In the heart of the Black Belt of the South in _ante-bellum_ days
there was a large estate, with palatial mansion, surrounded by a
beautiful grove, in which grew flowers and shrubbery of every
description. Magnificent specimens of animal life grazed in the
fields, and in grain and all manner of plant growth this estate was a
model. In a word, it was the highest type of the product of slave
labor.
Then came the long years of war, then freedom, then the trying years
of reconstruction. The master returned from the war to find the
faithful slaves who had been the bulwark of this household in
possession of their freedom. Then there began that social and
industrial revolution in the South which it is hard for any who was
not really a part of it to appreciate or understand. Gradually, day by
day, this ex-master began to realise, with a feeling almost
indescribable, to what an extent he and his family had grown to be
dependent upon the activity and faithfulness of his slaves; began to
appreciate to what an extent slavery had sapped his sinews of strength
and independence, how his dependence upon slave labour had deprived
him and his offspring of the benefit of technical and industrial
training, and, worst of all, had unconsciously led him to see in
labour drudgery and degradation instead of beauty, dignity, and
civilising power. At first there was a halt in this man's life. He
cursed the North and he cursed the Negro. Then there was despair,
almost utter hopelessness, over his weak and childlike condition. The
temptation was to forget all in drink, and to this temptation there
was a gradual yielding. With the loss of physical vigour came the loss
of mental grasp and pride in surroundings. There was the falling off
of a piece of plaster from the walls of the house which was not
replaced, then another and still another. Gradually, the window-panes
began to disappear, then the door-knobs. Touches of paint and
whitewash, which once helped to give life, were no more to be seen.
The hinges disappeared from the gate, then a board from the fence,
then others in quick succession. Weeds and unmown grass covered the
once well-kept lawn. Sometimes there were servants for domestic
duties, and sometimes there were none. In the absence of servants the
unsatisfactory condition of the food told that it was being prepared
by hands unschooled to such duties. As the years passed by, debts
accumulated in every direction. The education of the children was
neglected. Lower and lower sank the industrial, financial, and
spiritual condition of the household. For the first time the awful
truth of Scripture, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap," seemed to dawn upon him with a reality that it is hard for
mortal to appreciate. Within a few months the whole mistake of slavery
seemed to have concentrated itself upon this household. And this was
one of many.
We have seen how the ending of slavery and the beginning of freedom
produced not only a shock, but a stand-still, and in many cases a
collapse, that lasted several years in the life of many white men. If
the sudden change thus affected the white man, should this not teach
us that we should have more sympathy than has been shown in many cases
with the Negro in connection with his new and changed life? That they
made many mistakes, plunged into excesses, undertook responsibilities
for which they were not fitted, in many cases took liberty to mean
license, is not to be wondered at. It is my opinion that the next
forty years are going to show by many per cent. a higher degree of
progress in the life of the Negro along all lines than has been shown
during the first thirty years of his life. Certainly, the first thirty
years of the Negro's life was one of experiment; and consequently,
under such conditions, he was not able to settle down to real,
earnest, hard common sense efforts to better his condition. While this
was true in a great many cases, on the other hand a large proportion
of the race, even from the first, saw what was needed for their new
life, and began to settle down to lead an industrious, frugal
existence, and to educate their children and in every way prepare
themselves for the responsibilities of American citizenship.
The wonder is that the Negro has made as few mistakes as he has, when
we consider all the surrounding circumstances. Columns of figures have
been gleaned from the census reports within the last quarter of a
century to show the great amount of crime committed by the Negro in
excess of that committed by other races. No one will deny the fact
that the proportion of crime by the present generation of Negroes is
seriously large, but I believe that any other race with the Negro's
history and present environment would have shown about the same
criminal record.
Another consideration which we must always bear in mind in considering
the Negro is that he had practically no home life in slavery; that is,
the mother and father did not have the responsibility, and
consequently the experience, of training their own children. The
matter of child training was left to the master and mistress.
Consequently, it has only been within the last thirty years that the
Negro parents have had the actual responsibility and experience of
training their own children. That they have made some mistakes in
thus training them is not to be wondered at. Many families scattered
over all parts of the United States have not yet been able to bring
themselves together. When the Negro parents shall have had thirty or
forty additional years in which to found homes and get experience in
the training of their children, I believe that we will find that the
amount of crime will be considerably less than it is now shown to be.
In too large a measure the Negro race began its development at the
wrong end, simply because neither white nor black understood the case;
and no wonder, for there had never been such a case in the history of
the world.
To show where this primary mistake has led in its evil results, I wish
to produce some examples showing plainly how prone we have been to
make our education formal, superficial, instead of making it meet the
needs of conditions.
In order to emphasise the matter more fully, I repeat, at least eighty
per cent. of the coloured people in the South are found in the rural
districts, and they are dependent on agriculture in some form for
their support. Notwithstanding that we have practically a whole race
dependent upon agriculture, and notwithstanding that thirty years have
passed since our freedom, aside from what has been done at Hampton and
Tuskegee and one or two other institutions, but very little has been
attempted by State or philanthropy in the way of educating the race in
this one industry upon which its very existence depends. Boys have
been taken from the farms and educated in law, theology, Hebrew and
Greek,--educated in everything else except the very subject that they
should know most about. I question whether among all the educated
coloured people in the United States you can find six, if we except
those from the institutions named, who have received anything like a
thorough training in agriculture. It would have seemed that, since
self-support, industrial independence, is the first condition for
lifting up any race, that education in theoretical and practical
agriculture, horticulture, dairying, and stock-raising, should have
occupied the first place in our system.
Some time ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our
training at the Tuskegee Institute, I was amazed to find that it was
almost impossible to find in the whole country an educated coloured
man who could teach the making of clothing. We could find them by the
score who could teach astronomy, theology, grammar, or Latin, but
almost none who could instruct in the making of clothing, something
that has to be used by every one of us every day in the year. How
often has my heart been made to sink as I have gone through the South
and into the homes of people, and found women who could converse
intelligently on Grecian history, who had studied geometry, could
analyse the most complex sentences, and yet could not analyse the
poorly cooked and still more poorly served corn bread and fat meat
that they and their families were eating three times a day! It is
little trouble to find girls who can locate Pekin or the Desert of
Sahara on an artificial globe, but seldom can you find one who can
locate on an actual dinner table the proper place for the carving
knife and fork or the meat and vegetables.
A short time ago, in one of the Southern cities, a coloured man died
who had received training as a skilled mechanic during the days of
slavery. Later by his skill and industry he built up a great business
as a house contractor and builder. In this same city there are 35,000
coloured people, among them young men who have been well educated in
the languages and in literature; but not a single one could be found
who had been so trained in mechanical and architectural drawing that
he could carry on the business which this ex-slave had built up, and
so it was soon scattered to the wind. Aside from the work done in the
institutions that I have mentioned, you can find almost no coloured
men who have been trained in the principles of architecture,
notwithstanding the fact that a vast majority of our race are without
homes. Here, then, are the three prime conditions for growth, for
civilisation,--food, clothing, shelter; and yet we have been the
slaves of forms and customs to such an extent that we have failed in a
large measure to look matters squarely in the face and meet actual
needs.
It may well be asked by one who has not carefully considered the
matter: "What has become of all those skilled farm-hands that used to
be on the old plantations? Where are those wonderful cooks we hear
about, where those exquisitely trained house servants, those cabinet
makers, and the jacks-of-all-trades that were the pride of the South?"
This is easily answered,--they are mostly dead. The survivors are too
old to work. "But did they not train their children?" is the natural
question. Alas! the answer is "no." Their skill was so commonplace to
them, and to their former masters, that neither thought of it as being
a hard-earned or desirable accomplishment: it was natural, like
breathing. Their children would have it as a matter of course. What
their children needed was education. So they went out into the world,
the ambitious ones, and got education, and forgot the necessity of the
ordinary training to live.
God for two hundred and fifty years, in my opinion, prepared the way
for the redemption of the Negro through industrial development.
First, he made the Southern white man do business with the Negro for
two hundred and fifty years in a way that no one else has done
business with him. If a Southern white man wanted a house or a bridge
built, he consulted a Negro mechanic about the plan and about the
actual building of the house or bridge. If he wanted a suit of clothes
or a pair of shoes made, it was to the Negro tailor or shoemaker that
he talked. Secondly, every large slave plantation in the South was, in
a limited sense, an industrial school. On these plantations there were
scores of young coloured men and women who were constantly being
trained, not alone as common farmers, but as carpenters, blacksmiths,
wheelwrights, plasterers, brick masons, engineers, bridge-builders,
cooks, dressmakers, housekeepers, etc. I would be the last to
apologise for the curse of slavery; but I am simply stating facts.
This training was crude and was given for selfish purposes, and did
not answer the highest ends, because there was the absence of brain
training in connection with that of the hand. Nevertheless, this
business contact with the Southern white man, and the industrial
training received on these plantations, put the Negro at the close of
the war into possession of all the common and skilled labour in the
South. For nearly twenty years after the war, except in one or two
cases, the value of the industrial training given by the Negroes'
former masters on the plantations and elsewhere was overlooked. Negro
men and women were educated in literature, mathematics, and the
sciences, with no thought of what had taken place on these plantations
for two and a half centuries. After twenty years, those who were
trained as mechanics, etc., during slavery began to disappear by
death; and gradually we awoke to the fact that we had no one to take
their places. We had scores of young men learned in Greek, but few in
carpentry or mechanical or architectural drawing. We had trained many
in Latin, but almost none as engineers, bridge-builders, and
machinists. Numbers were taken from the farm and educated, but were
educated in everything else except agriculture. Hence they had no
sympathy with farm life, and did not return to it.
This last that I have been saying is practically a repetition of what
I have said in the preceding paragraph; but, to emphasise it,--and
this point is one of the most important I wish to impress on the
reader,--it is well to repeat, to say the same thing twice. Oh, if
only more who had the shaping of the education of the Negro could
have, thirty years ago, realised, and made others realise, where the
forgetting of the years of manual training and the sudden acquiring
of education were going to lead the Negro race, what a saving it would
have been! How much less my race would have had to answer for, as well
as the white!
But it is too late to cry over what might have been. It is time to
make up, as soon as possible, for this mistake,--time for both races
to acknowledge it, and go forth on the course that, it seems to me,
all must now see to be the right one,--industrial education.
As an example of what a well-trained and educated Negro may now do,
and how ready to acknowledge him a Southern white man may be, let me
return once more to the plantation I spoke of in the first part of
this chapter. As the years went by, the night seemed to grow darker,
so that all seemed hopeless and lost. At this point relief and
strength came from an unexpected source. This Southern white man's
idea of Negro education had been that it merely meant a parrot-like
absorption of Anglo-Saxon civilisation, with a special tendency to
imitate the weaker elements of the white man's character; that it
meant merely the high hat, kid gloves, a showy walking cane, patent
leather shoes, and all the rest of it. To this ex-master it seemed
impossible that the education of the Negro could produce any other
results. And so, last of all, did he expect help or encouragement from
an educated black man; but it was just from this source that help
came. Soon after the process of decay began in this white man's
estate, the education of a certain black man began, and began on a
logical, sensible basis. It was an education that would fit him to see
and appreciate the physical and moral conditions that existed in his
own family and neighbourhood, and, in the present generation, would
fit him to apply himself to their relief. By chance this educated
Negro strayed into the employ of this white man. His employer soon
learned that this Negro not only had a knowledge of science,
mathematics, and literature in his head, but in his hands as well.
This black man applied his knowledge of agricultural chemistry to the
redemption of the soil; and soon the washes and gulleys began to
disappear, and the waste places began to bloom. New and improved
machinery in a few months began to rob labour of its toil and
drudgery. The animals were given systematic and kindly attention.
Fences were repaired and rebuilt. Whitewash and paint were made to do
duty. Everywhere order slowly began to replace confusion; hope,
despair; and profits, losses. As he observed, day by day, new life and
strength being imparted to every department of his property, this
white son of the South began revising his own creed regarding the
wisdom of educating Negroes.
Hitherto his creed regarding the value of an educated Negro had been
rather a plain and simple one, and read: "The only end that could be
accomplished by educating a black man was to enable him to talk
properly to a mule; and the Negro's education did great injustice to
the mule, since the language tended to confuse him and make him
balky."
We need not continue the story, except to add that to-day the grasp of
the hand of this ex-slaveholder, and the listening to his hearty words
of gratitude and commendation for the education of the Negro, are
enough to compensate those who have given and those who have worked
and sacrificed for the elevation of my people through all of these
years. If we are patient, wise, unselfish, and courageous, such
examples will multiply as the years go by.
Before closing this chapter,--which, I think, has clearly shown that
there is at present a very distinct lack of industrial training in
the South among the Negroes,--I wish to say a few words in regard to
certain objections, or rather misunderstandings, which have from time
to time arisen in regard to the matter.
Many have had the thought that industrial training was meant to make
the Negro work, much as he worked during the days of slavery. This is
far from my idea of it. If this training has any value for the Negro,
as it has for the white man, it consists in teaching the Negro how
rather not to work, but how to make the forces of nature--air, water,
horse-power, steam, and electric power--work for him, how to lift
labour up out of toil and drudgery into that which is dignified and
beautiful. The Negro in the South works, and he works hard; but his
lack of skill, coupled with ignorance, causes him too often to do his
work in the most costly and shiftless manner, and this has kept him
near the bottom of the ladder in the business world. I repeat that
industrial education teaches the Negro how not to drudge in his work.
Let him who doubts this contrast the Negro in the South toiling
through a field of oats with an old-fashioned reaper with the white
man on a modern farm in the West, sitting upon a modern "harvester,"
behind two spirited horses, with an umbrella over him, using a machine
that cuts and binds the oats at the same time,--doing four times as
much work as the black man with one half the labour. Let us give the
black man so much skill and brains that he can cut oats like the white
man, then he can compete with him. The Negro works in cotton, and has
no trouble so long as his labour is confined to the lower forms of
work,--the planting, the picking, and the ginning; but, when the Negro
attempts to follow the bale of cotton up through the higher stages,
through the mill where it is made into the finer fabrics, where the
larger profit appears, he is told that he is not wanted.
The Negro can work in wood and iron; and no one objects so long as he
confines his work to the felling of trees and sawing of boards, to the
digging of iron ore and making of pig iron. But, when the Negro
attempts to follow this tree into the factory where it is made into
desks and chairs and railway coaches, or when he attempts to follow
the pig iron into the factory where it is made into knife-blades and
watch-springs, the Negro's trouble begins. And what is the objection?
Simply that the Negro lacks the skill, coupled with brains, necessary
to compete with the white man, or that, when white men refuse to work
with coloured men, enough skilled and educated coloured men cannot be
found able to superintend and man every part of any one large
industry; and hence, for these reasons, they are constantly being
barred out. The Negro must become, in a larger measure, an intelligent
producer as well as a consumer. There should be a more vital and
practical connection between the Negro's educated brain and his
opportunity of earning his daily living.
A very weak argument often used against pushing industrial training
for the Negro is that the Southern white man favours it, and,
therefore, it is not best for the Negro. Although I was born a slave,
I am thankful that I am able so far to rid myself of prejudice as to
be able to accept a good thing, whether it comes from a black man or a
white man, a Southern man or a Northern man. Industrial education will
not only help the Negro directly in the matter of industrial
development, but also in bringing about more satisfactory relations
between him and the Southern white man. For the sake of the Negro and
the Southern white man there are many things in the relation of the
two races that must soon be changed. We cannot depend wholly upon
abuse or condemnation of the Southern white man to bring about these
changes. Each race must be educated to see matters in a broad, high,
generous, Christian spirit: we must bring the two races together, not
estrange them. The Negro must live for all time by the side of the
Southern white man. The man is unwise who does not cultivate in every
manly way the friendship and good will of his next-door neighbour,
whether he be black or white. I repeat that industrial training will
help cement the friendship of the two races. The history of the world
proves that trade, commerce, is the forerunner of peace and
civilisation as between races and nations. The Jew, who was once in
about the same position that the Negro is to-day, has now recognition,
because he has entwined himself about America in a business and
industrial sense. Say or think what we will, it is the tangible or
visible element that is going to tell largely during the next twenty
years in the solution of the race problem.