2. THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO.
BY PROFESSOR KELLY MILLER, OF HOWARD UNIVERSITY.
[Read Thursday morning, April 18.]
The education of the negro is not, of itself, a thing apart, but is
an integral factor of the general pedagogical equation. Race
psychology has not yet been formulated. No reputable authority
has indicated just wherein the two races differ in any evident
mental feature.
In proposing an educational scheme for the negro, we should
bear in mind the educational constants which admit of no ethno¬
logical variation. Knowledge and virtue have no ethnic quality.
The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the
Multiplication Table allow no latitude for racial idiosyncrasies.
The common trunk of the tree of knowledge may send forth
branches in many directions to meet local, economic, and tempo¬
rary needs. Many of our educators would establish for the negro
a racial tree of knowledge, with its own peculiar roots, limbs,
foliage, flower, and fruit.
A wise educational scheme for any class can be prescribed only
in the light of its comprehensive status. The needs of the race
sweep the entire circle of human interests. It can thus be seen
what a complex and difficult task on? enters upon when he under¬
takes to prescribe an educational regime for such a people. It is
plainly evident that no single programme is adequate to such a
wide circle of needs.
The dual function of education is to enable the recipient to
make a living for himself, in order that he may make something
out of himself. Life is more than meat. No system of education
worthy of the name can be based upon the temporary expedients
of a livelihood. While it must take cognizance of such stern
necessity, yet it should leap swiftly beyond them to the develop¬
ment of the enduring qualities of mind and soul.
The negro's education, therefore, has a larger function than that
of the white youth who has only to qualify for a prepared place.
Il8 AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION
The futile discussion as to whether industrial or higher education
is of greater importance to the negro is suggestive of a subject of
great renown in rural debating societies: " Which is of greater
importance to man,— air or water ? " We had as well attempt to
decide whether the base or the altitude is the more essential
element of a triangle.
1. The negro needs industrial training because nine-tenths of
the race must make their living by some form of manual exertion
for all time which we have the data to calculate.
The crude, shiftless, wasteful, slovenly methods of work which
prevailed under the slave regime will not answer modern indus¬
trial demands. Unless the negro learns to work with intelligence,
science, and system, he will be relegated to the crude, bone-break¬
ing, dehumanizing forms of labor by the fierce rivalry of the age ;
and his last industrial state will be worse than the first.
2. In the second place the school is the only avenue through
which the negro can form an acquaintance with the higher
methods of the industrial arts.
Trades-unionism, with its narrow-minded policy, acts upon the
principle of industrial restraint. Its avowed creed is that compe¬
tition is the soul of trade, but the death of the trades. It seizes
upon the prevailing prejudice as a show of justification for exclud¬
ing the negro, his color being utilized as a badge of identification.
The industrial school, therefore, is the only means by which the
race can form connection with the industrial current.
3. The negro belongs to a backward race, and has had little
experience in the practical handling of things. The white man
has-been in control of the world's affairs for many generations, and
has acquired a practical coefficient of skill which has become a
part of the heritage of the race. The negro, on the other hand,
has never interpreted thought in terms of things. He is therefore
deficient in practical judgment and executive force. There is no
close co-ordination of faculties. Sentiment overrides sense: the
energy of the will is too feeble to put in execution the conceptions
of the intellect. The deficiency can be made good only by manual
training which focusses the hand, the eye, the intellect, the sensi¬
bilities, and the will upon the accomplishment of a given task.
This training is essential, not merely for its industrial value, but
also as a means of race development.
It is not so much technical handicraft, however, but a deeper
THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO PROF. MILLER I 19
incentive and broader perspective that the negro needs in order to
stimulate his lethargic energies. The ignorant peasant, without
rational conception of the object and end of labor, is urged to
exertion only by the principle of physical necessities or the sterner
compulsion of force. The enlightened freeman, on the other
hand, delights to toil because his larger range of vision can see it
transmuted into independence, wealth, honor, and power. Train¬
ing in the three R.'s, with a smattering of handicraft, even with
Sunday-school maxims thrown in, will not qualify the recipient to
enlighten the ignorant, restrain the vicious, care for the-sick and
afflicted, or administer spiritual solace to the weary soul.
According to the census of 1890 there were fifty-four cities in
the United States with a population of more than five thousand
persons of color, averaging fifteen thousand each, aggregating
eight hundred thousand in all. The professional needs of this
urban population alone called for five thousand well-equipped men
and women, not one of whom would be qualified for his function
by the three R.'s or a handicraft.
The charge has recently been made that the money spent on the
higher education of the negro has been wasted. Does this charge
come from the South ? When we consider that it was through
Northern philanthropy that a third of its population received its
first impulse to better things; that these higher institutions pre¬
pared the 35,000 negro teachers whose services are utilized in the
public schools; that the men and women who were the benefi¬
ciaries of this philanthropy are doing all in their power to control,
guide, and restrain the South's ignorant and vicious masses, thus
uplifting the general life to a higher level and thus lightening the
public burden ; that these persons are almost without exception
earnest advocates of harmony, peace, and good will between the
races ; to say nothing of the fact that these vast philanthropic con¬
ditions have passed through the trade channels of Southern
merchants,— it would seem that the charge is strangely incompatible
with that high-minded disposition and chivalrous spirit which the
South is so zealous to maintain.
Does the charge come from the North ? It might not be imper¬
tinent to propound a few propositions for consideration. Is it
possible to specify a like sum of money spent upon any other
backward race which has produced greater results than the amount
spent upon the Southern negro ?
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AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION
It is said that the education of the negro has not restrained
vicious tendencies. If we note the parallel increase in education
and crime throughout the country at large, it is difficult to see how
this alleged tendency can be considered a race trait or failing.
The graduates and the former pupils of negro schools and colleges
are almost to a man well-behaved, law-abiding citizens, and exer¬
cise a wholesome, restraining influence upon the masses with whom
they come in contact. The criminal record of the negro race is
indeed appalling in its proportions. It is inevitable that any iso¬
lated and submerged class should have a high criminal average.
But we should stop to consider how much more threatening these
evil manifestations might be if it were not for the restraining influ¬
ence of the cultivated class.
" What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted."
As an illustration of the value of the higher education to the
negro race, I point to Howard University, which is the largest and
best equipped institution of its class. The establishment and
maintenance of this institution during the past thirty-four years has
cost between two and three millions of dollars. As the returns on
this investment, it has sent into the world two hundred ministers
of the gospel, seven hundred physicians, pharmacists, and dentists,
three hundred lawyer's, and six hundred persons with a general
collegiate and academic training, together with thousands of some¬
time pupils who have shared the partial benefits of its courses.
These graduates and sometime pupils are to be found in every dis¬
trict and county where the negro population resides, and are fill¬
ing places of usefulness, honor, and distinction, as well as perform¬
ing works of mercy and sacrificial service for social betterment.
Not a half-dozen of the entire number have a criminal record. They
serve as an inspiration and a stimulus, quickening the dormant
energies of the people and urging them to loftier ideals and
nobler modes of life. It devolves upon the complainant to present
some plan by which a like sum of money, in a like space of time,
can be expended so as to produce a more wholesome or more wide¬
spread effect upon the general social uplift.
The South is in full control of the local governmental situation,
and is therefore responsible to the world for the maintenance of a
just and equitable regime. It should be expected to maintain the
THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO — PROF. MILLER 12 1
public schools at the highest possible degree of efficiency. The
elements of agriculture should be taught in rural schools, and the
domestic and industrial arts in cities. Such private centres as
Hampton and Tuskegee can furnish only the industrial inspiration
and impulse. The public schools alone can give the general im-
partation of industrial knowledge and skill. Each Southern State
should maintain a high grade normal school, with facilities and
equipments equal to the pedagogical requirements of the age.
The argument that the whites pay the taxes for the negro's edu¬
cation is not based upon sound economic principles or wise public
policy. Labor pays every tax in the world.' Whatever super¬
structure of material glory the South may enjoy, it must remember
that underneath it all is the negro's brawny arm. Would any
political party advocate in its platform that, because the laboring
man does not figure on the tax list, he is not in reality a tax-payer,
and therefore should be curtailed in the enjoyment of public priv¬
ileges ? The principle of the public schools is not that the child
should be given advantages according to the tax-paying ability of
the parent, but that the State makes the investment in order to se¬
cure a higher quality of citizenship.
The South gauges everything according to the exactions of the
race problem. Nothing stands alone on its merits. Religious,
devotion, political policy, and educational programmes are tested
by the standard of race expediency. And yet Southern statesman¬
ship has not only failed to bring the desired solution, but has not
even secured temporary tranquillity. Odious Jim Crow car laws
and fraudulent disfranchisement measures have not untied a single
knot of the tangled web. But education, at least, should be free
from such narrow restrictions, and placed upon the broad basis of
human development. However the complex ethnic problems may
eventuate, it is the wisest policy for any community to develop in.
all of its citizens the highest possible degree of knowledge, virtue,,
and practical efficiency.
The negro is willing to accept any adjustment, however hardly
it may bear upon present conditions, since it does not suppress,
the race below the level of its possibilities and exclude future
expansion and outlook. The least that he can ask of those whom
inevitable circumstances have placed in control of affairs is that
he be given the widest opportunity for the development of his
faculties and improvement of his lot.
122 AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION
The negro is indebted to the North for much of the progress he
has made since emancipation; and, like Jacob wrestling with the
angel, he will not let go until he has received a larger measure of
blessing. He needs more of its economic habit, industrial thrift,
strenuous spirit, and enlightened view of life. This has been im¬
parted mainly through the colleges, universities, and industrial
schools which Northern philanthropy has planted in the South.
The North is appealed to to continue the lines of work which fall
beyond or at least outside of the scope of public instruction.
The Northern college is not apt to inspire colored youth with
the enthusiasm and fixed purpose for the work which Providence
has assigned them. It is not the letter, but the spirit, that maketh
alive. It is almost inconceivable that Booker T. Washington
could have received his inspiration other than by actual contact
with the problem of which he forms a part. The white college
does not contemplate the needs of the negro race.
American ideals could not be fostered in the white youth of the
country by sending them to Oxford or Berlin for their tuition. No
more can the negro gain racial inspiration from Harvard or Yale.
And yet it would be a calamity to cut them off from these great
centres of learning. - They need the benefit of contact and com¬
parison, and the zeal for knowledge and truth, that these great
institutions impart.
We are all too anxious to solve the race problem, although it
clearly baffles our highest wisdom. Who can tell what its ultimate
outcome is to be ? Our concern is with duty, not destiny.
" Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribe their present state."
If a person is drowning, the law of human impulse demands his
rescue, without stopping to inquire as to his complexion, racial
identity, or future relation to society, but immediate and un¬
conditional rescue. And so the negro should be rescued from
ignorance, superstition, and vice, without idle speculation of what
the future may have in store. Statesmen, philosophers, and
philanthropists, alike, need to sacrifice their pride of theory, and
content themselves with one step in the direction of duty, without
asking to see the distant scene.