HANDS OF NEGRO TEACHERS?
BY MRS. PAUL L. DUNBAR.
[Illustration: Mrs. Paul L. Dunbar]
MRS. PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR.
Mrs. Paul Laurence Dunbar (Alice Ruth Moore) was born in New
Orleans, La., July 19, 1875. Attended public schools there
and Straight University, and was graduated from the latter
institution in 1892. Taught in the public schools of New
Orleans until 1896, when she went to Boston and New York for
study, taking a course in Manual Training at the Teachers'
College. Was appointed a teacher in the public schools of
Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1897, and taught there until her
marriage to Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar, in March, 1898.
In 1895, Mrs. Dunbar's first book, "Violets and Other
Tales," was published by the Monthly Review Publishing
Company, Boston. The next book, "The Goodness of St.
Rocque," published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, in 1899,
was favorably received by some of the best critics. Mrs.
Dunbar has written a number of short stories for some of the
leading magazines and newspapers in the country, among them
McClures, the Smart Set, Ladies' Home Journal, the Southern
Workman, Leslie's Weekly, the New York Sun, Boston
Transcript, and for over a year did regular work on the
Chicago News.
While teaching in Brooklyn, Mrs. Dunbar was actively
interested in mission work on the East Side of New York,
conducting classes in manual training and kindergarten after
the regular hours of public school work was over. Since her
marriage, Mrs. Dunbar has resided in Washington, and has
done some of her best work in short story writing, as well
as acting as secretary and general helpmeet for her husband.
It seems a rather incongruous fact that so many of our Negro colleges
in the South, whose purpose is avowedly the insistence of higher
education of Negro youth, should deny that youth not only the
privilege of teaching in the very institutions which have taught him,
but also deny him the privilege of looking up to and reverencing his
own people. For so long have the whites been held up to the young
people as the only ones whom it is worth while taking as models; for
so long have the ignorant of the race been taught that their best
efforts after all, are hardly worth while, that wherever possible, it
behooves us to place over the masses those of their own race who have
themselves attained to that dignity to which the education of the
schools tend.
It has been my good or ill fortune to number among my acquaintances a
number of young boys and girls who could rattle off with fluency the
names of Greek philosophers of ancient days; who could at a moment's
notice tell you the leading writers of the Elizabethan period, or the
minor Italian poets of the fifteenth century, but who were hopelessly
ignorant of what members of their own race had done. They had,
perhaps, a vague idea of an occasional name here and there, but what
the owner of that name had done was a mystery. Happily these instances
are decreasing in proportion as our schools are filled with teachers
of our own race who can teach a proper appreciation of, and pride in
the deeds of that race.
It is unreasonable to suppose that any teacher of another race, no
matter how conscientious and scrupulous, is going to take the same
interest in putting before his pupils the achievements of that people
in contradistinction to the accepted course of study as laid down by
the text books. How many young students of history in the white-taught
schools remember being drilled to revere the glorious memory of
Lincoln, and Sumner and Garrison and Wendell Phillips, and how few
remember being drilled to remember Crispus Attucks and the
fifty-fourth and fifty-fifth Massachusetts? How many students of
literature are taught of the first woman writer in America to earn
distinction, Margaret Hutchinson, but how few are reminded of her
contemporary, Phyllis Wheatley? How many students remember the
lachrymose career of Byron and how few know of his contemporary,
Poushkin? The student of natural science is taught about Franklin, but
not of Benjamin Banneker; the elocution classes remember Booth and
Macready, and even how excellent an actor was Shakespeare, but they
seldom hear of Ira Aldridge. How many of the mathematical students
remember that Euclid was a black man? And the elementary classes in
art, how glibly they can discuss Turner and Ruskin and the
pre-Raphaelites and the style of Gibson, but they are likely not to
know the name of the picture that the Paris Salon hung for Henry
Tanner.
It is unreasonable, of course, to expect any Caucasian to remember
these things, or if remembering them, to be able to point them out
with the same amount of pride and persistence that a Negro in the same
position would. And therein lies the secret of the foundation of a
family, a government, a nation--pride. Pride in what has been done, in
what may be done, in the ability to reach the very highest point that
may be reached. With that quality instilled in the young from the very
first, the foundation for individual achievement is firmly laid; and
what more can we ask of any education?
It has been said that Negro boys and girls hearing of the deeds of
some great man or woman have exclaimed, "Oh, well, no colored person
could do that!" Fortunately, there are few of these now, but how much
it is to be regretted that such an expression could ever have been
made--at least within the last thirty years?
By all means let us have Negro teachers in our Negro schools and
colleges. Let the boy who wants to be a farmer carry with him the
memory of successful Negro farmers and of a Negro who knew enough
about scientific agriculture to teach him to compete with the best
white farmers in the country. It will be easier for him to reach his
goal, and he will have more respect for his own ability and less
cringing, servile admiration for his Caucasian rivals. Let the boy or
girl whose inclinations tend to a profession get their instruction
from some one whose complexion is akin to their own. It is a spur to
ambition, a goal to be reached. The "what man has done, man may do" is
so much easier from a successful brother than from a successful,
though supercilious, neighbor.
Of course, the good effect of Negro teachers upon the youthful minds
is the only point thus far touched upon. The other side of the
question is obvious. What is the use of training teachers, of spending
time and money acquiring college training if there is no place to use
such training? There is room, and plenty of it, for the college bred
man and woman, and for every place filled by our own teachers there is
so much more money saved to our own race.
The closer the corporation, the wealthier it is. The tighter the lines
drawn about distributing money outside our own great family the more
affluent our family becomes. Every cent is an important item. More
money for ourselves, a better opinion of our own achievements and
ability to do more, higher regard for the raising of Negro ideals, and
a deeper sense of the responsibility imposed on each individual to do
his part towards leavening the lump; these things are dependent upon
our teachers in our own schools.
By all means let us have Negro teachers in Negro colleges.
TOPIC IX.
WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM?
BY BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
[Illustration: Booker T. Washington.]
PROF. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, A. M.
Prof. B. T. Washington, the founder and principal of the
Tuskegee, Alabama, Normal Industrial Institute, was born at
Hale's Ford Postoffice, Franklin County, Virginia, about
1856 or 1857. At the age of nine he went with his mother and
the rest of the family to Malden, Kanawha County, West
Virginia. Here he attended the common schools until 1872. In
the Fall of that year he left Malden and proceeded to
Hampton Institute, at Hampton, Virginia. His means were
scanty, but he thought he had money enough to reach that
place. Upon his arrival at Richmond, he found himself minus
enough to pay for a night's lodging. He took the next best,
shelter under a sidewalk. Next morning he got employment in
helping to unload a vessel, thus earning a sufficient sum
with which to continue his journey to Hampton. At this
institution the first year he paid his expenses by working,
with a brother helping him some. The two remaining years he
worked out his entire expenses as janitor. Graduating in
1875, he taught school several years at Malden, the place of
his birth. In 1878 he entered Wayland Seminary and took a
course of studies there. After leaving there he was given a
position in Hampton Institute, which position he held two
years, the last year having charge of the Indian boys.
Meanwhile the Legislature of Alabama passed an act
establishing a Normal School at Tuskegee, Alabama. The State
Commissioners applied to Gen. S. C. Armstrong, principal of
Hampton Institute, to recommend some one for principal. He
recommended Mr. Washington, who went at once to Alabama, and
organized the school July 4th, 1881. The buildings then
occupied were a church and a small dwelling house, with
thirty pupils and one teacher. Since that time it has made
such wonderful progress that, to-day, the site of the
institution is a city within itself. Mr. Carnegie recently
donated to the institution $20,000, with which to build and
equip a library. It is aided by friends both North and
South. Mr. Washington is a splendid example of "grit and
determination," and the history of his life is worthy the
study of every colored youth in our land.
Professor Washington, in speaking of his experiences at
Hampton, says: "While at Hampton, I resolved, if God
permitted me to finish the course of study, I would enter
the far South, the black belt of the Gulf States, and give
my life in providing as best I could the same kind of chance
for self-help for the youth of my race that I found ready
for me when I went to Hampton, and so, in 1881, I left
Hampton and went to Tuskegee and started the Normal and
Industrial Institute."
Professor Washington is in great demand as a speaker in all
educational gatherings. For several consecutive years he has
addressed the National Educational Association, where from
ten to fifteen thousand of the cream of the educational
workers of the nation listen to his addresses with rapt
attention. Without question he is the great leader of his
race, and one of the great men of this age.
"Will Education Solve the Race Problem?" is the title of an
interesting article in the June number of The North American Review,
by Professor John Roach Straton, of Macon, Georgia. My own belief is
that education will finally solve the race problem. In giving some
reasons for this faith, I wish to express my appreciation of the
sincere and kindly spirit in which Professor Straton's article is
written. I grant that much that he emphasizes as to present conditions
is true. When we recall the past, these conditions could not be
expected to be otherwise; but I see no reason for discouragement or
loss of faith. When I speak of education as a solution for the race
problem, I do not mean education in the narrow sense, but education
which begins in the home and includes training in industry and in
habits of thrift, as well as mental, moral and religious discipline,
and the broader education which comes from contact with the public
sentiment of the community in which one lives. Nor do I confine myself
to the education of the Negro. Many persons in discussing the effect
that education will have in working out the Negro question, overlook
the helpful influence that will ultimately come through the broader
and more generous education of all the race elements of the South. As
all classes of whites in the South become more generally educated in
the broader sense, race prejudice will be tempered and they will
assist in lifting up the black man.
In our desire to see a better condition of affairs, we are too often
inclined to grow impatient because a whole race is not elevated in a
short time, very much as a house is built. In all the history of
mankind there have been few such radical, social and economic changes
in the policy of a nation as have been effected within thirty-five
years in this country, with respect to the change of four million and
a half of slaves into four million and a half of freemen (now nearly
ten million). When all the conditions of the past are considered, and
compared with the present, I think the White South, the North and the
Negro are to be congratulated on the fact that conditions are no
worse, but are as encouraging as they are. The sudden change from
slavery to freedom, from restraint to liberty, was a tremendous one;
and the wonder is, not that the Negro has not done better, but that he
has done as well as he has. Every thoughtful student of the subject
expected that the first two or three generations of freedom would lead
to excesses and mistakes on the part of the Negro, which would in many
cases cause moral and physical degeneration, such as would seem to the
superficial observer to indicate conditions that could not be
overcome. It was to be anticipated that, in the first generation at
least, the tendency would be, among a large number, to seek the shadow
instead of the substance; to grasp after the mere signs of the highest
civilization instead of the reality; to be led into the temptation of
believing that they could secure, in a few years, that which it has
taken other races thousands of years to obtain. Any one who has the
daily opportunity of studying the Negro at first hand cannot but gain
the impression that there are indisputable evidences that the Negro
throughout the country is settling down to a hard, common sense view
of life; that he is fast learning that a race, like an individual,
must pay for everything it gets--the price of beginning at the bottom
of the social scale and gradually working up by natural processes to
the highest civilization. The exaggerated impressions that the first
years of freedom naturally brought are giving way to an earnest,
practical view of life and its responsibilities.
Let us take a broad, generous survey of the Negro race as it came into
the country, represented by twenty savages, in 1619, and trace its
progress through slavery, through the Civil War period, and through
freedom to the present moment. Who will be brave enough to say that
the colored race, as a whole, has not increased in numbers and grown
stronger mentally, morally, religiously, industrially, and in the
accumulation of property? In a word, has not the Negro, at every
stage, shown a tendency to grow into harmony with the best type of
American civilization?
Professor Straton lays special stress upon the moral weakness of the
race. Perhaps the worst feature of slavery was that it prevented the
development of a family life, with all of its far-reaching
significance. Except in rare cases the uncertainties of domicile made
family life, during two hundred and fifty years of slavery, an
impossibility. There is no institution so conducive to right and high
habits of physical and moral life as the home. No race starting in
absolute poverty could be expected, in the brief period of thirty-five
years, to purchase homes and build up a family life and influence that
would have a very marked impression upon the life of the masses. The
Negro has not had time enough to collect the broken and scattered
members of his family. For the sake of illustration, and to employ a
personal reference, I do not know who my own father was; I have no
idea who my grandmother was; I have or had uncles, aunts and cousins,
but I have no knowledge as to where most of them now are. My case will
illustrate that of hundreds of thousands of black people in every part
of our country. Perhaps those who direct attention to the Negro's
moral weakness, and compare his moral progress with that of the
whites, do not consider the influence of the memories which cling
about the old family homestead upon the character and aspirations of
individuals. The very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if he
fails in life, he will disgrace the whole family record, extending
back through many generations, is of tremendous value in helping him
to resist temptations. On the other hand, the fact that the individual
has behind him and surrounding him proud family history and
connections serves as a stimulus to make him overcome obstacles, when
striving for success. All this should be taken into consideration, to
say nothing of the physical, mental and moral training which
individuals of the white race receive in their homes. We must not pass
judgment on the Negro too soon. It requires centuries for the
influence of home, school, church and public contact to permeate the
mass of millions of people, so that the upward tendency may be
apparent to the casual observer. It is too soon to decide what effect
general education will have upon the rank and file of the Negro race,
because the masses have not been educated.
Throughout the South, especially in the Gulf states, the great bulk of
the black population lives in the country districts. In these
districts the schools are rarely in session more than three months of
the year. When this is considered, in connection with poor teachers,
poor schoolhouses, and an almost entire lack of apparatus, it is
obvious that we must wait longer before we can judge, even
approximately, of the effect that general education will have upon the
whole population. Most writers and speakers upon the subject of the
Negro's non-progressiveness base their arguments upon alleged facts
and statistics of the life of Negroes in the large cities. This is
hardly fair. Before the Civil War the Negro was not, to any
considerable extent, a denizen of the large cities. Most of them lived
on the plantations. The Negro living in the cities has undergone two
marked changes: (1) the change from slavery to freedom; (2) the change
from country life to city life. At first the tendency of both these
changes was, naturally, to unsettle, to intoxicate and to lead the
Negro to wrong ideas of life. The change from country life to city
life, in the case of the white man, is about as marked as in the case
of the Negro. The average Negro in the city, with all of its
excitements and temptations, has not lived there more than half a
generation. It is, therefore, too soon to reach a definite conclusion
as to what the permanent effect of this life upon him will be. This, I
think, explains the difference between the moral condition of the
Negro, to which Professor Straton refers, in the states where there
has been little change in the old plantation life, as compared with
that in the more northern of the Atlantic states, where the change
from country to city life is more marked.
Judging from close observation, my belief is that, after the Negro has
overcome the false idea which city life emphasizes, two or three
generations will bring about an earnestness and steadiness of purpose
which do not now generally obtain. As the Negro secures a home in the
city, learns the lessons of industry and thrift and becomes a
taxpayer, his moral life improves. The influence of home surroundings,
of the school, the church and public sentiment will be more marked and
have a more potent effect in causing him to withstand temptations.
But, notwithstanding the shortness of the time which the Negro has had
in which to get schooled to his new life, any one who has visited the
large cities of Europe will readily testify that the visible signs of
immorality in those cities are far greater than among the colored
people of America. Prostitution for gain is far more prevalent in the
cities of Europe than among the colored people of our cities.
Professor Straton says that the Negro has degenerated in morals since
he became free; in other words, that his condition in this respect is
not as hopeful as it was during the early period of slavery. I do not
think it wise to place too much reliance upon such a view of the
matter, because there are too few facts upon which to base a
comparison. The bald statement that the Negro was not given to crime
during slavery proves little. Slavery represented an unnatural
condition of life, in which certain physical checks were kept
constantly upon the individual. To say that the Negro was at his
best, morally, during the period of slavery is about the same as to
say that the two thousand prisoners in the State prison and the city
penal institutions in the city of Boston are the most righteous two
thousand people in Boston. I question whether one can find two
thousand persons in Boston who will equal these two thousand
imprisoned criminals in the mere negative virtues. During the days of
slavery the Negro was rarely brought into the court to be tried for
crime; hence, there was almost no public record of crimes committed by
him. Each master, in most cases, punished his slave as he thought
best, and as little as possible was said about it outside of his
little plantation world. The improper relations between the sexes,
with which the black race is now frequently charged in most sections
of the South, were encouraged or winked at, under the slavery system,
because of the financial value of the slaves. A custom that was
fostered for three centuries cannot be blotted out in one generation.
In estimating the progress of a race, we should not consider alone the
degree of success which has been actually attained, but also the
obstacles which have been overcome in reaching that success. Judged by
the obstacles overcome, few races, if any, in history have made
progress commensurate with that of the colored people of the United
States, in the same length of time. It may be conceded that the
present generation of colored people does not compare favorably with
the present generation of the white race, because of the reasons I
have already given, and the further reason that on account of the
black man's poverty of means to employ lawyers to have his case
properly appealed to the higher courts, and his inability to furnish
bonds, his criminal record is much worse than that of the white race,
both in the Northern and Southern states. The Southern states, as a
whole, have not yet reached a point where they are able to provide
reformatories for juvenile offenders, and consequently most of these
are sent to the state prison, where the records show that the same
individuals are often committed over and over again, because in the
first instance, the child prisoner, instead of being reformed, becomes
simply hardened to prison life. In the North, it is true, the Negro
has the benefit of the reformatories; but the unreasonable prejudice
which prevents him from securing employment in the shops and the
factories more than offsets this advantage. Hundreds of Negroes in the
North become criminals who would become strong and useful men if they
were not discriminated against as bread winners.