Twentieth Century Negro Literature Part 10

THIRD PAPER.

SHOULD THE NEGRO BE GIVEN AN EDUCATION DIFFERENT FROM THAT GIVEN TO THE WHITES?

BY REV. S. G. ATKINS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Prof. S. G. Atkins]

PROF. S. G. ATKINS, A. M.

Prof. S. G. Atkins, President and Founder of The Slater Industrial and State Normal School, Winston-Salem, N. C., was born of a humble, yet high, because Christian, parentage, in Chatham County, North Carolina, June 11, 1863.

Through this humble slave, yet Christian, parentage, there came to this youth principles of industry, morality and Christianity which formed the broad, deep, and solid foundation on which has rested his eventful and useful life.

In early life he learned that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." In the days of youth he remembered his Creator.

Like many of the world's n.o.blest and best characters, Prof.

Atkins started life's journey at the plow handles; clearing the ground of roots and stumps, splitting rails, opening the furrow, planting and harvesting the crops, const.i.tuted the duty and pleasures of his early life.

Early evincing an insatiable thirst for knowledge, all the advantages of the village school were given him. His progress here was phenomenal. His eagerness to know truth; his power of mind to perceive, comprehend and a.n.a.lyze; his retentive memory, soon gave him first place among his fellows in the school in the village. A few years pa.s.sed; he in the meantime having prepared himself, the master-mantle of the village school falls upon him. His work here caused a widening of his intellectual horizon. In the year 1880, therefore, he entered the Academic Department of St.

Augustine Normal and Collegiate Inst.i.tute, Raleigh, N. C., and graduated with distinction in 1884.

Immediately after leaving college, President J. C. Price, the famous colored orator, invited him to join the faculty at Livingstone College, Salisbury, N. C. At this post he proved himself one of the most useful men in the faculty. At times he filled various positions in the college. The Grammar School Department, under his management, was a model department, and was the pride of the college. He taught here, serving well and at a great sacrifice, six years.

Prof. Atkins retired from the Livingstone College to enter the public school work in which he had long taken a deep interest. This interest had been manifested chiefly in connection with his devotion to the work of building up the North Carolina Teachers' a.s.sociation, which body he helped to organize and of which he was President for three successive years. His first extended work in this field was as Princ.i.p.al of the Colored Graded School, of Winston, N. C.

This position of responsibility he held, with increasing success, for five years, when he gave it up, against the protest of the Board of School Commissioners of Winston, to become President of The Slater Industrial and State Normal School. This Inst.i.tution had already been projected by him to meet a want among the colored people in the community which he soon saw that the public school could not meet, viz.: a deeper ethical culture and the training of the youth of the community, not only in books, but also in some useful handicraft which would the sooner furnish the basis for strong personal character and sound home-life. His first step in this direction had been the founding of the settlement known as "Columbian Heights," to serve as a background for the Inst.i.tution, which would do this. The settlement was founded in 1891, and the Inst.i.tution projected in 1892. Prof. Atkins, as the first settler on Columbian Heights, and as the organizer and both Secretary and agent of the Board of Trustees, pushed the work of The Slater Industrial School, encouraged and supported by the industrious efforts of the members of the Board, until in 1895 he was called to the Presidency of the Inst.i.tution.

From that date to the present his labors have been an inseparable part of the history of the school.

Hon. C. H. Mebane, Superintendent of Public Instruction for North Carolina, says of him: "If I had fifty such men as Prof. Atkins in North Carolina, I could make a complete revolution in educational work in a short while, a complete revolution as to moral uplift and general good of the negro race."

In addition to his work as an educator, Prof. Atkins has taken much interest in the work of the American Academy of Social and Political Science, of which he is a member. He is also a member of the American Statistical a.s.sociation, and has been twice elected Secretary of Education of the A. M.

E. Zion Church.

The esteem in which he is held by leading men of the nation wherever he is known is fairly indicated in the following statement of Hon. J. L. M. Curry, LL. D., ex-minister to Spain and agent of the great Peabody and Slater Trusts for educational purposes. Dr. Curry says: "I regard President Atkins, of The Slater Industrial and State Normal School at Winston, N. C., as one of the most worthy and capable men connected with the education of the Negroes in the South.

His intelligence, courtesy, good deportment, high character and efficiency as the head of a school have won the confidence and goodwill of the people among whom he lives, and of all who best know his work and worth."

"The education of a Negro is the education of a human being. In its essential characteristics the human mind is the same in every race and in every age. When a Negro child is taught that two and two are four he learns just what the white child learns when he is taught the same proposition. The teacher uses the same faculties of mind in imparting the truth as to the sum of two and two. The two children use the same faculties in learning the truth; it means the same thing to them both.

In further teaching and training the methods may vary, but variations will depend less on differences of race than on peculiarities of the individual."--Bishop Haygood.

The above quotation from Bishop Haygood indicates my answer to the question. This question is simply a revival of the old superst.i.tion concerning the Negro that manifested itself in the inquiry as to whether the Negro had a soul. Civilization and fraternity have so far developed that it would be hard in these days to find a person whose skepticism concerning the Negro would find a doubtful expression as to the Negro's humanity. The light has become too strong for the existence of that kind of mist; hence the unsympathetic critic has been forced to find a new way of putting his wish begotten thought.

There is still a higher authority for a negative answer to the question, "Should the Negroes be given an education different from that given to the whites?" in the following language: "G.o.d had made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of all the earth."

This declaration of St. Paul goes to the core of the matter, unless it is proposed to revive the old superst.i.tion that the Negro is not included as a part of the "nations of men." It is a strange fact that n.o.body ever proposes a modified or peculiar form of education for any other nationality.

It is the glory of the backward peoples of the earth that they are adopting the forms and methods of education which have made Western civilization the touch-stone of the world's progress.

But the implied contention that the Negro should be given an education of a different kind is not absolute. Most disputants on this subject--so far as published statements go--allow that after a long period of adaptation and modified training the American Negro may reach a stage in his mental evolution that he may a.s.similate the same kind of mental food that is admittedly suited to the Caucasian, Mongolian and others. This view of the matter leaves out of the count another great fact, viz., that the American Negro is more American than anything else, that he is not an alien either by birth or blood.

Whatever exceptions might be alleged against Africa can no longer be made a bar to him.

But let us recur again to the evolution theory, and I will not undertake to consider this theory as Darwinian.

It is not generally advanced as a presumption that the Negro is not yet a thoroughbred, but it is presented in certain catchy and specious phrases such as suggest the necessity of beginning at the bottom rather than at the top, the necessity of giving to the colored American a kind of colored education, the necessity of making his civilization earthbound and breadwinning rather than heavenbound and soul-satisfying--the necessity of keeping him close to mother earth--as he "is of the earth earthy."

In those a.s.sumptions it is forgotten that education is not a question of mechanics; it is rather a question of ethics and immortality.

Education is primarily an effort to realize in man his possibilities as a thinking and feeling being.

Man's inheritance is first from heaven, from above. That is the respect in which education differs from all merely constructive processes. The stimulating and quickening power is from above.

Historically this is eminently true.

Education has been a process from above. It is not my intention to enter upon the discussion of the merits of any particular kind of education. My contention is that because the Negro is a part of humanity, because he is an American with an American consciousness and with a demonstrated capacity to take on training after the manner of an ordinary man he should not be treated as a monstrosity. Bishop Haygood sets forth the only proper line of distinction in education in the following sentence: "In further teaching and learning the methods may vary, but variations will depend less on differences of race than on peculiarities of the individual." The "peculiarities" here indicated unquestionably exist. They may be noted even in the same family, but these peculiarities are found in differences which lie deeper than the skin. There is no philosopher, unless he "is joined to idols," so bold as to base his presumption of difference in human beings upon the skin, for then his judgment might have to depend on whether the skin is dark, copper-colored, brown, white, yellow, freckled, red, etc. Human differences, all will admit, are essentially differences of _individual souls_, and this does not preclude the importance of environment and other incidental influences.

The great fact is that mind is mind--of like origin and like substance--and that it has been found to yield to like treatment among all nations and in all ages. There is no system of pedagogy that would hold together for a moment if the idea of the unity of the human race and the similarity of mind were invalidated. Philosophy itself would be threatened and all science would be in jeopardy. Investigation and practice never fail to support this theory of the solidarity of the human race. In the schools where it has been tried it has been found not to be a matter of color, nor even of blood--and certainly the differences have not depended on race affiliation. It has been a question of the individual and of local environment.

But so positive and indivisible is the human ident.i.ty that even the influence of individualism and environments is overcome by the great universal processes of education, the great processes of mind quickening and mind development. In many of our best inst.i.tutions there sit side by side the representatives of many nationalities and races, and it has never been found in the work of these inst.i.tutions--as far as I have been able to discover--that any one color or race could monopolize the benefits, but, on the contrary, it has been found that the benefits were realized according to individual temperament and power.

My position is not one in reference to non-essentials but essentials; it is not a contention based even so much on degree, but rather on quality and capability. I would not contend that environment would not make a whole group of children more or less backward, and I do not dispute the fact that because of better environments the whites represent as a whole a higher state of civilization. But I hold that this is true not because of race ident.i.ty but rather because of individual embarra.s.sment. Give a white child and a colored child the same environment and their progress or backwardness, I hold, would be essentially the same under the same stimulants and encouragements.

Wherever colored and white children have been put to comparative tests too little attention has been paid to difference of environment, and too often there has been a dormant presumption that the same environment would not have produced the same results upon white children. Wherever these tests have been made it has been too often overlooked that the facilities for their education were not equal; they may have been nominally equal but the fact remains that they were not really equal.

Considering the inequalities of environment and educational facilities the results of most of the comparative tests are complimentary to the colored child and demonstrate the similarity of his mental susceptibilities--demonstrate that he is but a normal const.i.tuent part of the great human race with substantially the same limitations and capabilities as other members of the great human family.

FOURTH PAPER.

SHOULD THE NEGRO BE GIVEN AN EDUCATION DIFFERENT FROM THAT GIVEN TO THE WHITES?

BY PROF. J. H. JONES.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Prof. J. H. Jones, D. D.]

REV. JOSHUA H. JONES.

The Rev. Joshua H. Jones was born at Pine Plains, South Carolina, June 15, 1856. He professed religion at ten years of age and joined the Shady Grove A. M. E. Church of the Bull Swamp Circuit, South Carolina. At the age of fourteen he was made Sunday School teacher, and at the age of sixteen Sunday School superintendent. By the time he was eighteen he had served in all the local spiritual offices of the church, and was then licensed as a local preacher by the quarterly conference of said circuit. The pastors soon discovered his usefulness and aid to them. He was a diligent student and an ardent churchman, and acquired education rapidly. At the age of twenty-one years he entered the Normal Department of Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina, and in 1880 finished the Normal and College Preparatory Courses. He then taught and preached one year, after which he returned to Claflin University, and in 1885 graduated with the degree at A. B. Not daunted nor yet satisfied with his attainments he came north, studied awhile at Howard University, Washington, D. C., thence to Wilberforce University, where in 1887 he graduated from the Theological Course with the degree of B.

D. In 1893 Wilberforce University conferred upon him the degree of D. D. in recognition of his superior worth and ability. In June, 1900, he was elected President of Wilberforce University, and a year later Claflin University conferred upon him the degree of M. A.

As a minister of the Gospel he has been pastor in charge of Williams Chapel, Orangeburg, South Carolina; Branchville Circuit, South Carolina; Fort Motte Circuit, South Carolina; Wheeling, West Virginia; The Holy Trinity Church, Wilberforce, Ohio; Lynn, Ma.s.sachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; Columbus, Ohio; and Presiding Elder of the Columbus District, Ohio Conference; Pastor at Zanesville, Ohio. In all an unbroken period of thirty-six years of church work and twenty-eight years in the ministry he has never known a failure. His labors have been indefatigable and his ministrations clean and inspiring.

In his public services he has been an inspiration to the race. For fourteen years he has been a Trustee of Wilberforce University, five years Trustee and Secretary of the Normal and Industrial Department at Wilberforce, and a constant and ardent helper in the establishment and development of the same. For six consecutive years he was elected and served as member of the Columbus Board of Education, and through his efforts six colored teachers were put into the mixed schools of Columbus, Ohio, as teachers.

In private affairs he has been industrious, frugal, economical and administrative. He has acc.u.mulated a comfortable estate and stands well with the banking and business circles of Columbus, Ohio, and pays taxes on a tax valuation of $10,000.

He has always been an ardent lover of his race, of his church, of his country and his G.o.d, and has always been a striking figure in the circles of men wherever his lot has fallen. Fifteen years ago he was elected Dean of Allen University, Columbia, South Carolina; eight years ago Professor of Theology in Payne Theological Seminary, neither of which he was able to accept because of heavy demands upon his energy elsewhere. In 1890 he was elected delegate to the Methodist Ec.u.menical Conference and has been several times delegate to the General Conference of the A. M. E. Church, and in 1900 was a strong candidate for the Bishopric, receiving fifty or more votes on the first ballot. In his present position he bids fair to give the church good service.

If this question is to be answered affirmatively or negatively, I emphatically say no. If the question be asked inquiringly, carrying with it the thought of race experience, race opportunity, race status and the variations growing out of these, then I would give the dubious answer, _yes and no_. In the first place, all things are educative and all forms of education have a definite relation to all other forms of education, and all educational processes have definite relations to all other educational processes, so all of these factors make for unity in education, and the completest education is that which embraces the greatest number of educational factors. It is perfectly true that educational processes may be varied so as to suit varying ideals or they may be varied so as to accomplish certain ends, for unvarying sequences follow definite antecedents; even so educational systems may be framed for the accomplishment of varying results or definite results as the framers of such systems may determine to suit the conditions of mankind as conceived at any given time. The end in view in an educational system is everything. What the chosen end of any system of education may be ought to depend upon the inst.i.tution of the country in which a people lives and every educational system should be framed so as to utilize all of the agencies and involve all of the processes that make most rapidly for the achievement of the end in view.

If the end in view is serfdom for the Negro, then a vast amount of industrial training by rote, minus the natural sciences and mechanic arts for the generation of capacity, plus such rudiments in arithmetic, reading and writing as will enable him to be an efficient workman under the directions of others is the requisite. If it is the desire to make the Negro a useful agent in the production of wealth through the operation of the basal industries, in the largest quant.i.ty or the highest quality for the smallest amount of outlay, then a still higher cla.s.s of training would be necessary, whether this production of wealth be for the good of self or for the common good of society.

But if the end in view is to prepare him for the higher responsibilities of American citizenship, involving as that citizenship does the relationships, obligations and duties which devolve upon freemen and equally binding upon him as upon the whites in a democratic society or in a country of the people, for the people and by the people, it is evident that such a system must have structural affinity with such a system of education carried on by the whites and for the whites. In other words, such must be his education that his whole being is developed and in him there is the largest generation of capacity, insight, foresight, the power to think with proportions so as to give him that mastery over his environments and over the questions of common good which will enable him at all times to do the right things, the wisest things, the best things under any given circ.u.mstances in the midst of which he may be thrown. Any educational system that has an aim short of this as its end will certainly fail to prepare the Negro for the high duties which belong to a free individual in a democratic society.

Why should the Negro be given an education different from that given to the whites? Is he not a man? Is he not a free man? Is he not a citizen? Is he not held responsible by society for the performance of duties enjoined upon him by law? Is he not a subject of government? As a subject of government, ought he not partic.i.p.ate in the affairs of the government? I think it will be admitted by all fair-minded men that all governments are for the welfare of the governed. Now, since the Negro is more interested in his own welfare than anybody else is and since to have a thing well done you had better do it yourself, since also his welfare is shaped by any government under which he lives, it must necessarily follow that his best good requires that he partic.i.p.ate in the affairs of that government if he is to continue to be a free man. It is argued--and that not without some degree of reason--by part of the more favored people in this country, that the gift of the high privileges of citizenship carries with it the demand that the recipients of these gifts possess the capacity to exercise them for the common good of all who belong to the body politic. They also argue that human conditions for government are grounded in intelligence, virtue and property. So good, so well. But how is the Negro to acquire intelligence, virtue and property according to the American standard if his education is to be according to an un-American system? There are four fundamental American doctrines that both experience and philosophy attest as being right: (I) The right of education is a human right. (II) That the schools furnished by the state should be open to all of the children of the state. (III) The safety of the state depends upon the intelligence of our citizens of that state. (IV) As a matter of self-defense the state should compel all of its citizens to become intelligent. These doctrines have their root in the great truth that every individual is a member of society and that therefore society has an interest in him, in his capacity, in his intelligence, in his worth, and in turn is injured by his incapacity, his lack of worth, his ignorance. The great war-cry of American leadership is "Educate, educate, educate;" yea, more, "Educate your masters." No man lives unto himself. G.o.d has made every man dependent, a.s.sociative and co-operative, and hence the good of every individual is found in the common good of society and the common good of society is found in the good of the individual. Every man who is not at his best or not doing his best is to that extent a failure and a hurt to the common good.

To me it is perfectly clear that if the Negro is to be in this country and not of it then his education should be different from that given to the whites. But if he is to be in the country and of the country it follows without argument that he must be educated in common with all of the people of the country so that the nation may have a common ideal and a common consciousness so that our whole society may have or feel a common interest in our common country. To be more explicit, whether or not the Negro should be given the same kind of education the whites are given depends upon whether or not the whites have the proper kind of education. I should rather contend that if the whites have the proper kind of education for mankind, then that given to the Negro should be exactly like it. If the whites have not the proper kind of education for mankind, then it follows that the Negro should be given a different kind, for whether or not one man should have the same thing as another depends upon whether or not that thing is fit for mankind in general. This would naturally force upon us the inquiry as to what kind of education the whites receive. If upon proper inquiry we find that theirs is the proper kind for man, in this same finding we should discover that this is the proper kind for the Negro.