CRYSTAL R. SANDERS: Education has always been central to the Black freedom struggle.

TINA MCDUFFIE: For years, under America's system of segregation, Black Americans who wanted advanced degrees had to travel North.

SANDERS: For most of the 20th century, I should say, African Americans in the South did not have the opportunity to secure any type of higher education, beyond the bachelor's degree.

ANDREW FEILER: Education was liberation.

MCDUFFIE: "Segregation Scholarships" on Local, U.S.A. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ SANDERS: During a time where African Americans can't eat at lunch counters, can't try on clothes in department stores... ♪ ♪ we see thousands and thousands of African Americans decide that they are still going to reach their highest potential.

Traveling while Black, going into communities where you know absolutely no one but believing that the pursuit of education was worth it.

♪ ♪ This is a story about Black determination and Black perseverance.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ For most of the 20th century, I should say, African Americans in the South did not have the opportunity to secure any type of higher education beyond the bachelor's degree.

There's not one single public institution, an institution that's supported by tax dollars, Black and white tax dollars, allowing African Americans to pursue post-baccalaureate study.

So we take something like the University of North Carolina or the University of Georgia or the University of Florida, all of these Southern flagship institutions have an array of graduate and professional school programs but those programs are off-limits to African Americans.

So any African Americans in the South desiring a master's degree, a doctorate degree, a JD or an MD or a DDS had to travel outside of the state to receive those opportunities because all of the states of the former Confederacy and all of the border states refused to put post-baccalaureate programs at their Black colleges.

♪ ♪ African Americans are having to have this migration, what I call a forgotten migration, to the North, the Midwest, and the West to receive the same educational opportunities that white Southerners could receive at home.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Back in the 1920s, we began to see Black lawmakers strategically introducing laws across the South, to secure educational opportunities for African Americans.

Missouri elects its first Black state legislator and it was a man by the name of Walthall Moore.

So, he introduces a bill in 1921 to upgrade Lincoln University, which was the only public Black college in that state.

His bill says, "Until the state invests as it should in Lincoln "to make it the Black counterpart "of the University of Missouri, "the state should pay "for Black residents to go out of state "and secure the same educational opportunities that white residents have."

What we're going to see is it's a domino effect.

Between 1921 and 1948, 16 Southern and border states created these programs where they used tax dollars to compel African Americans to go out of state for anything beyond the bachelor's degree.

I have coined this tuition assistance as segregation scholarships because essentially, the purpose of this money is to preserve segregation.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Every state had different parameters for their segregation scholarship programs.

Most states paid the differential between the cost of attendance at the flagship in that state and the cost of tuition where a student actually attended.

♪ ♪ Some states provided transportation assistance, as these students are having to take buses and trains and sometimes planes, to go back and forth between the North and the South.

Some states provided a living stipend, with a recognition that living in the North, Midwest or West, was often a lot more expensive than living in the South.

So when African Americans are demanding the opportunity for graduate study, what they're saying to Southern state governments is, "We are citizens, and in the same way "that you provide opportunities for white Americans, we demand opportunities for ourselves."

♪ ♪ One of the reasons why the N.A.A.C.P.

pursues educational equality lawsuits in graduate and professional education first, is that they understood that it's graduate and professional education that creates a class of race leaders, a professional class of doctors and lawyers and attorneys and pharmacists and teachers and nurses who are going to serve Black communities, who are going to lead Black communities.

And many of these segregation scholarship recipients go to the North, Midwest and the West knowing that they're coming back home and they're coming back home equipped with terminal degrees and with the determination to change their home states.

♪ ♪ One of the most famous cases of this is the case of Fred Gray.

He said "It will be my mission to go back home and to dismantle segregation."

And indeed, he does just that.

He graduates from Case Western's Law School in 1954 and a year later, his good friend Rosa Parks calls him and says "I've been arrested for sitting down on a Montgomery city bus" and he immediately becomes her attorney.

He ends up representing not just Rosa Parks but all of the African Americans that are arrested for their participation in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and that is the beginning of a very long career he has as a civil rights attorney.

He would go into court time and time again to defend the Constitutional rights of African Americans.

And he's just one example of the numerous segregation scholarship recipients who used their training to come back home and began to create a more just and inclusive society.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ When I tell people about these segregation scholarship programs, they often say, "Well, that was amazing.

"These individuals had the opportunity "to go to the best schools in the country "and they received some money to offset their expenses.

That was wonderful."

I say "Number one, "they were compelled to go to these institutions.

"They didn't have a choice.

♪ ♪ "And number two, "these are individuals who are forced to travel while Black during the age of Jim Crow."

♪ ♪ I had not been on a train before, but when I got on that train, and there was a car for the Blacks and then behind that was the car for white passengers.

As I remember, it was a train that took me up to Boston and in a segregated car.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ KHALIFF WATKINS: Could you help paint the picture of what the actual physical journey was like?

♪ ♪ Traveling while Black during the age of Jim Crow was often an experience in humiliation.

It was an experience in racial indignity.

Oftentimes, African Americans are forced to sit in the worst parts of train cars.

EARLY: There weren't any overhead racks to place your luggage.

We had to put them either under the seat or in the aisles.

♪ ♪ SANDERS: They are sitting in the car right behind the locomotive.

So all of the steam and all of the bad fumes are coming into the car that they are in.

♪ ♪ And even before they boarded the train, they are in the worst part of the train's waiting area.

Rooms that often don't have restroom facilities.

So African Americans are often made to use the bathroom outside.

♪ ♪ The Black-only section would've been the smoking section for the entire car, and at that time, it wasn't just smoking in the air but actually chewing tobacco.

SANDERS: They are being made to sit in cars that are often dirty.

GOLDMAN: People would be spitting at the feet of those Black passengers and there would be this sticky residue across the floor.

SANDERS: They're calling them all kinds of names.

Many of the women are oftentimes sexually harassed.

This is an experience in humiliation.

EARLY: It just hit me.

I had no idea because no one had told me what to expect.

♪ ♪ NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Well, it appears that everybody's ready and into the spacious luggage compartment with the bags.

Careful, that's Grandma's present.

SANDERS: In a 21st century mind, we think of travel as very easy throughout the United States.

You figure out where you want to go, you put it in your GPS, and you just go along your way.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: And with the utmost economy.

♪ ♪ SANDERS: Throughout the era of legal segregation, hardly any of that was possible for African Americans because many gas stations and many hotels refused to serve them.

African Americans had to be very strategic and plan out their trips well in advance to know what cities are actually safe to be caught in after dark, because there were many towns that were sundown towns.

What cities will I be able to buy a cup of coffee and not be lynched?

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ The Green Book really becomes the GPS system that we all use today to ensure that a traveler could go to their destination and get there safely.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ African American students who are compelled to go North, Midwest or West for graduate study, go to a host of institutions all across the country.

♪ ♪ In New York, Columbia University and New York University were very common.

Everyone had heard of Harlem.

Harlem had this mystique in the minds of many African Americans, and so Columbia being located right there, was a perfect match.

♪ ♪ Now that said... ♪ ♪ many find that these institutions, while they were quick to accept Black tuition dollars, are not always that welcoming of Black students.

♪ ♪ Take the example of Christine King Farris.

She's the older sister of the Civil Rights hero, Martin Luther King Jr. and she goes to Columbia University to pursue a master's degree in economics after graduating from Spelman College.

♪ ♪ In her own memoir, she writes that her time at Columbia was some of the worst years of her life because of the racism that she experienced in the classroom.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ In most states, the majority of segregation scholarship recipients were Black teachers.

They wanted to have advanced training to ensure that they were keeping up with trends in the field.

So many African American schoolteachers are receiving segregation scholarships to go several consecutive summers at places like Teachers College, or NYU or Penn State to get that master's degree in education.

♪ ♪ Nine times out of ten, and perhaps it's ten times out of ten, Black teachers had more credentials than their white counterparts because they are double-taxing themselves in many ways to really equip themselves with knowledge that they're going to take back into these Black classrooms.

♪ ♪ So it's a huge sacrifice on their part.

♪ ♪ But it shows you their commitment to education and their commitment to ensuring that Black students have everything they could possibly have, even if they are in institutions that are very under-resourced in terms of funding from local school districts.

♪ ♪ Education has always been central to the Black freedom struggle.

♪ ♪ In the 20th century, because Southern states and local state governments underfunded Black education, African Americans are double-taxing themselves, joining forces, pooling resources, having fundraisers to create opportunities for Black children to learn.

FEILER: At the heart of this story are two men, who reach across divides of race, religion, and region and fundamentally change this country.

♪ ♪ And I think for everybody marching in the streets for social justice and progressive change in America, this story speaks to them.

♪ ♪ Booker T. Washington, born to slavery in Virginia, goes to Hampton College, becomes an educator and is the founding principal of the historically Black college in Tuskegee, Alabama originally known as Tuskegee Institute.

♪ ♪ Julius Rosenwald is born to Jewish immigrants who had fled religious persecution in Germany, and he rises to become the president of Sears, Roebuck and Company.

These two men meet in 1911, in one of the earliest collaborations between African Americans and Jews in progressive civic causes.

They create this program that becomes known as Rosenwald Schools, and from 1912 to 1937, the program builds 4,978 schools across 15 Southern and border states and the results are transformative.

♪ ♪ But it remains hidden history and its scope and sweep is largely unknown.

♪ ♪ My name is Marian Coleman.

I've lived here in Cassville, Georgia all my life.

I was born and raised here and this was my school when I attended in the early '50s, 1950s.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It was a time of segregation.

Very poor conditions, and the teachers were not paid.

They didn't have the finances that they needed to get supplies for the children to help them educate them.

♪ ♪ The buildings that they had school in was either an Army barracks or a large hall and mostly church buildings, but a lot of them had to be condemned.

♪ ♪ The conditions under which they had to come to school was very poor during that time.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I just remember a lot of things that my parents did during fundraiser times to raise money.

♪ ♪ I know my granddaddy, he had a cotton field.

We picked cotton, We picked berries, whatever we could sell to raise money to have the school built.

♪ ♪ We had a lot of cooperation between the parents, the teachers, the neighbors, everybody.

They would say that it took a community to raise a child.

Every child in the community was important.

♪ ♪ When the school was built, there was like a pride, you know?

The community had pride in the school because they had a part in it.

FEILER: This is an African American community already being taxed to pay for white schools, who had to dig deep to pay for this school.

They fought and they strove and they did what they could to make a better life for their children because in their eyes, education was liberation.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ There are two economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, who have done five studies of Rosenwald Schools, and what their data shows is that prior to World War I there was a large and persistent Black-white education gap in the South.

That gap closes precipitously between World War I and World War II and the single greatest driver of that achievement is Rosenwald Schools.

I had some great teachers that influenced us to move forward and to take on dreams.

Whatever we wanted to be, we could do it.

♪ ♪ FEILER: In addition, many of the leaders and foot soldiers of the Civil Rights movement to come, come through these schools.

Medgar Evers, Maya Angelou, multiple members of the Little Rock Nine, who integrate Little Rock Central High and Congressman John Lewis, all went to Rosenwald Schools.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Of the original 4,978 schools, only about 500 survive.

♪ ♪ And only about half of those have been restored.

♪ ♪ These spaces are the locus of history and memory in a community.

♪ ♪ And when we lose spaces like this, we lose a piece of the American soul.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ COLEMAN: Education shapes our nation, it shapes our world.

I'm a firm believer that we should keep this type of information alive for the future generations so that they too will know the struggles and the hardships that it took our people to survive and keep them motivated to do the same, not to give up.

They weren't people that would give up easy.

They fought for what they wanted and what was right and they're still doing it today.

We're still fighting for what we believe is right.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪