Reprinted from the Educational Review, Vol. 62, No. 3.
October, 1921.
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO IN THE NORTH
Kelly Miller
THAT " the negro can earn a dollar in the South, but
cannot spend it; and can spend a dollar in the North,
but cannot earn it," is one of Booker T. Washington's
most felicitous phrases. This was an apt and accurate
description at the time of its utterance. But social upheavals
frustrate the wisdom of our profoundest philosophies.
The war robbed this sententious assertion of its erstwhile
truth and appositeness. The great educator had scarcely
been dead a single year, when negroes by the tens of thou¬
sands were rushing into the North to fill the vacuum in the
labor market. The scale of wages seemed fabulous to the
negro workman, accustomed to the meager compensations
in the South. The opportunity to earn and to spend were
availed of with equal avidity. As a result of this labor
demand, fully a half million negroes were transferred from
the South to the North.
Economic opportunity constitutes the prevailing motive
in the movement of human population. Human greed is
too hasty for immediate concrete results to calculate the
far-reaching social consequences that follow in the train of
the introduction of strange population for purposes of
industrial and economic exploitation. The foreigner in
America, the negro in the South, and the Japanese in Hawaii
and on the west coast were introduced to fulfill urgent labor
demands, but their permanent social adjustments constitute
the gravest problems of our national experience.
Fred Douglass used to say that wherever the negro goes
he takes himself with him. The sudden injection of a half
million negroes into the north will tend to make the question
of race adjustment a national, rather than a sectional prob¬
lem. The various features of the problem will gain new
meaning and emphasis because of its widespread relation¬
ships. The educational significance of this northern move-
232
1921]
Education of the Negro in the North
233
ment of the negro has hitherto received little or no attention,
and yet it is calculated to be of the greatest significance in
the educational life of the entire negro race, and to influence
the attitude of the whole nation. According to the reports
of the Census Office, in 1920 there were 1,550,754 negroes in
the North, giving a decennial increase of 472,418 over the
census of 1910. The great bulk of negroes in the North are
found in the cities. The number of rural negroes in the
northern states has been gradually diminishing for the past
three decades. The northern negro creates an urban rather
than a rural problem. The following table reveals this city
tendency in a most striking manner;
negro population
cities north op the potomac
river
City
1910
1920
Increase
New York .
91,706
153,088
61,382
Philadelphia
84,459
134,098
44,639
Washington
96,446
109,976
15,530
Chicago
44,103
109,594
65,491
St. Louis
43,960
69,603
25,643
Detroit
5,291
41,532
35,791
Pittsburgh
25,623
37,688
12,065
Indianapolis
21,816
34,690
12,874
Cleveland
8,448
34,474
26,026
Kansas City
23,566
30,706
7,140
Cincinnati
19,639
29,636
9,976
Columbus
12,739
22,091
9,352
Total
478,476
807,176
329,430
These twelve cities show an increase of 329,430 or a
growth of 70 per cent. While this rapid growth was due to
special causes of limited continuance, yet the numbers are
not likely to diminish, but will show substantial increase
with the coming decades.
There are six cities in the United States with more than
100,000 negroes, all of which, with the single exception of
New Orleans, are to be found north of the Potomac River.
The border cities, Washington, Baltimore, St. Louis, and
Kansas City have separate colored schools, following the
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[October
policy of the southern states. In the other cities on the list
there is no legal scholastic separation of the races. The
city is the center of the educational life of the nation. The
great systems of education, as well as the great seats of
learning, are to be found mainly in the centers of population.
A million and a half negroes, constituting 15 per cent,
of the race, are thus brought into intimate contact with the
best educational facilities to be found anywhere in the world.
In the South the negroes are found mainly in the rural dis¬
tricts, where school facilities are meager and inadequate,
and even in the large cities of this section the provisions for
colored schools fall woefully short of the up-to-date standards
of a well ordered system. In speaking of the education
of the negro, we should always keep in mind the widely con¬
trasted educational advantages of these two groups.
Negroes in the North generally are admitted to all educa¬
tional facilities provided for the general community, whether
supported by public funds or based upon private foundation.
The people of the North have devoted much of their resources
and philanthropic energy to the education of the negro
in the South, while giving little or no consideration to the
contingent of the race within their midst. The individual
has been given an equal chance in the general educational
provisions and has been expected to rise or fall according to
the measure of his own merit. The rapidly increasing num¬
bers focusing in the large centers of population will inevitably
call attention to the special needs of this growing group
separated in many ways from the life of the community
of which they form a part.
The colored children have not seemed overeager to avail
themselves of the advantages provided for them. They
have not felt the necessity of thorough educational equip¬
ment for the life tasks that lay within their reach. Being
confined to the menial modes of service, they have not in
large numbers been inspired to enter upon the higher reaches
of education demanded in the more exacting lines of service.
The eagerness of the southern negro for knowledge in the
midst of meager facilities was in glaring contrast with the
1921]
Education of the Negro in the North
235
apathy of his northern brother surrounded by such great
advantages.
Until quite recently the fact of a colored student gradua¬
ting from a high school in the North was so unusual as to
demand general notice and flattering comment. For the
most part the colored youth who pushed their way through
northern institutions of learning have been from the South
with fresh incentive of the masses upon them. But as their
numbers increase and .concentrate in the larger centers, the
circle of racial opportunity widens. The inspiration of
racial life and uplift gives spurs to higher aspiration. The
inherent needs and necessities of the masses create opportun¬
ities in the higher lines of leadership and service that demand
the fullest educational equipment. Wherever the number
of negroes in a community is too small to create a center of
racial life and activity, there is apt to be shown a correspond¬
ing lack of ambition and upward purpose on the part of
colored youth. Wherever a handful of negroes are gathered
together in the North, there springs up a little church, which
serves as an outlet for leadership and as a center of race aspir¬
ation. The largest negro cities in the world are found in the
North. New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington,
and Chicago contain each a sufficient number of negroes
to engage the highest human powers and faculties to answer
the needs of so large a number of human beings. The ever
widening field invites the highest ambition of negro youth
to rise to the level of the opportunity that awaits them.
In all of the northern cities the negro is concentrated in
segregated areas and districts. This residential segregation
creates a demand for leadership and self-direction. Large
as his numbers seem, taken by themselves, the negro consti¬
tutes only a small percentage of the total population except
in several of the border cities. If they were evenly distri¬
buted throughout the white population, they would be prac¬
tically unnoticed as a factor in the general equation. One
hundred and fifty thousand negroes in New York in the midst
of six million whites, if evenly diffused, would count but one
in forty, and would be a negligible entity in the general life
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Educational Review
[October
of the metropolis. But a hundred thousand negroes in
Harlem constitute a city within a city. The racial needs
of this large mass must be supplied by their own leadership,
almost as if they constituted a separate community. Negro
ministers, physicians, lawyers, editors, teachers, and business
men must conform with reasonable approximation to the
prevailing standards of the community. This opportunity
gives incentive and ambition to the youth of the race to
equip themselves with the fullest educational qualifications.
In most of the northern states primary education is
compulsory, so that every negro child, in compliance with
the law, must attend the public schools for a given period of
years. In the near future we may expect that the negro
will approximate his full quota in high schools, normal
schools, technical schools, and colleges in the great centers
of population where he is rapidly congregating.
There were more than four hundred negro graduates from
high schools in the class of 1920, and more than one hundred
graduates from colleges and professional schools in the
northern states. This indicates the rapid growth in enroll¬
ment of the negro in secondary as well as in higher institu¬
tions. There were probably 500 negroes enrolled in colleges
and professional schools of the North during the past year.
This educational awakening in the North but indicates what
may be expected in the near future.
The question naturally arises as to how far separate
educational facilities will be deemed advisable for the negroes
in the northern cities as their numbers tend to increase.
This is already a mooted question in such cities as Philadel¬
phia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Chicago. In Washington,
Baltimore, St. Louis, and Kansas City, where separate
colored schools are maintained, there is a much larger en¬
rollment of colored pupils in the higher levels of instruction
than in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, where the
schools are mixed. The separate systems seem to invoke
a keener incentive and zest.
Will separate schools bring out the higher aspirations of
the negro and lead to the unfolding of his powers and possi-
1921]
Education of the Negro in the North
237
bilities? is the question countered by the query; Will not
scholastic separation on racial lines vitiate the spirit of
democracy and lower the standards of the less favored race?
This controversy will doubtless engender great heat of feeling
and animosity on part of both races. The final outcome
should be determined in the light of the best good to the
negro as well as that of the community. The purpose of
the schools is to produce good and useful citizens. This
objective should transcend all theoretical question of manner
or method. And yet the great democratic ideal must be
kept constantly in mind.
While the mass of the race remains in the South, the edu¬
cational center of gravity will be shifting toward the North.
Ambitious youth will flock to the centers of the best educa¬
tional advantage, regardless of national or racial border lines.
Northern institutions are filled with white southern youth,
because they find there at present better educational facilities
than the South provides. They saturate themselves with
the aims and ideals and acquire technical facilities of these
great centers of learning, and carry the acquisition back for
the assimilation of their own section. Negro youth will be
actuated by the same impulse and purpose.
Negro schools in the South have, so far, been planted and
supported on the basis of the northern philanthropy. This
philanthropy has concerned itself largely with negroes in
the southern states who have been suppressed below the
level of educational opportunity and advantage. It has not
contemplated that negroes in considerable numbers would
avail themselves of the best educational facilities afforded
by colleges and universities of the North. It will be in¬
teresting to note the effect of this tendency upon the fate
of the negro's higher institutions of learning supported in
the South on a philanthropic basis. Philanthropists are,
naturally enough, disposed to place help where they deem
it is the most needed. There is no particular need to help
the negro in the North, where he has only to stretch forth
his hand and partake of the tree of knowledge which flour¬
ishes all about him. It is also natural that philanthropy
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Educational 'Review
will be inclined to foster institutions which encourage
graduates to live and work among the masses in the South
where the need is greatest. Negro students of Harvard,
Yale, or Chicago do not make the same philanthropic appeal
as those in Atlanta, Fisk, and Tuskegee,
There is also a reserved feeling that it might be well to
encourage separate negro institutions, in order to keep too
large a number of negroes from entering white universities.
This feeling will doubtless inure greatly to the benefit of
negro schools in the South. It must be determined whether
the northern universities are apt to impart to negro students
the social impulse and racial aspiration requisite to the best
service of the race. These institutions are not adapted to
the negro's peculiar circumstances and conditions. They
are founded and fostered to meet the needs, aspirations, and
ambitions of the most favored white youth. The negro must
grasp the general aims and ideals and interpret and apply
them to the situation and circumstances of his own race.
The schools of the South will be patterned after those in
the North. The less-developed always pay homage to the
better-perfected standards. The negro will gain acquain¬
tance with the aims, ideals, and methods of the North, and
will, perforce, exploit the attainment among his own people
in the South.
In the educational world the law of supply and demand is
inexorable. The demand for negroes in the higher levels
of intellectual, moral, and social leadership in the North
will be relatively small as compared with the larger field
of the South. The incidental hardships and inequalities
of the southern regime will be undergone in quest of a larger
field for acquired attainment, quickened by sacrificial im¬
pulse of racial reclamation. Thus the northern movement
of the negro, actuated by purely industrial and economic
motives, will yield significant educational fruitage.
Note. This timely article has been furnished by the Dean of the Junior
College, Howard University, Washington, D. C.