Following the end of the Civil War, Negro education no longer took place in separate schools. Figures regarding Negro participation in public education are not completely clear, but it appears that enrollment in schools varied, declining to a low of 55% of those eligible in 1900, then increasing, until by 1930 Negroes were proportionately represented in the school population.
During the 1930’s there were, at one point, 35 Negro students from New Haven enrolled in colleges. This was three times the national average for Negro college enrollment but only three-fourths the average of all students. This does indicate, however, given the extremely low number of Negroes participating equally in most city-wide institutions, that education in New Haven may have been more open to blacks than other areas of life.
One continuing problem for Negroes who aspired to an education was that except for a very small proportion of those who could directly serve the black New Haven community as professionals or businessmen, there was little opportunity to use in the larger community whatever degrees or skills had been obtained in school. It was not uncommon for young people who did come from stable homes and who had had the opportunity and encouragement to continue their schooling to leave the city to practice their professions either in the South or in larger urban settings, both of which had a larger black population.
Within the city school system black teachers and administrators were extremely rare. In 1898 and 1914 the first two regular Negro teachers, Miss Grace Booth and Miss Jessie Muse, were hired. By 1930 there were only four black teachers, none of them in the high or middle schools.