Following the Color Line Part 41

Each year conferences have been held in the South, a feature of which has been the "Ogden Special"--a special train from the North bringing Northern citizens to Southern inst.i.tutions and encouraging a more intimate acquaintanceship on both sides. No one influence has been more potent than this in developing a spirit of nationalisation in the Southern educational movement.

So far in this chapter I have had very little to say about the Negro, and especially Negro education. It is important to know the view of the new leadership on this question. I have shown in previous articles that the majority view in the South was more or less hostile to the education of the Negro, or, at least, to his education beyond the bare rudiments.

The new leaders have recognised this feeling, and while without exception they believe that the Negro must be educated and most of them have said so openly, the general policy has been to emphasise white education and unite the people on that.

"In education," one of the leaders said to me, "it doesn't matter much where we begin. If we can arouse the spirit of the school, the people are going to see that it is as important to the state to have a trained Negro as it is to have a trained white man."

One of the troubles in the South, one of the reasons for the prejudice against education, and particularly Negro education, has arisen from the fact that what has been called education was not really education at all.

In the first place many of the schools have been so poor and the teachers so inefficient that the "education" acquired was next to worthless. There was not enough of it, nor was it of a kind to give the Negro any real hold upon life, and it often hurt him far more than it helped. Much of the prejudice in the South against Negro education is unquestionably due to the wretched school system, which in many places has not really educated anybody. But, deeper than all this, the old conception in the South of a school was for a long time the old aristocratic conception--what some one has called "useless culture"--of educating a cla.s.s of men, not to work, but to despise work. That idea of education has wrought much evil, especially among the Negroes. It has taught both white and coloured men, not the doctrine of service, which is necessary to democracy, but it has given them a desire for artificial superiority, which is the characteristic of aristocracies. It has made the Negro "uppish" and "b.u.mptious"; it has caused some white men to argue their superiority when they had no basis of accomplishment or usefulness to make them really superior.

_The Inspiration of Hampton Inst.i.tute_

But when the idea of education began to be democratic, when men began to think more of their duties than of their rights, a wholly new sort of school appeared; and it appeared first among the Negroes. The country has not yet begun to realise the debt of grat.i.tude which it owes to the promoters of Hampton Inst.i.tute--to the genius of General Armstrong, its founder and to the organising ability of Dr. H. B. Frissell who followed him. These men will be more highly honoured a hundred years from now than they are to-day, for Americans will then appreciate more fully their service to the democracy.

The "Hampton idea" is the teaching of work--of service, of humility, of duties to G.o.d and to man. It is in the highest sense the democratic idea in education. And it has come, as most great movements have come, from the needs and the struggles of those who are downtrodden and outcast. And how wonderfully the idea has spread! Out of Hampton sprung Tuskegee and Calhoun and Kowaliga and scores of other Negro schools, until to-day nearly all Negro inst.i.tutions for higher training in the South have industrial or agricultural departments.

The best Southern white people were and are friendly to schools of this new type. They thought at first that Hampton and Tuskegee were going to train servants in the old personal sense of servants who become only cooks, butlers, and farmers, and many still have that aristocratic conception of service. But the "Hampton idea" of servants is a much greater one, for it is the democratic idea of training men who will serve their own people and thereby serve the country. Men who graduate from Hampton and Tuskegee become leaders of their race. They buy and cultivate land, they set up business establishments--in short, they become producers and state-builders in the largest sense.

_New World Idea of Education_

The idea of Hampton is the new world idea of education, and white people in the South (and in the North as well) are now applying it everywhere in their educational movements. Agricultural and industrial schools for white boys and girls are spreading throughout the South: schools to teach work, just as Hampton teaches it. Only last year the state of Georgia provided for eleven new agricultural schools in various parts of the state, and there is already talk in the South, as in the North, of agricultural training in high schools. These men, white and black, who are educated for democratic service will in time become masters of the state.

The new leaders, then, of whom I have spoken, do not oppose Negro education: they favour it and will go forward steadily with the task of bring it about. So far, the Negro public schools have felt little of the new impulse; in some states and localities, as I have shown in other chapters, the Negro schools have actually retrograded, where the white schools have been improving rapidly. But that is the continuing influence of the old leadership; the new men have not yet come fully into their own.

I could quote indefinitely from the real statesmen of the South regarding Negro education, but I have too little s.p.a.ce. Senator Lamar of Mississippi once said:

"The problem of race, in a large part, is a problem of illiteracy. Most of the evils which have grown up out of the problem have arisen from a condition of ignorance, prejudice and superst.i.tion. Remove these and the simpler elements of the question will come into play.... I will go with those who will go furthest in this matter."

No higher note has been struck in educational ideals than in the Declaration of Principles adopted last winter (1907) at the meeting of the Southern Educational a.s.sociation at Lexington, Ky., an exclusively Southern gathering of white men and women. Their resolutions, which for lack of s.p.a.ce cannot be here printed in full, should be read by every man and woman in the country who is interested in the future of democratic inst.i.tutions. I copy here only a few of the declarations:

1. All children, regardless of race, creed, s.e.x, or the social station or economic condition of their parents, have equal right to, and should have equal opportunity for, such education as will develop to the fullest possible degree all that is best in their individual natures, and fit them for the duties of life and citizenship in the age and community in which they live.

2. To secure this right and provide this opportunity to all children is the first and highest duty of the modern democratic state, and the highest economic wisdom of an industrial age and community. Without universal education of the best and highest type, there can be no real democracy, either political or social; nor can agriculture, manufactures, or commerce ever attain their highest development.

3. Education in all grades and in all legitimate directions, being for the public good, the public should bear the burden of it. The most just taxes levied by the state, or with the authority of the state, by any smaller political division, are those levied for the support of education. No expenditures can possibly produce greater returns and none should be more liberal.

_The New South on Negro Education_

Concerning Negro education, I am publishing the resolutions in full, because they voice the present thought of the best leadership in the South:

1. We endorse the accepted policy of the states of the South in providing educational facilities for the youth of the Negro race, believing that whatever the ultimate solution of this grievous problem may be, education must be an important factor in that solution.

2. We believe that the education of the Negro in the elementary branches of education should be made thorough, and should include specific instruction in hygiene and home sanitation, for the better protection of both races.

3. We believe that in the secondary education of Negro youth emphasis should be placed upon agriculture and the industrial occupations, including nurse training, domestic science, and home economics.

4. We believe that for practical, economical and psychological reasons Negro teachers should be provided for Negro schools.

5. We advise instruction in normal schools and normal inst.i.tutions by white teachers, whenever possible, and closer supervision of courses of study and methods of teaching in Negro normal schools by the State Department of Education.

6. We recommend that in urban and rural Negro schools there should be closer and more thorough supervision, not only by city and county superintendents, but also by directors of music, drawing, manual training, and other special topics.

7. We urge upon school authorities everywhere the importance of adequate buildings, comfortable seating, and sanitary accommodations for Negro youth.

8. We deplore the isolation of many Negro schools, established through motives of philanthropy, from the life and the sympathies of the communities in which they are located. We recommend the supervision of all such schools by the state, and urge that their work and their methods be adjusted to the civilisation in which they exist, in order that the maximum good of the race and of the community may be thereby attained.

9. On account of economic and psychological differences in the two races, we believe that there should be a difference in courses of study and methods of teaching, and that there should be such an adjustment of school curricula as shall meet the evident needs of Negro youth.

10. We insist upon such an equitable distribution of the school funds that all the youth of the Negro race shall have at least an opportunity to receive the elementary education provided by the state, and in the administration of state laws, and in the execution of this educational policy, we urge patience, toleration, and justice.

(Signed) G. R. GLENN, P. P. CLAXTON, J. H. PHILLIPS, C. B. GIBSON, R. N. ROARK, J. H. VAN SICKLE,

_Committee_.

In this connection also let me call attention to the reports of J. Y.

Joyner, Superintendent of Education, and Charles L. c.o.o.n of North Carolina, for a broad view of Negro education.

I have already shown how the South and the North came together in educational relationships in the Southern Education Board. I have pointed it out as a tendency toward nationalisation in educational interests. But the Southern Education Board, while it contained both Northern and Southern white men, was primarily interested in white education and contained no Negro members. At the time the board was organised, an active interest in the Negro would have defeated, in part at least, its declared purpose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: S. C. MITCh.e.l.l of Richmond College; President of the Cooperative Education a.s.sociation of Virginia.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: JUDGE EMORY SPEER of Georgia. After two terms in Congress he was appointed to the Federal bench.

Photograph by Curtiss Studio]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDGAR GARDNER MURPHY of Alabama, member Southern Education Board; author "Problems of the Present South."

Photograph by Sol. Young]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. H. B. FRISSELL Princ.i.p.al Hampton Inst.i.tute and member of Southern Education and Jeanes Fund Boards.

Photograph by Rockwood]

[Ill.u.s.tration: R. C. OGDEN of New York, President of the Southern Education Board.

Copyright, 1907, by Pach Bros.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: J. Y. JOYNER Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina.

Photograph by Wharton & Tyree]

_The South, the North, and the Negro at Last Work Together_