About: Training school (United States)

Training schools were schools established to educate African Americans, especially as teachers, in the Southern United States and reformatory schools in the northern states. The southern schools were supported by northern philanthropists. The Slater Fund supported many of them. In the segregated Jim Crow South, schools for African Americans could not be high schools so they were called training schools and “emphasized vocational training and domestic science over academic subjects”. Training schools were also established in northern states as reformatory schools. In the south they often served African American students from a large area and were often named county training schools. Many were eventually renamed and became high schools until desegregation when many were closed.