than it is of pious priests. The time has come for the lawyer to take
his place in the lead. We are celebrating this year the 50th anniversary
of our emancipation, and, paradoxical though it may be, we appear
further from emancipation to-day than when Lincoln signed his
Emancipation Proclamation, or when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. It is
quite true that we have an immensely larger realty-holding to our
credit, that our financial worth is constantly on the increase, that our
illiteracy is rapidly reaching the vanishing-point, and that in all
matters, spiritual as well as temporal, we seem to have improved, but
the closer we approximate the standard of life and living of the
dominant race, all the harder apparently have we to fight to maintain
our self-respect, and preserve the rights and privileges which the
letter of our American law guarantees. When we were slaves and had
nothing except our muscles, there was no thought of separate-car laws.
When we were ignorant and powerless to think coherently, there were no
efforts at our disfranchisement. When we were poverty-stricken and
satisfied if we might live in the alleys of our great American cities,
there was no thought of segregation, whether in the matter of our
residences, or in that of the employees of our much-heralded republican
government. With every increase in accomplishment, or worth, or demand
for the better things of life, comes the burden of wrongs, injustice,
and rash discrimination. It would be idle here to attempt to recount in
detail the grievances we justly have against the government in city,
state and nation; to do so further than the purpose I have in view would
be but to tell you what you full well know. The Negro race needs a
change of viewpoint; another leadership is an absolute necessity, and I
see no reason why men of our profession should not attain it. For years
we have had in the ascendency the prophets of submission and silence,
and we have been taught to declare for peace when we knew there was no
peace. No other element in our great nation, except that of ourselves is
content with things as they are, accepting without protest every new
injustice, in the vain hope that some day would bring about a change for
the better. We have lulled ourselves to sleep with this fatalism, and
what is the result? We have noted the practical nullification of every
act suggested or inspired by the changing conditions in the lives and
property of freedmen brought about by the Civil War. Disfranchisement in
every Southern State is as fixed and determinate, as the indifference of
the Negroes of those sections, or the practises of all political parties
can make it. Separate, and therefore inferior, accommodations on public
conveyances are the rule, and we have endured these conditions so long
that it would appear almost cruel now to undertake, or to ask a change.
We have noted further, and this is the saddest of all, that our
inactivity in claiming our rights, or our indifference about their
recognition, has not only emboldened our enemies, but it has silenced
our friends.
We have seen with increasing alarm the judicial construction of statutes
and the Constitution itself, which all but vitiate and annul the basis
of our citizenship; we have seen repeated attempts made to discredit the
War amendments to the national Constitution, and some have in all
seriousness gone so far even as to question their constitutionality.
Every student of our common law has always been sure of the right to
private property, and the corollaries thereto, but it is just in the
present year that a court of last resort in a neighboring State, in an
interpretation of one of these new conceptions, a segregation ordinance,
declared that while the one under investigation was invalid, that the
municipality enacting it might under its police powers make provision
for the segregation of the races in the matter of their residences,
schools, churches, and places of public assembly. The law is not a fixed
science; it is more properly growth, a development. What is not regarded
as law to-day may, by the inactivity or indifference of those most
deeply concerned, become the law of the next decade. So we behold to-day
our rights and liberties drifting away from us, and that regarded as the
law which years ago we deemed impossible. What are we to do, you say?
What can we do? The lawyers trained here and in other institutions of
learning must answer these questions, and in finding their answers will
be their opportunity. The adjudication of the conflicting interests of
mankind, the interpretation of our statutes and our common law the
determination of rights and privileges of all men, is a judicial
function. What rights we enjoy to-day have come in the final analysis
from the courts. What rights we find ourselves to-day deprived of, and
which we hope to enjoy to-morrow, must come, if at all, from the same
source. The courts have the last word, and it is to that instrument of
government we must appeal, and to that last word we must look for our
safety, or fear our doom. But courts are not self-acting institutions,
and they are not engaged in academic discussions of abstractions. They
are severely serious. It may be that, like so many Americans, we have
lost faith in the courts, and Heaven knows we have had abundant reason
for so doing, but there's hope. They have too often and too long
listened to the clamors of public opinion, put too much faith and credit
in the utterances of latter-day journalism, coloring their opinions to
suit the one, or to escape the criticism of the other. Under the
pernicious doctrine of public policy and in fortifying that undefined
and indefinable legal notion of police power, courts have wiped aside
Constitutional limitations, and disregarded what the profession at least
had learned to consider as almost fixed precedents of the law, but even
with all these defects admitted, there remains the startling truth that
to these governmental agencies we must look for the righting of our
wrongs and the redress of our grievances. We have shunned the courts too
often in our temporal affairs, fearing, it seems, further adverse
decisions, or waiting a proper adjustment at some other forum. In my own
State it might now be compulsory upon you, or any other decent
self-respecting person of the race, in travelling from here to New York
or elsewhere in the North, to ride in the so-called "Jim-Crow" cars
provided by an indulgent Maryland legislature for Negro patrons of its
railroads, had it not have been for a member of the Faculty of this
institution. William H. H. Hart knew that legislation of that character
was an attempt to restrict interstate traffic, and the Court of Appeals
of Maryland agreed with him. The case of State vs. Hart, reported in 100
Md. at page 595, is a landmark in our Maryland law, and under its
influence "Jim-Crow" cars have almost disappeared from the railroads of
our State. Another distinguished member of the Faculty of Howard
University, but of another department, in travelling over the railroads
in the eastern part of our State last fall, discovered that the
compartments provided by the roads for their colored passengers, in
point of cleanliness, appointment, and convenience, were notably
inferior to those furnished others. He complained to the Public Service
Commission and, after a full hearing, the Commission passed a decree
requiring these railroads to furnish accommodations to its colored
passengers equal in all respects to that furnished others. This is
exactly what the Separate-Car Law provides, but it is exactly what the
railroads had never intended to furnish and, without the complaint of
Professor T. W. Turner, no other course would have been followed. Here
are two, and there are numerous other concrete examples of what may be
accomplished by sane and timely appeals to our judicial tribunals. Our
government has three well defined departments separate and distinct,
each operating in a manner as a check on the other, and all together
working for the common good of the whole. We have resorted generally to
the executive and have been satisfied with its appointment of a few men
to office, and with its passive execution of the laws affecting us. In
recent years we have arisen to the point of seeking legislation in the
defense of our civil rights, and it is hoped that as the years pass more
of this will be done. But in the judicial branch of the government is
where, after all, we must place our reliance. We need a body of trained
lawyers in full sympathy with our community life, eager, anxious, and
capable, prepared at any emergency to present our cause fairly and
intelligently before any tribunal; and with this accomplished, I have
faith in the American people that justice will prevail, and right
triumph over every wrong. I do not mean that the lawyer is to seek such
service by the fomenting of litigation; far from it, but let him be
prepared for it by study and devotion to racial ideals, and when the
hour comes he will be called on to marshal its forces and take charge of
the legal contests of a race. This will never be if he dreams only of
his money, if he thinks only of present material gain, if he counts his
successes in terms of houses and lands. He must be willing to serve for
the sake of the service. The failures in our professional life come
almost wholly from those who had no high ideals of their calling, and no
devotion to the interests of their race or country. Country and race in
this matter are synonymous; you can't serve one without at the same time
serving the other. The lawyer who advocates the protection of the
lives, the property, and the civic welfare of ten millions of Americans
of whatever hue, or origin, is not a racial zealot, but a patriot of the
highest character, and his worth in preserving the nation's ideals is
beyond calculation.
Young men, you who are either about to leave these halls for the active
life of the lawyer, or you who are just beginning the pursuit of your
studies here looking to the same end, I bring you, I hope, no
discouraging note. My aim is to do the contrary. The heavy burdens the
race is bearing in the form of unjust laws and practises, in strained
constructions of statutes, constitutions, and the common law; in the
thousand ways which the ingenuity of the prejudiced find to bar us from
the full enjoyment of American liberty and freedom, these will some day,
along with those of us who are now at the bar, furnish your greatest
opportunity. Your duty then, as now, will be to fortify yourselves with
all the learning which this institution provides, with all that the
libraries in your reach contain, with all that close and intimate
association with others of your profession will secure, with sincere
devotion to the ideals and traditions of our noble profession, and with
no less devotion to the interest of your clients, and a determination
faithfully and loyally and efficiently to serve your race, your nation
and your God.
THE TRAINING OF NEGROES FOR SOCIAL REFORM[53]
BY W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS, PH. D.
_Editor and Founder "The Crisis"_
[Note 53: From the New York _Outlook_.]
The responsibility for their own social regeneration ought to be placed
largely upon the shoulders of the Negro people. But such responsibility
must carry with it a grant of power; responsibility without power is a
mockery and a farce. If, therefore, the American people are sincerely
anxious that the Negro shall put forth his best efforts to help himself,
they must see to it that he is not deprived of the freedom and power to
strive. The responsibility for dispelling their own ignorance implies
that the power to overcome ignorance is to be placed in black men's
hands; the lessening of poverty calls for the power of effective work;
and the responsibility for lessening crime calls for control over social
forces which produce crime.
Such social power means, assuredly, the growth of initiative among
Negroes, the spread of independent thought, the expanding consciousness
of manhood; and these things to-day are looked upon by many with
apprehension and distrust. Men openly declare their design to train
these millions as a subject caste, as men to be thought for, but not to
think; to be led, but not to lead themselves.
Those who advocate these things forget that such a solution flings them
squarely on the other horn of the dilemma: such a subject child-race
could never be held accountable for its own misdeeds and shortcomings;
its ignorance would be part of the nation's design, its poverty would
arise partly from the direct oppression of the strong and partly from
thriftlessness which such oppression breeds; and, above all, its crime
would be the legitimate child of that lack of self-respect which caste
systems engender. Such a solution of the Negro problem is not one which
the saner sense of the nation for a moment contemplates; it is utterly
foreign to American institutions, and is unthinkable as a future for any
self-respecting race of men. The sound afterthought of the American
people must come to realize that the responsibility for dispelling
ignorance and poverty, and uprooting crime among Negroes cannot be put
upon their own shoulders unless they are given such independent
leadership in intelligence, skill, and morality as will inevitably lead
to an independent manhood which cannot and will not rest in bonds.
Let me illustrate my meaning particularly in the matter of educating
Negro youth.
The Negro problem, it has often been said, is largely a problem of
ignorance--not simply of illiteracy, but a deeper ignorance of the world
and its ways, of the thought and experience of men; an ignorance of self
and the possibilities of human souls. This can be gotten rid of only by
training; and primarily such training must take the form of that sort of
social leadership which we call education. To apply such leadership to
themselves and to profit by it, means that Negroes would have among
themselves men of careful training and broad culture, as teachers and
teachers of teachers. There are always periods of educational evolution
when it is deemed quite proper for pupils in the fourth reader to teach
those in the third. But such a method, wasteful and ineffective at all
times, is peculiarly dangerous when ignorance is widespread and when
there are few homes and public institutions to supplement the work of
the school. It is, therefore, of crying necessity among Negroes that the
heads of their educational system--the teachers in the normal schools,
the heads of high schools, the principals of public systems, should be
unusually well trained men; men trained not simply in common-school
branches, not simply in the technique of school management and normal
methods, but trained beyond this, broadly and carefully, into the
meaning of the age whose civilization it is their peculiar duty to
interpret to the youth of a new race, to the minds of untrained people.
Such educational leaders should be prepared by long and rigorous courses
of study similar to those which the world over have been designed to
strengthen the intellectual powers, fortify character, and facilitate
the transmission from age to age of the stores of the world's knowledge.
Not all men--indeed, not the majority of men, only the exceptional few
among American Negroes or among any other people--are adapted to this
higher training, as, indeed, only the exceptional few are adapted to
higher training in any line; but the significance of such men is not to
be measured by their numbers, but rather by the numbers of their pupils
and followers who are destined to see the world through their eyes, hear
it through their trained ears, and speak to it through the music of
their words.
Such men, teachers of teachers and leaders of the untaught, Atlanta
University and similar colleges seek to train. We seek to do our work
thoroughly and carefully. We have no predilections or prejudices as to
particular studies or methods, but we do cling to those time-honored
sorts of discipline which the experience of the world has long since
proven to be of especial value. We sift as carefully as possible the
student material which offers itself, and we try by every conscientious
method to give to students who have character and ability such years of
discipline as shall make them stronger, keener, and better for their
peculiar mission. The history of civilization seems to prove that no
group or nation which seeks advancement and true development can despise
or neglect the power of well-trained minds; and this power of
intellectual leadership must be given to the talented tenth among
American Negroes before this race can seriously be asked to assume the
responsibility of dispelling its own ignorance. Upon the
foundation-stone of a few well-equipped Negro colleges of high and
honest standards can be built a proper system of free common schools in
the South for the masses of the Negro people; any attempt to found a
system of public schools on anything less than this--on narrow ideals,
limited or merely technical training--is to call blind leaders for the
blind.
The very first step toward the settlement of the Negro problem is the
spread of intelligence. The first step toward wider intelligence is a
free public-school system; and the first and most important step toward
a public-school system is the equipment and adequate support of a
sufficient number of Negro colleges. These are first steps, and they
involve great movements: first, the best of the existent colleges must
not be abandoned to slow atrophy and death, as the tendency is to-day;
secondly, systematic attempt must be made to organize secondary
education. Below the colleges and connected with them must come the
normal and high schools, judiciously distributed and carefully manned.
In no essential particular should this system of common and secondary
schools differ from educational systems the world over. Their chief
function is the quickening and training of human intelligence; they can
do much in the teaching of morals and manners incidentally, but they
cannot and ought not to replace the home as the chief moral teacher;
they can teach valuable lessons as to the meaning of work in the world,
but they cannot replace technical schools and apprenticeship in actual
life, which are the real schools of work. Manual training can and ought
to be used in these schools, but as a means and not as an end--to
quicken intelligence and self-knowledge and not to teach carpentry; just
as arithmetic is used to train minds and not skilled accountants.
Whence, now, is the money coming for this educational system? For the
common schools the support should come from local communities, the State
governments, and the United States Government; for secondary education,
support should come from local and State governments and private
philanthropy; for the colleges, from private philanthropy and the United
States Government. I make no apology for bringing the United States
Government in thus conspicuously. The General Government must give aid
to Southern education if illiteracy and ignorance are to cease
threatening the very foundations of civilization within any reasonable
time. Aid to common school education could be appropriated to the
different States on the basis of illiteracy. The fund could be
administered by State officials, and the results and needs reported upon
by United States educational inspectors under the Bureau of Education.
The States could easily distribute the funds so as to encourage local
taxation and enterprise and not result in pauperizing the communities.
As to higher training, it must be remembered that the cost of a single
battle-ship like the Massachusetts would endow all the distinctively
college work necessary for Negroes during the next half-century; and it
is without doubt true that the unpaid balance from bounties withheld
from Negroes in the Civil War would, with interest, easily supply this
sum.
But spread of intelligence alone will not solve the Negro problem. If
this problem is largely a question of ignorance, it is also scarcely
less a problem of poverty. If Negroes are to assume the responsibility
of raising the standards of living among themselves, the power of
intelligent work and leadership toward proper industrial ideals must be
placed in their hands. Economic efficiency depends on intelligence,
skill and thrift. The public school system is designed to furnish the
necessary intelligence for the ordinary worker, the secondary school for
the more gifted workers, and the college for the exceptional few.
Technical knowledge and manual dexterity in learning branches of the
world's work are taught by industrial and trade schools, and such
schools are of prime importance in the training of colored children.
Trade-teaching can not be effectively combined with the work of the
common schools because the primary curriculum is already too crowded,
and thorough common-school training should precede trade-teaching. It
is, however, quite possible to combine some of the work of the secondary
schools with purely technical training, the necessary limitations being
matters of time and cost: _e. g._, the question whether the boy can
afford to stay in school long enough to add parts of a high-school
course to the trade course, and particularly the question whether the
school can afford or ought to afford to give trade training to
high-school students who do not intend to become artisans. A system of
trade-schools, therefore, supported by State and private aid, should be
added to the secondary school system.
An industrial school, however, does not merely teach technique. It is
also a school--a center of moral influence and of mental discipline. As
such it has peculiar problems in securing the proper teaching force. It
demands broadly trained men: the teacher of carpentry must be more than
a carpenter, and the teacher of the domestic arts more than a cook; for
such teachers must instruct, not simply in manual dexterity, but in
mental quickness and moral habits. In other words, they must be teachers
as well as artisans. It thus happens that college-bred men and men from
other higher schools have always been in demand in technical schools. If
the college graduates were to-day withdrawn from the teaching force of
the chief Negro industrial schools, nearly every one of them would have
to close its doors. These facts are forgotten by such advocates of
industrial training as oppose the higher schools. Strong as the argument
for industrial schools is--and its strength is undeniable--its cogency
simply increases the urgency of the plea for higher training-schools and
colleges to furnish broadly educated teachers.
But intelligence and skill alone will not solve the Southern problem of
poverty. With these must go that combination of homely habits and
virtues which we may loosely call thrift. Something of thrift may be
taught in school, more must be taught at home; but both these agencies
are helpless when organized economic society denies to workers the just
rewards of thrift and efficiency. And this has been true of black
laborers in the South from the time of slavery down through the scandal
of the Freedmen's Bank to the peonage and crop-lien system of to-day. If
the Southern Negro is shiftless, it is primarily because over large
areas a shiftless Negro can get on in the world about as well as an
industrious black man. This is not universally true in the South, but it
is true to so large an extent as to discourage striving in precisely
that class of Negroes who most need encouragement. What is the remedy?
Intelligence--not simply the ability to read and write or to sew--but
the intelligence of a society permeated by that larger vision of life
and broader tolerance which are fostered by the college and university.
Not that all men must be college-bred, but that some men, black and
white, must be, to leaven the ideals of the lump. Can any serious
student of the economic South doubt that this to-day is her crying need?
Ignorance and poverty are the vastest of the Negro problems. But to
these later years have added a third--the problem of Negro crime. That a
great problem of social morality must have become eventually the central
problem of emancipation is as clear as day to any student of history. In
its grosser form as a problem of serious crime it is already upon us. Of
course it is false and silly to represent that white women in the South
are in daily danger of black assaulters. On the contrary, white
womanhood in the South is absolutely safe in the hands of ninety-five
per cent. of the black men--ten times safer than black womanhood is in
the hands of white men. Nevertheless, there is a large and dangerous
class of Negro criminals, paupers, and outcasts. The existence and
growth of such a class far from causing surprise, should be recognized
as the natural result of that social disease called the Negro problem;
nearly every untoward circumstance known to human experience has united
to increase Negro crime: the slavery of the past, the sudden
emancipation, the narrowing of economic opportunity, the lawless
environment of wide regions, the stifling of natural ambition, the
curtailment of political privilege, the disregard of the sanctity of
black men's homes, and, above all, a system of treatment for criminals
calculated to breed crime far faster than all other available agencies
could repress it. Such a combination of circumstances is as sure to
increase the numbers of the vicious and outcast as the rain is to wet
the earth. The phenomenon calls for no delicately drawn theories of race
differences; it is a plain case of cause and effect.