Materials pertaining to a grant awarded to Professor White, Dr. Lacy, and Mark Taylor by the Missouri Committee for the Humanities. Records include paperwork for the grant, microfilm reels of county government documents dating from the early 1900s, a sound reel and a slide presentation, photographs of early Cape Girardeau, images of rural schools, (photographs, negatives, and glass plate negatives), and cassette tapes of the oral history interviews. Some of the photographic materials do not directly relate to the Rural Schools project, but were also collected by Professor White over the course of his career at Southeast Missouri State University. The collection is arranged by the format and subject of the materials. Series I deals with the grant process, and Series II-V contain the research and records collected and created over the course of the project.