The Lexington Civic League: Agent of Reform, 1900 - The Filson ...

1988] Lexin'gton Civic League 347
ette County, for example, in 1907 had thirty white and fourteen
black school districts.2a
In 1907 the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs under-
took a major campaign for educational reforms, calling for
consolidated school districts, school suffrage for women, and
an increased appropriation for the new state normal schools at
Richmond and Bowling Green. The Civic League added its en-
thusiastic support toward helping lay the groundwork for the
so-called "Educational Legislature" of 1908. Responding to sta-
tistics showing that fewer than fifty percent of school-age
children were attending school and that approximately fifteen
percent of the white, adult, male population was illiterate (in-
cluding about 5,000 school trustees), the General Assembly
passed a series of laws intended to remedy the situation. The
most significant of these acts was the Sullivan bill which estab-
lish-ed the county as the school unit, required the counties to
levy taxes to support local schools, and required the establish-
ment of a high school in each county within two years. Other
acts included an appropriation of $500,000 for the state colleges
and normal schools, a law strengthening enforcement of com-
pulsory school attendance, and another calling for creation of
a state educational commission to recommend future avenues
for reform. 4
23Mable P. Dagett, "Kentucky's Fight for an Education," in The
Delineator, John G. Crabbe Scrapbook, Townsend Room, Eastern Kentucky
University Library; John Grant Crabbe, Biennial Report of the Superintendent
of Public Instruction for the Two Years Ending June 30, 1909
(Frankfort, 1909), 15, 21, 293.
24 Lexington Herald, 17 March, 9 April, 22 June, 14, 28 July, 5 October,
3, 21 November 1907; Nancy Forderhase, "'Limited Only By Earth and
Sky': The Louisville Woman's Club and Progressive Reform," The Filson
Club History Quarterly 59 (1985): 337, 339; Forderhase, "'The Clear Call
of Thoroughbred Women': The Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs
and the Crusade for Educational Reform, 1903-1909," The Register of the
Kentucky Historical Society 83 (1985) : 25-31, passim; Hamlett, History of
Education in Kentucky, 200-210. For a further discussion of women and
educational reforms in the South, see James L. Leloudis, II, "School Reform
in the New South: The Woman's Association for the Betterment of
Public School Houses in North Carolina, 1902-1919," Journal of American
History 69 (1983) : 886-909.