The Negro has now reached a critical stage in his career. The point
of attachment between the races which slavery made possible has been
destroyed. The relation is daily becoming less intimate and friendly,
and more business-like and formal. It thus becomes all the more
imperative that the race should gain for itself the primary principles
of knowledge and culture.
The social separation of the races in America renders it imperative
that the professional classes among the Negroes should be recruited
from their own ranks. Under ordinary circumstances, professional
places are filled by the most favored class in the community. In a
Latin or Catholic country, where the fiction of “social equality”
does not exist, there is felt no necessity for Negro priest, teacher,
or physician to administer to his own race. But in America this is
conceded to be a social necessity. Such being the case, the Negro
leader, to use a familiar term, requires all the professional
equipment of his white confrere, and special knowledge of the needs
and circumstances of his race in addition. The teacher of the Negro
child, the preacher of a Negro congregation, or the physician to Negro
patients, certainly requires as much professional skill as those who
administer to the corresponding needs of the white race. Nor are
the requirements of the situation one whit diminished because the
bestower is of the same race as the recipient. The Negro has the same
professional needs as his white confrere and can be qualified for his
function only by courses of training of like extent and thoroughness.
By no other means can he be qualified to enlighten the ignorant,
restrain the vicious, care for the sick and afflicted, or administer
solace to weary souls, plead in litigation the cause of the injured.