Until 1872, African-American students attending Bloomington Public Schools attended the Number 8 School, also known as The African School. When their parents decided to test the "separate but equal" Illinois law and sent their children to the more convenient Number 5 School (later, named Hawthorne, then Bent). Superintendent E.M. Etter had the children ejected and the school board decided to solve the issue by erecting a more convienent, smaller school for the two or four African American students.
The parents were not happy with the Board's decision and brought the case to court. Judge Thomas Tipton heard the case brought about by the parents and declared the side-by-side schoolhouse approach a "fraud on the taxpayers." The Illinois Supreme Court agreed with him. Bloomington Schools were integrated in 1872 and Sarah Raymond reported twenty years later that "the old prejudices of ante-bellum days soon disappeared and our young friends seemed to be very happy in their new relations.'"
Courtesy of the McLean County Museum of History
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