Education is the highest test of a people’s capacity and the best
measure of their progress. The ability of the Negro to become educated
according to the highest standards of the times is one of the great
marvels of the last half century. Never in the history of the world has
any people met with such overwhelming opposition against acquiring such
training as will fit them for the full duties of citizen, as have the
Freedmen in the United States; never before has a people struggled as
nobly and succeeded so well in mastering every branch of learning, as
this people, practically all of whom were illiterate at the close of the
Civil War; but of whom only thirty per cent were illiterate in 1910.
The influences through which the colored people have passed in their
quest for learning constitutes one of the most interesting pages of
American history. No historian can chronicle the heart throbs, the
ambitions and the untiring energy that they have spent, and are still
expending, in their education.
The various education processes to which the Negroes of America have
been subjected is interwoven with the history of the United States from
the year 1619, when the first slaves were landed, to the present moment.
The story of the development of the African slave, to the present
condition of the American Negro is full of interest and instruction and
worthy of much more extended scientific treatment than this chapter can
possibly comprehend.
With all the mistakes that have been made by a loose-jointed American
democracy in its treatment of the Negroes, both as slaves and as free
men, the general movement of the Negro people has been decidedly
forward. Even under slavery these people benefited by a contact with
civilization that no corresponding groups have had in any other part of
the world. They were quick to perceive that the mastery of the white man
over them lay in his education. Though crushed to the lowest level, they
never lost hope or opportunity to learn the meaning of books and
figures. Sometimes through sympathy of a master’s child, sometimes by a
kindly stranger from the North, a slave learned the alphabet and a
little arithmetic. When the Emancipation Proclamation was sounded the
eagerness and determination of the Negro to obtain an education opened
into full blossom, and the colored people consecrated themselves to the
one great task of educating their children, so that these coming men and
women might be able to live happier and better lives. It was here that
systematic efforts were undertaken to build schools for the colored and
by the colored people. How wonderful has been the result of their effort
is revealed by facts which have just been published by the United States
Bureau of Education. These figures show:
1. That $5,860,876 is spent annually by the public authorities of
Southern States in the wages of teachers in public schools for Negroes.
2. That the Federal State and land-grant schools have an annual income
of $963,611, and a total property valuation of $5,727,609.
3. That the private schools have an annual income of $3,026,460, and a
property valuation of $28,496,946.
4. That eight educational funds are devoting part or all of their income
for the improvement of Negro schools.
5. That the Negroes themselves are contributing an increasing share to
the support of their schools.