[Reprinted from December, 1915, Education.]
The Practical Value of The Higher Education
of the Negro
By Pbofessoe, Kelly Millek, Dean of the College of Arts
and Sciences, Howard University, Washington, D. C.
jiiiimiiiiiiaiiiiiiimiic^jjj] progress of the Negro race consists in improve-
1 ment of the personal worth and social efficiency
! of its individual members. The value of any type
[ of education must be appraised in terms of these
j|]iiiiiiiiiiiiaiiiiiiiiiiiic|; standards. Any proposed scheme of social uplift
I | which hopes to gain popular approval and support
| | must be subjected to the concrete test of rendering
ftiiiiiiiiiiiiDiiiiiiimiii:* the recipient more worthy in his individual quali¬
ties and of making him a more efficient instrument of service to
his fellowman.
In this practical age there is little tolerance for abstract doc¬
trine or fruitless theory that does not translate itself into the
actualities of life. The whole educational world has been pro¬
foundly affected by the influence of this tendency. The stress of
educational emphasis has been shifted from the passive to the
active aspect of culture. To be somebody was the ideal of the
old school education; to do something is the aim of the new. The
one placed the stress of emphasis on being; the other on doing.
This tendency towards the practical end of education is greatly
emphasized when the application is limited to the colored race.
The Negro's presence in this country, in the first place, was due
to the belief that he was intended by the Creator to be an instru¬
ment of crude service. His traditional function was mainly me¬
chanical, and scarcely more human than that of the ox which pulls
the plow. His personality was at first denied, and afterwards
ignored. Men spoke of the Negro as a "good hand" just as they
spoke of a good ax or a good ox. The imputed virtue had ex¬
clusive reference to his utility as a tool. The traditional bias
concerning the Negro's ordained place in the social scheme in¬
fluences present opinion concerning the kind of education which
should be imparted to him. As a consequence of this attitude,
that type of education which fits him for his accustomed sphere
and place has found ready appreciation and favor; he is to be edu¬
cated for his work, rather than for himself.
As a matter of fact, the great bulk of this race must devote its
chief energies to the cruder and coarser grades of service which
fall to its lot as far in the future as our present vision can pene¬
trate. The industrial education of the masses, therefore, becomes
a matter of the highest concern to the practical statesman and
philanthropist. Dr. Booker T. Washington, in his moments of
greatest enthusiasm, has never over stated the importance of in¬
dustrial training as an essential agency of the general social up¬
lift. But at the same time, it should never be forgotten that the
Negro is a human being as well as a utensil of service. A wise
educational economy will seek to make him a man working, rather
than a working man.
The universities and colleges for the Negroes were founded on
the wave of moral enthusiasm which marked the highest point that
christian philanthropy has ever attained. Upon the crest of this
wave of enthusiasm for quickening the manhood of the Negro,
educational facilities were provided for the race which, up to
that time, had been forbidden the use of letters, on the basis of
the higher standards adapted to the requirements of the most fa¬
vored European youth. If the practical phase was ignored, it
was merely because industrial training was not at that time con¬
sidered a vital part of the education of the white race. Indeed,
it was reserved for General S. C. Armstrong to add a new chapter
to American education. Industrial training has gained and will
forever retain its important place in the educational program of
the American people. Hampton and Tuskegee typify national,
rather than racial educational ideals. General Armstrong and
Booker T. Washington, his chief apostle, have become the school¬
masters, not merely to the Negro, but to the nation. Educational
methods suggested by the needs of the Negro have been applied
to the requirements of the white race. One is reminded of the
lines of Kipling: "The things that you learn from the yellow and
brown will help you a heap with the white."
As the heat of feeling engendered by the anti-slavery agitation
cooled down, it was inevitable that there would be a reaction in
public sentiment against the higher education of the race. Sen-
tiinent at the time when the general educational policy of the
nation was being re-written in terms of new demand, was such
that it was to be expected that the so-called higher education of
the Negro would be discredited and belittled. Under the parti¬
san propaganda of the industrial advocates, the fountain of phi¬
lanthropy was frozen to the appeal for higher education.
Fortunately, however, the saner sense of the people is now re¬
asserting itself. The two types of education are no longer con¬
trasted as antagonistic and inconsistent, but compared as common
factors of a joint product. Their relative claims should never
have been made a matter of essential controversy, but merely a
question of ratio and proportion. Negro colleges, following the
lead of their white prototypes, are adjusting their curricula to the
demands of the age. Economics, social science, and history, are
sharing with the traditional ingredients. The advocates of in¬
dustrial training are now willing graciously to concede the value
of the higher education if sensibly adapted and wisely applied.
There are ten million Negroes in the United States with the
status of American citizenship, each of whom needs to improve
his personal qualities and social efficiency. This improvement
must be brought about through philanthropic assistance and by
self-reclamation. The agency that will most effectively conduce
to this end is the chief concern of wise philanthropy and states¬
manship. Industrial and the higher education are both applied
to the same task of uplifting and sustaining these millions of
human beings and rendering them competent and willing co>-
workers for the common good of the nation. Industrial educa¬
tion is pushing up from the bottom, while the higher education
is pulling from the top. Both elements are efficient; neither is
sufficient.
The chief aim of the higher education is to produce an effi¬
cient leadership. According to the last available data from the
Federal census, there are fifteen thousand Negro clergymen, about
two thousand Negro physicians and dentists, twenty-one thousand
Negro teachers, seven hundred Negro lawyers, and several thousand
workers along the other lines of the higher callings and pursuits.
These constitute about one-half of one per cent of the race; but
it is to this class that the ninety-nine and one-half per cent must
look for leadership. The foreigners who flock to our shores are up-
lifted and sustained largely because they have intelligent and
sympathetic leadership among their own race. The Catholic
priesthood with its high standard of intelligence and practical
statesmanship, saves the foreigner from becoming a national
menace. The Negro must have a leadership within his own race
to save him from a like fate. It is only through the higher train¬
ing that such influence can be developed; this task is a practical
one. It is of no more immediate practical advantage to the Ne¬
gro, that the hungry should be fed, the naked clothed, and the
houseless sheltered, than that the sick should be healed, the igno¬
rant enlightened, and that the simple should be guided and the
wayward reclaimed.
In the present temper of the American mind the Negro is con¬
fined to a separate social area which makes it necessary that his
needs should be met by the professional class of his own race/Thus,
the Negro teacher, minister, physician, lawyer, and editor become
a social necessity; hence, the importance of the Negro college
and university to train men and women of this blood for the higher
offices to which their destiny calls them. Just in proportion as
the spirit of racial segregation increases, the demand for internal
leadership becomes intensified. No race, even through its most
self-sacrificing members, can furnish intimate direction for a
despised people, where general regulations compel them to ride
in separate coaches, and to walk the streets apart, and to move in
separate social spheres. It will be generally conceded that profes¬
sional workers should have about the same degree of education
regardless of the social advantages of the people among whom they
will be called upon to labor. The Negro teacher certainly meets
with the most difficult problems in pedagogy and psychology;
the Negro physician must treat every form of disease that human
flesh is heir to; the Negro minister has to deal with the gravest
moral and spiritual problems growing out of original and acquired
sin. There devolves upon the leadership of this race the handling
of issues which are as far reaching in their relations and as in¬
tricate in their entanglement as any that ever taxed the human
understanding. Surely, they need that kind and degree of prepa¬
ration for their calling which have been found to be necessary by
the experience of the ages. The function of the Negro college is
to prepare the choice men of this race to stand in the high place
of moral and spiritual authority as guides, philosophers, and
friends to their less fortunate brethren. For want of vision peo¬
ple perish, as well as for want of provision. The blind cannot
lead the blind lest both fall into the ditch.
The graduates of Negro colleges and universities are some times
derided in all the moods and tenses of irony and ridicule. We
have all laughed ourselves to weariness over the account of the
barefoot boy reading Plato between the plow handles, the kitchen
scullion discanting upon Kant, and the hotel waiter revelling in
the glories of the Renaissance. The Negro collegian is depicted as
an impractical doctrinaire, who spends his time in impotent
frenzy, screaming against the existing evils of society which he
has neither the deep discernment to understand nor the practical
wisdom to alleviate.
In the rapid rise of this class from the lower to the higher levels
of life instances of mal-adaptations and grotesque misfits might
naturally be expected. But a wide acquaintance with the gradu¬
ates of Negro colleges and universities in all parts of the land,
convinces me that such instances are exceptional, and do not, in
the least, characterize them as a class. They are almost univer¬
sally employed along lines of useful endeavor for the general
betterment of the community and command the respect and good
will of the people of both races among whom they live and work.
As a concrete illustration of this principle, I cite the case of
Howard University which is the largest university of European
type for Negro youth to be found anywhere in the world. This
institution has a student body of fifteen hundred young men and
women pursuing the various branches of collegiate and profes¬
sional studies, and has sent into the world about three thousand
graduates, and several times as many sometime pupils who have
shared the partial benefit of its courses. These three thousand
graduates, and sometime pupils are scattered throughout the
length and breadth of the land, in almost every county and city
with considerable Negro population, and are working along the
lines of their callings as ministers, physicians, lawyers, teachers,
and in the general activities for the welfare of the people. What
is true of graduates of this university is equally true of other
Negro colleges and of the men of the higher education as a class.
A few individual examples of Howard Alumni must suffice to
justify this statement. Rev. Wm. H. Brooks, Pastor of St.
Mark's Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City, has gone
in and out among a congregation of nearly two thousand members
for seventeen years, as their moral and spiritual example and
guide. He is universally beloved and esteemed for his good
works, and might well be described as the Good Shepherd of the
colored people of New York City. Rev. George Erazier Miller,
of the City of Brooklyn, a man of clean life and clear thought,
high ideals and lofty endeavor, has endeared himself to the en¬
tire community as an exemplary moral and spiritual leader of men.
Wm. E. Benson, founder of Kowaliga, Alabama, has established
a self-supporting community involving ten thousand acres of
land within the very heart of the black belt of the South. Hon.
J. C. Napier, Ex-Registrar of the U. S. Treasury, is a lawyer of
substance and standing in the City of Nashville, and is universally
respected and esteemed by the white and black alike for his
manly life and wholesome influence. Prof. Hugh M. Brown,
the re-organizer of the Colored Institute at Cheney, Pa., is per¬
haps the best expert of the country upon the application of in¬
dustrial education to the teaching needs of the masses. Dr. W.
A. Warfield is surgeon-in-chief of Ereedmen's Hospital, Wash¬
ington, D. C., an institution with two hundred and fifty beds,
and perhaps the largest and best equipped hospital between Bal¬
timore and New Orleans. Mr. J. E. Moorland, International
Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association, has been
instrumental largely through the beneficence of Mr. Rosenwald,
of Chicago, in promoting the erection of Y. M. C. A. buildings
costing upward of $100,000 each, in large cities of the country;
such buildings are already in full operation in Chicago, Washing¬
ton, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia, and plans are under way
for erection of like plants in a half dozen other cities. Under
the leadership and direction of Mr. Moorland, the Young Men's
Christian Association has become the most active field of social
endeavor among the colored race within the last few years; the
work already accomplished and under way involves more than a
million of dollars. These are but samples of the effective work
which graduates of this university are doing along all lines of en¬
deavor for the general betterment of the people.
In the final analysis it will be found that there is no reasonable
ground for conflict or misunderstanding between the two types
of education. The late Dr. Booker T. Washington was a trustee of
Hampton Institute and also of Harvard University, and effectively
served his race through the instrumentality of both institutions.
Both types of school make the joint appeal to the philanthropy,
statesmanship, and conscience of the American people: "This, ye
ought to have done and not to have left the other undone."
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