THE NEW SOUTHERN STATESMANSHIP
"Democracy is the progress of all through all, under the leadership of
the best and the wisest."--_Mazzini._
In former chapters I have had much to tell that was unpleasant and perhaps
discouraging; but it had to be told, for it is there, and must be honestly
met and reckoned with.
But the chief pleasure of the present task has been the opportunity it has
given me to meet the working idealists of the South, and to see the
courageous and unselfish way in which they are meeting the obstacles which
confront them. If any man would brighten his faith in human nature, if he
would attain a deeper and truer grasp upon the best things of life, let
him attend one of the educational rallies of Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Georgia, or Texas, and hear the talks of Dr. S. C. Mitchell,
President Alderman, J. Y. Joyner, P. P. Claxton, Chancellor Barrow,
President Houston, and others; or let him spend a few days at Hampton with
Dr. Frissell, or at Tuskegee with Dr. Washington, or at Calhoun with Miss
Thorne. Coming away from a meeting one night at Tuskegee after there had
been speaking in the chapel by both white and coloured men, I could not
help saying to myself:
"The Negro problem is not unsolvable; it is being solved, here and now, as
fast as any human problem can be solved."
Men may be found straining their vision to see some distant and complex
solution to the question (have we not heard talk of deportation,
extermination, amalgamation, segregation, and the like?) when the real
solution is under their very eyes, going forward naturally and simply.
It is this quiet, constructive movement among the white people in the
South which I wish to consider here.
In a former chapter I showed how the Negroes of the country are divided
into two parties or points of view, the greater led by Booker T.
Washington, the lesser by W. E. B. DuBois. Washington's party is the party
of the opportunist and optimist, which deals with the world as it is: it
is a constructive, practical, cheerful party. It emphasises duties rather
than rights. Dr. DuBois's party, on the other hand, represents the
critical point of view. It is idealistic and pessimistic: a party of
agitation, emphasising rights rather than duties.
But these two points of view are by no means peculiar to Negroes: they
divide all human thought; and the action and reaction between them is the
mode of human progress.
_Division of White Leadership in the South_
White leadership in the South, then, is divided along similar lines with
Negro leadership--a party of rights and a party of duties. But with this
wide difference: among the Negroes as I showed, the party of agitation and
criticism led by DuBois is far inferior both numerically and in influence
to the party of opportunity and duties led by Washington. For the Negroes
have been forced to concede the futility of trying to progress by
political action and legislation, by rights specified but not earned.
Washington's preaching has been:
"Stop thinking about your rights and get down to work. Get yourself right
and the world will be all right."
But among the white people of the South the party of agitation and the
emphasis of rights rather than duties is still far in the ascendency. Led
by such men as Tillman, Vardaman, Jeff Davis, Hoke Smith, and others, it
controls, for the present, the policies of the entire South. It has much
to say of the rights of the white man, very little about his duties. It
is, indeed, doing for the whites by agitation and legislation (often a
kind of force) exactly what Dr. DuBois would like to do for the Negro, if
he could.
"Agitate, object, fight," say both Tillman and DuBois.
"Work," says Washington.
Now, the same logic of circumstances which produced Booker T. Washington
and his significant movement among the Negroes has produced a group of new
and highly able white leaders. These new leaders saw that agitation
(while most necessary in its place) would not, after all, build up the
South; they saw that although the sort of leader typified by Tillman and
Vardaman was passing laws and winning elections, he was not, after all,
getting anywhere; that race feeling was growing more bitter, often to the
injury of Southern prosperty; that progress is not built upon stump
speeches. The answer to all this was plain enough.
"Let us stop talking, forget the race problem, and get to work. It does
not matter where we take hold, but let us go to work."
And the doctrine of work in the South has become a great propaganda,
almost, indeed, a passion. It has found expression in a remarkable growth
of industrial activities, cotton-mills, coal-mines, iron and steel
industries; in new methods of farming; in spreading railroads. But more
than all else, perhaps, it has developed a new enthusiasm for education,
not only for education of the old classical sort, but for industrial and
agricultural education--the training of workers. All this, indeed,
represents the rebound from years of agitation in which the Negro has been
"cussed and discussed," as one Southerner put it to me, beyond the limit
of endurance. Wherever I went in the South among the new industrial and
educational leaders I found an active distaste for the discussion of the
Negro problem. These men were too busy with fine new enterprises to be
bothered with ancient and unprofitable issues.
_New Prescriptions for Solving the Negro Problem_
When I asked Professor Dillard of New Orleans how he thought the Negro
question should be treated, he replied:
"With silence."
"My prescription," says President Alderman in his address on "Southern
Idealism," "is 'silence and slow time,' faith in the South, and wise
training for both white and black."
Edgar Gardner Murphy of Alabama, himself one of the new leaders, has thus
outlined the position of the rising Southern leadership:
"The South is growing weary of extremists and of sensational
problem-solvers.... Our coming leadership will have a sense of proportion
which will involve a steady refusal to be stampeded by antique nightmares
and ethnological melodrama. It will possess an increasing passion for
getting hold of the real things in a real world. And it will ... deal with
one task at a time. It will subordinate paper schemes of distant
amelioration to duties that will help right now."
Emphasis here is laid upon "real things in a real world" and "duties that
will help right now"; and that is the voice everywhere of the new
statesmanship.
But let us be clear upon one point at the start. The platforms of these
parties are matters of emphasis. One emphasises rights; the other
emphasises duties. I have no doubt that Booker T. Washington believes as
firmly in the rights of the Negro as any leader of his race; he has merely
ceased to emphasise these rights by agitation until his people have gained
more education and more property, until by honest achievement they are
prepared to exercise their rights with intelligence.
In the same way, the views of many of the new Southern white leaders of
whom I shall speak in this article have not radically changed, so far as
the Negro is concerned; some of them, I have found, do not differ from
Tillman upon essential points; but, like Washington, they have decided not
to emphasise controversial matters, and go to work and develop the South,
and the people of the South, for the good of the whole country. If the
test has to come in the long run between white men and coloured men, as it
will have to come and is coming all the time, they want it to be an honest
test of efficiency. The fittest here, too, will survive (there is no
escaping the great law!), but these new thinkers wish the test of fitness
to be, not mere physical force, not mere brute power, whether expressed in
lynching or politics, but the higher test of real capacity. They have
supreme confidence that the white man is superior on his merits in any
contest; and Washington, on his side, is willing to (indeed, he must) take
up the gauntlet thus thrown down.
[Illustration: JAMES H. DILLARD of New Orleans, President Jeanes Fund
Board.
Photograph by Hitchler]
[Illustration: EDWIN A. ALDERMAN President of the University of Virginia.
Photograph by Pach Bros.]
[Illustration: A. M. SOULE President Georgia State College of
Agriculture.]
[Illustration: D. F. HOUSTON President of the University of Texas.
Photograph by The Elliotts]
[Illustration: GEORGE FOSTER PEABODY of New York, member of the Southern
Education and Jeanes Fund Boards.
Photograph by Pach Bros.]
[Illustration: P. P. CLAXTON of the University of Tennessee, leader of the
educational campaign in Tennessee.
Photograph by Knafft & Bro.]
The condition in the South may be likened to a battle in which the
contestants, weary of profitless and wordy warfare, are turning homeward
to gather up new ammunition. Each side is passionately getting
education, acquiring land, developing wealth and industry, preparing for
the struggles of the future. And it is a fine and wholesome tendency. In a
large sense, indeed, this movement typifies the progressive thought of the
entire country for it means a sincere attempt to change the plane of
battle (for battle there must be) from one of crude, primitive force,
whether physical, political, or, indeed, industrial, to one of
intellectual efficiency or usefulness to society.
And these working idealists of both races understand one another better
than most people think. Dr. Mitchell and President Alderman understand
Booker T. Washington, and he understands them. This is not saying that
they agree. But agreement upon every abstract principle is not necessary
where both parties are hard at work at practical, definite, and immediate
tasks.
_Self-Criticism in the South_
The new Southern statesmanship began (as all new movements begin) with
self-criticism. Henry W. Grady, a real statesman, by criticising the old
order of things, announced the beginning of the "New South"--an active,
working, hopeful South.
He saw the faults of the old exclusive agricultural life and the danger of
low-class, uneducated labour, and he urged industrial development and a
better school system. R. H. Edmonds of Baltimore, through the
_Manufacturers' Record_, and many other able business leaders have done
much to bring about the new industrial order: the day of new railroads,
cotton-mills, and coal-mines; the day of cities.
But it is in the educational field that the development of the new
statesmanship has been most remarkable. Although it was unfortunate in one
way that so much of the political leadership of the South should have
fallen to men of the type of Vardaman, Jeff Davis, and Heflin, it is
highly fortunate in another way. For it has driven the broadest and ablest
minds in the South to seek expression in other lines of activity, in
industry and in the church, but particularly in educational leadership. It
is not without profound significance that the great American, General
Lee, turned his attention and gave his highest energies after Appomattox,
not to politics, but to education. The South to-day has a group of
schoolmen who are leaders of extraordinary force and courage. The ministry
has also attained an influence in the South which it does not possess in
most parts of the North. The influence of Bishop Galloway of Mississippi,
Dr. John E. White and Dr. C. B. Wilmer of Atlanta, and many others has
been notable.
For many years after the war the South was passive with exhaustion. Young
men, who were not afraid, had to grow up to the task of reconstruction.
And no one who has not traced the history of the South since the war can
form any conception of the magnitude of that task. It was essentially the
building of a new civilisation. The leaders were compelled not only to
face abject poverty, but they have had to deal constantly with the problem
of a labouring class just released from slavery. At every turn, in
politics, in industry, in education, they were confronted with the Negro
and the problem of what to do with him. Where one school-house would do in
the North, they were compelled to build two school-houses, one for white
children, one for black. It took from twenty-five to forty years of hard
work after the war before the valuation of wealth in the South had again
reached the figures of 1860. The valuations in the year 1890 for several
of the states were less than in 1860. South Carolina in 1900--forty years
after the beginning of the war--had only just caught up with the record of
1860. Since 1890, however, the increase everywhere has been swift and
sure.
_Courage and Vision of New Leaders_
Well, it required courage and vision in the earlier days to go before a
poverty-stricken people, who had not yet enough means for living
comfortably, and to demand of them that they build up and support two
systems of education in the South. And yet that was exactly the task of
the educational pioneers. Statesmanship, as I have said, begins with
self-criticism. While the mere politician is flattering his followers and
confirming them in their errors, the true statesman is criticising them
and spurring them to new beliefs and stronger activities. While the
politician is pleading rights, the statesman also dares to emphasise
duties. While the politicians in the South (not all, but many of them)
have been harping on race prejudice and getting themselves elected to
office by reviving ancient hatred, these new statesmen have been facing
courageously forward, telling the people boldly of the conditions of
illiteracy which surround them, and demanding that schools be built and
every child, white and black, be educated. In many cases they have had to
overcome a settled prejudice against education, especially education of
Negroes; and after that was overcome they have had to build up a sense of
social responsibility for universal education before they could count on
getting the money they needed for their work.
After the war the North, in one form or another, poured much money into
the South for teaching the Negroes; lesser sums, like those coming from
the Peabody fund, were contributed toward white schools. But in the long
run there can be no real education which is not self-education; outside
influences may help (or indeed hurt), but until a state--like a man--is
inspired with a desire for education and a willingness to make sacrifices
to get it, the people will not become enlightened.
In the middle eighties the fire of this inspiration began to blaze up in
many parts of the South. Various combustible elements were present: a
sense of the appalling condition of illiteracy existing in the South; a
pride and independence of character which was hurt by the gifts of money
from the North; a feeling that the Negroes in some instances were getting
better educational opportunities than the white children; and, finally,
the splendid idealism of young men who saw clearly that the only sure
foundation for democracy is universal education.
_Inspiration of Democracy in North Carolina_
Not unnaturally the movement found its earliest expression in North
Carolina, which has been the most instinctively democratic of Southern
states. From the beginning of the country North Carolina, with its
population of Scotch-Presbyterians and Quakers, has been inspired with a
peculiar spirit of independence. When I was in Charlotte I went to see the
monument which commemorates the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence:
the work of a group of stout-hearted citizens who decided, before the
country at large was ready for it, to declare their independence of
British rule. North Carolina was among the last of the Southern states to
secede from the Union, and its treatment of its Negroes all along has been
singularly liberal. For example, in several Southern states little or no
provision is made for the Negro defective classes, but at Raleigh I
visited a large asylum for Negro deaf, dumb, and blind which is conducted
according to the most improved methods. And to-day North Carolina is freer
politically, the state is nearer a new and healthy party alignment, than
any other Southern state except Tennessee and possibly Kentucky.
Such a soil was fertile for new ideas and new movements. In 1885 two young
men, Charles D. McIver and Edwin A. Alderman, now president of the
University of Virginia, began a series of educational campaigns under the
supervision of the state. They spoke in every county, rousing the people
to build better school-houses and to send legislators to Raleigh who
should be more liberal in educational appropriations. In many cases their
rallies were comparable with the most enthusiastic political
meetings--only no one was asking to be elected to office, and the only
object was public service. As Alderman has said:
"It was an effort to move the centre of gravity from the court-house to
the school-house."
And it really moved; the state took fire and has been afire ever since.
Governor Aycock made the educational movement a part of his campaign;
Governor Glenn has been hardly less enthusiastic; and the development of
the school system has been little short of amazing. When I was in Raleigh
last spring J. Y. Joyner, State Superintendent of Schools, who was also
one of the pioneer campaigners, told me that a new school-house was being
built for every day in the year, and new school libraries established at
the same rate. Between 1900 and 1906 the total amount of money expended
for schools in North Carolina more than doubled, and while the school
population in the same years had increased only 6 per cent., the daily
attendance had increased 28 per cent.
_North Carolina Compared with Massachusetts_
To give a graphic idea of the progress in education, I can do no better
than to show the increase in public expenditures since 1872:
1872 Total school expenditures $ 42,856
1880 Total school expenditures 349,831
1890 Total school expenditures 787,145
1900 Total school expenditures 1,091,610
1906 Total school expenditures 2,291,053
I have looked into the statistics and I find that North Carolina spends
more per hundred dollars of taxable property for school purposes than
Massachusetts, which is perhaps the leading American state in educational
expenditures. In 1906 North Carolina raised $.40 on every one hundred
dollars, while Massachusetts raised $.387. But this does not mean, of
course, that North Carolina has reached the standard of Massachusetts; it
only shows how the people, though not rich, have been willing to tax
themselves. And they have only just begun; the rate of illiteracy of the
state, as in all the South, is still excessive among both white and
coloured people. According to the last census, North Carolina has more
illiterate white people than any other state in the Union, a condition
due, of course, to its large population of mountaineers. While the
progress already made is notable the leaders still have a stupendous task
before them. At the present time, although taxing itself more per hundred
dollars' worth of property than Massachusetts, North Carolina pays only
$2.63 each year for the education of each child, whereas Massachusetts
expends $24.89--nearly ten times as much.
I do not wish to over-emphasise the work in North Carolina; I am merely
using conditions there as a convenient illustration of what is going on in
greater or less degree all over the South. One of the group of early
enthusiasts in North Carolina was P. P. Claxton, who is now in charge of
the educational campaign in Tennessee. With President Dabney, formerly of
the University of Tennessee and State Superintendent Mynders, Mr. Claxton
has conducted a state-wide campaign for education. Every available
occasion has been utilised: picnics, court-days, Decoration Days: and
often the audiences have been larger and more enthusiastic than political
rallies. Indeed, the meetings have been carried on much like a political
campaign. At one time over one hundred speakers were in the field. Every
county in the state was stumped, and in two years it was estimated that
over half of the entire population of the state actually attended the
meetings. Labour unions and women's clubs were stirred to activity,
resolutions were passed, politicians were called upon to declare
themselves, and teachers' organisations were formed. The result was most
notable. In 1902 the state expended $1,800,000 for educational purposes;
in 1908--six years later--the total will exceed $4,000,000.
A similar campaign has been going on in Virginia, under the auspices of
the Cooeperative Educational Association, in which the leaders have been
Dr. S. C. Mitchell, Professor Bruce Payne, President Alderman, and others.
In this work Ex-Governor Montague has also been a force for good, both
while he was governor and since, and Governor Swanson at present is
actively interested. Local leagues were formed in every part of the state
to the number of 324. Negroes have also organised along the same line and
now have ten local associations in five counties.
_How the South Is Taxing Itself_
One of the most striking features of the movement has been the development
of the system of local taxation for school purposes--which is a long step
in the direction of democracy. In the past the people have looked more or
less to some outside source for help--to state or national funds, or the
private gifts of philanthropists, or they have depended upon private
schools--but now they are voting to take the burden themselves. In other
words, with the building up of a popular school system, supported by local
taxation, education in the South is becoming, for the first time,
democratic. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this
movement in stimulating the local pride and self-reliance of the people,
or in inspiring each community with educational enthusiasm.
Another development of profound influence has been going on in the South.
As I have already pointed out, the so-called "Northern philanthropist" has
long been interested in Southern education, especially Negro education.
For years his activities awakened, and indeed still awaken, a good deal of
hostility in some parts of the South. Many Southerners have felt that the
Northerners, however good their intentions, did not understand Southern
conditions, and that some of the money was expended in a way that did not
help the cause of progress in the South.
_South and North Work Together_
But both the Northerners (whatever their mistakes in method may have been)
and the new Southern leaders were intensely and sincerely interested in
the same thing: namely, better education and better conditions in the
South. It was natural that these two groups of earnest and reasonable men
should finally come together in a spirit of cooeperation; and this is,
indeed, what has happened. Out of a series of quiet conferences held in
the South grew what has been called the "Ogden movement" and the Southern
Education Board. This organisation was made up of three different classes
of men: first, a group of the Southern leaders of whom I have
spoken--Mitchell, Alderman, Dabney, Curry, Houston, Hill, McIver, Claxton,
Edgar Gardner Murphy, Sydney J. Bowie, and Henry E. Fries; second,
Southern men who, living in the North, were yet deeply interested in the
progress of the South--men like Walter H. Page, George Foster Peabody, and
Frank R. Chambers; and, finally, the Northerners--Robert C. Ogden, who was
president of the board, William H. Baldwin, H. H. Hanna, Dr. Wallace
Buttrick, Albert Shaw, and Dr. G. S. Dickerman.
One of the inspirers of the movement, also a member of the board, was Dr.
H. B. Frissell, who followed General Armstrong as principal of Hampton
Institute.
Each year conferences have been held in the South, a feature of which has
been the "Ogden Special"--a special train from the North bringing Northern
citizens to Southern institutions and encouraging a more intimate
acquaintanceship on both sides. No one influence has been more potent
than this in developing a spirit of nationalisation in the Southern
educational movement.
So far in this chapter I have had very little to say about the Negro, and
especially Negro education. It is important to know the view of the new
leadership on this question. I have shown in previous articles that the
majority view in the South was more or less hostile to the education of
the Negro, or, at least, to his education beyond the bare rudiments.
The new leaders have recognised this feeling, and while without exception
they believe that the Negro must be educated and most of them have said so
openly, the general policy has been to emphasise white education and unite
the people on that.
"In education," one of the leaders said to me, "it doesn't matter much
where we begin. If we can arouse the spirit of the school, the people are
going to see that it is as important to the state to have a trained Negro
as it is to have a trained white man."
One of the troubles in the South, one of the reasons for the prejudice
against education, and particularly Negro education, has arisen from the
fact that what has been called education was not really education at all.
In the first place many of the schools have been so poor and the teachers
so inefficient that the "education" acquired was next to worthless. There
was not enough of it, nor was it of a kind to give the Negro any real hold
upon life, and it often hurt him far more than it helped. Much of the
prejudice in the South against Negro education is unquestionably due to
the wretched school system, which in many places has not really educated
anybody. But, deeper than all this, the old conception in the South of a
school was for a long time the old aristocratic conception--what some one
has called "useless culture"--of educating a class of men, not to work,
but to despise work. That idea of education has wrought much evil,
especially among the Negroes. It has taught both white and coloured men,
not the doctrine of service, which is necessary to democracy, but it has
given them a desire for artificial superiority, which is the
characteristic of aristocracies. It has made the Negro "uppish" and
"bumptious"; it has caused some white men to argue their superiority when
they had no basis of accomplishment or usefulness to make them really
superior.
_The Inspiration of Hampton Institute_
But when the idea of education began to be democratic, when men began to
think more of their duties than of their rights, a wholly new sort of
school appeared; and it appeared first among the Negroes. The country has
not yet begun to realise the debt of gratitude which it owes to the
promoters of Hampton Institute--to the genius of General Armstrong, its
founder and to the organising ability of Dr. H. B. Frissell who followed
him. These men will be more highly honoured a hundred years from now than
they are to-day, for Americans will then appreciate more fully their
service to the democracy.
The "Hampton idea" is the teaching of work--of service, of humility, of
duties to God and to man. It is in the highest sense the democratic idea
in education. And it has come, as most great movements have come, from the
needs and the struggles of those who are downtrodden and outcast. And how
wonderfully the idea has spread! Out of Hampton sprung Tuskegee and
Calhoun and Kowaliga and scores of other Negro schools, until to-day
nearly all Negro institutions for higher training in the South have
industrial or agricultural departments.
The best Southern white people were and are friendly to schools of this
new type. They thought at first that Hampton and Tuskegee were going to
train servants in the old personal sense of servants who become only
cooks, butlers, and farmers, and many still have that aristocratic
conception of service. But the "Hampton idea" of servants is a much
greater one, for it is the democratic idea of training men who will serve
their own people and thereby serve the country. Men who graduate from
Hampton and Tuskegee become leaders of their race. They buy and cultivate
land, they set up business establishments--in short, they become producers
and state-builders in the largest sense.
_New World Idea of Education_
The idea of Hampton is the new world idea of education, and white people
in the South (and in the North as well) are now applying it everywhere in
their educational movements. Agricultural and industrial schools for white
boys and girls are spreading throughout the South: schools to teach work,
just as Hampton teaches it. Only last year the state of Georgia provided
for eleven new agricultural schools in various parts of the state, and
there is already talk in the South, as in the North, of agricultural
training in high schools. These men, white and black, who are educated for
democratic service will in time become masters of the state.
The new leaders, then, of whom I have spoken, do not oppose Negro
education: they favour it and will go forward steadily with the task of
bring it about. So far, the Negro public schools have felt little of the
new impulse; in some states and localities, as I have shown in other
chapters, the Negro schools have actually retrograded, where the white
schools have been improving rapidly. But that is the continuing influence
of the old leadership; the new men have not yet come fully into their own.
I could quote indefinitely from the real statesmen of the South regarding
Negro education, but I have too little space. Senator Lamar of Mississippi
once said:
"The problem of race, in a large part, is a problem of illiteracy. Most of
the evils which have grown up out of the problem have arisen from a
condition of ignorance, prejudice and superstition. Remove these and the
simpler elements of the question will come into play.... I will go with
those who will go furthest in this matter."
No higher note has been struck in educational ideals than in the
Declaration of Principles adopted last winter (1907) at the meeting of the
Southern Educational Association at Lexington, Ky., an exclusively
Southern gathering of white men and women. Their resolutions, which for
lack of space cannot be here printed in full, should be read by every man
and woman in the country who is interested in the future of democratic
institutions. I copy here only a few of the declarations:
1. All children, regardless of race, creed, sex, or the social
station or economic condition of their parents, have equal right to,
and should have equal opportunity for, such education as will develop
to the fullest possible degree all that is best in their individual
natures, and fit them for the duties of life and citizenship in the
age and community in which they live.
2. To secure this right and provide this opportunity to all children
is the first and highest duty of the modern democratic state, and the
highest economic wisdom of an industrial age and community. Without
universal education of the best and highest type, there can be no
real democracy, either political or social; nor can agriculture,
manufactures, or commerce ever attain their highest development.
3. Education in all grades and in all legitimate directions, being
for the public good, the public should bear the burden of it. The
most just taxes levied by the state, or with the authority of the
state, by any smaller political division, are those levied for the
support of education. No expenditures can possibly produce greater
returns and none should be more liberal.
_The New South on Negro Education_
Concerning Negro education, I am publishing the resolutions in full,
because they voice the present thought of the best leadership in the
South:
1. We endorse the accepted policy of the states of the South in
providing educational facilities for the youth of the Negro race,
believing that whatever the ultimate solution of this grievous
problem may be, education must be an important factor in that
solution.
2. We believe that the education of the Negro in the elementary
branches of education should be made thorough, and should include
specific instruction in hygiene and home sanitation, for the better
protection of both races.
3. We believe that in the secondary education of Negro youth emphasis
should be placed upon agriculture and the industrial occupations,
including nurse training, domestic science, and home economics.
4. We believe that for practical, economical and psychological
reasons Negro teachers should be provided for Negro schools.
5. We advise instruction in normal schools and normal institutions by
white teachers, whenever possible, and closer supervision of courses
of study and methods of teaching in Negro normal schools by the State
Department of Education.
6. We recommend that in urban and rural Negro schools there should be
closer and more thorough supervision, not only by city and county
superintendents, but also by directors of music, drawing, manual
training, and other special topics.
7. We urge upon school authorities everywhere the importance of
adequate buildings, comfortable seating, and sanitary accommodations
for Negro youth.
8. We deplore the isolation of many Negro schools, established
through motives of philanthropy, from the life and the sympathies of
the communities in which they are located. We recommend the
supervision of all such schools by the state, and urge that their
work and their methods be adjusted to the civilisation in which they
exist, in order that the maximum good of the race and of the
community may be thereby attained.
9. On account of economic and psychological differences in the two
races, we believe that there should be a difference in courses of
study and methods of teaching, and that there should be such an
adjustment of school curricula as shall meet the evident needs of
Negro youth.
10. We insist upon such an equitable distribution of the school funds
that all the youth of the Negro race shall have at least an
opportunity to receive the elementary education provided by the
state, and in the administration of state laws, and in the execution
of this educational policy, we urge patience, toleration, and
justice.
(Signed) G. R. GLENN, P. P. CLAXTON, J. H. PHILLIPS, C. B. GIBSON,
R. N. ROARK, J. H. VAN SICKLE,
_Committee_.
In this connection also let me call attention to the reports of J. Y.
Joyner, Superintendent of Education, and Charles L. Coon of North
Carolina, for a broad view of Negro education.
I have already shown how the South and the North came together in
educational relationships in the Southern Education Board. I have pointed
it out as a tendency toward nationalisation in educational interests. But
the Southern Education Board, while it contained both Northern and
Southern white men, was primarily interested in white education and
contained no Negro members. At the time the board was organised, an active
interest in the Negro would have defeated, in part at least, its declared
purpose.
[Illustration: S. C. MITCHELL of Richmond College; President of the
Cooeperative Education Association of Virginia.]
[Illustration: JUDGE EMORY SPEER of Georgia. After two terms in Congress
he was appointed to the Federal bench.
Photograph by Curtiss Studio]
[Illustration: EDGAR GARDNER MURPHY of Alabama, member Southern Education
Board; author "Problems of the Present South."
Photograph by Sol. Young]
[Illustration: DR. H. B. FRISSELL Principal Hampton Institute and member
of Southern Education and Jeanes Fund Boards.
Photograph by Rockwood]
[Illustration: R. C. OGDEN of New York, President of the Southern
Education Board.
Copyright, 1907, by Pach Bros.]
[Illustration: J. Y. JOYNER Superintendent of Public Instruction of North
Carolina.
Photograph by Wharton & Tyree]
_The South, the North, and the Negro at Last Work Together_
Since that time another highly significant movement has arisen. In 1907
Miss Jeanes, a wealthy Quakeress of Philadelphia, gave $1,000,000 for the
encouragement of Negro primary education. She placed it in the hands of
Dr. H. B. Frissell of Hampton and Dr. Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee. In
the organisation of the board for the control of this fund and its work, a
further step forward in nationalisation and, indeed, in the direction of
democracy, was made. It marks a new development in the cooeperation of all
the forces for good in the solution of this difficult national problem.
The membership of the board includes not only Southern and Northern white
men, but also several leading Negroes. The president and general director
is a Southern white man, coming of an old family, James H. Dillard, dean
of Tulane University of New Orleans. It will be of interest to publish
here a full list of the members, because they represent, in more ways
than one, the new leadership not only in the South, but in the nation:
Southern white men:
James H. Dillard, President.
David C. Barrow, chancellor University of Georgia.
Belton Gilreath, manufacturer and mine-owner, Alabama.
Dr. S. C. Mitchell, of Richmond College, Richmond, Va.
Northern white men:
Robert C. Ogden, of New York.
Andrew Carnegie, of New York.
Talcott Williams, of Philadelphia.
George McAneny, president of the City Club of New York.
William H. Taft, of Ohio.
To these must be added:
Dr. H. B. Frissell, of Hampton Institute, a Northerner, whose work
and residence has long been in the South.
George Foster Peabody, treasurer, a Georgian, trustee of the
University of Georgia, who resides in the North.
Walter H. Page, the editor of the _World's Work_, a North Carolinian
who has long lived in the North.
Negro membership:
Booker T. Washington.
Bishop Abraham Grant, of Kan.
R. R. Moton, of Hampton Institute, secretary of the board.
J. C. Napier, a banker of Nashville, Tenn.
R. D. Smith, a farmer of Paris, Tex.
In a true sense the Southern Education Board and the Jeanes Fund Board
represent organisations of working idealists. Such cooeperation as this,
between reasonable, broad-minded, and unselfish men of the entire country,
is, at the present moment, the real solution of our problems. It is the
solution of the Negro problem--all the solution there ever will be. For
there is no finality in human endeavour: there is only activity; and when
that activity is informed with the truth and inspired with faith and
courage, it is not otherwise than success, for it is the best that human
nature at any given time can do.
In making this statement, I do not, of course wish to infer that
conditions are as good as can be expected, and that nothing remains to be
done. As a matter of fact, the struggle is just beginning; as I have shown
in previous chapters, all the forces of entrenched prejudice and ignorance
are against the movement, the political leaders who still dominate the
South are as hostile as they dare to be. The task is, indeed, too big for
the South alone, or the North alone, or the white man alone: it will
require all the strength and courage the nation possesses.
_Universities Feel the New Impulse_
Besides the campaign for better common schools, the educational revival
has also renewed and revivified all the higher institutions of learning in
the South. The state universities, especially, have been making
extraordinary progress. I shall not soon forget my visit to the University
of Georgia, at Athens, nor the impression I received while there of strong
men at work, not merely erecting buildings of mortar and brick, but
establishing a new sort of university system, which shall unify and direct
to one common end all of the educational activities of the state:
beginning with the common school and reaching upward to the university
itself; including the agricultural and industrial schools, and even the
Negro college of agriculture. The University of Georgia is one of the
oldest state colleges in America, and the ambition of its leaders is to
make it one of the greatest. Mr. Hodgson drove me around the campus, which
has recently been extended until it contains nearly 1,000 acres. He showed
me where the new buildings are to be, the drives and the bridges. Much of
it is yet a vision of the future, but it is the sort of vision that comes
true. I spent a day with President Soule of the Agricultural College, on
his special educational train, which covered a considerable part of the
state of Georgia, stopping at scores of towns where the speakers appeared
before great audiences of farmers and made practical addresses on cotton
and corn and cattle-raising, and on education generally. And everywhere
the practical work of these public educators was greeted with enthusiasm.
I heard from Professor Stewart of his work in organising rural high
schools, in encouraging local taxation, and in bringing the work of the
public schools into closer correlation with that of the university.
Seeing the educational work of states like Georgia, North Carolina,
Virginia, and others, one cannot but feel that the time is coming shortly
when the North will be going South for new ideas and new inspiration in
education.
In a brief review like this, I have been able, of course, to give only the
barest outline of a very great work, and I have mentioned only a few among
hundreds of leaders; the work I have described is only illustrative of
what is going on in greater or less degree everywhere in the South.
Many important developments have come from these campaigns for education.
The actual building of new school-houses and the expenditure of more money
for the struggle with illiteracy is only one of many results. For the
crusade for education, supplemented by the new industrial impulse in the
South, has awakened a new spirit of self-help. The success with which the
public was aroused in the educational campaign has inspired leaders in all
lines of activity with new courage and faith. It is a spirit of
youthfulness which is not afraid to attempt anything.
Much printers' ink has been expended in trying to account for the spread
of the anti-saloon movement throughout the South. But there is nothing
strange about it: it is, indeed, only another manifestation of the new
Southern spirit, the desire to get things right in the South. And this
movement will further stir men's minds, develop self-criticism, and reveal
to the people their power of concerted action whether the politicians are
with them or not. It is, indeed, significant that the women of the South,
perhaps for the first time, have become a powerful influence in public
affairs. Their organisations have helped, in some instances led, in both
the educational and the anti-saloon movement. No leaders in the Virginia
educational movement have been more useful than Mrs. L. R. Dashiell and
Mrs. B. B. Munford of Richmond.
Practically all the progress of the South, both industrial and
educational, has been made by non-political movements and non-political
leaders--often in opposition to the political leaders. Indeed, nearly
every one of the hopeful movements of the South has had to capture some
entrenched stronghold of the old political captains. In several states,
for example, the school systems a few years ago were crippled by political
domination and nepotism. Superintendents, principals, and teachers were
frequently appointed not for their ability, but because they were good
members of the party or because they were related to politicians.
_New Statesmen Against Old Politicians_
In Alabama I found prominent men attacking the fee system of payment of
lesser magistrates. The evil in this system lies in the encouragement it
gives to trivial litigation and the arrest of citizens for petty offences.
Let me give a single example. A Negro had another Negro arrested for
"'sault and battery." Both appeared in court. The accused Negro was tried,
and finally sent to the chain-gang. The justice suggested to the convicted
man that if he wanted satisfaction he should turn around and have his
accuser arrested; which he did, promptly accusing him of "'busive
language." Another trial was held; and in the end both Negroes found
themselves side by side in the chain-gang; the magistrate, the constable,
the sheriff, had all drawn liberal fees, and the private contractor who
hired the chain-gang, and who also "stood in" with the politicians, had
obtained another cheap labourer for his work. It is a vicious circle,
which has enabled the politicians and their backers to profit at every
turn from the weakness and evil of both Negro and low-class white man.
In attacking the fee system and the old, evil chain-gang system as the new
leaders are doing in many parts of the South, in closing the saloons
(always a bulwark of low politics), in building up a new school system
free from selfish control, the new leaders are striking squarely at the
roots of the old political aristocracy, undermining it and cutting it
away. It is sure to fall; and in its place the South will rear a splendid
new leadership of constructive ability and unselfish patriotism. There
will be a division on matters of vital concern, and a turning from ancient
and worn-out issues to new interests and activities. When that time comes
the whole nation will again profit by the genius of Southern statesmanship
and we shall again have Southern Presidents.
Already the old type of politician sees the handwriting of fate. He knows
not which way to turn. At one moment he harps more fiercely and bitterly
than ever before on the issue which has maintained him so long in power,
the Negro; and at the next moment he seizes frantically on some one of the
new issues--education, prohibition, anti-railroad--hoping thereby to
maintain himself and his old party control. But he cannot do it; every
force in the South is already making for new things, for more democracy,
for more nationalisation.