Reprinted from the Educational Review, Vol. 58, No. i,
June, 1919
NATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE EDUCA¬
TION OF THE NEGRO1
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution made
the negro a citizen of the United States. By fiat of law the
status of the chattel was suddenly transformed into that
of the citizen. The National Government is wholly re¬
sponsible for the creation of negro citizenship, a responsi¬
bility which involves the obligation to prepare him for his
new function in the government. Carried away by the
heat and hysteria of war, the statesmanship of that period
did not consider all of the consequences growing out of this
momentous act. It was deemed sufficient to invest the
newly emancipated slave with a garb of citizenship, with¬
out preparing him to wear the unaccustomed garb becom¬
ingly. His education was left to the afflicted states, which
had recently been disrupted and disorganized by the ruinous
ravages of war. The ill-fated Freedmen's Bureau under¬
took in some slight measure to fulfil the national obligation.
But for the most part the freedman was left to shift
for himself in his upward struggle from ignorance to en¬
lightenment. It was hoped that his enfranchisement
might enable him to exert the requisite influence on the
policy of the several states, leading to the establishment of
adequate educational provision. Amidst all the inperfec-
tions and misdeeds of reconstruction, actual or alleged,
there stands out in bold relief one clear redeeming feature.
Actuated by the purpose of qualifying the negro for the
proper exercise of his citizenship function, the reconstruc¬
tion governments established the public school system in
the several southern states. One searches in vain for any
1 Paper read before the Department of Superintendents, Atlantic City,
March 1, 1918.
31
32
Educational Review
[June
record of southern statesmanship, before or since the Civil
War, fraught with greater benefits to both races than the
public provision for the education of all citizens, estab¬
lished by the much-maligned reconstruction governments.
But actual experience soon demonstrated what prudent
provision should have foreseen, namely, that the recently
impoverished and distracted southern states were not, of
themselves, able to maintain adequate school system for
the efficient education of both races. Their heroic efforts
must be supplemented by national provision, or else the
South for many generations must lag behind other sections
of the nation, and the efficiency of the nation, as a whole,
will be seriously impaired.
We are apt to be misled by statistics of illiteracy showing
the remarkable rapidity with which the negro is acquiring the
use of letters. Beginning practically at the zero point of
literacy, at the time of his emancipation, the rate of literacy
had arisen to 70.6 per cent in 1910. The rapidity with
which the negro race has been literalized, has been consid¬
ered the most marvelous attainment of the past century.
In the period of fifty years a considerable majority of its
members has learned the use of letters. This is a much
larger percent than is shown by many of the historic races
of the old world.
The mere technical acquisition of letters, however, is a
matter of very simple attainment. A few months' schooling
is sufficient to communicate to the individual the oral and
phonetic symbols of knowledge, and the method of com¬
bining them into written and spoken speech. The letters
of the alphabet constitute a key with twenty-six notches,
which unlocks the accumulated storehouse of the wisdom
and experience of mankind. But the mere possession of
this mystic key is of little value unless the wielder has a
previous appreciation of the wealth of wisdom which the
storehouse contains. The Red Indian or any other savage
peoples might acquire the ability to read and write within
a single generation but if they still cling to their ancestorial
I9I9] National responsibility for education of negro 33
and traditional ways, without the curiosity of incentive
to understand the secret and method of civilization, their
mere technical attainments would be of little more value
than a curious intellectual gymnastic. Altho 70 per cent
of the negro race can read and write, comparatively a
small fraction of that number actually do make an efficient
use of their attainments. In the states which require a
literacy test for the exercise of franchise, the great bulk
of negroes are excluded because of their inability to meet
this simple test; albeit the statistics of such states show a
high average of negro literacy. Of course it would be un¬
becoming to intimate that a sovereign state would be
guilty of the deep dishonor of depriving its citizens of
fundamental rights by cunning device or tricky contrivance.
Statistics of illiteracy are misleading because the individual's
pride which indisposes him to have his ignorance acknowl¬
edged and recorded, often leads him to render misleading
answer to the query of the enumerator.
At Camp Dodge, where there were 3600 negro conscripts
from Alabama, no one of whom, under the terms of conscrip¬
tion, was over 31 years of age, the Young Men's Christian
Association found that over 75 per cent of them were un¬
able to read or write effectively, notwithstanding the fact
that the rate of negro illiteracy in Alabama, according to
the federal statistics, is only 40.1 per cent. There is
one conspicuous outstanding fact, that the great majority
of the negro race are not able to make use of literary knowl¬
edge to improve their efficiency, or measure up the standard
of an enlightened citizenship.
When we consider the woeful inadequacy of provision
made for negro education, there is left no room to marvel
because of this alarming result. According to reports just
issued by the Bureau of Education, the State of Alabama
expends $1.78 per capita for each negro child, the state of
Georgia $1.76, and. Louisiana $1.31. These states ex¬
pend from five to six times this amount per capita for the
schooling of white children. It is conceded that even the
34
Educational Review
[June
provision for education of the white children of the South
is scarcely more than one-third of that for the education of
a child of the North and West. If it requires $25 per
capita to prepare a white child in the North for the duties
of citizenship, whose powers are reinforced by racial and
social heredity, by what law of logic or common sense, can
it be expected that $1.31 will prepare a negro child in
Louisiana, who misses such reinforcement, for the exercise
of like function?
I am not bringing this glaring discrepancy to light for
the purpose of condemnation or denunciation, but merely
to describe a situation furnishing a basal argument for the
necessity of national aid to negro education. Without
such aid the southern states must continue for generations
under the heavy handicap of a comparatively ignorant
and illy equipt citizenship.
It is a fatal mistake to suppose that the efficient educa¬
tion of the negro can be conducted on a cheaper scale than
that for the whites. The fact that his home environment
and his general grade of life is lower, makes adequate
educational facilities all the more expensive. $1.31 per
capita applied to negro education in Louisiana accom¬
plishes even less, in effective results, than a like sum ap¬
plied to the whites. Imagine the educational status of
Massachusetts, if the state should suddenly reduce the
provision of public instruction to the level of the cost of
negro education in Louisiana.
Philanthropy to a commendable degree has served to
supplement the deficiencies of the southern states for negro
education. But neither the individual state nor the United
States has the moral right to depend upon voluntary
philanthropy to prepare its citizens for the responsible
duties and obligations of citizenship. At best philanthropy
is only a temporary and inadequate makeshift. As huge
as philanthropic contributions seem to be in the aggregate,
they amount to little more than one dose of medicine in the
I9I9 ] National responsibility for education of negro 35
hospital, when compared to the magnitude of the task to
which they are applied.
A generation ago Senator Henry W. Blair, of New Hamp¬
shire, devoted his public career to the promulgation of
national aid to negro education. The array of facts and
arguments which he marshalled in support of his propa¬
ganda, was undisputed and indisputable. The urgency of
the need has been emphasized by a generation of neglect.
It is said that the Athenians banished Aristides because
they grew weary of hearing him called Aristides, the Just.
By parity of ungracious procedure, Senator Blair was
thrown out of public life because of his loquacious advocacy
of national equity and justice. But his cause still re¬
mains. The nation has merely deferred payment on a debt
which sooner or later must be liquidated with accumulated
interest.
At the time of the Blair Educational Bill there were
lurking suspicions in the minds of opposing statesmen of
political and partisan advantage, and sinister sectional
animosity concealed under the guise of Federal aid to educa¬
tion. The doctrine of local sovereignty was sharply ac¬
centuated; but opposition on these grounds has weakened
with the intervening years. There still survives a states¬
manlike duty of the nation to meet its moral obligation to
the least of its citizens.
It was unfair to the southern states to require them, un¬
aided, to prepare the negro for duties of citizenship at the
time of his enfranchisement. The nation as a whole
was responsible for the condition of the negro. The fact
that slavery became a localized institution was not due to
the inherent deviltry of the South nor to the innate good¬
ness of the North. Slavery was a national institution and
became localized under the operation of climatic and eco¬
nomic law. It is equally unfair today, to require the South
to bear the heavy burden alone. The negro problem is
the nation's problem; the remedy should be as compre¬
hensive as the need.
36
Educational Review
[June
In democracy, as in ethics, the individual is the ultimate
unit, and there must be essential equality among the units,
or else the fabric of democracy, like the fabric of ethics,
must fall. Under the traditional attitude of the white
race toward the negro, it was supposed that the guiding
intelligence should be lodged in the white man's brain,
and the muscular energy in the negro's arm. But the cir¬
cuit is too long. In a democracy each man must think as
well as work. The country can no longer look upon the
negro merely for his utility as a tool, but must regard his
totality as a man. An ideal American citizen is not that
of a working man; but that of a man working. The pres¬
ence of the ignorant negro lowers the general average of
efficiency of the community in which he lives and of the
nation of which he forms a part. Georgia with half of its
population practically illiterate can never hope to keep
pace with Iowa, which strives to make every citizen in¬
telligent and efficient. The United States can never
reach the desired goal of efficiency, until it utilizes the un¬
developed energies' which lie dormant in the brain and
brawn of every citizen.
So far I have dealt with the demands for Federal assis¬
tance to primary and elementary education, which imparts
to each citizen a more or less well understood minimum
of necessary knowledge and standard of efficiency. But
there is a higher sense in which the nation is obligated to
the cause of negro education. At the time of his emancipa¬
tion the negro was left wholly without wise guidance and
direction. The sudden severance of personal relation
which had existed complacently under the regime of
slavery left the negro dependent upon his own internal
resources for leadership of his higher and better life. The
discipline of slavery had illy fitted him for this function.
It had imparted to him the process without the principle;
the knack without the knowledge; the rule without the
reason; the formula without the philosophy. If the blind
lead the blind they will both fall into the ditch. For want
I9I9] National responsibility for education of negro 37
of vision people perish. The professional class consti¬
tutes the higher light of the race, and if that light within this
race be darkness, how great is that darkness.
The negro teacher meets with every form of ignorance
and pedagogical obtuseness that befalls the white teach¬
ers ; the negro preacher has to do with every conceivable form
of original and acquired sin; the doctor meets with all the
variety of disease that the human flesh is heir to; the law¬
yer's sphere covers the whole gamut involving the rights
of property and person. The problems growing out of the
contact, attrition, and adjustment of the races involve
issues which are as intricate as any that have ever taxed
human wisdom for solution. If, then, the white man
who stands in the high place of authority and leadership
among his race, fortified as he is by superior social environ¬
ment, needs to qualify for his high calling by thoro and
sound educational training, surely the negro needs a no
less thoro general education to qualify him to serve as
philosopher, guide, and friend of ten million unfortunate
human beings.
The federal government should make some provision
for those who are to stand in the high places of intellect
and. moral authority. In the western states where philan-
thropical millionaires are scarce, and where the average
citizen is not able to support the system of education on
the higher level, the state undertakes the task of main¬
taining high institutions of learning for the leaders in the
various walks of life. The negro is unable at present to
maintain such institutions for his own race; he is dependent
upon a remote and vicarious philanthropy. The chief
benefits of the higher workers among the negro peoples inures
to the community, to the state, and to the nation. Dr.
James, the president of the University of Illinois, has for
years advocated with great power of persuasion the es¬
tablishment of a national university. All of his arguments
may be multiplied by ten, when applied to obligation of
38 Educational Review
the government to support at least one higher institution
for the education of the negro race.
Already thru Land Grant and other federal funds, the
government in cooperation with the several states, is sup¬
porting agricultural and mechanical colleges for white
youth. Some provision is also made for the negroes in
the states where there is scholastic separation of the races.
But these agricultural and mechanical colleges are essen¬
tially schools of secondary grade and can not be maintained
on high level of collegiate basis. It is easy for the federal
government to extend the application by establishing and
maintaining at least one institution of technical character
and collegiate grade, which might serve as a finishing
school for the work done in the several states. The negro
needs to be rooted and grounded in the principles of knowl¬
edge on the highest collegiate basis. The federal govern¬
ment has already acknowledged this responsibility in the
moderate support which it gives Howard University as
the national institution of the negro race. This acknowl¬
edgement of a national responsibility, let us hope, augurs
early ample provision for the education of a race in its
upward struggle to the fullness of the stature of American
citizenship.
It is needless to inject in this discussion the intricate
and tangled issues of the race problem. Suffice it to say
that ignorance is a menace to intelligence; sloth to efficiency;
vice to virtue; and degradation to the dignity and decencies
of life. Just as the government thru adequate federal agency
stamps out the yellow fever, cholera, and other infectious
diseases, so it must, sooner or later, exterminate ignorance,
which is more menaceful than any other plague that af¬
flicts the nation.
kelly miliar
Howard University
Washington, D. C.