The Local Black Histories Project - Edited Funding Inequities

Funding Inequities in the Segregated Schools of Williamsburg and James City County

Public School No. 2, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1892. Photographed with permission of Marie Sheppard by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

In Williamsburg and James City County, as elsewhere, public schools for Black children received significantly less resources than schools for White children. The School Boards, as well as the College of William & Mary, played a role in systematically advantaging White students over Black students through unequal pay for teachers, inequitable student-teacher ratios, and funding for school resources and supplies.

Despite these systematic disadvantages, the Black community supported teachers by raising money for supplies. Black and White students were aware of their inequitable treatment.

Unequal Pay for Teachers

Teachers were critical to student success in the early public schools in Williamsburg and James City County. However, as the Williamsburg School Board hired teachers for the new public school system, it did not treat Black and White teachers equally.

As this chart demonstrates, the School Board introduced a racial pay gap by paying white teachers roughly twice as much as the Black teachers. The School Board also established gender segmentation in the schools as men were hired in the higher-paying Principal Teacher positions, while women were hired in the lower-paying Assistant Teacher positions.

Ms. Pauline Hill, a Black woman and assistant teacher, earned only a fifth of the White male teacher’s salary and earned just over a third as much as the White female assistant teacher and the Black male teacher, Mr. Dennis H. Bourbon. As the classes within the schools were organized by gender with one teacher assigned to the boys and the other to the girls, the lowest paid teacher was assigned to educate Black girls.

In the first year of public schools, the School Board ordered that the two White teachers and one Black teacher be paid the same and not more than $25 per month. However, after a few years, the School Board made the decision to introduce significant pay gaps by race.

Source: Constructed from Rowe (1997) and Byrd (1968), citing Williamsburg School Board Meeting Minutes, 1870-1907. The length of sessions changed during this period, making it difficult to compare directly per month and per session salaries.

The racial and gender wage gaps across teachers in Williamsburg persisted in the decades to come. While the gender wage gap waivered, Black teachers would continue to earn far less than their White counterparts.

Source: Morgan (1985)

Black teachers in James City County experienced a similar wage gap that intensified significantly after the turn of the century as Jim Crow laws tightened in Virginia and across the South.

Source: Morgan (1985)

Inequitable Student-Teacher Ratios

Black teachers earned lower pay than white teachers and had more students in their classrooms.

Williamsburg

Black teachers in Williamsburg had significantly more students in their classrooms than white teachers in the first few decades of the 20th century. The gap in the student-teacher ratio slowly closed over time.

calculated from Byrd (1968)

James City County

In James City County, Black teachers consistently had far more students in their classrooms than white teachers - in many years double the number of students.

calculated from Byrd (1968)

Disparities in Resources

Budget figures from the School Board demonstrate that Black schools in Williamsburg nearly always received fewer dollars per student than White schools.

This list of supplies from the Williamsburg School Board in the early 1900s demonstrates that White students received a disproportionate share of the School Board's resources.

Source: Rowe (1997), citing school board meetings

When new schools were built, these funding inequities continued and even intensified.

Source: Rowe (1997), citing school board meetings

Ms. Grace Radcliffe describes the high quality of teachers she learned from at School No. 2 and the James City County Training School in the 1920s, as well as the challenges due to the lack of resources:

Source: Interview with Mr. Philip R. Cooke | August 15, 1984 | James City County Oral History Collection | Special Collections Research Center | William & Mary Libraries

When asked if the facilities for the white and Black students were equal, Rev. Junius H. Moody responded,

“No, they weren’t. And, that’s one reason the Supreme Court ruled their reason out. Because they said as long as you are separate you can’t be equal. We didn’t get the advantages that the white children got.”

Source: Interview with Rev. Junius H. Moody | July 31, 1984 | James City County Oral History Collection | Special Collections Research Center | William & Mary Libraries

Community Support

Black teachers did benefit from a strong network of parents and community members who volunteered time and money to address the inequities in funding from the School Boards.

When asked for improvements or educational resources for the Black school, the school board often required Black parents to subsidize the cost.

Source: Rowe (1997)

The Greater Impact

As Rowe recounted, the disparities across the schools could not have gone unnoticed by the youth.

Local residents, Ms. Marie Sheppard recalled that, in response to continued incidents like this, the school board staggered the opening and closing times at the Black and white schools in order to minimize contact among students.

Source: Rowe (1997)

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Works Cited

Byrd, Rawls. 1968. History of Public Schools in Williamsburg. Williamsburg, VA.
Morgan, Philip D. 1985. Black Education in Williamsburg-James City County, 1619-1984. Report produced for the Williamsburg-James city County Public Schools and The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
Rowe, Linda H. 1997. A History of Black Education and Bruton Heights School. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library Research Report Series – 0373. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

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