on in this
town, however, this school has not rapidly developed, although the
work of the teachers employed there has been efficient, as has been
evidenced by their well-prepared eighth-grade students who have done
excellently in more advanced schools.[17]

A little farther north, in Wheeling in Ohio County, Negro education
had a better opportunity. Wheeling is geographically a part of
Pennsylvania, and its attitude toward education has been determined to
a large extent by the impetus given the cause in that progressive
commonwealth. The spirit of fairness in dealing with the man far down
in urban communities nearby, moreover, has been reflected to a certain
extent in the policies of the educational authorities of Wheeling in
dealing with the Negro. At an early date the Negroes of Wheeling were
provided with elementary schools. Referring to the increasing interest
in Negro education in 1866, State Superintendent White said: "An
excellent school has been started in Wheeling and a few are reported
in other places. The school-house in Wheeling cost about $2500. The
school is conducted by a teacher of their own color and the behavior
and scholarship of the pupils are worthy of imitation."

Here, as in the case of most Negro schools near the Ohio River and
even in the central portion of the State, their first teachers came
from Ohio, where they had the opportunity to attend the high schools
and even colleges of high order, although they were not able to
over-ride the race prejudice which barred them from the teaching corps
in that free State. In Wheeling, moreover, the salaries paid were much
more inviting than in many towns of West Virginia, and that city could
easily employ the best equipped Negro teachers, who in the beginning
came largely from Ohio.

The Wheeling school, then, fortunate in having the service of such
teachers, developed about as rapidly as possible under the
circumstances of a limited Negro population; for Wheeling is not in a
Negro section, and the industrial aspect of the city not being
inviting to Negro workers, the population of color did not rapidly
increase. Because of the small enumeration thereby resulting, more
extensive facilities could not be provided even when the board of
education was favorably inclined. In 1897, however, when the pupils of
all of the grades reached about three hundred, the city established
the Lincoln High School, which had its development under the late J.
McHenry Jone