 Consequently, many Northern religious organizations, former Union Army officers and soldiers, and wealthy philanthropists were inspired to create and fund schools for the betterment of African Americans in the South.Although Reconstruction legislatures passed authorization to establish public education for the first time in the South, a system of legal racial segregation was later imposed under Jim Crow laws, and black schools were systematically underfunded by Southern states.The fear caused by Nat Turner's insurrection and the concerns raised in the emancipation debates that followed resulted in politicians and writers responding by defining slavery as a "positive good".