';*JV>_^J^7rl~~^fZZ 7"'"T~'7;~~~' 1 - ~1' ;v ~ * ~ y;
From Servitude
To Service
Old South Lecture
on
Atlanta University
by
Professor W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
1906
FROM SERVITUDE
TO SERVICE
Old South Ledture
on
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
by
Professor W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
1906
reprinted from
"FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE"
by permission of
American Unitarian Association
THE ATLANTA UNIVERSITY PRESS
T TNDER tlie title,"From Servitude to Serv-
ice," the American Unitarian Association!
has recently published the "Old South Lect¬
ures on the History and Work of Southern
Institutions for the Education of the Negro."
The book contains six chapters, as follows:
I. Howard University.
By Professor Kelly Miller.
II. Berea College.
By President William G. Frost.
III. Tuskegee Institute.
By Professor Eoscoe Conkling Bruce.
IV. Hampton Institute.
By Principal H. B. Frissell.
V. Atlanta University.
By Professor W. E. Burghardt DuBois.
VI. Fisk University.
By President James G. Merrill.
We reprint, by kind permission, the chapter
on Atlanta University by Professor DuBois.
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY.
Most men in this world are colored. A faith
in humanity, therefore, a belief in the gradual
growth and perfectability of men must, if honest,
be primarily a belief in colored men. Atlanta
University was founded as an expression of the
same faith in humanity within, as in humanity
without the color line. That faith in men meant
a firm belief that the great mass of human be¬
ings of all races and nations, withal their dif¬
ferences and peculiarities, were capable of es¬
sentially similar development and that the method
of bringing about that development was by the
education of youth. The founders of Atlanta
University did not wait until this thesis was
absolutely proven beyond peradventure — they
held it to be a perfectly valid assumption to
make, and to work on, immediately, and there¬
fore they established Atlanta University, two
years after Lee surrendered.
They did not establish simply a primary
school, or a grammar school, or high school. On
the contrary they established all these schools
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
and in addition to this a college, and made the
college the centre and norm of all their work.
Thej did this, first for the development of in¬
dividual Negro talent,— second, for inspiration
and leadership of Negro communities, and
third, for the supplying of teachers. Their
primary idea was stated in perfectly plain
language; they proposed to train men; they
believed that a black boy with the capacity to
learn, was worth teaching and that the only
limitations to the development of an individual
human soul were that soul's capacity and its ob¬
ligations to its fellow men — its duty to society.
In the case of the emancipated and enfranchised
Negro this duty to his fellow men revealed itself
most pressingly and imperatively as a call for en¬
lightenment and inspiration for the mass from
leaders. Much as the Negro race needed to
know in agriculture, they needed to know still
more as to life. They were poor carpenters,
but they were still poorer fathers and mothers;
they did not understand the methods of modern
industry, but they knew even less of the aims
of that civilization which industry serves. Sad
it was that the slave was an undeveloped hand,
it was far sadder that he was an undeveloped
man. This, then, was the second problem to
which the founders of Atlanta University ad-
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
dressed themselves, and it was no small one.
There are many ways of developing manhood
and inspiring men. All ways this institution
did not try, but it did try one which the experi¬
ence of four thousand years of civilized life on
this earth has proven of foremost value — and
that is the sending of missionaries of culture
among the masses. This is not the only teaching
a mass of untaught people need — they need
teaching in the technique of industry, in methods
of business, in the science of agriculture. But
they need especially in their halting, hesitating
beginnings the guidance of men who know what
civilization means — who stand before them as
guides not simply to teach them how to walk, but
to teach them whither to go, and while logically
we may argue that learning to walk ought to
precede preparations for a great journey, yet as
a matter of fact and history, it is the inspiration
of some goal to be reached that has ever led men
to learn how to get there.
The third object of Atlanta University was
to train teachers. Everybody, both in Recon¬
struction days and now, agrees that some amount
of elementary training is necessary for the
Freedmen's sons. Missionaries, government
agents and army officers all agreed from the first
that schools were needed. But schools call for
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
teachers and, therefore Normal schools were
;needed. Nor was this all. A Normal school
in Massachusetts trains an educated person
in the art of teaching. In the South, among
Negroes after the war, there was no such edu¬
cated class to train. A normal school then in
the South must be primarily a high school and
college; it must first educate its teachers and then
train them to teach.
And, moreover, in case it cannot do both these
things well, surely it is far better to send out
among the masses educated persons who lack
technical training in methods of teaching rather
than to send persons who have technique with¬
out education. So that in these three ways At¬
lanta University was demanded: to train talented
Negro youth, to disseminate civilization among
the untaught masses, and to educate teachers.
It is, however, one thing to conceive a great
human need and quite another thing to realize
this in deeds and sacrifices, in bricks and stone.
And when in the world's history struggling
human beings have in doubt and travail, in
weariness and anxiety, established a great en¬
gine of human betterment, it behooves us who sit
and see and hope in God's good time to help —
to ask what they did and how they did it and
who were the men that did these things. These
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
questions it is my task to answer and to show
how there to the southward, where the great Blue
Ridge first bows and crumbles before the far-off
sea, twelve men in 1867 founded an institution
of learning which has meant so much to the
higher aspirations and untrammelled develop¬
ment of two hundred million black men on
this earth. These men created on the barren
red mud of North Georgia a little cluster of
brick buildings, now six in number, which have
mothered five thousand sons and daughters in
thirty-five years and which first, last and ever
have stood for one unwavering ideal. They
created this institution out of poverty and dis¬
trust in the midst of enmity and danger, in the
face of ignorance and crime. Dying, they left
their legacy to us — their legacy and their
burden.
What sort of men established and carried on
the work of Atlanta University ? They were not
all visionaries and dreamers, and yet among
them were men who saw the vision and dreamed
the dream. Two of the original founders rep¬
resented the American Missionary Association,
that great movement born at the slaveship that
wandered into Connecticut and coming to the
fullness of manhood just as the nation needed
it in the reconstruction crisis. One was a tall
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
and dark-haired man, who afterward carried
the idea of equal opportunity for black men to
Nashville and founded Fisk University there;
three were northern business men, resident in
Atlanta; two were Negroes, new clothed with
authority, and one was Edmund Ware. These
men are nearly all dead to-day, but around the
work of their hands have clustered many and
diverse helpers. A bishop like Atticus G. Hay-
good, Southern bred, but emancipated and hon¬
est; a justice of the Georgia Supreme Court
like McKay; a president of one of Atlanta's
greatest banks; and men like Charles Cuthbert
Hall, of New York, and Samuel M. Crothers, of
Cambridge. To-day Atlanta University is di¬
rected by four of its own graduates and by
members of the governing boards or faculties of
Harvard and Yale Universities, Williams and
Dartmouth Colleges, Union Theological Semi¬
nary, and Tuskegee Institute.
But, after all, the founder of Atlanta Univer¬
sity was Edmund Ware, and Edmund Ware was
a man of faith. We are not dealing in faith
these days. We are discounting it, and some¬
times half sneering at it. Because in the past
a certain type of simple-hearted enthusiast has
believed so piteously in things absurd, impossi¬
ble and false, we have come to discount the whole
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
proceeding, striving to know even where knowl¬
edge is yet impossible, and pitying loftily that
old-fashioned goodness that believed in men,
that glorified in sacrifice, and had an unwaver¬
ing faith that somewhere beyond the mists was
a good God, and that the world was as good as
the God that made it. Edmund Asa Ware was
born in North Wrentham, now Norfolk, Mass.,
a few miles from Boston, in 1837. He fitted
for college at the Norwich Free Academy, Con¬
necticut, and was graduated from Yale Univer¬
sity in 1863. After his graduation, he taught
for a time in the school in which he had fitted
for college, and then was principal of a public
school in Nashville, Tenn. Soon the way opened
for him to enter a field of labor of which he had
dreamed and planned in his schoolboy days, and
he began the life work for which he believed he
had a divine commission and from which he
could not be diverted by his alluring offers of
money, comfort and position. His friend has
written of him:
" He was conscientious. His mother had no
recollection of his ever being untruthful. His
village teachers all commended him for his un¬
varying conformity to the right in school. * It is
said that when fifteen years old, he had never
been absent a day, nor had a mark for tardiness.
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
One morning as the bell stopped, writes one, his
seat was observed to be vacant. Those near the
windows, looking out, saw him running at full
speed, trying to gain his seat before his name
should be called. The teacher was seen to cast
an eye to the window and then to linger a mo¬
ment before he called the roll. Thus he was
seated to respond when the W's were reached."
What sort of a man did such a boy make?
Certainly not a good business man in the mod¬
ern sense; not a leader in literature or polite
society; not a member of Congress; nor even a
promising pillar of the State Legislature. And
yet, after this man had lived less than fifty years
and lay white, thin and dead in the darkened
halls of Atlanta University, there came a stream
of men who had known him, black and white,
student and teacher, Northerner and Southerner,
and this is the picture they painted:
The Superintendent of the Freedman's Bureau
for Georgia, said: "It was he who counselled
and advised with the colored and other members
of the constitution convention and secured the
wise provision in the constitution for the estab¬
lishment of a public school system, and after¬
wards, with members of the first Legislature,
by which it was established and put into opera¬
tion. He was in thorough sympathy with the
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
religious work carried on at the same time by
the Christian teachers and church organizations,
but found oftentimes his greatest difficulties in
overcoming the sectarian differences which in¬
terfered with the harmonious operation of the
school work. This he had always in view, and,
by his gentleness and forbearance and generous
catholic spirit, he removed many ignorant preju¬
dices that stood in the way."
A student said: " His manner of speech was
terse, laconic, forceful, animated, in perfect
harmony with the fervency of soul, with that
restless activity which was so peculiarly mani¬
fest in all his doings. On leaving him I felt
that I had been talking with a man who was
living a higher life, living above the ordinary
aims and petty ambitions of this world, a man
who, though toiling in a field obscure and un¬
popular, nevertheless was entirely devoted to the
cause he had espoused, and showed in every look
and word a faith which rose sublimely above the
mists and shadows of the present."
" This spirit of work which so completely pos¬
sessed Mr. Ware, he naturally endeavored to
transfuse into his pupils. I shall never forget
those talks he used to give to the students every
year just before the closing of school for the
summer vacation. With what emphasis he used
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
to say to the young men: ' Now, if you can get
schools to teach, it is well. Teach them. Do all
the good you can. But if you can't get schools
to teach, don't hesitate a minute to work with
your hands. Go into the field. Dig, hoe, pick
cotton. Labor is honorable.' "
Another graduate said: " After that inter¬
view with him alone, after feeling his tender
caresses as he sat near me, and after listening
to the mild tones of his voice, and seeing, face
to face, those eyes, not now indignantly flashing,
but full of sweetness and tenderness, after this,
there never was any terror in that face or those
eyes for me during all the following years that
I knew him. During the last eighteen or nine¬
teen years I have seen many a student quail
before that steady, withering gaze, which Mr.
Ware knew so well how to use. But for me there
ever remained that same soft expression, first
seen during our first interview, in the little li¬
brary upstairs at Storrs' School in 1867. That
look has, in a great measure, influenced my
course of life; has often kept me in the right
path, when temptation was strong to go other¬
wise."
A friend added: " I think I never knew a
man so strong of will who was so free from the
lower self. If ordinary ambition entered into
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
his calculations, it strengthened by the reaction
it aroused, the very virtue it assailed. It was
preeminently as moral teacher and quickener that
he excelled. True as steel himself, he felt a lie
as men feel a personal insult. He did not like
even an insincere or merely conventional tone."
And finally Bishop Atticus G. Haygood, of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and
author of the " Brother in Black," and who was
at one time a trustee of the University, in speak¬
ing of the " Man who can wait," said: " Only
those who began with Mr. Ware nearly twenty
years ago this new and difficult work of trying
to educate in a rational and Christian manner
the enfranchised people of this country, and so
to help in introducing into the family of Chris¬
tian and civilized nations a new race, can under¬
stand how much Edmund Ware, when he first
began work in this city, needed to be a man who
could do his work and wait. The conditions un¬
der which this work is carried on are different
now; very small encouragement do workers in
this field get from us of the white race in the
Southern States, although next to the Negro
race, we are, of all men on earth, most concerned
in the success of your work and most concerned
because we have most at stake in this work. The
social environments are not inspiring now; but
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
let me assure you 1885 is very far from 1865.
To have gone on as President Ware did during
those early years there must have been in his
heart deathless love and pity for men who needed
what he could give them,— a faith in the gospel
and eternal righteousness that never wavered,
and a love for God that made work easy and
suffering joy."
I have dwelt upon the character of this man
because, in some places, it is the fashion of the
day to represent those who went south after the
war to help the freedmen as officious busy-bodies,
goody-goody sort of folk, with heads very nearly
as soft as their hearts. And yet that wonder¬
ful call which sounded in the ears of the sons
and daughters of the North in the later sixties
was a call to far greater heroism and self-sacri¬
fice than that which called them earlier through
the smoke of Sumter. They could not, like the
soldiers, expect monuments, the notice of histo¬
rians, or even (shall I write it?) pensions, but
they could expect work, danger, contempt, and
forgetfulness, and those who dared this, at least
deserve the respect and reverence of thinking
men!
I said that Edmund Ware was a man of faith.
As early as 1867 he was writing North in his
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
capacity as state superintendent of education;
he said:
"The Education Association will meet in
Macon on the 9th of October, and then will come
the demand for teachers. Please let me know
before the time, how many teachers (board paid
by colored people) you can give me, besides those
at the points you already hold. Make a rough
estimate, only make it large enough. You must
do something on faith. I know the people of
the North will do much more than they have yet
done, if the matter is only presented in the right
way to them. Get young ladies in each town
to agree to carry round a paper, and get all the
people to subscribe from ten cents to ten dollars
per month, and then go round and collect it
monthly. All that is wanted is a few workers
in each city and town and it will all be done."
After he became president of an institution on
paper, then this wonderful unwavering faith,
slowly, surely became transmuted. The first
building came from the American Missionary
Association; the second from the State of
Georgia, with its growing number of black legis¬
lators. The Recitation hall and the Manual
Training building came from two Massachusetts
women, the Housekeeping Cottage from circles
of the King's Daughters and Rev. Dr. D. L.
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
Furber, the Training School from the General
Educational Board and other friends, and now
a Library from Andrew Carnegie. This has
been the material growth. But that which
Western colleges call the "plant" of Atlanta
University, is the least of its real being. Our
buildings are simple and small, not unpleasing
in appearance, neat and substantial, but nothing
calculated especially to impress the beholder.
The peculiar spiritual growth which this in¬
stitution typifies is on the other hand the object
of our especial pride. Not even the heavy loss
caused by President Ware's premature death
checked for a moment this inner growth, for a
leader and successor stood ready trained in heart
and mind for the work.
Atlanta University is fortunate in having but
two presidents in her thirty-five years of exist¬
ence. The successor of President Ware was the
son of a man who, at one time, furnished many of
the text-books which were used in the schools of
Boston, and a nephew of Nathaniel P. Willis.
President Bumstead was born in Boston in
1841, was graduated at the Boston Latin School,
and in 1863 at Yale. He was major of the
Forty-third United States Colored troops in the
civil war and afterward- graduated at Andover
and entered the ministry. He joined Atlanta
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
University as teacher of Science in 1875, and
since that time as teacher and president has
given to that institution the best years of a sin¬
gularly devoted life. His name will go down
in history as that of the Apostle of the Higher
Education of the American Negro.
Many men. and women of energy and devotion
have built their lives into this work. Every
stone on that broad campus has meant the pulse
of some man's life blood and the sacrifice of some
woman's heart. There sits to-night within those
Southern walls a woman bent and bowed, old with
years, and yet ever young in the hearts of a
thousand black men to whom, for thirty years,
she was more than mother; there sounds within
those halls to-day the voice of a white-haired man
who, thirty-five years ago, sacrificed a govern¬
ment position and a good salary and brought his
young wife down to live with black people. Not
all the money that you and yours could give for
a hundred years would do half as much to con¬
vince dark and outcast millions of the South
that they have some friends in this world, as the
sacrifice of such lives as these to the cause.
I have said that the founder of this institu¬
tion planned a college — even a university.
How far has that plan honestly been carried out?
There are in name to-day numerous universities
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
in the South for colored men, and this is often
brought as an argument against Negro Col¬
leges — their absurdly overwhelming number.
This is, in reality, untrue. There are very few
institutions in the United States really doing
college work for Negroes. Many institutions
called colleges represent an ambition or an ideal,
while as a matter of present fact such schools
are higher institutions simply in name; in real¬
ity they are great primary and grammar schools
with a score of high school students and a few
or none of college grade. They represent, in
many cases, high hopes and laudable ambition,
but in some cases they have no present prospect
or design of developing into real colleges, and
in some other cases they have been tempted to
be content with calling a high school a college,
possibly after the venerable example of Harvard
in its early days. This practice, however, has
led to the suspicion that all Negro colleges are
of low rank and parading more or less under
false pretenses.
There are in the United States to-day about
five institutions which, by reason of the number
of students and grade of work done, deserve to
rank as Negro colleges. How far, now, is the
work done at an institution like Atlanta Uni-
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
versity deserving of the respect due to liberal
training ?
If there is one thing at Atlanta University
upon which we pride ourselves it is that we have
never succumbed to the temptation of mere num¬
bers. We have to-day seventy-five students of
a rank above the high school — fifty in the regu¬
lar college course, and twenty-five in the teacher's
college. It is fair to say that we might, by a
general lowering of standard, easily have a col¬
lege of one hundred to one hundred and fifty.
This we have steadily refused to do. On the
contrary, we have sought unceasingly, year by
year, to raise and fix a fair standard, and I
think it is perfectly just to say that so far as
our work goes in Atlanta University, the stand¬
ard equals that of any New England school.
We have a high school of two hundred and twen¬
ty-five pupils, divided into two parallel courses
of three years, an English and classical. This
gives one year less than the New England high
schools with their four-year courses. Above the
high school there are two courses of study of¬
fered: a regular college course of four years,
leading to the bachelor's degree and a teacher's
training course of two years, leading to a nor¬
mal diploma. Our college rank is thus one year
behind the smaller New England colleges, and
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
this rank has been proven in case of several of
our graduates, who have afterward taken the
A.B. degree in leading Northern colleges after
one year's study.
In maintaining this standard we have, of
course, our peculiar troubles. In New England
there is difficulty in articulating the high school
and college courses. In the South the almost
total absence of high schools for Negroes makes
a preparatory department necessary to a college
like ours. All other Negro colleges in the South
have grammar grades in addition, but we have
simply the high school and the college, and con¬
sequently find our great difficulty in fitting our
Junior high school year to the eighth grade of
the public schools. The varying quality of
work done in the public schools makes it neces¬
sary that our first year should be one of sifting
and examination. About one-half of our public
school candidates do the work of this class in a
year; a fourth more do the work in something
over a year, and are given electives so as to start
even with the regular second year class. The
other fourth, from poor preparation or lack of
ability and other reasons, drop out.
For admission to the high school we require
eight grades of common school work. If the
pupil proposes to take the full college course,
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
he has before him about 2,800 recitation periods
of forty-five minutes each, or, in laboratory work,
of twice that length. Three-tenths of these are
given to ancient languages, three-tenths evenly
divided between science and mathematics, two-
tenths to English and modern languages at the
rate of English seven and German two, and two-
tenths to history, sociology, philosophy and
pedagogy at the rate of history and sociology
nine and other studies two. In addition to this
there are 384 hours of manual training. By
electives the proportion of modern languages can
be increased.
The length of the entire normal course is five
years, and the total number of recitation periods,
of forty-five minutes each, is 2,028. Three-
tenths of these are given to pedagogy, three-
tenths to mathematics and science, two and a
half tenths to English, one-tenth to philosophy
and history, etc.
How far is the charge true that old-fashioned
studies and out-of-date methods are being used
in Negro colleges to fit black boys for a world
which prides itself on being rather ahead of time
than even up with it? We willingly plead
guilty to a persistent clinging to many of the
older forms of discipline. We still count the
teacher as of considerably more importance than
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
the thing taught. This explains considerable
amount of Latin in our curriculum. We have
one of the most successful Latin teachers in the
South, a man not only learned in method, but
of great and peculiar personal influence. We
are willing and anxious for our college men to
have four or five years' contact with this man,
and we seriously doubt if a greater course in
engineering under a lesser man would be a real
gain for the development of manhood among us.
On the other hand, our teachers and instructors
have been drawn from Yale, Harvard, Dart¬
mouth, Wellesley, Boston University, Worces¬
ter Polytechnic, Fisk and our own institution.
Our dean ranked his class at Dartmouth; a
former dean was the DeForest medal man at
Yale; the head of our normal department is
from Bridgewater, and for sixteen years has
done some of the most successful normal work in
the South; two classmates of President Ware at
Yale joined him in his work, and now his two
children, from Yale and Columbia, are taking up
their father's mantle.
There are five full professors and ten instruc¬
tors. The library has 11,500 volumes, classified
by the Dewey system and well selected. There
is a physical laboratory 50x22 feet, in which all
class work is carried on by individual experi-
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
ments and measurements. Adjoining this is a
science lecture room with considerable apparatus.
The chemical laboratory is 50x25 feet, with in¬
dividual desks and chemicals. There are small
geological and mineralogical cabinets, and the
beginning of a zoological cabinet in the lower
orders. The astronomy class has a small tele¬
scope, and in the mathematical department there
are surveying and engineering instruments.
The department of Sociology and History has
sets of modern and ancient maps and a class
room library with reference works, duplicate
text-books and statistical treatises. The recita¬
tion rooms are large and light, and nearly all
furnished with tablet chairs.
Manual training is an integral part of our
work, and is carried on in two buildings, one for
the girls and one for the boys. Manual train¬
ing is required of all High School students.
The boys' building has a floor devoted to wood
working, with power saws, planers, etc., a lum¬
ber storage room and a paint room. Another
floor is occupied by the turning lathes, twenty
individual benches with tools, and a drawing
room with eighteen sets of instruments. In the
basement, iron-working is carried on with forges
and lathes. The printing office has a full equip¬
ment, including a power press.
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
Manual training for girls is carried on at the
Housekeeping Cottage, and consists in cooking,
sewing, dressmaking, drawing and general house¬
keeping.
When we enumerate these facilities for man¬
ual training, people are usually surprised, and
say, " Why, you have, then, an industrial school
after all!" This we disclaim. We do not have
an industrial department for the important work
of teaching trades. Our equipment, almost
without exception, is an integral part of our
educational work, and is designed for its edu¬
cational effect alone. Just as the boy works
with his own hands in the chemical laboratory
or the laboratory in sociology, so he works in the
manual training shop, and the object in all three
cases is the same, viz.: to develop the boy to the
full capacity of his powers, mental and phys¬
ical. With the education thus gained, the boy
might use his chemistry in the study of medi¬
cine, or his sociology in the ministry, or his
manual dexterity at a trade school, but we do not
pretend to train either physicians, clergymen or
carpenters. I speak of this because there is so
much confusion of ideas on the point, especially
so far as southern schools are concerned.
Schools of higher training in the South are
often supposed to be places without manual
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
training, despising and ridiculing it, and know¬
ing nothing of its great educative power, while
an industrial school is supposed to be necessarily
and always a centre of education.
If you should visit Atlanta University you
would see little evidence of student manual work
in finished products of wood, or iron, or stone.
Our furniture is from the factory, our buildings
erected by hired labor, and our important re¬
pairs largely done by outside workmen. Never¬
theless, the influence of our manual training of
the students is easily traceable in their after life.
When the conference for Southern Education,
popularly associated with the Ogden parties,
met in Athens, Ga., they especially admired the
industrial exhibit of the Negro schools. " That
is the sort of work that is needed," they said re¬
peatedly, " where was the Principal trained ?"
And then they found out that he and all his
teachers came from Atlanta University. They
had never learned basket making or clay modell¬
ing there, but they had received a far more fun¬
damental training in human power. With this
as a basis, it took them but a short time to mas¬
ter the technique.
The work of teacher training is also carried
on by the laboratory method — that is it is cen¬
tred in the model school containing a kinder-
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
garten and four grades (to be extended to eight
grades eventually) with all the equipment of a
modern school. Here, under instructors, the
normal students teach, observe and experiment.
I have indicated the formal curriculum of At¬
lanta University and the facilities for carrying
it out. But this is not all of our educational
work with our students. A centre of education
with us is our school Home; among the earliest
ideals entertained by the University is one that
may be designated as home-building. In its
first days, officers and teachers kept before the
minds of students and their parents the desir¬
ability of securing land and homes, and many
a cottage in Atlanta owes its existence to the
personal counsel and pecuniary assistance of
some teacher in the University; and when, at
the beginning of a summer vacation, some three
or four hundred were sent out to teach school in
the smaller towns and rural districts, among
other injunctions it was impressed upon them
to encourage and assist the people among whom
they were to labor, to buy land and make them¬
selves homes, and specific items of information
with reference to accomplishing this were given
them. And when these student teachers re¬
turned from their summer's work they were
asked to report what they had done in this line
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
and also to give facts they had gathered as to
the amount of land the people owned or were
buying.
The effect of this policy is shown in the sta¬
tistics of Negro property in Georgia. Of
course it would not be fair to claim that At¬
lanta University is solely responsible for this
record, but certainly the influence of this insti¬
tution has been a potent factor in the increase
of property from nearly nothing in 1860 to a
real value of nearly thirty-five millions in 1905.
Atlanta University is more than a school, it
is a home. The dormitories are not simply a
collection of rooms where students may study
and lodge and care for themselves, but each of
them is under the supervision of a competent
woman, who takes the place of a mother and sees
that the students are regular in their habits, tidy
in dress, neat in the care of rooms, attentive to
study, polite in manners, careful in regard to
health, and made comfortable in illness. The
dining room, too, where teachers and students
assemble for meals, is not merely a commons,
where simply a sufficient quantity of food is
furnished, but is a place where teachers and
students eat together, talk and learn to know
each other; where the etiquette of family life
is carefully observed — indeed this is one of the
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
few places in America where black and white
people meet as simple, friendly human souls, un¬
veiled from light and unguarded from feared
contagion; bound in human sympathy and help.
And so, in these ways, is carried out the inten¬
tion expressed in the first catalogue of 1868—70,
and in the latest 1903—04, in these words: " It
is designed to make the school as far as possible
a home for those who attend," and it may be
added that in thus making it a home it becomes
a home builder.
With the home life go the home chores and
duties — the care of the rooms, the sweeping of
the halls, the washing of the dishes, and the lit¬
tle errands here and there. The comparatively
small number of our students makes the home
life peculiarly cheerful and cozy. Teachers and
students know each other intimately, and in a
way impossible in large institutions, and always
the graduate looks back upon the home life as
the greatest and best gift of the Alma Mater.
Not only is Atlanta University a school and
a home; it is in the larger sense of the word, a
church. I do not mean by that anything nar¬
row or sectarian, but I do mean that we whose
work it is to train youth in the South have to
face some patent facts: first, the religious con¬
ditions among both whites and blacks are such
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
that the differences between Methodists and Bap¬
tists sometimes overshadow the differences be¬
tween heaven and hell; that particularly among
young educated Negroes this is a day of rapid
religious evolution which might easily end any¬
where or nowhere; consequently it will not do
in the South to leave moral training to individual
homes, since their homes are just recovering
from the debauchery of slavery, and only in a
minority of instances are they capable of the
necessary teaching. As the larger home, then,
of its sons and daughters, Atlanta University is,
and always has been, a teacher of religion and
morality. Our chaplain, the son of the late
president, and a graduate of Union Theological
Seminary, is a young man of clear-hearted de¬
votion, and both his work and example are of
great influence. A part of our religious exer¬
cises are voluntary and all of them are main¬
tained at a level of high earnestness with a mani-
mum of cant and empty form.
Such is our course of training. The great
question, however, which men of right may ask
of Atlanta University is, " What has this train¬
ing resulted in? How far has this institution
justified its existence? How far has it trained
men of talent, civilized communities, and given
real teachers to the black south?"
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
It is in the answer to this question that At¬
lanta University makes its greatest claim to pub¬
lic attention; and yet it is a very difficult thing
to exhibit a process of education to the eye.
The experience in this line with which every
teacher is so familiar is exaggerated in our case,
for we and the whole Negro race are often
judged for time and eternity by a fifteen-minute
visitor.
On the other hand, when in the towns and
country districts of the South the work of the
graduates and former students of this institu¬
tion is carefully studied, the verdict is always
unanimous; that there is not in the country an
institution which, in thirty-five years of work,
has sent into the world a set of men and women
stronger in character and attainment, and more
useful in their fields of labor. The General
Educational Board, after investigation, came
to its endorsement on this ground particularly.
Southern born men who still oppose Negro col¬
leges have repeatedly acknowledged the remark¬
able character of our graduates. The School
Board of Atlanta has put the Negro public
schools of the city under the almost complete
control of teachers whom we have trained; the
state of Georgia, while it gave us aid repeatedly,
bore testimony through its committees of the
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
high quality of work done, and when afterwards
that aid was taken from us and given to a new
institution at Savannah, the institution was
largely manned with our graduates, from its
president down.
Atlanta University has taught some five thou¬
sand students. Of these 677 have finished a full
high school course, and 487 of them have re¬
ceived a degree or normal diploma:
O
Occupations of Graduates
<T>
03
n
3
to
r-t
£■
Total
367
*489
Male
. 101
15
116
Female
23
352
*373
Living
. 108
311
*417
Dead
16
41
57
Teachers
62
178
240
Ministers
13
• • •
13
Physicians
4
4
Lawyers
2
Dentists
1
• • •
1
U. S. Service
12
2
14
Business
7
8
15
Students
4
3
7
Wives
1
tno
111
Others
2
10
12
* Two graduated in two departments.
144 other wives are classed as teachers.
In its work of training teachers, Atlanta
University has rendered its greatest service
to the country. Sixty per cent of our grad-
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
uates teach; they teach in city and county, in
public and private schools, in primary, second¬
ary and higher schools, and the schools of all re¬
ligious denominations; five are presidents of col¬
leges and normal schools, fourteen are principals
of high and secondary schools, twenty are con¬
nected with industrial schools. 1 presume it is
no exaggeration to say that our graduates and
former students are reaching 20,000 black boys
and girls each year, and handing on the light
which they have received.
; . The work done by these men as students has
been honest and fair. Our graduates have made
good records at Harvard, Dartmouth, and the
tlhiversity of Chicago, University of Michigan,
and Northern professional schools like Andover
and Hartford theological seminaries, and the
University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
Research work done at our institution has been,
ijn several cases, published by the United States
government, and even recognized abroad. We
Ijave not, so far as we know, graduated any men
of very exceptional genius, but we have sent
out a score of men of unusual ability, measured
by any standard, and we have trained a few who,
by ability and forceful personality, are above
the average of the trained men of any race.
. Our great work, however, has been the sending
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
of missionaries of culture throughout the south,
and in this work Atlanta University has had con¬
spicuous success. Of course such an influence is
difficult to measure.
Considering the intimate connection of At¬
lanta University Vith the State of Georgia, we
may, perhaps, best measure its influence by
studying that state; in a sense Atlanta Univer¬
sity founded the public school system of the
state, since its first president was the first state
superintendent of education. Of the thirteen
leading Negro institutions in the state outside of
Atlanta University, seven have presidents trained
at this school, and two or three others have
some of our graduates as teachers; and all of
them have students trained by our graduates.
The public schools of all the leading cities, At¬
lanta, Savannah, Athens, Columbus, and Macon,
are very largely manned by our former students,
and in all walks of life the influence of our
graduates and former students is felt.
A recent study of Georgia* shows that Negro
population, property and literacy in Georgia
are increasing, while serious crime has begun to
decrease.
This record is not due to any one single cause,
1Some Notes on Negro Crime. Atlanta Uni¬
versity Publication, No. 9.
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
but certainly the influence of Atlanta University
has been a most potent factor. In the work of
Negro uplift throughout the land our graduates
are not alone nor altogether singular — gradu¬
ates of a score of other worthy institutions are
working with them, but the long, thorough
courses of study in our work, the unbending men¬
tal discipline as a foundation for all work, wheth¬
er manual or intellectual, has left its enduring
mark on the Atlanta University man. The work
of these college trained men from this and other
institutions is not to be judged simply by what
they have done, but still more from what they
have prevented. I am persuaded that Ameri¬
cans do not dwell enough on this side of the
case. You complain of crime and vagrancy
among Negroes, and both are large and threat¬
ening, as it is perfectly natural they should be,
but consider what they might have been if this
race had been left without leaders — not leaders
who could simply read and write and hoe, but
real thinkers, men of vision, men who realized the
tremendous import of this vast social movement
and could stand ever ready within the veil to
calm passion and direct energy and say to the
turbulent waters, " Peace be still."
The peculiar character of work, however,
makes Atlanta University more than a simple
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
college — it is a social settlement where, for six
or seven years, the best we can find of the grow¬
ing generation of Negroes is brought into con¬
tact with the standards of modern culture in
school and home and campus. Nor do we wish
to stop here — the Social Settlement aims to
do more than teach the slums; it seeks also by
studying slums to teach the world what slums
mean. And Atlanta University seeks to become
a centre for the careful, earnest and minute
study of the Negro problems, through the ex¬
perience and active cooperation of other grad¬
uates scattered all over the south. For this pur¬
pose we have established a department of social
inquiry and an Annual Conference to study the
Negro problem; we have been careful not to let
the size of the field or the intricacy and delicacy
of the subject tempt us into superficial or hasty
work. Each year some definite phase of the
problem is taken, the inquiry is limited in ex¬
tent, and every effort is made to get thorough
unbiased returns. To establish such a work with
few funds, and untrained investigators was diffi¬
cult, but to-day, after nine years of work, we
feel as though the department was permanently
organized for efficient work, and that interesting
and instructive results will follow its further
prosecution. The nine investigations already
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
accomplished make a fairly well rounded study
of human life as lived by the American Negro.
They consist of the following studies:
1. Mortality among Negroes in Cities, 1896.
2. Social and Physical Condition of Negroes
in Cities, 1897.
3. Some Efforts of Negroes for Social Bet¬
terment, 1898.
4. The Negro in Business, 1899.
5. The College-bred Negro, 1900.
6. The Negro Common School, 1901.
7. The Negro Artisan, 1902.
8. The Negro Church, 1903.
9. Crime Among Negroes, 1904.
10. Methods and Results of Ten Years' Study,
1905.
Our present plan is to begin a second cycle
of studies similar to these beginning with a
study of Negro Mortality in 1906.
The results of these studies have been widely
used; they are in the chief libraries of the world
and have been commended by the London Times,
The Spectator, The Manchester Guardian, The
Outlook, The Nation, The Dial, The Inde¬
pendent, and leading daily papers.
While we believe that social inquiry of this
sort is fully justified if it seeks merely to know
and publish that knowledge, we have also sought
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
in addition to this to inspire our graduates in
various communities to use the information we
collect as a basis of concrete efforts in social
betterment, and we can already point to some
results of this policy.
I have sought, thus far, to tell you who
founded Atlanta University, what the institu¬
tion is, what it is doing and what it has done.
There arises now naturally the question, What
judgment is being passed upon this institution
by its neighbors? After all the judgment of a
man's peers is of great, if not of final value in
determining his desert; and so to-day there has
arisen in the North a not unnatural desire to
give at least some weight to Southern opinion in
judging the merits of Southern schools. This
is perfectly proper, but it has some limitations.
In the first place, you must not forget that
Southern opinion is composed not simply of the
opinion of whites, but also of blacks. Among
the blacks it is hardly necessary to say that At¬
lanta University has long been regarded as the
chiefest bulwark against the assaults of all
forces within and without the race, which con¬
sciously or unconsciously work to narrow the
opportunities and to curb the righteous ambi¬
tions of black men. Where we stood thirty-five
years ago, to-day, on a plank of the widest and
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
best education for black boys and girls, which
they are capable of assimilating and using, we
still stand. We do not regard this stand as the
stubbornness of senility, but rather as the stead¬
fastness of the true faith. Many, however, both
North and South, do not agree with us. To
these we can only say, examine, not hastily nor
superficially, but carefully and frankly, the re¬
sults of thirty-five years of higher education at
Atlanta University and let us hear your verdict.
We have said this to Northern skeptics and such
as have investigated have in the large maj ority of
cases come to agree with us. We have said this
to the whites South, but in only a few cases have
we been able to get the best class of Southern
whites to examine and really learn about our
work. The larger part of them either remain
indifferent or unfriendly toward us. Why is
this? Unless you visit and mingle with your
next-door neighbors, you can easily remain per¬
fect strangers to them. In the South the whole
community is cut in twain along the color line,
only at the bottoms among the shadows of crime
do they mingle; in real life, their bond is be¬
coming more and more purely economic. At the
top among the better elements of both races
there is little communication. It is therefore
easy to see that the very class among which At-
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
lanta University is working is the class least
known by the average Southerner of to-day —
the teachers, professional men, the business men
with Negro clientele; on the other hand, he
knows and is interested in colored labor skilled
and unskilled, and he is easily induced to visit
Negro industrial schools. As the work of Negro
colleges becomes in time known in the South it
will be more and more appreciated, but it is
largely unknown to-day. One of our white
teachers was talking to an intelligent Southerner
not long since about education as a means of alle¬
viating distressing social conditions. " And yet,"
said he, " education doesn't always help. Take
the case of the Negro: when did education ever
do a Negro any good? Why, do you know
three-fourths of the Negroes in our prisons are
educated? " " How much education do you sup¬
pose they have?" asked the teacher. " They
can read and write," he answered, " that is about
as far as the Negro can go in education. What¬
ever else he acquires is purely through the fac¬
ulty of imitation and the pity of it is that he
always imitates what is worst."
So, too, the president of an important white
school assured a recent French visitor that our
graduates could find nothing to do except as
bootblacks and porters. He had no intention
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
to deceive. Most of the Negroes he saw were
unskilled menials, and he naturally supposed that
practically all of them were. Moreover, it did
not seem worth while for him to find out.
To be sure there are exceptions and signs of
progress: The Hon. G. R. Glenn, late State
School Commissioner of Georgia, has said:
" Many of our very best school teachers who
are now at work in the public schools for colored
children have either graduated at that institu¬
tion or have spent considerable time there acquir¬
ing their professional equipment. I commend
the Atlanta University very cordially to all
those friends of education who may desire to
help the cause of education in the South."
The present superintendent of the Atlanta
Public Schools writes:
" Atlanta University furnishes seventy-five
per cent of the teachers for the Negro schools
of this city. They are the best we have been
able to obtain from any source. We have tried
other teachers from other schools and colleges,
and in proficiency they fall far below the nor¬
mal school graduates of Atlanta University."
The Hon. Hoke Smith, of Atlanta, Ex-Sec¬
retary of the Interior in President Cleveland's
cabinet testifies:
" I have had occasion to watch the work of
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
the Atlanta University for many years. I went
very carefully through the institution several
years ago and wrote the report upon it as State1
visitor from the University of Georgia. As
President of the Board of Education of Atlanta,
I have watched the institution, for from it
largely we draw our teachers for our colored
schools. My observation justifies my saying
that we have obtained no better teachers for our
colored public schools throughout the State than
those furnished from the Atlanta University."
Hon. Rufus B. Bullock, Ex-Governor of
Georgia, says: " The Atlanta University dur¬
ing its thirty odd years of continuous work has
won by its merit the highest esteem of the best'
people of our city and State. Its graduates are
sought for by our State School Commissioners
and by the school boards of our cities."
Hon. Allan D. Candler, another Ex-Gover¬
nor says: " I know that this institution has
done more (and I do not desire to disparage other
institutions; I do not mean to disparage them),"
so far as my information has gone, to elevate
the colored race than any other institution in
the bounds of this State."
And finally we may add the testimony of the
Hon. John L. Hopkins (formerly Judge of Su¬
perior Court, Atlanta, Ga.) : " My opportunity
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
for observing its work and for knowing the very
spirit of the institution has been of the best.
Being by birth and education a southern man, I
could but look with critical eye, and really with
some distrust, upon this attempt to confer the
higher education upon the Negro, but the years
have left me with no doubt as to the wisdom of
all that has been done. It has been a noble and
a successful work. With scant means and
under great difficulties, the consecrated men in
control have accomplished much direct good for
the Negro, with a valuable reflex influence upon
the white people."
The active open opposition to our work has
long since disappeared and here and there men
who accidentally or through their daily work
have been brought into contact with us have not
hesitated to testify to its value. After all, the
opposition to higher training for Negroes is not
usually based on actual knowledge of its results,
but rather upon its supposed inherent and
theoretical absurdity when viewed as a policy;
and back of such view, hidden or clouded, for¬
gotten or artfully concealed, sits the real un¬
spoken thing that prompts the oposition —
namely, the feeling that black men are not men.
There is no doubt of the unfortunate spread of
anti-Negro prejudice in the North in recent
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
years. There is no doubt of the spread of the
caste spirit, even beyond the color line. This
is a national calamity and calls for something
more than exclamations and sighs on your part.
It is not surely too much to ask that parents
and teachers of the future citizens of the nation
should see to it that they themselves are broad
enough and honest enough and brave enough to
recognize human desert and accomplishment
under any human guise and to teach their pupils
and children to do likewise; for this is no pass¬
ing difficulty; no merely local problem; nothing
of even simply national concern. We have a
way in America of wanting to be rid of prob¬
lems. It is not so much a desire to reach the
best and largest solution as it is to clear the
board and start a new game. Of this, our most
sinister social problem, the future status and de¬
velopment of 9,000,000 Negroes, most Ameri¬
cans are simply tired and impatient. They do
not want to solve it; they do not want to under¬
stand it; they want simply to be done with it
and hear the last of it. Of all possible attitudes,
this is the most dangerous, because it fails to
realize the most significant fact of the opening
century, namely, that the Negro problem in
America is but a local phase of a world problem,
" The problem of the Twentieth Century is the
FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE
problem of the color line." Many smile incred¬
ulously at such a proposition, but let us see. The
tendency of the great nations of the day is ter¬
ritorial and political expansion, but in nearly
every case this has brought them in contact with
darker peoples, so that we have to-day, England,
France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Portugal, Hol¬
land, Belgium, and the United States in close
contact with yellow, brown, and black peoples.
The older idea was that the whites would eventu¬
ally displace the native races and inherit the
earth; but this idea has been rudely shaken in
the increase of the American Negroes, and
of the native races in India, South Africa,
and the West Indies, and in the development
of South America. The policy of expansion,
then, simply means world problems of the
color line; the color question enters into
the German and English imperial politics,
shadows the problem of the Turk, shook the
Triple Alliance through Italy's overthrow in
Abyssinia, covers the islands of the sea from
Australia to Hawaii and floods our continent
from Alaska to Patagonia. Nor is this all.
Since 732 when Charles Martel beat back the
Saracens at Tours, the white races have had the
hegemony, so far that white and civilized have
become synonymous in every-day speech and
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
men had well-nigh forgotten where civilization
started. To-day for the first time in a
thousand years the great white nation is meas¬
uring arms with the yellow nation and is shown
to be distinctly inferior in civilization and
ability. Whatever its end may be the Russo-
Japanese war in epoch-making. The foolish
modern magic of the word " white " is already
broken and the color line has been crossed in
modern times as it was in the great past; the
awakening of the yellow races is certain, whether
Japan wins or loses; that the awakening of the
brown and black races will follow in time no
unprejudiced student of history can doubt;
shall the awakening of these sleeping millions
be in accordance with and aided by the greater
ideals of white civilization or be in spite of them
and against them? This is the problem of the
yellow peril and of the color line, and it is the
problem of the American Negro. Force and
fear and repression have hitherto marked our
attitude toward darker races. Shall this con¬
tinue or be replaced by freedom and friendship
and opening opportunity? Atlanta University
stands for opportunity.
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
TRUSTEES
Rev. Samuel M. Crothers, D. D., Cambridge,
Mass.
Rev. Ozora S. Davis, Ph. D., New Britain, Conn.
Mr. Harvey Edward Fisk, A. B., New York,
N. Y.
Rev. C. Cuthbert Hall, D. D., New York, N. Y.
Hon. John L. Hopkins, Atlanta, Ga.
Mr. William B. Matthews, A. B., Atlanta, Ga.
Rev. Frederick H. Means, A. B., Winchester,
Mass.
Rev. Daniel Merriman, D. D., Worcester,
Mass.
Rev. Edgar J. Penney, D. D., Tuskegee, Ala.
Rev. Edward F. Sanderson, D. D., Providence,
R. I.
Rev. Joseph E. Smith, Chattanooga, Tenn.
Mr. Arthur C. Walworth, A. M., Boston,
Mass.
Mr. Herbert A. Wilder, Boston, Mass.
Rev. C. Breckinridge Wilmer, D. D., Atlanta,
Ga.
Pres. Richard R. Wright, LL. D., Savannah,
Ga.
Mr. Hugh Young, New York, N. Y.
{Ex-offieio) President Horace Bumstead, D. D.,
Atlanta, Ga.
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
ENROLLMENT.—About, 320 students tire en¬
rolled^, some 50 of them in the college course, under
27 teachers and officers■* From the college and »oN
mal courses, 508 graduates have been sent out,
nearly all of whom have r&adily found permanent
employment in teaching or other useful occupations*
THE PLANT.—Seven large brick buildingSi on a
campus of 65 a,cresi an, endowed library of over
11,500 volumes, physical, chemical% and sociolog¬
ical laboratories wit ft growing equipmentr and a
well furnished printing office, constitute the chief
features of the material plantt worth not less than
$250,000.
PERMANENT FUNDS.—In round numbers, these
are as follows:
For scholarships •, $31,000
For general endowment . . , 17,000
For maintenance^ of library f w 6,000
Total - r . , . $54,000
NEEDS.—The great need of the University is an
endowment of nt least $500,000. The pressing
need is money for current expenses. The total an¬
nual cost of the work is about $50,000. Oflhis, the
students themselves pay in cash, about $10,000, and
the invested funds and a, Jew miscellaneous reve¬
nues yield art income of about $5,000. For the re¬
maining $35,000, the University is dependent Upon/
the annual gifts of its friend*. ,
Legacies for endowment or current expenses
should be made payable to 1' The Trustees of the
Atlantq University™ in Atlanta, Qa.\ and attested
by three witnesses.
Remittances may be addressed to
MYRON" W. ADAMS, Treasure*,
Atlanta University, Atlanta, Ga.,
ORESIDENT Charles W. Eliot of
* Harvard University, in referring to
the work of Atlanta University, has
said: "But there is another essential
thing—namely, that the teachers,
preachers, physicians, lawyers, engin¬
eers, and superior mechanics, the
leaders of industry, throughout the Ne¬
gro communities of the South, should
be trained , in superior institutions. If
any expect that the Negro teachers of
the South can be adequately educa¬
ted in primary schools, or grammar
schools, or industrial schools pure and
simple, I can only say in reply that
that is more than we can do at the
North with the white race. The only
way to have good primary schools and
grammar schools in Massachusetts is
to have high and normal schools and
colleges, in which the higher teachers
are trained. It must be so throughout
the South; the Negro race needs ab¬
solutely these higher facilities of edu¬
cation."