promise alone that brightens our sky. The dawn has appeared. The music
of the morn has already been heard, and nations are awaking and
rushing to crowd around the altar as worshippers at the shrine of
learning. What lover of letters would doubt for a moment that if
Thomas Carlyle could re-enter the world of letters and dignify the
profession with the fertility of his brain, instead of captivating the
world with his beautiful outline of heroes and hero worship, he would
summon all his powers as an agency to do reverence, as a worshipper
at the shrine, not of things material, not of men, but of _ideas_.
This is the school to which we are crowding. In the development of our
educational system we are enabled to find the highest ideals and
center our thoughts on the highest and purest standard of life.
Only those who think, or those who seek to know the virtues of
intelligence, and to enjoy the beauties of a pure and ideal life, can
enter into the spirit of rejoicing over the approach of the time when
each person will be measured by what is represented in his ability to
exert a potent influence in shaping the destiny of things and helping
to mold public sentiment. The mind can no more be allowed to remain
dormant or inactive than the turf of the field, or the muscles of the
body. It must be stirred up; it must be awakened from its stupor and
quickened into a newness of life.
The opportunity for this general awakening was denied our parents, who
were the victims of slavery, and they suffered the loss of the
prestige and influence that naturally follows; but what was lost to
our ancestry must be redeemed to posterity. We must center our work in
the youth of our land and give them the broadest, deepest and highest
training. The most liberal education should be provided for all. An
education free from bias, free from proscription, free from any label
that will mark them as Negro laborers, as Negro mechanics, as Negro
scholars, but an education that will mark them as artisans, as skilled
mechanics, as scholars, thinkers, as men and women with master minds
and noble souls. In this will we find the reward for our labors and
the hope of the race. I agree with the writer who says: "There is
nothing to be compared with the beauty of an excellent character and
the usefulness of a noble life. To the unlimited, unfettered spirit of
man's mind that can rise above the mountain peaks and sweep across the
ocean bounds. To that unequaled beauty of a pure and spotless soul.
The whole earth, with all its beauties of art and skill, are counted
as naught in the sight of God, as compared with a living creature,
that represents in his body the image of his Creator, and in his mind
and soul the divine principles of the mystery, the power, and glory of
His Son."
'Tis not enough to know that schools and colleges exist, and to boast
of the advantages, and opportunities afforded us. We must lay hold
upon them and become a part of them. We must, by our own efforts, out
of our own means, build, own and control our own institutions for the
training of our youths, and then establish enterprises of business for
the practical display and use of the training received.
The great trouble about our system of education is that the masses
have not yet felt the real good of it. To some it is no good, because
they have simply gotten enough to misuse. You cannot satisfy a man's
appetite by stopping him at the door of your dining room, where he can
get only a smell of the dinner while he sees others eating. Of course
he would turn away in disgust and call it all a farce. You cannot
teach a man to swim by stopping him at the water's edge. You cannot
convince a man that he is at the top of a mountain when you stop him
at the base, where he can look up and see others above him; and you
cannot show a man the virtue of education when you stop him at the
school house door and deny him entrance while others crowd by and pass
through. Let him in. Open the doors wide and let all come in and sit
down to the intellectual feast. We want to bring the people out into
the middle of the stream, into the deep water where they can be borne
up by the strong tide of intellect and follow the current of popular
ideas.
We must take them up and away from the foot of the mountain, place
them on top, where they can bask in the sunlight of intelligence,
where the atmosphere is pure and the virtue of education beams in
every eye. God made man in his own image, prepared him a body,
arranged for his food and raiment, stretched nature before him, and
then commissioned him to go forth and subdue, replenish and have
dominion over all. Yea more than this. He endowed man with reasoning
faculties and for these faculties fixed no bounds; but left them to
work out their own destiny and achieve their own triumphs.
I do not believe God intended for man's mind to remain undeveloped. He
did not intend that His creatures should forever remain ignorant and
shrouded in ignorance. Wherever He places talents there he expects to
find evidence of growth and increase. Hence it is our duty to educate
and prepare all for the intelligent use of what God has given them. If
we expect to have a part in shaping events in this life; if we expect
to be numbered among the learned, the strong, the molders of public
sentiment, the masters of things material, free from abject menial
servitude, we must educate the people.
Let this idea run all through our schools until it permeates the life
of every boy, every girl, every man, every woman; making its influence
felt in every home, every clime and among all nations.
THIRD PAPER.
WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM?
BY PROF. KELLEY MILLER.
It is a hopeful sign when those who are vitally concerned in the
outcome of the Negro problem are guided in their discussion by the
light of evidence and argument, and are not impelled to foregone
conclusions by transmitted prejudice and traditional bias. The article
of Professor John Roach Straton in the North American Review for June,
1900, is notable for its calm, dispassionate, argumentative treatment,
and for its freedom from rancor and venom. His conclusions, therefore,
if erroneous, are all the more damaging because of the evident
sincerity and helpful intention of the author.
With much erudition and argumentative skill Professor Straton sets
forth the proposition that education has failed to check the Negro's
degenerating tendencies or to fit him for his "strange and abnormal
environment."
There are two leading divisions of the race problem:
1. The development of a backward race.
2. The adjustment of two races with widely divergent ethnic
characteristics.
These two factors are, in the mind of many, antagonistic to each
other. The more backward and undeveloped the Negro, the easier is the
process of his adjustment to the white race; but when you give him
"Greek and Latin and eyeglasses" frictional problems inevitably arise.
Under slavery this adjustment was complete, but the bond of adjustment
was quickly burst asunder when the Negro was made a free man and
clothed with full political and civil privilege. The one great
question which so far remains unanswerable is, can the two be
readjusted on terms of equality? The solution of social problems
belongs to the realm of statesmanship, philanthropy and religion. The
function of education is to develop latent faculties. It was a shallow
philosophy which prophesied that a few years of schooling on the part
of the Negro would solve the race question. If the education of the
colored man has not worked out the fulfillment which its propounders
prophesied, it simply proves them to be poor prophets. The Negro, too,
believed that if he could only learn to read and write, and
especially if he could go to college, that he would be relieved of
every incumbrance that beset him. Education was looked upon as an end
and not as an agency. As his friends were destined to disappointment,
the Negro himself was doomed to humiliation and chagrin. Education
creates as many problems as it solves. It is both static and
dynamical. When Professor Straton says, therefore, that education has
not solved the race problem, he utters a truism. But if he means to
imply that it has not had a wholesome effect upon the life of the
Negro, his conclusion verges upon the absurd.
We are apt to be misled by the statistics showing the decline of
illiteracy among Negroes. All those who can read and write are set
apart as educated persons, as if this mere mechanical information had
worked some great transformation in their nature. The fact, is a very
small per cent of the race is educated in any practical or efficient
sense. The simple ability to read and write is of the least possible
benefit to a backward race. What advantage would it be to the red
Indians to be able to trace the letters of the English alphabet with a
pen, or to vocalize the printed characters into syllables and
sentences? Unless the moral nature is touched and the vital energies
aroused there would be no improvement in conduct or increase in
practical efficiency. Education has a larger function for a backward
than for a forward race. To the latter it merely furnishes a key to an
existing lock, while to the former it must supply both lock and key.
The pupil who is already acquainted with the nature and conditions of
a problem may need only a suggestion as to a skillful or lucky
combination of parts in order to lead to its solution; whereas to one
ignorant of the underlying facts and factors such suggestion would be
worse than useless.
Even much of the so-called higher education of the Negro has been only
a process of artificially forcing a mass of refined information into a
system which had no digestive or assimilative apparatus. Such
education produces no more nourishment or growth than would result
from forcing sweetmeats down the throat of an alligator. Of education
in its true sense the Negro has had very little. The great defect of
the Negro's nature is his lack of individual initiative, growing out
of his feeble energy of will. To overcome this difficulty, his
training should be judiciously adapted and sensibly applied to his
needs. Industrial training will supply the method and the higher
culture the motive.
Professor Straton tells us that $100,000,000 have already been
expended upon the education of this race. Princely as this sum seems
to be, it is nevertheless utterly insignificant when compared with the
magnitude of the task to which it has been applied. The city of New
York alone spends $15,000,000 annually for educational purposes. And
yet if we are to believe the rumors of corruption and the low state of
municipal morality it will be seen that education has not yet done its
perfect work in our great metropolis. Then why should we rave at the
heart and froth at the mouth because a sum of money, scarcely equal to
a third of the educational expenditure of a single American city,
though distributed over a period of thirty years and scattered over a
territory of a million square miles, has not completely civilized a
race of 8,000,000 degraded souls?
The whites maintain that they impose taxes upon themselves for the
education of the blacks. This is only one of the many false notions of
political economy which have done so much to blight the prosperity of
the South. Labor pays every tax in the world; and although the laborer
may not enjoy the privilege of passing the tribute to the tax taker,
he is nevertheless entitled to share in all of the privileges which
his toil makes possible. And besides children are not educated because
their parents are taxpayers, but in order that they may become more
helpful and efficient members of the community. It would be wisdom on
the part of the South to place the future generations under bonded
debt, if necessary, for the education of its ignorant population,
white and black. This would be far more statesmanlike than to transmit
to them a legacy of ignorance, degradation and crime. Pride in a
political theory should no longer prevent the appeal to national aid
to remove the threatening curse.
Professor Straton underestimates the effect of culture upon a backward
race when he minimizes the value of individual emergence. The
individual is the proof of the race. The conception of progress has
always found lodgment in the mind of some select individuals, whence
it has trickled down to the masses below. May it not be that the races
which have withered before the breath of civilization, have faded
because they failed to produce individuals with sufficient
intelligence, courage and good sense to wisely guide and direct their
path? What names can the red Indian present to match Benjamin Banneker
or Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass or Paul Laurence Dunbar?
The Negro has contributed four hundred patented inventions to the
mechanical genius of his country; how many has the aborigine
contributed? The congressional library has collected fourteen hundred
books and pamphlets by Negro authors. These works are, of course, in
the main, commonplace or indifferent. But a people who have the
ambition to write poor books will soon gain the ability to make good
ones. Have any of the vanished races shown such aptitude for
civilization? But these are exceptions. So are the eminent men of any
race. When the exceptions become too numerous it is rather poor logic
to urge them in proof of the rule. It is also a mistake to suppose
that these picked individuals are without wholesome influence upon the
communal life. They are diffusive centers of light scattered
throughout the whole race. These grains of leaven will actually leaven
the whole lump.
"We take these savages from their simple life and their low plane of
evolution and attempt to give them an enlightenment for which the
stronger races have prepared themselves by ages of growth." There is
in this utterance a tinge of the feeling which actuated the laborers
who had borne the heat and burden of the day when they objected to the
eleventh hour intruders being received on equal terms with themselves.
One answer suffices for both: "Other men have labored, and ye are
entered into their labors." It is true that the Negro misses evolution
and his adjustment to his environment is made the more difficult on
that account. Education, therefore, is all the more essential and
vital. The chasm between civilization and savagery must be bridged by
education. The boy learns in a few years what it took the race ages to
acquire. A repetition of the slow steps and stages by which progress
has been secured is impossible. Attachment to civilization must take
place at its highest point, just as we set a graft upon the most
vigorous and healthy limb of a tree, and not upon a decadent stem.
Must the Negro dwell for generations upon Anglo-Saxon stems and
Cancerian diction before he is introduced to modern forms of English
speech? The child of the African slave is under the same linguistic
necessity as the offspring of Depew and Gladstone. He must leap,
_instanter_, from primitive mode of locomotion to the steamboat, the
electric car and the automobile. Of course many will be lost in the
endeavor to sustain the stress and strain. Civilization is a saver of
life into life and death into death. Japan is the best living
illustration of the rapid acquisition of civilization. England can
utilize no process of art or invention that is not equally invaluable
to the oriental islanders. This has been accomplished by this young
and vigorous people mainly through the education of picked youth.
Herein lies the only salvation of the Negro race.
In the meantime the dual nature of the solution and its relative
importance to both races is clearly indicated by Voltaire, the great
French savant: "It is more meritorious and more difficult to wean men
from their prejudices than to civilize the barbarian."
FOURTH PAPER.
WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM?
BY C. H. TURNER.
[Illustration: Prof. C. H. Turner]
PROF. CHARLES HENRY TURNER, M. S.
Charles Henry Turner was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, February
3, 1867. Both parents were of Negro descent. His mother was
a Kentucky girl and his father a Canadian. Both parents were
temperate and Christian in habits. Neither parent was
college-bred, yet Charles' father was a well-read man, a
keen thinker, and a master of debate. He had surrounded
himself with several hundred choice books and one of the
earliest ambitions of Charles was to learn to read these
books.
The only education of our subject was obtained in the
excellent public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio. From the
Walnut Hills District School Charles passed to the Gaines
High School, from which he graduated valedictorian of his
class. From High School he passed to the University of
Cincinnati, from which he graduated in 1891 with the B. S.
degree, and in 1892 with the M. S. degree.
When a youth in college, Charles hoped some day to be the
head of a technological or agricultural school for Negroes,
and much time and money was expended mastering those
essentials that the head of a school should know. That
youthful day dream has never been realized, but Charles has
been an active teacher for years. Even before graduation he
taught one year in the Governor Street School at Evansville,
Indiana, and occasionally taught, as a substitute, in the
public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1891 to 1893 he was
assistant in Biology at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Since then he has been Professor of Biology at Clark
University, South Atlanta, Ga. In 1901 he was dean of the
Georgia Summer School.
By training Prof. Turner is a biologist who has contributed
his mite towards the advancement of his favorite science. In
the following list of some of the principal publications of
Prof. Turner, those marked with an asterisk are
contributions to biology.
*Morphology of the Avian Brain; "Jour. of Comp. Neur."
(1891), 100 pp. 8 pls.
*A Few Characteristics of the Avian Brain. "Science"
(1891).
*Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider. "Jour. of
Comp. Neur." (1892).
*Notes on the Clodocera, Ostracoda and Rotifera of
Cincinnati. "Bull. Sci. Lab. of Den. Univ." (1892), 17
pp., 2 pls.
*Additional Notes on the Clodocera and Ostracoda of
Cincinnati, 18 pp., (1893), 2 pls. _Ibid._
*Notes on the American Ostracoda. _Ibid_, 11 pp., 2 pls.
*Preliminary Note on the Nervous System of the Genus
Cypris. "Jour. Comp. Neur." (1893), 5 pp., 3 pls.
*Morphology of the Nervous System of Cypris. _Ibid_,
(1896), 24 pp., 6 pls.
*Synopsis of the Entomostraca of Minnesota, etc., C. L.
Herrick and C. H. Turner (1895), 525 pp., 81 pls. [C. H.
Turner is only part author of this.]
Numerous abstracts and translations from German and French
published in the Jour. of Comp. Neur.
Reason for Teaching Biology in Negro Schools.
"Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1897).
Object of Negro Memorial Day (1899).
New Year Thoughts About the Negro. "Southwestern Christian
Advocate" (1899).
*Notes on the Mushroom Bodies of the Invertebrates.
"Zoological Bulletin" (1899), 6 pp., 6 figs.
*A Male Erpetocypris Barbatus, Forbes. "Zool. Bulletin"
(1899).
*Synopsis of North American Invertebrates. V. Fresh-Water
Ostracoda. "Amer. Naturalist" (1899), 11 pp.
Living Dust. "Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1901),
xiii chapter.
*The Mushroom Bodies of the Crayfish and their
Histological Environment. "Jour of Comp. Neur." (1901), 50
pp., 4 pls.
The War of the rebellion is over, Negro slavery in America is no more,
and the days of reconstruction have passed into history.
Dr. DuBois in speaking of that period wrote: "Amid it all two figures
ever stand to typify that day to coming men: the one a gray-haired
gentleman, whose fathers had quit themselves like men, whose sons lay
in nameless graves; who bowed to the evil of slavery because its
abolition boded untold ill to all; who stood at last, in the evening
of life, a blighted, ruined form, with hate in his eyes. And the other
a form black with the mist of centuries, and aforetime bent in love
over the white master's cradle, rocked his sons and daughters to
sleep, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife to the world;
aye, too, had laid herself low to his lusts, and borne a tawny man
child to the world, only to see her dark boy's limbs scattered to the
winds by midnight marauders riding after niggers. These were the
saddest sights of that woeful day; and no man clasped the hands of
these two passing figures of the present-past, but hating they went to
their long home, and hating their children's children live to-day."
Would some power had clasped the hands of these "two fleeting figures
of the present-past!" Then those "marauders chasing niggers" would
have been subdued and there would not be so many bloody threads in the
weft of the history the New South has been weaving.
The "gray-haired gentleman" has left a grandson who has all the
culture and education money and thrift can buy. He is thrifty and
enterprising, law-abiding and conscientious. He has inherited
prejudices, yet he is sincere. He loves the South no less than did his
grandfather; but he loves the Union more. He would die to save the
Union; he lives to glorify the South. He is known as the new
Southerner and he is evolving a New South.
The "marauder chasing niggers" has left a grandson who is illiterate,
uncultured and thriftless. He despises manual labor, but is too poor
and too ignorant to live without doing it. Unfit to be the associate
of the new Southerner, and feeling himself too superior to mingle with
Negroes, he broods over his hardships and bemoans his fate. He is a
Negro hater and thirsts for the excitement of a lynching bee. This
condoned clog to the progress of Southern civilization is known as
white trash.
The "form black with the mist of centuries" has left two grandsons.
One is a thrifty, law-abiding gentleman; too thrifty to be a beggar
and too busy acquiring an education or accumulating wealth or
educating his race to be a loafer or criminal. In his home are all the
comforts of modern life that his purse can afford. He loves his
country and his Southland, and is educating his children to do
likewise. He even contributes his mite to the literature, science and
art of to-day. He is modest and retiring and is known as the new
Negro.
The other grandchild is a thriftless loafer. He is not willing to pay
the price of an education; but he likes to appear intellectually
bright and entertaining. He often works, but merely to obtain the
means for gratifying his abnormally developed appetites. He laughs, he
dances, he frolics. He knows naught of the value of time nor of the
deeper meanings of life. In the main he is peaceable and law-abiding;
but, under the excitement of the moment, is capable of even the worst
of crimes. This thriftless slave of passion, this child-man, this much
condemned clog to the progress of Southern civilization is called the
vagrant Negro.
Prejudice is older than this age. A comparative study of animal
psychology teaches that all animals are prejudiced against animals
unlike themselves, and the more unlike they are the greater the
prejudice. A comparative study of history teaches that races are
prejudiced against races unlike themselves, and the greater the
difference the more the prejudice. Among men, however, dissimilarity
of minds is a more potent factor in causing prejudice than unlikeness
of physiognomy. Races whose religious beliefs are unlike the accepted
beliefs of our race we call heathens; those whose habits of living
fall below the ideals of our own race we call uncivilized. In both
cases we are prejudiced. When a highly civilized race is brought in
contact with another people unlike it in physiognomy but in the same
stage of intellectual advancement, at first each is prejudiced against
the other; but when they become thoroughly acquainted prejudice gives
way to mutual respect. For an example of this recall the relations of
the nations of Europe to the Japanese.