Many will think me wrong in the opinion I now offer; some of the wisest
of the teachers in the real work of teaching negroes will agree with
me: it is a misfortune that the names given these schools are so out
of proportion to their real work and character. None of them, even in
catalogues, go beyond the ordinary college course; many of them do not
come up to it; in none of them do more than a very small number complete
this course. There is not a university, in any proper sense, among them
all. It is not in the spirit of censure that I speak of these things, but
of deep interest in the great and necessary work, that the good people
engaged in these schools are trying, with rare consecration and in the
teeth of a thousand discouragements, to accomplish.
The great names for these schools have done harm. They are misleading to
begin with, and that is an evil. It is hard enough to get the indifferent
or the antagonistic people to understand the subject of the education of
the negroes at best; it is harder when new meanings have to be given to
old names in order to state acts. I am of the opinion that the names
given to most of these schools have done some harm in the North—whence
the money has been drawn to support them. Northern men have sometimes
spoken to me on these subjects in language that made it plain that they
would have helped more but from a conviction that “schools and not
universities are what these poor people need.” _Per contra_, it may well
enough be answered, some have given largely to build “universities” that
would not give to establish schools. As to the influence on northern
sentiment of the _too-great names_, those who know that sentiment better
than I do can express themselves more definitely. I know that the big
names have done harm in the States where the schools are. At this point
let me say, I am only stating what I believe to be facts. Comments,
inferences, justifications, do not concern me just now.
First, then, the large names have excited prejudice among the white
people who did not know what was back of the names. Most of them, for a
long time, did not know what the universities and colleges were really
trying to do; the majority do not know at this time.
Some of those who did know something thought the whole business a mere
sham; for a long time only a few southern white people really knew that
faithful, wise and successful teaching was done in these colleges and
universities—most of it not being college or university work at all. The
few who really knew what good work was being done could over-look the
ambitious names—it being a weakness in the South and West, yielded to
by not a few, to give great names to small schools for white youth. The
wiser and kinder-hearted ones could condone the offense of over-large
names in view of their own example.
The big names did as much as anything else to anger the poor whites
against all negro education. People who know human nature will understand
this statement without explanation: those who do not know human nature
will not understand it anyway.
The worst evil, in the long run, of this big naming of schools for
the negroes, fell upon the negroes themselves. It aggravated the
tendency—very strong among them—to be satisfied with the name of a thing
in the lack of the thing itself, and, what is more, not knowing that
they can lack the thing when they have the name. Take, for example, “⸺
University,” an admirable school well known to me. Its annual enrollment
will average three hundred; its catalogue course reaches from the primary
studies through an ordinary college curriculum; one in ten attempts this
college course; one in fifty may complete it. The whole three hundred
tell their friends: “I was educated in ⸺ University.” It gives them
importance. They pass as scholars beyond their merits among their own
people. In many of them it breeds injurious conceits—of a sort that
makes enemies of those who might be friends, and prejudices with the
uninformed—who in all countries are the majority—the whole subject of
negro education. It is to be feared that only a few colored students know
the difference between “⸺ University” and a real university.