed., With the Best of Intentions: How Philanthropy Is Reshaping K-12 Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. Hess notes the importance of creating parallel systems and organizational capacity as an effective means to promote sustained reform. For a discussion of how Southern parochialism helped to promote change through incremental local reforms through local institution building see Szymanski, “Beyond Parochialism.”

69. Minutes of the General Education Board, January 24, 1911, Folder 3651, Box 353, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB.

70. Wallace Buttrick to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., February 5, 1914, Folder 1937, Box 203, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB.

71. “Negro Public Education in the South, 1927,” 7-B, Folder 1, Box 33, Series 5, SEF-AUC.

72. Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line, 16.

73. Of the 1,415 Southern counties, 213 counties (26%) employed these teachers by 1919; 354 (44%) by 1930; and 390 (48%) by 1935. This reflected 26 percent of the total in 1918, 44 percent of the total in 1930, and 49 percent by 1935. “Survey of Jeanes Teacher Areas in 14 States,” March 1, 1933, Folder 17, Box 19, Series 3, SEF-AUC; “Rural Supervising Industrial Teachers, 1919–20,” Folder 2122, Box 221, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB; “Survey of Jeanes Teacher Areas in 14 States,” March 1, 1933, Folder 17, Box 19, Series 3, SEF-AUC; “Teachers and County Supervisors of Negro Schools,” 1927–1930, Folder 2125, Box 222, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB; Arthur D. Wright to Trevor Arnett, October 7, 1935, Folder 1931, Box 203, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB.

74. Jackson Davis to Wycliffe Rose, September 2, 1910. Folder Wycliffe Rose, Box 6, The Papers and Photographs of Jackson Davis (Charlottesville: Alderman Memorial Library, University of Virginia).

75. “A Working Plan for the Development of the Rural Schools,” an attachment in A. P. Bourland to Wallace Buttrick, November 28, 1913, Folder 7415, Box 720, RAC-RFA.

76. Jackson Davis to Wyckliffe Rose, September 2, 1910, Folder Wyckliffe Rose, Box 6, No. 3072, Papers and Photographs of Jackson Davis (Charlottesville: Alderman Memorial Library at the University of Virginia), 2–4.

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid.

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82. Bura Hilbun to Frank Bachman, April 22, 1925, Folder 872, Box 97, Series 1.1, RAC-GEB.

83. For a discussion of organizational repertoires and interest groups, see Clemens, The People's Lobby, 92–93. While rural blacks were not able to use these repertoires to enact change on the level of the groups that Clemens discusses, the use of these school models was central to their participation in reform. Connie Lester describes a similar role in the organization of the Grange in Tennessee, Lester, Connie L., Up from the Mudsills of Hell: The Farmers’ Alliance, Populism, and Progressive Agriculture in Tennessee, 1870–1915 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

84. John R. Ellis to James H. Dillard, March 21, 1916, Folder 871, Box 97, Series 1.1, RAC-GEB.

85. Scholars have recognized the extensive political contributions of white women who were often appointed or elected to positions in county and state administration of public education beginning in the last half of the nineteenth century, but have not similarly recognized the important contributions of rural black teachers to state and local political development. See Pisapia, Michael Callaghan, “The Authority of Women in the Political Development of American Public Education, 1860–1930,” Studies in American Political Development 24 (April 2010): 1–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86. Circular Letter to Extension and Supervising Teachers and Organizers, April 7, 1910, Folder 2125, Box 222, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB.

87. James Dillard to Members of the Slater and Jeanes Boards, November 23, 1927, Folder 2123, Box 222, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB.

88. U.S. Bureau of Education, Negro Public Education: A Study of the Private and Higher Schools for the Colored People in the United States, Bulletins 1917, Nos. 38 and 39 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1917), 34Google Scholar.

89. “Conferences of Jeanes Teachers,” November 14, 1918, Folder 2121, Box 221, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB. These conferences demonstrate the development of the kinds of translocal communities that might develop through the institution of schooling. See Neem, “Civil Society and American Nationalism,” 37.

90. Malczewski, Joan, “The Schools Lost Their Isolation,” Journal of Policy History 23, no. 3 (June 2011): 323–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91. Booker T. Washington to Hollis B. Frissell, October 23, 1909, Folder 222, Box 27, SEF-AUC.

92. Leo Favrot to James H. Dillard, June 15, 1925, Folder 19, Box 27, SEF-AUC.

93. “Application for Jeanes Fund Aid,” from King George, Virginia, September 1, 1932, Folder 6, Box 23, SEF-AUC.

94. “Application for Jeanes Fund Aid,” from Knox and Jefferson, Tennessee, October 1, 1932, Folder 5, Box 23, SEF-AUC.

95. “Southern Education Foundation: Special Report of Jeanes Teacher for School Year 1939–40,” from Westmoreland, Virginia, Folder 7, Box 145, SEF-AUC.

96. “Southern Education Foundation: Special Report of Jeanes Teacher for School Year 1939–40,” from Carline, Virginia, Folder 5, Box 145, SEF-AUC.

97. “Jeanes Teachers,” prepared by James Dillard, May 10, 1927, Folder 2125, Box 222, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB.

98. Summarized statement of the activities of the State Agents for Negro Rural Schools for the year 1916, Folder 4, Box 34, SEF-AUC, Ala 2.

99. “Notes Made at the Conference of State Agents for Negro Rural Schools Held at the Battery Park Hotel, Asheville, North Carolina, November 26, 27, and 28, 1921,” Folder 2000, Box 208, Series 1, RAC-GEB, 2–3.

100. “Conference of State Agents of Rural Schools for Negroes,” June 4 and 5, 1929, Folder 2000, Box 208, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB.

101. “Jeanes Agent's Final or Term Report, 1928–29, Bolivar, Mississippi, Box 7988, Series 2342, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, hereinafter MDAH.”

102. “Jeanes Agent's Final or Term Report, 1928–29, Lamar, Mississippi, Box 7988, Series 2342, MDAH.”

103. “Jeanes Agent's Final or Term Report, 1928–29, Leflore, Mississippi, Box 7988, Series 2342, MDAH.”

104. The archives include examples of the GEB pushing state agents in Mississippi to do more, but with little success. For example, in 1925 foundation representatives called a meeting with Mississippi's state agents to figure out why so little was accomplished. The two men explained that they were, essentially, “assistants to the Superintendent, at his will,” and expected to focus on state initiatives of which black education was a minor part, even if the unrelated work provided a “wedge in launching the educational program for the negroes.” They outlined their specific responsibilities to the foundations, which included the Rosenwald Building Program, the teacher employment bureau, and supervision of twenty-four county training schools, twenty-three Jeanes Teachers, and a network of nineteen summer schools, but explained that none of these initiatives was a primary focus. The men lamented that the Rosenwald program required three trips to the site of each construction project, while the county training schools were “weighing heavily on our hearts at the present time,” and the Jeanes Teachers received only a “minimum amount of time which, of course, is a regret to us.” Bura Hilbun and William Strahan to Frank Bachman, 2, April 22, 1925, Folder 872, Box 97, Series 1.1, RAC-GEB.

105. Wallace Buttrick to Chancellor Andrew A. Kincannon, August 11, 1908, File Mississippi 10, University of Mississippi (1902–1956), Roll 74, Frame 0004, The General Education Board Archives, Series 1, Appropriations, Subseries 1: The Early Southern Program (New York: Rockefeller University, 1993. Distributed by Scholarly Resources)Google Scholar.

106. The archives include numerous reports and correspondence from these two men that provide extensive data about secondary school issues, state and rural politics, as well as recommendations for policy initiatives that might work in Mississippi. These reports are more detailed and informative than those submitted by the state agents during the same time period. The secondary professor reports can be found on Roll 74, Series 1.1, The University of Mississippi (1906–1956), The General Education Board Archives, MDAH; and in Boxes 92 and 93, Series 1.1, RAC-GEB.

107. Fant's request provided detail about school terms, including that a third of the counties went only four to five months with white teachers receiving less than $160 annually and black teachers far less. He noted that twenty-six counties made no school levy, running schools solely with state allocations of the common school fund. John C. Fant to Wallace Buttrick, June 10, 1919, Folder 828, Box 93, Series 1.1, RAC-GEB.

108. Thomas Bailey to Wallace Buttrick, October 12, 1908, File Mississippi 10, University of Mississippi (1902–1956), Roll 74, Frame 0004, The General Education Board Archives, Series 1, Appropriations, Subseries 1: The Early Southern Program (New York: Rockefeller University, 1993. Distributed by Scholarly Resources)Google Scholar.

109. “Report of Professor Bailey of Mississippi for March, 1909,” File Mississippi 10, University of Mississippi (1902–1956), Roll 74, Frame 0004, The General Education Board Archives, Series 1, Appropriations, Subseries 1: The Early Southern Program (New York: Rockefeller University, 1993. Distributed by Scholarly Resources), 1Google Scholar.

110. Ibid., 3.

111. Ibid., 2–3

112. E. C. Sage to Professor Thomas Bailey, March 16, 1909, File Mississippi 10, University of Mississippi (1902–1956), Roll 74, Frame 0004, The General Education Board Archives, Series 1, Appropriations, Subseries 1: The Early Southern Program (New York: Rockefeller University, 1993. Distributed by Scholarly Resources)Google Scholar.

113. “Executive Committee Meeting Negro Rural School Fund: Jeanes Foundation,” June 23, 1911, Folder 7, Box 17, SEF-AUC.

114. Minutes of the General Education Board, January 24, 1911, Folder 3651, Box 353, Series 1.2, RAC-GEB. The Rosenwald Fund was clear that matching funds were central to achieving its goals. Between 1917 and 1936, 5,357 buildings were constructed in 883 Southern counties, located in fifteen Southern states for a total cost of $28,408,520. Of this amount, 15 percent came from the fund, 17 percent from black donations, 4 percent from white contributions, and 64 percent from state and county tax funds. The largest single number of buildings was in North Carolina with 813 schools. See “Negro School Buildings in the Southern States, 1917–1947,” Folder 10, Box 76, Series 2.5, RFA-Fisk.

115. Abraham Flexner to Julius Rosenwald, June 20, 1919, Folder 6, Box 53, Julius Rosenwald Papers, University of Chicago Special Collections.

116. For an example, see Allen, Arch Turner, Johnson, Charles M., Betters, Paul V., Morrison, Fred Wilson, and Ross, Charles, State Centralization in North Carolina, ed. Betters, Paul Vernon (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1932)Google Scholar.

117. Leo M. Favrot, “Negro Education in the South,” an Address Delivered to the Department of Rural Education of the National Education Association, July 1, 1929, Folder 19, Box 27, SEF-AUC.

118. Malczewski, Building a New Educational State.

119. Steffes, School, Society, and State, 201. Carl Harris makes a similar argument with regard to urban black schools in Birmingham, Alabama, where reform was dependent upon general economic conditions, the ideology of the dominant white interests groups, and organizational change in school and governance. Harris, Carl V., “Stability and Change in Discrimination against Black Public Schools: Birmingham, Alabama, 1871–1931,” The Journal of Southern History 51 no. 3 (August 1985): 375–416 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

120. Christine Woyshner makes a similar point about the segregated black PTA, which was also able to participate within the national PTA and get considerable organizational power from it, because both groups promoted shared ideals of child welfare and parent education, making black participation seem nonthreatening. Woyshner, Christine, The National PTA, Race, and Civic Engagement: 1897–1970 (Columbus: Ohio State University, 2009)Google Scholar. See also Malczewski, Joan, “Philanthropy and Progressive Era State Building through Agricultural Extension Work in the Jim Crow South.” History of Education Quarterly 53, no. 4 (November 2013): 369–400 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joan Malczewski, “The Schools Lost Their Isolation,” 323–56.

121. Annie Holland was a local Jeanes Teacher beginning in 1911 and then became the state supervisor in 1919, reporting to the state agent for Negro education. Other professional black educators were also appointed as foundation agents, including Florence Alexander, the Mississippi State Jeanes supervisor, Helen Whiting, the Georgia State Jeanes supervisor, W. T. B. Williams, Southern field agent for the Jeanes Fund, George Davis, Rosenwald Fund field agents assigned to the North Carolina Division of Negro Education, and Charles Moore, the first North Carolina inspector for Rosenwald schools. Between 1920 and 1940, the two full decades after the initial appointment of these agents, twenty-three black assistants were appointed to report to state agents for Negro education in state-level departments. For a description of the structure of state departments for Negro education, see Smith, Samuel L., Builders of Goodwill: The Story of the State Agents of Negro Education in the South, 1910 to 1950 (Nashville: Tennessee Book, 1950), 175–78Google Scholar.

122. “New Developments,” November 7, 1931, Folder 10, Box 57, Series 3.1, Papers of Julius Rosenwald (Chicago: University of Chicago Special Collections).