Do we hit upon it in his ignorance, in the fact that an immense number
of the black people are illiterate, not knowing the first from the last
letter of the alphabet? Hardly. For, almost to a man, the people who
most parade and most rail at the race problem in private conversation,
on the political platform, and in the pages of newspapers, books, and
periodicals, are disposed rather to lament, than to assist, the passing
of the Negro's ignorance. Ex-Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, used
the following language in a message to the legislature of that state,
January, 1906:--
"The startling facts revealed by the census show that those [Negroes]
who can read and write are more criminal than the illiterate, which
is true of no other element of our population.. .. The state for many
years, at great expense to the tax-payers, has maintained a system
of Negro education which has produced disappointing results, and I am
opposed to the perpetuation of this system. My own idea is, that the
character of education for the Negro ought to be changed. If, after
forty years of earnest effort, and the expenditure of fabulous sums to
educate his head, we have only succeeded in making a criminal of him
and impairing his usefulness and efficiency as a laborer, wisdom would
suggest that we make another experiment and see if we cannot improve him
by educating his hand and his heart.... Slavery is the only process by
which he has ever been partially civilized. God Almighty created the
Negro for a menial, he is essentially a servant."
This is the reply of an ex-governor of one of our blackest states to
those who contend that the negro is a problem, a "burden carried by
the white people of the South," because of his ignorance and consequent
inefficiency; and that the lightening of the burden depends upon more
money spent, more earnest efforts made, for the schooling of the black
people. According to this ex-governor, and there are thousands who agree
with him in and out of Mississippi, the race problem is heightened,
rather than mitigated, by all attempts to increase the negro's
intellectual efficiency. The more ignorant he is, the less burdensome he
is to the white man, provided his heart be good, and his hands skillful
enough to do the service of a menial. Nothing but slavery ever partially
civilized him, nothing but slavery continued in some form can civilize
him further!