This study examines neglected aspects of the educational history of Texas. Although much emphasis has been placed on the western, frontier aspects of the state in the years after Appomattox, this study assumes that Texas remained primarily a southern state until 1900, and its economic, political, social, and educational development followed the patterns of the other ex-Confederate states as outlined by C. Vann Woodward in his Origins of the New South. This study of the educational history of Texas should aid in understanding such developments for the South as a whole. For the purposes of this study, "education" is defined in terms of institutions specifically created for the formal education of the young. Additionally, the terms "public education" and "private education" are used extensively. It is a contention of this study that the obvious differences between public and private schools in the last half of the twentieth century were not so obvious in the last half of the nineteenth, at least in Texas. Finally, an attempt has been made to confine the study to those areas of formal schooling which are today commonly called primary and secondary, although this was difficult because of the lack of definition used in naming …

On 13 November 1942, Thelma E. Page, a black high school teacher in Dallas, Texas, brought suit against the Dallas Board of Education in order to bring about the equalization of black and white teachers' salaries. This suit was part of a national movement of blacks, under the direction of the NAACP, and was an indirect attack upon segregation. Most of these suits were filed against large city school systems, in the South, in order to effect the greatest possible number of black teachers. This suit was won by the plaintiff and brought about equalization.