Washington — Many advocates of historically black colleges and universities were apoplectic after Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called the group of schools forged at the height of racial segregation “pioneers” of “school choice.”

DeVos issued a statement Monday evening after a meeting with HBCU leaders, praising their schools for identifying “a system that wasn’t working” and taking it “upon themselves to provide the solution” from the outset of their founding.

DeVos said in the statement that HBCUs “started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education.”

But the statement did not delve into the historical context behind the creation of HBCUs: that they were a response to racist Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the South, barring black students from attending traditionally white institutions. Instead, DeVos said HBCUs are “living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality.”

On Tuesday, DeVos spoke at more length with HBCU leaders during a luncheon in Washington. In her prepared remarks, discussing civil rights activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune, DeVos noted that “the traditional school system systemically failed to provide African-Americans access to a quality education — or, sadly, more often to any education at all.”

DeVos also said in the Tuesday speech: “HBCUs have always been more than simply institutions of higher learning. You have long represented a challenge to the status quo, starting by providing a necessary opportunity to African-Americans following the Civil War.”

Her Monday evening statement drew immediate backlash on social media. Tweets poked fun of her characterization of HBCUs as about school choice — “as if white/colored water fountains were about beverage options” and comparing the Montgomery bus boycott to “pioneering new scenic walking paths.”