BEFORE ECKSTEIN SCHOOL
EARLY OHIO EDUCATION LAWS
Prior to 1848 Ohio did not provide for education of non-white children. Non-white children could attend White schools if no White parent objected.
1848 The Ohio General Assembly school law required that school boards establish separate schools for colored children, if more than 20 such children lived in the district and wanted an education.
1853 Colored children were defined as having at least three-eighths African blood and being regarded as colored by the community. The new colored schools were to be funded by property taxes exacted from Negro property owners.
1878 The law changed requiring boards of education to provide free education to all, although they were still allowed to maintain segregated schools.
1887 The Ohio Legislature abolished segregated public schools. School boards were required to provide the same educational opportunities to students of all races.
THE FIRST FORMAL EDUCATION FOR GLENDALE’S NEGRO CHILDREN
The Eckstein School opened in 1915. Prior to this date the children from Glendale’s Negro community were taught in a number of locations around the village.
The first record of formal education for local Negro children is a class taught by Miss Eleanor Eckstein, in a barn behind her house, on East Fountain Avenue.
Whether her actions spurred the local school board into action or whether they were already considering the development of educational opportunities for the Negro community to comply with Ohio law, we may never know. But in 1869 the local school board deemed “it expedient to establish a separate school for the education of the colored children of the district in pursuance of the law in such cases provided.”
MISS ELEANOR ECKSTEIN TEACHES IN HER BARN ON FOUNTAIN AVENUE
Eleanor Eckstein began teaching the local Negro children in a barn behind the house soon after her arrival in the village in 1868.
She was an experienced teacher who had learned her trade in the private schools her parents had owned and ran while she was growing up. She also spent many years teaching second grade in a school on Sycamore Street, just north of Fifth Street, in downtown Cincinnati.
Miss Angie Richardson, who lived next door to the Eckstein sisters, recalled the school in the barn and said that the pupils were “taught sewing and cooking as well as reading and writing.”
This photograph is said to be of Miss Eckstein and her students the location is unknown.
