Atlanta University Leaflet, No. 12.
A New Southern View.
The Success of the Hihheb
Education of the Negro
Conceded and Used to
Stimulate High¬
er Education of
White Youth.
[Editorial in the Boston Transcript.]
The Negro University's Recognition.
An editorial in the Atlanta Constitu¬
tion cordially approves the recent ad¬
dress of President Bumstead of Atlanta
University advocating the higher edii*-
cation for the Negro, and bases upon it
an earnest plea for the more liberal
support of the higher education of
white youth in Georgia. The Constitu¬
tion's article closes with these words:
College Instruc- lt wiU not do >r"
.. „ 1 nore 01 sneer at the
be Ignore<?or ™* fOT
Sneered at A earrled on' Wl'
l°f® tVl have it to meet, and
Srhft- the quicker we meet
Whltes" it the better. The
progress of these colored institutions
should spur us up to something more
than we have been doing'. The figures
show that since 1825, 2414 Negroes
have been graduated from college:
most of them since 1870, and for the
last six years an average number of
about one hundred and thirty a year.
Returns received from some six hundred
show an individual holding of real es¬
tate of an average assessed value of
nearly $2500. Returns from more than
half of all these graduates show that 55
per cent were teachers; 19 per cent min¬
isters ; 6 per cent doctors, and 3 per cent
lawyers; or 83 per cent engaged in teach¬
ing and the professions. Listen to this:
"Ninety per cent of those graduated
in Southern colleges remain and work
in the South, while fully fifty per cent
of those graduated in the North go
South and labor where the masses of
their people live."
The South the Not only do we re-
Best Place for tain ninety per cent
the Talented "f fhese educated
■Krpp.ro black people, but fit-
s ty per cent of those
educated in the North come back—a
compliment to the South, as the place
best adapted to them; but a menace al¬
so, unless we arouse and keep our white
boys in front of the procession!
Not suppression of Negro education,
even if that were possible, but competi¬
tion, which will give to the dominant
race the advantage assumed by natural
capacity.
The leading Georgia journal's candid
recognition of the important results
achieved by the higher education of the
Negro is all the more significant when
we remember that most Southern pa¬
pers and not a few Northern ones have
insisted that only elementary and in¬
dustrial education were needed by the
Negro, anything else being a positive
injury to him by unfitting him for the
struggles and hardships inseparably
connected with his lot.
The Practical Val- gation made into the
ue of the Higher careers of college-
tutions devoted to higher education
has forever settled the practical value
of the best instruction for the race, and
vindicated the wisdom of those who
founded these institutions as well as
The patient investi-
Education for
the Race Forever
Settled.
bred Negroes under
the auspices of one
of the leading insti-
those who are sustaining them today.
The Atlanta Constitution is too ably ed¬
ited not to fall into line with facts.
Hence its frank admission that the work
of colleges for Negroes "should no long¬
er he sneered at or ignored/' It is of
especial significance that this journal,
so representative of Southern sentiment,
is finding so strong a stimulus for the
higher education of its white youth in
the success which lias attended the col¬
legiate training of
A Well-rounded Negro youth. "If the
ZSSSSS?- Sa>'S lhP
for Both Races. Constitution, "can
recognize the advan¬
tage of a well rounded system whicli
supplies to the body politic the various
talents necessary to it, surely the super¬
ior should not lag behind."
It must be very gratifying to Presi¬
dent Bumstead and friends and support¬
ers of the higher education of the Negro
to discover that their efforts are proving
of such material advantage to Southern
white youth as well.
Neither Eacecaa Neither race can ad-
Advance without i ,
Helping the Other vance without help-
to Advance. in8' the ()tlier to ad¬
vance, and so we ear-
5
neatly hope that the legislature of (Jeor-
gia now in session will heed the words
of the Constitution, so pregnant with
sound sense, and make generous pro¬
vision for the State University for
whites at Athens.
Comments on the foreuoinw.
Those who do not live in the South
can have no just conception of the rev¬
olution in feeling—it might not be amiss
to say in public sentiment—that is in¬
dicated by the remarkable utterances
of the Atlanta Constitution, which serv¬
ed as a text for the editorial in the Bos¬
ton Transcript given above.
The great publishing plant of this
widely known and influential Southern
journal is within a mile of the campus
of Atlanta University. It has therefore
had ample opportunity to investigate
the real significance of our work, and it
cannot be said that this organ was bi¬
ased in our favor, for up to this time it
has thrown its whole force against col¬
legiate education for Negroes.
6
Atlanta University still contends
that the masses cannot be brought up to
the highest standard of Christian civ¬
ilization except through the agency of a
thoroughly disciplined and consecrated
intellect.
With this as their capital the excep¬
tional individuals of the race will con¬
tinue to find, as they already have
found, their own way out of this wilder¬
ness if we but let things adjust them¬
selves upon the principles of truth, jus¬
tice and mercy.
The change of base on the question of
higher education by the Atlanta Consti¬
tution has for the whole Negro problem
the same significance as the capture of
Atlanta by Sherman during the war.
After that he could begin his celebrated
March to the Sea.
The supreme faith of our friends who
have stood by us all these years is at
last beginning to be rewarded by
unquestioned evidences of the splendid
achievement of our graduates and the
candid acknowledgement of our former
opponents that this solution has solvent
power.
Every dollar spent in train¬
ing a black Leader with suffi¬
cient ability to understand our
traditions and institutions,
and consecration to devote his
life to bringing his own unfor¬
tunate race up to a just appre¬
ciation of our civilization and
a correct use of it, is an invest¬
ment that will return with
compound interest to the child¬
ren of our nation long after
we are dead.
Bobert Lloyd Smith.