On December 14, 1819, Alabama was admitted to the Union. Between then and February 1854 when the General Assembly of Alabama passed a law establishing a statewide public schooling system, the state's educational enactments were exceedingly modest and largely restricted to the chartering of private academies. Such action was barely sufficient to give substance to the constitutional piety that "Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged in this State." This should not, however, be taken as a sign of any particular indolence. Before the Civil War (1861-1865) the socialization of children was regarded in most parts of the United States as a parental and community matter. In Alabama, community schools were organized and survived - or did not survive - according to the wishes and wherewithal of the people they served. Educational policy was the province of elected trustees who were also responsible for building schoolhouses, employing teachers, prescribing texts, and generally operating the schools within a local area termed a township. In 1929, when modernization was still a work in progress, Edgar W. Knight, professor of education at the University of North Carolina, claimed this early model of schooling inspired a "persistent devotion to and confidence in localism in education." He saw this as a continuing blight and tut-tutted that localism "still commends itself to wide popular approval because of the deep democratic colour it is believed to wear." Geography goes some way toward explaining the localism that was Alabama's prevailing cultural condition during the nineteenth century. The state contains an area of 52,423 square miles, which, for comparative purposes, is about the same size as England. Within its borders are a number of fairly distinct regions, which are themselves composed of varying landscapes.

In the period between the end of the American Civil War in 1865 and 1915 - the year when a number of educational reform bills were enacted by its state legislature Alabama developed the structure for a modern educational system. This included graded "elementary" schools, county high schools, a tertiary sector of normal schools, agricultural colleges and polytechnic institutes, and a state university supported with public funds. This was a signal achievement for a great many educationists, elected office-holders, politicians, professional organisations and for other activists committed to modernising reform. Yet the progress was insufficient. The history of public education in Alabama in the period covered by this thesis has usually been written as a narrative of frustratingly slow but progressive development in which some determined men and women maintained their resolve to achieve an effective schooling system and to rid Alabama of its negative educational reputation. Over time these modernising reformers had some success though they had to fight against general legislative disinclination to increase educational funding and constitutional constraints on taxation. But, in this predominantly rural state, there was also a countervailing and valid cultural aspect to the rate and nature of reform which has not been adequately explored. This thesis will show that the cultural traditions of rural localism, including self-reliance, autonomous community decision-making, and a cluster of ideas about the purpose of the school and the content of the curriculum, had a pertinacity and pervasiveness that made them significant factors in the way in which Alabama's public schooling system was shaped. These factors influenced the pace of the development and expansion of the system as well. Those intent on modernising reform (even those armed with the authority of the state) were bound to respect and engage these traditions if they wished to succeed. Where they did so, the reformers had their greatest success. Hence cultural localism, rather than just being an irritating retardant to modernisation, was part of an evolving cultural dialectic and helped to set the terms of discourse within the educational polity and to shape reform agendas. Black localism was a projection of racial pride and the educational experience of Alabama's black citizens offers a counterpoint for the topic. Elementary schools were frequently staffed with poorly trained teachers who gave lessons in schoolhouses of dubious quality lacking adequate equipment. Attendance was not yet compulsory, the state's rate of illiteracy was a matter of shame, and there were huge inequities in the respective provisions for black and white students. In a 1912 national survey of educational efficiency, Alabama's "general rank" was at the very bottom.