Marker Text: An event here in September 1880 led to the end of segregation by race in the state's public schools. At the South Ward schools, Elias Allen tried unsuccessfully to enroll his two children. He appealed to the Crawford County Court of Common Pleas, and Judge Pearson Church declared unconstitutional the 1854 state law mandating separate schools for Negro children. This law was amended, effective July 4, 1881, to prohibit such segregation.
Location: On South Main Street in front of The Second District School, Meadville, PA. Erected by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in 2000.
My last post about school integration during the 1950's in what was called “Massive Resistance” over segregation within Virginia schools was only one event in many years of struggle to integrate public schools. The first struggles to integrate public schools began less than 20 years after the end of the Civil War, like this marker located in Meadville, PA indicates.
Photo taken looking south on S. Main Street in Meadville, PA. Click any photo to enlarge.
On May 8, 1854, Governor William Bigler signed Pennsylvania's common school law creating “separate schools for the tuition of negro and mulatto children.” Twenty-six years later in September 1880, Elias Allen, an African American living in Meadville, Crawford County, challenged the legislation by trying unsuccessfully to enroll his two children in the South Ward school in Meadville. The following year he adamantly refused to send his son to an all-Black school to which the county’s school board had assigned him.
