This study details the enactment of attendance laws for black pupils in Missouri and describes their effect by citing examples from two counties: St. Louis County and Polk County. The study is based on a review of primary sources yielding quantitative and qualitative data reported during the first 40 years of the attendance laws. A study of primary sources between 1865 and 1905 revealed black students in Missouri were denied equal educational opportunity through laws that closed their segregated schools when they failed to reach a threshold attendance number established by the legislature. Although fashioned for the purpose of educating freed slaves, the laws ensured second-class status for the state's black residents throughout the period of study. The problem was acute in areas of sparse black population; it became intensified when blacks migrated from rural areas to seek opportunity in the cities.