The Southern Education Board was established in 1901 as the executive branch of the Conference for Education in the South, which was founded after a series of meetings, 1898-1900, held at Capon Springs, W. Va. The Board worked primarily to promote public support for schools and better education, especially in the rural South—it chose not to challenge Jim Crow laws and the era’s systematic disenfranchisement of Blacks, on the belief that education and work would overcome ignorance and race prejudice. The Board sought public school education as the lever by which it hoped to move the South, to solve all of the complex problems of Southern poverty, ignorance, and racial tension. The Board disbanded in 1914. Some prominent Southern Education Board members included:

• Edwin A. Alderman
• Charles D. McIver - First President of Normal and Industrial School for White Girls at Greensboro, North Carolina (later the University of North Carolina at Greensboro).
• J.L.M. Curry
• John D. Rockefeller, Sr. - His philanthropy influenced public and higher education in throughout the South and the United States. Funded normal and common schools throughout the south.
• Fredrick T. Gates - Philanthropic advisor to John D. Rockefeller Sr.
• Andrew Carnegie
• Robert C. Ogden - Financial supporter of Samuel Armstrong (founder of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute now Hampton University) and Booker T. Washington (founder of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute now Tuskegee University)
• George Foster Peabody
• William H. Baldwin - Financial supporter of Booker T. Washington (founder of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute now Tuskegee University)
• Wallace Buttrick - Served as executive officer and secretary of the General Education Board.
• Charles W. Dabney
• Hollis B. Frissell - Served as second President of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute.
• Walter Hines Page - Journalist
• Albert Shaw - Journalist