Across a forty year period, sixteen of the seventeen states which maintained dual education for blacks and whites provided subsidies for blacks to study outside the region. Initiated in the 1920s, program for out-of-state study were established in five states before the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the practice in the 1938 case Gaines v. Canada, yet after this decision, eleven more states initiated new programs, some of which operated until the late 1960s. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) litigated against these programs for three decades during its campaign against segregated schools. While this struggle went on, thousands of African Americans took advantage of these programs to subsidize their graduate study, enrolling at numerous universities outside the region. After graduation, many southerners surely remained outside the region, joining the millions of migrants who made permanent homes in the North, Midwest and Far West. But unlike other black professionals, the study participants and other educators returned to the region where market conditions provided opportunities to introduce the social and educational capital from the North back to schools and colleges in the South.

This project seeks to better understand these events. It describes the legal context for out-of-state-study, and examines the personal experiences of nine southern educators who enrolled in outside institutions, highlighting an often overlooked aspect of the segregated educational experience in America. The participants' preparation for graduate school within the system of segregated primary, secondary, and undergraduate schools in the South is also examined, schools which lacked funding, supplies, and infrastructure, yet made up for this by the encouragement they provided to black students Finally, the participants' professional work in colleges and schools for blacks in examined, highlighting how the circular migration in which black educators participated resulted in the importation of diverse knowledge and skill sets from numerous colleges and universities from across the country.