University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER V
THE NEGRO TEACHER AND THE NEGRO SCHOOL

IN THE spring of 1907, Colonel Henry Watterson,
of Louisville, Kentucky, the noted Democratic
editor and statesman, made an address
at a great meeting in Carnegie Hall, New York City,
in the interest of Negro education in the South.
Speaking of the work that has been accomplished in
this direction since the War, he said: "The world
has never yet witnessed such progress from darkness
into light as the American Negro has made in the
period of forty years."

When the Negro was made free and became an
American citizen, it is safe to say that not more than
5 or, at most, 10 per cent. of the race could read
and write. In 1900, at the end of less than forty
years of freedom, 55 1/2 per cent. could both read
and write. If Negro education has made as much
progress in the last ten years, as it did from 1890
to 1900, it is safe to say, at the present time, that
not more than 32 per cent. of the Negro population
is without some education in books. As Mr.
Watterson said, no race in history can show a
similar record.

What was it that so aroused a whole race, a
nation within a nation, numbering at the present
time ten millions of people, to make such strides
in education? How has this work been done?

Perhaps the best answer I can make to this
question is to relate my own experience. When
I was a boy in Virginia, I used sometimes to accompany
the white children of the plantation to the
schoolhouse, in our neighbourhood. I went with
them to carry their books, to carry their wraps,
or their lunches, but I was never permitted to go
farther than the schoolroom door. In my childish
ignorance, I did not understand this. During the
hours when the white children were not in school,
we played and chatted together about the house or
in the fields. We rode together our wooden horses;
we fished together in the nearby streams; we
played marbles, town-ball, "tag," and wrestled
together on the parlour floor. And yet, for some
reason I did not understand, I was debarred from
entering the little schoolhouse with the children
of my master.

The thing made such an impression upon my
mind, that I finally asked my mother about it.
She explained the matter to me as best she could,
and from her I heard for the first time that learning
from books in a schoolroom was something that,
as a rule, was forbidden to a Negro child in the
South. The idea that books contained something

which was forbidden aroused my curiosity and
excited in me a desire to find out for myself what
it was in these books that made them forbidden
fruit to me and my race.

From the moment that it was made clear to me
that I was not to go to school, that it was dangerous
for me to learn to read, from that moment I resolved
that I should never be satisfied until I learned
what this dangerous practice was like. What was
true in my case has been true in the case of thousands
of others. If no restriction had been put upon
Negro education, I doubt whether such tremendous
progress in education would have been made.

When I became free all the legal restrictions
against my getting education were removed. Nevertheless
I heard it stated in public speeches that
the Negro was so constituted that he could not
learn from books, and that time, effort and money
would be thrown away in trying to teach him to
master the studies of the ordinary school curriculum.
When I heard this, I resolved again that, at the
price of any sacrifice, I would do my part in order to
prove to the world that the Negro possessed the ability
to get an education, and to use it. If I had heard
no such prediction regarding the ability of the
Negro to get education, I question whether I would
have been any more interested in mastering my
school studies and text-books than the ordinary
white boy.

Directly after the War the whole race was conscious
that a large part of the American people doubted
the ability of the Negro to compete with other
races in the field of learning. But when the
Negro heard people freely discussing his abilities
and making predictions about his future he
determined to see to it that these predictions should
not be fulfilled.

My experience is that it is very unsafe to make
predictions either in regard to races or in regard
to individuals. Sometimes the mere statement
of a prophecy tends to bring about its own fulfillment.
In this case, if the predictions made are
evil, the prophets become, to a certain extent,
responsible for their consequences. At other times
predictions stimulate the people, in regard to whom
they are made, to do something entirely different
than the thing predicted. But in that case, of
course, the predictions do not become true. In
either case prophecy is likely to be unprofitable.

In order to gain a just idea of the distance the
Negro has travelled during the years since freedom
came we should compare his progress with that
of the people of some of the countries of Europe
that have been free for centuries. For example,
in Italy, 38.30 per cent. of the population can neither
read nor write. In Spain the percentage of illiteracy
is 68.1 per cent.; in Russia, 77 per cent.; in Portugal,
79 per cent.; in Brazil, 80 per cent.; in Venezuela,

75 per cent.; and in Cuba 56.6 per cent. By comparison,
the progress of the American Negro
represents a remarkable achievement.

In the early days, when slavery was still merely
an economic and not yet a political institution,
there seems to have been no special restrictions
put either upon the education of slaves or of free
Negroes. If Negroes did not obtain an education
it was because there were few opportunities in
the Southern colonies for any one to receive an
education. In fact, before the Revolution, there
was no such thing as a public school system in
any colony south of Connecticut. The colonies
were opposed in principle to public schools. It
was considered an interference on the part of the
state to undertake the education of the younger
children, who were supposed to be taught at home.

People in England who sent out the first colonies
were interested, however, in the religious education
of the Indians and as the number of slaves increased
they became interested in the education of the
Negroes, who, at that time, were also a "heathen"
people. In fact, the first public school in Virginia,
which was started about 1620, was erected for the
benefit of these native Americans. The Indian
War of 1622 destroyed this school, however, and
thus little or nothing was done to educate either
the Indian or the Negro in the English colonies
until the year 1701, when a society was organised

in England to carry the gospel and its teachings
to the Indians and Negroes in America. In June,
1702, Reverend Samuel Thomas, the first missionary
of this society, in reporting upon his work in South
Carolina, said that he "had taken much pains, also,
in instructing the Negroes, and learned twenty
of them to read."

In 1704, Elias Neau, a French Protestant, established
a catechising school for the Indian and
Negro slaves in New York. His work continued
successfully until 1712, when a conspiracy of the
Negro slaves was discovered in New York, which
was said to have had its origin in Mr. Neau's school.
Upon the trial, however, it appeared that the guilty
Negroes were "such as never came to Mr. Neau's
school. And what is very observable," the chronicle
adds, "the persons whose Negroes were found
most guilty were such as were declared opposers
to making them Christians." In 1738, the Moravian
or United Brethren first attempted to establish
missions exclusively for Negroes. In the Moravian
settlement at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a painting
is preserved of eighteen of the first converts made
by these missionaries in America prior to 1747.
Among the number are Johannes, a Negro of South
Carolina, and Jupiter, a Negro from New York.

The religious instruction of Negroes was begun
by the Presbyterians in Virginia in 1747. In a
letter written in that year, Reverend Samuel Davis

refers to "the poor, neglected Negroes who are so
far from having money to purchase books that
they themselves are the property of others." A
little further on in this same letter, speaking of the
eagerness of the Negro slave to hear the gospel
and to learn to read, he says:

Two years earlier than the date of this letter, in
1745, the Society for Propagating the Gospel in
Foreign Parts established a school in Charleston,
South Carolina. It had at one time as many as
sixty scholars and sent out annually about twenty
Negroes, "well instructed in the English language
and the Christian faith." This school was
established in St. Philip's Church and some of its
scholars were living as late as 1822, when the Denmark
Vesey Conspiracy resulted in the closing of
the schools for free Negroes as well as for slaves.

It seems probable that prior to the Revolution
some attempt was made to teach the Negroes,
wherever they were brought into touch with the
Church. In this way, the Negro Sunday-schools

gave the Negroes the first opportunity for education
and his first school book was the Bible. In 1747,
when slavery was introduced into the colony of
Georgia, respresentatives from twenty-three districts
met in Savannah and drew up resolutions in regard
to the conduct of masters toward their slaves.
Among other things they declared in substance
"that the owners of slaves should educate the
the young and use every possible means of making
religious impressions upon the minds of the aged."

In 1750, the Reverend Thomas Bacon, who was
himself a slave-holder, established in Talbot County,
Maryland, a mission for the poor white and Negro
children. The majority of the colonied children
who attended this school were slaves.[2]

In the Methodist Conference of 1790 the question
was raised: "What can be done in order to instruct
poor children, white and black, to read?" to which
the following reply was made:

The opposition to the teaching of the slaves seems
to have begun in South Carolina. In 1740 that

state passed a law imposing a fine of one hundred
pounds upon any one who should teach any "slave
or slaves in writing in any manner whatsoever."
In 1770 Georgia passed a similar law punishing
with a fine of twenty pounds any person teaching
a slave to read and write.

Immediately after the Revolution there was a
feeling all over the United States that slavery was
soon to pass away. About 1792, however, a Yankee
schoolmaster, Eli Whitney, invented the cotton-gin.
This invention suddenly made Negro slave labour
valuable, particularly in the new states of the
Southwest. From this time on, the feeling that
slave labour was necessary to the economic life
of the Southern states grew to a conviction that
slavery was to be a permanent institution in the
Southern states.

The change in public opinion is reflected in the
laws. In 1819, Virginia passed an act prohibiting
all meetings of slaves, free persons, and mulattoes,
in the night, or any school or schools for teaching
them reading and writing in either day or night.
Ten years later, Georgia passed a law forbidding
any person of colour from receiving instruction
from any source. In 1830, Louisiana forbade free
Negroes entering the state and passed a law against
the printing and distribution of seditious matter
among people of colour and against their being
taught. A year later Mississippi passed a law against

any coloured person, free or slave, from preaching
the gospel. The next year Alabama passed a law
against teaching any free person of colour or slave
and, in 1835, North Carolina abolished the schools
for free persons of colour, which up to that time
had been taught for the most part by white teachers.
The law passed in North Carolina at this time provided
that no descendants of Negro parents, to the
fourth generation, should enjoy the benefit of the
public school system. Similar laws were passed
in Mississippi and Missouri.

In spite of this fact Negroes continued, in one
way or another, to keep alive the little tradition
of learning they had already possessed. In New
Orleans, and in Charleston, South Carolina, there
were clandestine schools in which the children
of free Negroes had an opportunity to get some
sort of an education. In New Orleans it had
long been the custom for planters, who had children
by slave mothers, to send them abroad to France
or to some of the Northern states for their education.
One of the most interesting, as well as one of the
most pathetic, chapters in American history is that
which has to do with this class of white men who
felt in honour bound to support, educate and protect
their illegitimate offspring. To do this meant
in many cases ostracism, loss of property, and
reputation.

In 1833, the city of Mobile was authorised by

an act of legislation to grant licence to suitable
persons to give instruction to the children of the
Creole Negroes in that city. This act applied only
to the county of Baldwin and to the city of
Mobile. The basis for it was the treaty between
France and the United States by which all the
rights and privileges of citizens were guaranteed
to them. It should be remembered, also, that
schools for free coloured people were never
abolished in Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee,
Florida and Texas.

The census of 1860 shows that there were 1,355
free coloured children attending school in Maryland.
The schools were such as the coloured
people could support, from the African Institute
on Saratoga Street, Baltimore, with its hundred
or more scholars, "to the half-dozen urchins learning
their words under the counter of a little tobacco
shop in Annapolis." One of these, known as the
Wells school, was established in 1835 by Nelson
Wells, a coloured man, who applied the income
of $7,000 to its support.

The coloured people who got sufficient education
during the days of slavery to read their Bible may
be divided into four classes: those who were taught
by their owners in spite of law; those who had
white fathers; those who, in some way or other,
obtained their freedom; those who literally stole
their education. There were always a few cases

in all the states where the master or mistress, or
some other member of the family, took sufficient
interest in some individual slave to teach him to
read. Sometimes this was done out of mere curiosity,
just to see if the Negro could learn. I
have met dozens of former slaves who told me
their owners taught them to read, and described
the great precautions sometimes taken to keep
the fact that such teaching was going on from
other members of the same family and from the
neighbours.

The desire to read the Bible was a plea that
usually touched the heart of the more kindly disposed
master. To this day there is an intense
longing among a number of the older people to
learn to read the Bible before they die. No
matter how the slaves obtained their knowledge
of reading and writing, in every case it was like
bringing the germs of an infectious disease into
the household; it spread. Among the free Negroes
of Charleston, the learning that the older people
had obtained previous to 1822 was handed down
from generation to generation until the War
brought freedom to the slave and the free Negro
alike.

During his journey through Northern Mississippi,
Frederick Law Olmsted one day stopped to talk
with a small planter who seemed to have an exceptionally
good class of slaves. Mr. Olmsted referred

to the fine appearance of his Negro labourers,
whereupon the following conversation as reported
by Mr. Olmsted ensued:

When slaves living on the distant plantations
in the back country of Mississippi succeeded in
learning to read it is not difficult to understand
that in the cities, where exceptional opportunities
were given to the slaves employed in the household
services of their masters, a considerable number
should in one way or another learn to read and
write. Frederick Douglass, in the story of his
life, has given a description of the manner in which
he learned to read, which is probably typical of
other slaves in the same class as himself. He says:

In another portion of his narrative, Mr. Douglass
describes how he used to pick pieces of waste
paper from the gutters of Baltimore, and try to
read them. Sometimes he made use of other
devices for getting the knowledge he wanted. For
example, he would bet the white boys, with whom
he frequently played, a marble or a piece of candy
that they could not read an advertisement he found

on the fences or on the side of a house. This
wager would tempt the white boys, of course, to
spell out and read these advertisements, and as
they did this young Douglass was able to learn
from them what the words of the advertisement
meant. This same method of learning to read was
adopted by more than one ambitious slave boy.

It sounds strange to-day, but it was nevertheless
true that up to a few years before the Civil War
there was almost as much opposition to Negro
education in the North as there was in the South.
In 1882, John F. Slater, of Norwich, Connecticut,
gave a million dollars to be used in the education
of the Negro race. Up to that time this was the
largest sum that had ever been given at one time
for a like purpose. Yet, fifty years before, in
the neighbouring town of Canterbury, Prudence
Crandall, a young Quaker schoolmistress, who
ventured to open a school for coloured children,
was mobbed by some of the inhabitants of that
town, and so great was the opposition to the school
that a special law was passed, making it a crime
to open a school for Negroes in that state.

In 1831, when the first national coloured convention
assembled at Philadelphia, it was determined
to establish a college for coloured people, and the
Reverend Samuel E. Cornish, a coloured Presbyterian
clergyman, was appointed agent to secure
funds. In the course of the next year, he succeeded

in raising $3,000 for establishing "a school on the
manual labour plan." Arthur Tappan, the philanthropist,
succeeded in buying several acres of land
in the southern part of New Haven, Connecticut,
and had completed arrangements for erecting a
building. As soon as it was discovered, however,
that it was proposed to erect a Negro school in New
Haven, there was a great outcry and protest from
the citizens. At a public meeting, at which the
mayor presided, it was resolved by a vote of seven
hundred to four, that "the founding of colleges
for educating coloured people is an unwarrantable
and dangerous undertaking to the internal concerns
of other states and ought to be discouraged," and
that "the mayor, aldermen, common-council, and
freemen will resist the establishment of the proposed
college in this state by every lawful means."

About this time, the Noyes Academy, of Canaan,
New Hampshire, opened its doors to coloured
students. Several young men entered the academy,
and for a time the coloured people believed that
they had found a school where they might obtain
advanced education in the United States. On the
3rd of July, 1835, however, a town meeting was
called and a committee was chosen to "remove
the academy." A little more than a month later,
this committee, aided by some three hundred persons
and a hundred yoke of oxen, proceeded to literally
carry out the instruction of the town meeting. In

many other of the Northern states, particularly
in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, even where there
was no law prohibiting the education of Negroes,
no provision was made for educating them in the
public schools.

In spite of the opposition which manifested
itself from time to time against Negro education,
there was a steady increase in the number of
Negro schools in most of the large Northern cities.
I have already referred to the school established by
Anthony Benezet, in 1750. This first noted teacher
of Negroes, who died May 3, 1784, left in his will
property to put this school on a permanent foundation.
The school was continued in the charge
of a committee of Friends, and received donations
from time to time, one donation of three hundred
pounds coming from a coloured man by the name
of Thomas Shirley. In 1849, it appeared from a
statistical study of the condition of coloured people
at Philadelphia, made at that time, that there were
among others the following schools for coloured persons:
A grammar school with 463 pupils; five other
schools with 911; an infant school in charge of the
abolition society with 70 pupils; a "moral reform"
school with 81 pupils. In addition to the public
schools there were also about 20 private schools
with 296 pupils, making an aggregate of more than
1,800 pupils receiving an education of one kind or
another.

In 1832, ten thousand dollars was left by the
will of Richard Humphreys, an ex-slave-holder,
to establish "An Institute for Coloured Youth."
The school was accordingly started in 1837. A
farm was purchased in Bristol Township, Philadelphia
County, in 1839, but later sold, and a
school building erected on Lombard Street, Philadelphia.
In 1852, the school was opened and
conducted for a time by Charles L. Reason,
of New York. Ebenezer D. Bassett, afterward
for nearly eight years Minister and United States
Consul-general at Porte au Prince, Haiti, was
for many years the principal of this school. A few
years ago, sufficient funds were raised to enable
the school to carry out the original purpose of its
founder and it was removed to Cheyney, Pennsylvania,
and transformed into an industrial school
for the special purpose of training teachers.

The circumstance that a number of free persons
of colour were frequently kidnapped in New York
City resulted in the formation in an early day of.
"The New York Society for Promoting the Manumission
of Slaves and for Protecting Such of Them
as Have Been or May Be Liberated." The same
gentlemen who organised this society became the
Board of Trustees of what was known as the New
York African Free School, which was, or afterward
became, the first public school in New York City.
This school was located on Cliff Street, between

Beekman and Ferry streets, and was opened in
1786 with forty pupils. In 1824, when General
Lafayette was in this country, he visited this school,
and a little coloured boy, who afterward became
Dr. James McCune Smith, was delegated to make
an address to him in behalf of the students.

This school and others established by the society
continued to flourish until 1832, when they, with
their 1,400 students, were formally turned over to
the public school society and became part of the
public school system of the city. The first normal
school for coloured teachers was established in
1853, with John Peterson, a coloured man who
had long been a teacher in the coloured schools of
New York, principal.

The first coloured school for Negro children in Ohio
was established in 1820. Owen T. B. Nickens, a
public-spirited and intelligent Negro, was largely
responsible for bringing these schools into existence.
In 1844, the Reverend Hiram S. Gilmore founded
the "Cincinnati High School" for coloured youth,
and in 1849, the Legislature passed an act establishing
public schools for coloured children. The law
provided that the school funds should be divided
among the white and coloured children, but for
a long time this law was not enforced, until, under
the leadership of John I. Gaines, the coloured
people took the matter to the court. In 1856, a
law was passed giving the coloured people the

right by ballot to elect their own trustees, and in
1858, Nicholas Longworth built the first school
house for coloured people, giving them a lease
for fourteen years, during which time they were
to pay the $14,000, which the building cost.

The first separate school for coloured children
in Massachusetts was established at the home of
Primus Hall, in Boston, in 1798. This school
continued to be held in the house of Primus Hall
until 1806, when the coloured Baptists erected a
church on Belknap Street, and fitted up the lower
rooms as a school for coloured children. This
school continued until 1835, when a coloured schoolhouse
was erected from a fund left for that purpose
by Abiel Smith. This became the famous "Smith
schoolhouse." This Smith schoolhouse continued
in existence until 1855, when a law was passed
abolishing separate schools for coloured children.

Although slavery was not abolished in the District
of Columbia until April 16, 1862, the free coloured
people, who were very numerous in the District,
early succeeded in establishing and maintaining
schools for their children. The first schoolhouse
built for coloured pupils was erected by three
coloured men named George Bell, Nicholas Franklin
and Moses Liverpool. All these men had been
slaves in Virginia, and not one of them knew a
single letter of the alphabet. From this time on,
the number of schools increased rapidly with the

increase of the free coloured population. One
of the most noted of the early coloured teachers
was John F. Cook. He had been born a slave,
but had been purchased by his aunt, Alethia Tanner,
who at the same time purchased his mother, Laurena
Cook, and four other children. John F. Cook
learned the shoemaker's trade in his boyhood and
worked very hard after the purchase of his freedom
to make some return to his aunt for the money she
had spent in setting him free. He picked up the
rudiments of an education in the Treasury Department,
and thereupon began teaching school. During
the Snow Riot of September, 1835, his schoolhouse
was destroyed, and, to escape the mob, he fled to
Pennsylvania. In the next year he returned,
re-opened his school on a more generous plan than
before, and kept it up until his death, March 21,
1855, when the work was taken up by his sons,
John F. and George F. T. Cook.

Among the other noted teachers in Washington
before the War were Louisa Park Costin, the daughter
of William Costin, who was for twenty-four years
the messenger for the bank of Washington, and
who was well known and respected by all the old
residents of Washington, District of Columbia.
Another was Maria Becraft, who was the head of
the first seminary for coloured girls in the District
of Columbia. This seminary was established, in
1827, in Georgetown, under the auspices of Father

Vanlomen, who was the pastor of the Holy Trinity
Catholic Church. In 1831, Maria Becraft gave
up her school to the care of one of the girls she had
trained. In October of that year she joined the
convent of the coloured Catholic Sisters at Baltimore,
where she was known as Sister Aloyons.

Little struggling schools, that sprang up here
and there in the cities North and South before the
Civil War, served to give the rudiments of an
education to a few coloured people, but it was not
until after 1865, when four millions of Negro slaves
were made free, that the education of the race
really began. I shall never forget the strange,
pathetic scenes and incidents of that time. Nothing
like it, I dare say, had ever before been seen. It
seemed that all at once, as soon as they realised
that they were free, the whole race started to go to
school, but not in the usual orderly fashion. It
was as if four million people had been shut up
where they could not get food until they had reached
the starving point, and then were suddenly released
to find food for themselves.

The primer, the first reader, and most frequently
of all, the Webster's blue-back speller, suddenly,
as if by a miracle, made their appearance everywhere.
Even before the thousands of Negro
soldiers had been disbanded, they inveigled their
officers into becoming their schoolmasters, and
scores of Negro soldiers in every regiment were

learning to read and to write and to cipher. On
every plantation, and in nearly every home, whether
in the town or city, the hidden book that had been
tucked away under the floor or in an old trunk or
had been concealed in a stump, or between mat-,
tresses suddenly came out of its hiding-place and
was put into use.

I can recall vividly the picture not only of children,
but of men and women, some of whom had reached
the age of sixty or seventy, tramping along the
country roads with a spelling-book or a Bible in
their hands. It did not seem to occur to any one
that age was any obstacle to learning in books.
With weak and unaccustomed eyes, old men and
old women would struggle along month after month
in their effort to master the primer in order to get,
if possible, a little knowledge of the Bible. Some
of them succeeded; many of them failed. To
these latter the thought of passing from earth
without being able to read the Bible was a source
of deep sorrow.

The places for holding school were anywhere
and everywhere; the Freedmen could not wait for
schoolhouses to be built or for teachers to be provided.
They got up before day and studied in
their cabins by the light of pine knots. They sat up
until late at night, drooping over their books, trying to
master the secrets they contained. More than once, I
have seen a fire in the woods at night with a dozen

or more people of both sexes and of all ages sitting
about with book in hands studying their lessons.
Sometimes they would fasten their primers between
the ploughshares, so that they could read as they
ploughed. I have seen Negro coal miners trying
to spell out the words of a little reading-book by
the dim light of a miner's lamp, hundreds of feet
below the earth. In the early days of freedom,
public schools were not infrequently organised and
taught under a large tree. Some of the early schoolhouses
consisted of four pieces of timber driven
into the ground and brush spread overhead as
a covering to keep out the sun and rain. It was a
simple and inexpensive schoolhouse, but I am sure
that the students were more earnest than many
who have since had much greater advantages.

The night school became popular immediately
after freedom. After a hard day's work in the
field, in the shop, or in the kitchen, men and women
would spend two or three hours at night in school.
A great many of the Freedmen got their first lessons
in reading and writing in the Sunday-school. In
fact, there were frequently more spelling-books in
the Sunday-school than Bibles. I, myself, got my
first knowledge of the alphabet by perusing a
spelling-book in the Sunday-school.

A teacher in the first few years of freedom
was likely to be any one who knew something
some one else did not know. Sometimes it happened

that some would be able to read better than they
could write; others would be able to write better
than they could read. In that case the former
became teachers of reading and the latter became
teachers of writing. As may well be understood,
there was very little organisation in these
first schools; they were just groups of people
moved by a common impulse in coming together
for study. But almost before the proclamation
of freedom had been issued, white teachers
of all classes and both sexes began to pour into
the South from the Northern states. Along with
them came numbers of Negro men and women
who had escaped from slavery and, having gained
some education in the North, now returned to the
South to become the teachers of their race. It
should be added, also, that many of these teachers
were Southern white people, who, when they found
no other occupation directly after the war, were
glad to turn to teaching the Freedmen in order to
eke out a livelihood.

It was during this same period that the people of
the Northern states, through their religious and
missionary organisations, began sending not merely
teachers, but money, books, and clothing to provide
for the schools and for the pupils in the Negro
schools that were springing up everywhere. It
was during this period that many of the most noted
schools in the Southern states were founded. Berea

College had been established since 1856, by the Reverend
John G. Fee, a Kentucky minister who had
been converted to anti-slavery views by taking a
course at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1865,
Lincoln Institute, at Jefferson City, Missouri, was
founded with the assistance of contributions of the
Sixty-second and Sixty-fifth United States coloured
regiments, who generously contributed something
over $6,000 of the wages they received from the
Government to help establish the school. The
same year Shaw University was started at Raleigh,
North Carolina. In 1866, Hampton Institute was
founded by General S. C. Armstrong, and in the same
year Fisk University was established at Nashville,
Tennessee. The next year Atlanta University was
established at Atlanta, Georgia; Biddle University,
at Charlotte, North Carolina; and Howard University,
named after General O. O. Howard, at
Washington, District of Columbia; two years
later, in 1869, Straight University, at New Orleans,
Louisiana; Tougaloo University, at Tougaloo,
Mississippi; Talladega College, at Talladega,
Alabama; and Clafin University, at Orangeburg,
South Carolina.

In speaking of the contribution which the people
of the United States made at this time to the education
of the Negro in America, it should not be forgotten
that Negro education has contributed something in
return to the people of the United States. It was

through the Negro that industrial education in this
country had its start. Neither in the North nor
in the South, before the starting of Hampton
Institute in Virginia, was any systematic instruction
in the industries given in any kind of educational
institution. The success of the Hampton and
Tuskegee institutes in giving industrial education
to the Negroes led the way to the introduction of
industrial education into the Northern schools
and white schools in the South, as well as in many
other parts of the world.

The desire for education among the Freedmen
was a veritable fever for the first ten or twelve
years after emancipation. Since that time I do
not think the desire for education has diminished
among the coloured people, but the methods for
obtaining it have become more profitable and less
picturesque. This is shown particularly in the
effort which the coloured people are making everywhere
to add to the meagre funds which are given
them by the states in order to prolong their school
terms, to secure better teachers, and build comfortable
schoolhouses. Negro parents will still make
all kinds of sacrifices, frequently depriving themsevles
not merely of the comforts, but many times of
the necessities of life, in order that they may have
the satisfaction of seeing their children able to read
and write.

All sorts of devices are now employed in the

coloured communities to eke out the salary of the
coloured school-teacher. In some communities
teachers will impose an extra tax of ten cents per
month for every student who comes to school. In
other cases each family will take turns in boarding
the teacher for a day or for a week. Sometimes
they will donate a pig, a chicken, a dozen eggs, a
fish, or a rabbit to help the school-teacher out. A
method that is now growing in popularity, for
the purpose of meeting the expenses of a first-class
school, is what is known as the "school farm."
This means that three or four acres of land will be
secured near the schoolhouse and on a given day,
usually Saturday, parents and children come
together to plant, plough, or harvest the cotton
which is to be sold to increase the length of the
school term.

Some idea of the difficulty under which the
coloured schools labour in the South may be gathered
from the fact that, while in the Northern and
Western states something like five dollars per pupil
is spent every year for the education of the children
of school age, in several of the Southern states
only fifty cents per pupil is expended for coloured
children. While a number of office-seekers in
the South, complaining about the burden of education
under which the South laboured, have
been advocating that no money be spent for the
education of the Negro, and that everything

possible be done to check his advancement in this
direction, a few courageous State Superintendents
of Public Instruction in the South have begun to
point out that, not only is the Negro not a burden
upon the South so far as his education is concerned,
but in some instances Negro taxpayers are supporting
white schools. In a careful study made of the
statistics of education some years ago in Florida,
the superintendent in that state came to the conclusion
that "the schools for Negroes not only
were not a burden upon the white people, but four
thousand five hundred and twenty-seven dollars
contributed for Negro schools from other sources
was in some way diverted into the white schools."
Speaking of the conditions in middle Florida, where
the Negro population is most dense and the
educational conditions are at their worst, he said:

At a meeting of the Conference for Southern
Education, in Atlanta, Georgia, in the spring of
1909, Charles L. Coon, Superintendent of Schools
at Wilson, North Carolina, read a paper on "Public

Taxation and Negro Schools," in which he attempted
to show, for the whole South, what he had previously
shown for North Carolina, that the Negroes were
not only not getting their share of the public education
fund, which they were entitled to under the
law, but their education was not, as has so often
been asserted, a piece of philanthropy on the part
of whites to the coloured race. He found, by the
study of actual statistics, that while Negroes represented
40.1 per cent. of the total population of
the eleven Southern states they received only 14.8
per cent. of the money spent for education. In
Mississippi, where Negroes represent 58.7 per
cent. of the population they received 21.9 per
cent. of the school funds. In Louisiana, where
they represent 47.2 per cent. of the population, they
received 8.6 per cent. of the school funds.

After a careful study of all the available statistics,
Mr. Coon reaches the conclusion, to put it in his
own words, "that the Negro school of the South
is not a serious burden on the white taxpayer. On
the contrary, if all the Negro children of the Southern
states were white, it would cost to educate them
just about five times as much as it does now to
give the same number of Negroes such education
as they are getting."

Mr. Coon points out, and quotes articles from
several Southern papers to support him, that the
Negro is not only almost the only dependable

labourer in the Southern states, but even those
people who are most ready to abuse him "as a
burden and a curse" are loud in their complaint
"whenever any one attempts to lure him away".

In 1891, the Negroes of North Carolina listed
$8,018,446 worth of property. In 1898, they listed
$21,716,922, an increase of 171 per cent. in seventeen
years. The property listed by the whites during
that time increased only 89 per cent. In other
words, the taxable value of property of Negroes
increased in seventeen years nearly twice in proportion
to that of the white people. In Georgia,
in 1891, Negroes listed $14,196,735 worth of property.
In 1907, they listed property to the value
of $25,904,822, an increase of 82 per cent.
The taxable property of white people increased
during this same period only 39 per cent. This
again indicates that the ratio of increase of
Negro property in Georgia during the last sixteen
years has been twice that of the property of the
white people.

"Such facts as these" says Mr. Coon, in concluding
his report, "give us glimpses of the economic
importance of Negroes, and abundantly justify
us in hoping that the senseless race prejudice which
has for its object the intellectual enslavement of
Negro children will soon pass away. I do not
believe that any superior race can hope for the
blessings of heaven upon its own children while

it begrudges more light and efficiency for those of
an inferior race."

In all that has been said, bearing upon what the
Negro has done to help himself in education through
the public schools in the South, the fact should not
be overlooked that he owes much to the Southern
white people. Especially is this true in the large
cities and towns of the South, where generous
provision has been made for the education of the
Negro child in the public schools. While in the
country districts, as a rule, the schools are poor,
almost beyond description, still in not a few country
districts broad-minded and courageous Southern
white men have seen to it, and are seeing to it, that
the Negro gets a reasonable chance for education
in the public schools. It should also be stated
that while the Negro at present is paying in a large
part for his own education in the public schools,
in the years immediately following emancipation
he paid very little and during this time the burden
of his education fell heavily upon the Southern
white people.

It should be remembered also that it is only
within the past fifty or sixty years that many of
the Northern states have begun to have a system
of education which sought to educate all the people
irrespective of race or colour. The world is slow
to learn that when we attempt to stop the growth
of our fellow-man, we are doing the thing that will

most surely stop our own growth. How much
faster the world would go forward if every one
should learn, once for all, that nothing is ever
permanently gained by any attempt to retard or
stop the progress of any human being!