“As all the new Southern state constitutions after the Civil War provided for universal education, the past seemed smooth enough. Within a generation, however, Jim Crow mandates began to nibble away at the more enlightened laws, until by 1922 eighty-five percent of all Black school children were concentrated in the first four grades. Improvements came slowly after that, but not until the Supreme Court declared in 1954 that segregated schools were inherently unequal, could Blacks begin to hope to equal access to educational programs throughout all the states (Erickson, 1997, p. 220).”