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| The value of school properties for Black children is an average of $37 per child in contrast to an average value of $157 per child for White students' schools in Deep South states. Also, many of the Black schools were built partially with private contributions from local African Americans adults. |
| Slater Fund and Jeanes Fund support an annual summer institute for African American ministers to become more effective leaders in meeting their communities' needs, including education. |
| On March 15, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) begins its attack on segregation and discrimination in American schools and colleges by suing the University of North Carolina on behalf of Black applicant Thomas Hocutt. The NAACP will lose the case after a Black educator refuses under pressure to certify Hocutt's academic record. |
| Amid the Great Depression, 54 "emergency" nursery schools are established for Black children across the South. The nursery schools are supported by federal funds in 14 Southern states. |
| US Supreme Court orders the law school of the University of Maryland to admit Blacks. Donald Murray will enroll the next semester but other Southern law schools will fail to follow suit. |
 Virginia Randolph Fund is established in honor of the first Jeanes Teacher to continue its work. |
| NAACP announces its legal campaign to equalize the salaries of White and Black teachers in the South. The first case is filed in Montgomery County, Maryland. |
| SEF is incorporated as a foundation with the merger of the Peabody Fund, Slater Fund, Jeanes Fund, and the Virginia Randolph Fund. The foundation selects Washington, DC as the site of its headquarters since no Southern city would allow the foundation to maintain an interracial staff with interracial public meetings. |
| On March 26, a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, William H. Hastie is confirmed as the first African American federal judge. He has been appointed to the District Court of the Virgin Islands. Hastie received his law degree from Harvard. |
| SEF launches a primary focus on improving academic performance for African American students by increasing the number of Jeanes teachers throughout the South. |
| US Supreme Court in Gaines v. Canada decrees that, in accordance with the 14th Amendment, a state is bound to furnish equal facilities within its own borders. |
 The State Agent for Negro Schools privately reports that Mississippi appropriates only 19 cents to educate a Black child for every dollar it spends on a White child, and that most Mississippi counties allocate no money for Black schools. As a result, more than one-third of the Black schools in rural Mississippi are privately owned--"churches, log cabins, lodges, and other inappropriate structures," usually with no school furniture. |
| Jeanes Teachers are now in over 500 counties in 15 Southern states. |
| In World War II the modern testing movement receives a boost with the Army Alpha test used to screen enlisted military personnel for their potential as officers. The tests will be modified and subsequently introduced into schools. These types of standardized tests will be adopted and used in Southern schools perhaps more pervasively than in schools in other regions, especially after the 1980s. |
| SEF develops audio recordings highlighting African American achievements and distributes them to Black and White schools in the South. |
| President Franklin Roosevelt signs the first "GI Bill of Rights" providing educational assistance and other benefits to the ex-soldiers of World War II. Similar laws will be passed after the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In total, over 12 million people will attend schools and colleges on the "GI Bills" in the 20th century. |
1932-1944: