This paper, recognizing the importance of normal and industrial
education, claims for higher education simply the place accorded
to it in other sections in the educational system for the South.
Its right to that place is widely questioned. The _Journal
of Education_ recently had the following: “In spite of the
youthfulness of colored education, some of their schools are graced
with a reprint of a Northern College curriculum. What nine-tenths
of the pupils in these classes want of Latin and Greek, fails of
our comprehension.” We are constantly hearing about “educating them
out of their place.” It will hardly be claimed that the colored man
_cannot_ be educated, when several have graduated with honor from
Northern colleges; when one has passed the fiery ordeal of West
Point; when one, below the middle of a class of six in a Southern
school, graduated above the middle of a class of thirty at Andover
Seminary; and when a Southern examining board say: “We were
impressed with the fact that the colored people, whether of pure
or mixed blood, can receive the education usually given in such
schools.”
Perhaps the frequent remark about “their place” means that they
ought not to be educated. Now and then we see what might have been
a good barber spoiled by the attempt to make him a minister, and a
hasty generalization leads many to say: “_They_, instead of _he_,
ought not to be educated.” Allowing for this folly, this talk about
“their place” raises several questions. Who determines and assigns
the place for six millions of American citizens? Who will keep them
in their assigned places? Are our Declaration of Independence and
Constitution “glittering generalities?” Are the life and teachings
of Christ a vain thing? Pres. Woolsey thanked God for the war to
rid us of slavery before it had so sapped the virtue of the whole
people that we should not be worth saving. Surely He sent it none
too soon. How few are color-blind; how many are color-blinded!
Higher education is needed because time is required for the
mental, and especially the moral, development and furnishing of
pupils, who neither inherit nor receive from home and church
such furnishing. It is needed to continue the work to which it
has already contributed so much, of the adjustment of the former
owner and property to their new relations of brother and man, of
fellow-citizens. The owner could not see the citizen till the man
was developed. He needs higher education that he may take some
part, other than with pick and shovel in, and may have his share
of, the rich benefits of the development of the vast resources of
the South. Again, it is often asked, “Would it not be well for the
negro to keep out of politics?” Would it not be well for Niagara to
run up-hill? He has the ballot, and the duty presses not simply to
fit him to read it, but to furnish leaders who will teach him the
sacredness of that ballot; who will teach him that the interests
of labor and capital are one; the duty of debt paying, personal,
state and national; the sacredness of law and the duty to obey it;
that the United States is a nation and not a confederacy. The law
and medicine should be open to him. The need of thoroughly educated
physicians for these people can hardly be overestimated, and is
second only, if indeed it be second, to the need of ministers.
Higher education should be open to him, that here, if nowhere else,
he may feel that he is like other people; that there may be one
door that is not forever shut in his face with the words, “This is
for white folks.”
Finally, an educated ministry is needed. Pres. Gillman says: “There
is no greater curse to a community than an ignorant ministry.” Dr.
Haygood, in “Our Brother in Black,” says: “The hope of their race
in this country is largely in its pulpit. How urgent the need,
how sacred the duty, of preparing those whom God has called to
preach to this people!” The few ministers who have received partial
training, and others who are making heroic efforts at self-culture
that they may aid their people, are worthy of all praise; but
their number is pitifully small, serving by their light to make
the surrounding darkness visible and to show the need of the best
training. This is needed to remove the mass of crude notions and
superstitions that almost hide the truth. It is often harder to
bring a benighted Christian than a heathen to the light. It is
needed to remove the bitter sectarianism which usurps the place
of the Gospel. This feeding upon ignorance can only be removed
by those whose minds and hearts, broadened by generous culture,
hold the great common truths of Christianity superior to the petty
differences of sects. It is needed to ward off skepticism, which
is to be feared from two sources: the memory of the injuries of
centuries, and the continued experience of many evils, even at
the hands of professed Christians; and, second, the revelation,
as they grow in knowledge, of the emptiness of what is preached
as religion and the ignorance and ofttimes wickedness of their
ministers leading them to loss of respect, to ridicule and to
unbelief. There is abundant testimony to the growth of these evils.
What machinery is needed? In the towns, the three months’ free
school should be so supplemented as to continue nine months. In
the larger towns and cities there should be high and preparatory
schools, with normal classes. At convenient points should be
boarding schools, with preparatory, normal and industrial
instruction. Then, supported and fed by, and inspiring all below,
should be the college, the school of higher education. Justice to
a race long oppressed, obligation to meet more than half way those
states that make generous appropriations to this end, and safety
to the nation, demand that these should be liberally furnished
with such buildings and grounds as health and comfort require,
with libraries and apparatus equal to the best, and an efficient
corps of teachers, so paid that their best energies may be given to
instruction.
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