The New South Part 4

[Footnote 1: How much of this difference in att.i.tude is due to lack of pride in race integrity and how much to religion is a question. The Roman Catholic Church, which is dominant in Southern Europe, does not encourage such inter-racial marriages, but, on the other hand, it does not forbid them or p.r.o.nounce them unlawful. Yet this cannot explain the whole difference. There seems to be another factor.]

In the Southern States the white man has made certain decisions regarding the relation of blacks and whites and is enforcing them without regard to the negro's wishes. The Southerner is convinced that the negro is inferior and acts upon that conviction. There is no suggestion that the laws forbidding intermarriage be repealed, or that separate schools be discontinued. Restaurants and hotels must cater to one race only. Most of the States require separation of the races in common carriers and even in railway stations. The laws require that "equal accommodations" shall be furnished on railroads, but violations are frequently evident, as the railways often a.s.sign old or inferior equipment to the negroes. In street cars one end is often a.s.signed to negroes and the other to whites, and therefore the races alternate in the use of the same seats when the car turns back at the end of the line. The division in a railway station may be nothing more than a bar or a low fence across the room, and one ticket office with different windows may serve both races.

Some of these regulations are defended on the ground that by reducing close contact they lessen the chances of race conflict. That such a result is measurably attained is probable, and the comfort of traveling is increased for the whites at least. William Archer, the English journalist and author, in Through Afro-America says, "I hold the system of separate cars a legitimate means of defence against constant discomfort," and most travelers will approve his verdict. The chief reason for such regulations, however, is to a.s.sert and emphasize white superiority. Half a dozen black nurses with their charges may sit in the car reserved for whites, because they are obviously dependents engaged in personal service. Without such relations.h.i.+p, however, not one of them would be allowed to remain. It is not so much the presence of the negro to which the whites object but to that presence in other than an inferior capacity. his is the explanation of much of the so-called race prejudice in the South: it is not prejudice against the individual negro but is rather a determination to a.s.sert white superiority. So long as the negro is plainly dependent and recognizes that dependency, the question of prejudice does not arise, and there is much kindly intimacy between individuals. The Southern white man or white woman of the better cla.s.s is likely to protect and help many negroes at considerable cost of time, labor, and money, but the relations.h.i.+p is always that of superior and inferior. If a suggestion of race equality creeps in, antagonism is at once aroused.

It is the fas.h.i.+on to speak of the "old-time negro" and the "new negro." The types are easily recognizable. One is quiet, un.o.btrusive, more or less industrious. He "knows his place"-which may mean anything from servility to self-respecting acceptance of his lot in life. The other resents more or less openly the discrimination against his race, and this resentment may range from impertinence to sullenness and even to dreams of social equality imposed by force. Some have a smattering of education while others, who have been subjected to little training or discipline, are indolent and s.h.i.+ftless. The thoughtless, however, are likely to include in this cla.s.sification the industrious, intelligent negro who orders his conduct along the same lines as the white man.

This last type, it is true, is sometimes regarded with suspicion. Many men and women in the South fear the progress of the negro. They do not realize that the South cannot really make satisfactory progress while any great proportion of the population is relatively inefficient. Some fear the negro's demand to be treated as a man. On the other hand, many negroes demand to be treated as men, while ignoring or perhaps not realizing the fact that, to be treated as a man, one must play a man's part. As Booker Was.h.i.+ngton put the matter, many are more interested in getting recognition than in getting something to recognize. Many are much more interested in their rights than in their duties. To be sure the negro is not alone in this, for the same att.i.tude is to be found in immigrants coming from the socially and politically backward states of Europe. The ordinary negro, however, apparently does not think much of such problems of the future, though no white man is likely to know precisely what he does think. He goes about his business or his pleasure seemingly at peace with the world, though perhaps he sings somewhat less than he once did. He attends his church and the meetings of his lodge or lodges, and works more or less regularly. Probably the great majority of negroes more nearly realize their ambitions than do the whites. They do not aspire to high position, and discrimination does not burn them quite as deeply as the sometimes too sympathetic white man who tries to put himself in their place may think.

There are, however, some individuals to whom the ordinary conditions of any negro's life appear particularly bitter. With mental ability, education, and aesthetic appreciation often comparable to those of the whites, and with more than normal sensitiveness, they find the color line an intolerable insult, since it separates them from what they value most. They rage at the barrier which shuts them out from the society which they feel themselves qualified to enter, and they are always on the alert to discern injuries. These injuries need not be positive, for neglect is quite as strong a grievance.

These individuals all spell negro with a capital and declare that they are proud of their race. They parade its achievements-and these are not small when enumerated all at once-but they avoid intimate a.s.sociation with the great ma.s.s of negroes. They are not at all democratic, and in a negro state they would a.s.sume the privileges of an aristocracy as a matter of right. It would seem that their demand for full political and social rights for all negroes has for its basis not so much the welfare of the race as a whole, as the possibility of obtaining for themselves special privileges and positions of leaders.h.i.+p. They are not satisfied merely with full legal rights. In those States where there is no legal discrimination in public places, their denunciation of social prejudice is bitter. They are not content to take their chances with other groups but sometimes are illogical enough to demand social equality enforced by law, though by this phrase they mean a.s.sociation with the whites merely for themselves; they do not wish other negroes less developed than themselves to a.s.sociate with them.

In any city where there is any considerable number of this cla.s.s, there is a section of negro society in which social lines are drawn as strictly as in the most aristocratic white community. To prove that the negroes are not emotional, these aristocrats among them are likely to insist upon rigid formality in their church services and upon meticulous correctness in all the details of social gatherings. Since many of these individuals have a very large admixture of white blood, occasionally one crosses the barrier and "goes white." Removal to a new town or city gives the opportunity to cut loose from all previous a.s.sociations and to start a new life. The transition is extremely difficult, of course, and requires much care and discretion, but it has been made. The greater part of them nevertheless remain negroes in the eyes of the law, however much they strive to separate themselves in thought and action from the rest of their kind. It is this small cla.s.s of "intellectuals" who were Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton's bitterest enemies. His theory that the negro should first devote himself to obtaining economic independence and should leave the adjustment of social relations to the future was denounced as treason to the race. Was.h.i.+ngton's opportunism was even more obnoxious to them than is the superior att.i.tude of the whites. They denounced him as a trimmer, a time-server, and a traitor, and on occasion they hissed him from the platform. From their safe refuges in Northern cities, some negro orators and editors have gone so far as to advocate the employment of the knife and the torch to avenge real or fancied wrongs, but these counsels have done little harm for they have not been read by those to whom they were addressed. Perhaps, indeed, they may not have been meant entirely seriously, for the negro, like other emotional peoples, sometimes plays with words without realizing their full import.

On the whole there is surprisingly little friction between the blacks and the whites. One may live a long time in many parts of the South without realizing that the most important problem of the United States lies all about him. Then an explosion comes, and he realizes that much of the South is on the edge of a volcano. For a time the white South attempted to divest itself of responsibility for the negro. He had turned against those who had been his friends and had followed after strange G.o.ds; therefore let him go his way alone. This att.i.tude never was universal nor was it consistently maintained, for there is hardly one of the older negroes who does not have a white man to whom he goes for advice or help in time of trouble-a sort of patron, in fact. Many a negro has been saved from the chain gang or the penitentiary because of such friendly interest, and many have been positively helped thereby toward good citizens.h.i.+p. Nevertheless there has been a tendency on the part of the whites to remain pa.s.sive, to wait until the negro asked for help.

Undoubtedly there is now developing in the South a growing sense of responsibility for the welfare of the negro. The negro quarters of the towns, so long neglected, are receiving more attention from the street cleaners; better sidewalks are being built; and the streets are better lighted. The sanitary officers are more attentive. The landowner is building better cabins for his tenants and is encouraging them to plant gardens and to raise poultry and pigs. The labor contractor is providing better quarters, though conditions in many lumber and construction camps are still deplorable. Observant lawyers and judges say that they see an increasing number of cases in which juries evidently decide points of doubt in favor of negro defendants, even where white men are concerned. Socially minded citizens are forcing improvement of the disgraceful conditions which have often prevailed on chain gangs and in prisons. Nor is this all. More white men and women are teaching negroes than ever before. The oldest university in the United States points proudly to the number of Sunday schools for negroes conducted by its students, and it is not alone in this high endeavor. Many Southern colleges and universities are studying the negro problem from all sides and are trying to help in its solution. The visiting nurses in the towns spend a large proportion of their time among the negroes, striving to teach hygiene and sanitation. White men frequently lecture before negro schools. Since the beginning of the Great War negro women have been encouraged to aid in Red Cross work. Negroes have been appointed members of city or county committees of defense and have worked with the whites in many branches of patriotic endeavor. Negroes have subscribed liberally in proportion to their means for Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps and have given liberally to war work.

The growth of a sense of responsibility for the welfare of the negro upon the part of the more thoughtful and more conscientious portion of the white population has reduced racial friction in many communities. White women are evincing more interest in the morals of black women than was usual fifteen or twenty years ago. Ostracism is more likely to visit a white man who crosses the line. There is no means of knowing the actual amount of illicit intercourse, but the most competent observers believe it to be decreasing. Though the percentage of mulattoes has increased since 1890, according to the census, the figures are confessedly inaccurate, and the increase can be easily accounted for by the marriage of mulattoes with negroes, and the consequent diffusion of white blood. An aspiring negro is likely to seek a mulatto wife, and their children will be cla.s.sed as mulattoes by the enumerators.

Except for the demagogues, whose abuse of the negro is their stock in trade, the most bitter denunciations come from those nearest to him in economic status. The town loafers, the cotton mill operatives, the small farmers, particularly the tenant farmers, are those who most frequently clash with both the impertinent and the self-respecting negro. In their eyes self-respect may not be differentiated from insolence. If a negro is not servile, they are likely to cla.s.s him as impertinent or worse. The political success of Blease of South Carolina, Vardaman of Mississippi, and the late Jeff. Davis of Arkansas is largely due to their appeal to these types of whites. The negro on the other hand may resent the a.s.sumption of superiority on the part of men perhaps less efficient than himself. Obviously friction may arise under such conditions.

The mobs which have so often stained the reputation of the South by defiance of the law and by horrible cruelty as well do not represent the best elements of the South. The statement so often made that the most substantial citizens of a community compose lynching parties may have been partially true once, but it is not true today. These mobs are chiefly made up from the lowest third of the white community. Perhaps the persistence of the belief has prevented the wiser part of the population from stamping out such lawlessness; perhaps some lingering feeling of mistaken loyalty to the white race restrains them from strong action; perhaps the individualism of the Southerner has interfered with general acceptance of the idea of the inexorable majesty of the law which must be vindicated at any cost. Yet, in spite of all these undercurrents of feeling, sheriffs and private citizens do on occasion brave the fury of enraged mobs to rescue or to protect. Attempts to prosecute partic.i.p.ants in such mobs usually fail in the South as elsewhere, but occasionally a jury convicts.

The tradition that, years ago, lynching was only invoked in punishment of the unspeakable crime is more or less true. It is not true now. The statistics of lynching which are frequently presented are obviously exaggerated, as they include many cases which are simply the results of the sort of personal encounters which might and do occur anywhere. There is a tendency to cla.s.s every case of homicide in which a negro is the victim as a lynching, which is manifestly unfair; but even though liberal allowance be made for this error, in the total of about 3000 cases tabulated in the last thirty years, the undisputed instances of mob violence are shamefully numerous. Rape is by no means the only crime thus punished; sometimes the charge is so trivial that one recoils in horror at the thought of taking human life as a punishment.

Yet it must not be forgotten that over certain parts of the South a nameless dread is always hovering. In some sections an unaccompanied white woman dislikes to walk through an unlighted village street at night; she hesitates to drive along a lonely country road in broad daylight without a pistol near her hand; and she does not dare to walk through the woods alone. The rural districts are poorly policed and the ears of the farmer working in the field are always alert for the sound of the bell or the horn calling for help, perhaps from his own home. Occasionally, in spite of all precautions some human animal, inflamed by brooding upon the unattainable, leaves a victim outraged and dead, or worse than dead. Granted that such a crime occurs in a district only once in ten, or even in twenty years; that is enough. Rural folks have long memories, and in the back of their minds persists an uncontrollable morbid dread. The news of another victim sometimes turns men into fiends who not only take life but even inflict torture beforehand. The mere suspicion of intent is sometimes enough to deprive such a community of its reason, for there are communities which have brooded over the possibility of the commission of the inexpiable crime until the residents are not quite sane upon this matter. Naturally calmness and forbearance in dealing with other and less heinous forms of negro crime are not always found in such a neighborhood. This fact helps to explain, though not to excuse, some of the riots that occur.

The better element in the South, however, opposes mob violence, and this opposition is growing stronger and more purposeful. a.s.sociations have been formed to oppose mob rule and to punish partic.i.p.ants. Where reputable citizens are lukewarm it is largely because they have not realized that the old tradition that lynching is the proper remedy for rape cannot stand. If sudden, sharp retribution were inflicted upon absolute proof, only for this one cause, it is doubtful whether much effective opposition could be enlisted. Yet wiser men have seen defiance of law fail to stop crime, have seen mobs act upon suspicions afterward proved groundless, have seen mob action widely extended, and have seen the growth of a spirit of lawlessness. Where one mob has had its way, another is always more easily aroused, and soon the administration of the law becomes a farce. In some years hardly a third of the victims of this summary process have been charged with rape or intent to commit rape. As a consequence the sentiment that the law should take its course in every case is steadily growing.[1]

[Footnote 1: The statistics on lynching do not always agree. Those compiled at Tuskegee Inst.i.tute list 38 cases for 1917 and 62 for 1918. The National a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People in its report Thirty Years of Lynching (1919) reports 67 cases for 1918, and 325 cases for the five-year period ending with 1918, of which 304 are said to have occurred in the South.]

Though mob fury has broken out on occasion in every Southern State, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina are measurably free from such visitations. Over considerable periods of time, Georgia comes unenviably first, followed by Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana. These four States have furnished a large majority of the lynchings. The other States range between the two groups, though in proportion to the negro element in its population Oklahoma has had a disproportionate share. It may be said that the lynchings occur chiefly in those sections or counties where the numbers of whites and negroes are nearly equal. They are fewer in the black belt and in those counties and States where whites are in an overwhelming majority.

No man has been wise enough to propose any solution of the negro question which does not require an immediate and radical change in human nature. As the proportion of negroes able to read and write grows larger, they will certainly demand full political rights, which the ma.s.s of the whites, so far as any one can judge, will be unwilling to allow. Deportation to Africa-proposed in all seriousness-is impossible. Negro babies are born faster than they could easily be carried away, even if there were no other obstacle. The suggestion that whites be expelled from a State or two, which would then be turned over to negroes, is likewise impracticable. Amalgamation apparently is going on more slowly now, and more rapid progress would presuppose a state of society and an att.i.tude toward the negro entirely different from that which prevails anywhere in the United States. There is left then the theory that, with increasing wealth and wider diffusion of education, or even without them, he negro must take his place on equal terms in the American political and social system. This theory, of course, requires an absolute reversal of att.i.tude upon the part of many millions of whites.

Color and race prejudice are stubborn things, and California and South Africa are no more free from such prejudices than the Southern States. In fact, South Africa is today wrestling with a problem much like that of the United States and is succeeding no better in solving it. The movement of negroes to the North and West, if continued on any large scale, seems likely to mean simply the diffusion of the problem and not its solution.

CHAPTER VIII

EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS

Apologists for Reconstruction have repeatedly a.s.serted that the Reconstruction governments gave to the South a system of public schools unknown up to that time, with the implication that this boon more than compensated for the errors of those years. The statement has been so often made, and by some who should have known better, that it has generally been accepted at its face value. The status of public education in the South in 1860, it is true, was not satisfactory, and the percentage of illiteracy was high. Any attempt to distract attention from these facts by pointing out the great proportion of the Southern white population in colleges and academies is as much to be deprecated as the denial of the existence of public schools at all.[1]

[Footnote 1: Some States had done little for public schools before 1860, but others had made more than a respectable beginning. Delaware established a "literary fund" in 1796, Tennessee in 1806, Virginia in 1810, Maryland in 1813, and Georgia in 1817. Kentucky and Mississippi soon followed their example; North Carolina began to create such a fund in 1825; Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina appropriated a part or the whole of their shares of the "surplus" distributed by the Federal Government under the Act of 1836 to increase these funds or establish new ones for the support of schools; and some States levied considerable taxes for the support of educational inst.i.tutions.]

In general the public schools of the South began as charity schools, but this was also the case in several of the older States in other parts of the country. These schools were generally poorly taught in the early years, and it has been questioned whether the training which the pupils received compensated them for the humiliating acknowledgment of poverty which their attendance implied. The amount of money available was small, and the teacher was generally inefficient or worse, but these "old field schools" did help some men on their way. Several States went beyond the idea of charity in education, and some of the towns and cities established excellent schools for all the people.

The literary fund in North Carolina, for example, amounted to nearly $2,250,000 in 1840. The rapid increase of this fund had led to the establishment of public schools in 1839. To every district which raised $20 by local taxation, twice that amount was given from the income of the literary fund. With the election of Calvin H. Wiley as state superintendent of education in 1852, substantial progress began. In 1860 there were over 3000 schools, and the total expenditure was $279,000. The number of illiterates had fallen proportionately and actually, and ten years more of uninterrupted work would have done much to remove the stigma of illiteracy. The school fund was left intact during the Civil War, and most of the counties continued to levy school taxes. A part of the fund was lost, however, through the failure of the banks in which it was invested, and the remainder was squandered by the Reconstruction government. In spite of all discouragements, Superintendent Wiley held on until deposed by the provisional governor in 1865. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the schools of this State were better in 1860 than they were in 1880.

During the Reconstruction period a system of schools was established in every one of the seceding States. On paper these schemes were often admirable. Usually they were modeled after the system in the State from which some influential carpetbagger came, and under normal conditions, if honestly and judiciously administered, they would have answered their ostensible purposes and would have done much to raise the intellectual level of the population. Conditions, however, were not normal. The production of wealth was hindered, and taxes had been increased to the point of confiscation. In States which had been ravaged by war, and of which the whole economic and social systems had been dislocated, an undue proportion of the total social income was demanded for the schools. Under existing conditions the communities could not support the schemes of education which had been projected. This fact is enough to account for their failure, for when an individual or a community is unable to pay the price demanded, it matters little how desirable or laudable the object may be.

As if to make failure doubly certain, the schools were neither honestly nor judiciously administered. Much money was deliberately stolen, and much more was wasted. Extravagant salaries were paid to favorites, and unnecessary equipment was bought at exorbitant prices. The authorities in several States seemed more interested in the idea of educating negro children with white children than in the real process of education. Though in but four States-South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas-were mixed schools the only schools, such an arrangement was understood to be the ultimate goal in several other States. Several of the state superintendents were negroes, and others were carpetbaggers dependent upon negro votes. Before the end of Reconstruction, several of these were forced to flee to avoid arrest for malfeasance in office. In those States where mixed schools alone were provided, white children did not attend and were thus cut off from educational opportunities at public expense. Where separate schools were provided, the teachers were often carpetbaggers who strove "to make treason odious." It is hardly surprising that some parents objected to having their children forced to sing John Brown's Body and to yield a.s.sent to the proposition that all Southerners were barbarians and traitors who deserved hanging.

Just after the close of the Civil War, thousands of white women went South to teach in schools which were established for negroes by Northern churches or benevolent a.s.sociations. Every one who reads the reports of such organizations now, fifty years after, must be touched by the lofty faith and the burning zeal which impelled many of these educational missionaries; but he must also be astonished by their ignorance of the negro and their blindness to actual conditions. They went with an ideal negro in their minds, and at first, they treated the negro as though he were their ideal of what a negro ought to be. The phases through which the majority of these teachers went were enthusiasm, doubt, disillusionment, and despair. Some left the South and their charges, holding that conditions were to blame rather than their methods; but others were clearsighted enough to realize that they had set about solving the problem in the wrong way.

Beginning with the a.s.sumption that the negro was equal or superior to the white in natural endowment and burning with resentment against his "oppressors," they attempted to bridge the gap of centuries in a generation. They were anxious to bring the negro into contact with the culture of the white race and thereby they strengthened the conclusion to which the negro had already jumped that educational and manual labor were an impossible combination. Then, too, in order to prove the sincerity of their belief in the brotherhood of mankind, they entered into the most intimate a.s.sociation with their pupils and their families. Some of them, we know, were compelled to struggle hard to overcome their instinctive repugnance to such intimacy. All of them taught by implication, and some by precept as well, that the Southern whites who held themselves apart were enemies to the blacks. That these teachers did some good is undoubted, but whether in the end a true balance would show more good than harm is not so certain.

When the native whites resumed control after the days of Reconstruction, their first thought was to reduce the expenses of the State. Tax levies were cut to the bone, school taxes among them. The school funds did not always suffer proportionately, however. In 1870, when the whites secured control in North Carolina, the expenditure for public schools in that State was $152,000. In 1874, the school revenue was over $412,000, and the number of white pupils was almost the same as in 1860; in addition 55,000 negroes were receiving instruction, but the school term was only ten weeks. The negro seems to have received in the first years of the new regime a fair share of the school money, but that share was not large. The reaction from Reconstruction extravagance was long-continued, and perhaps has not disappeared today.

Though the South was unable properly to support one efficient system, it now attempted to maintain two, one for whites and the other for blacks. Necessarily both systems were inadequate. The usual country school was only a rude frame or log building, sometimes without gla.s.s windows, in which one untrained teacher, without apparatus or the simplest conveniences, attempted to give instruction in at least half a dozen subjects to a group of children of all ages during a period of ten to fifteen weeks a year. Often even this meager period was divided into a summer and winter term, on the plea that the older children could not be spared from the farms for the whole time or that bad roads and stormy weather prevented the youngest from attending during the winter.

Though it seems almost incredible under such conditions, something was nevertheless accomplished. Many children, it is true, learned little or nothing and gave up the pretense of attending school. Others, however, found something to feed their hungry minds and, when they had exhausted what their neighborhood school had to offer, they attended the academies which had been reestablished or had sprung up in the villages nearby or at the countyseat. Between 1875 and 1890, it was not at all uncommon to find in such academies grown men and women studying the regular high school subjects. Some had previously taught rural schools and now sought further instruction; and others had worked on the farms or had been in business. Men of twenty-five or thirty sat in cla.s.ses with town children of fifteen or sixteen, but made such a large proportion of the total attendance that they did not feel embarra.s.sed by the contrast in ages.

In the eighties there were scores of these academies, inst.i.tutes, and seminaries in the towns of the South. They were not well graded; the teachers may never have heard of pedagogy. Their libraries were small or altogether lacking, and their apparatus was scanty; but in spite of these drawbacks an unusually large proportion of the students were desirous to learn. Many teachers loved mathematics or Latin, and some of the students gained a thorough if narrow preparation for college. An examination of college registers of the period shows a considerable proportion of students of twenty-five or thirty years of age. There is even a case where a college student remained out a term in order to attend a session of the Legislature to which he had been elected. The college students of the late seventies and early eighties were serious minded and thought of questions as men and not as boys. Though the clapper of the college bell was sometimes thrown into the well or the president's wagon was transferred to the chapel roof, these things were often done from a sort of sense of duty: college students were expected to be mischievous. Yet the whole tone of college life was serious. There were no organized college athletics, no musical or dramatic clubs, no other outside activities such as those to which the student of today devotes so much of his attention, except, of course, the "literary societies" for practice in declamation and debating.

Though many towns established graded schools before 1890 by means of special taxes, the condition of rural education at this time was disheartening. The percentage of negro illiteracy was falling, because it could not easily be raised, but the reduction of white illiteracy was slow. The school terms were still short, and many of the school buildings were unfit for human occupation. On the other hand, the quality of the teachers was improving. The short term of the schools was being lengthened by private subscription in some districts, and new and adequate buildings appeared in others. Progress was evidently being made, even if it was not obtrusive, and in that progress one of the leading factors was the Peabody Fund.

In 1867 George Peabody, a native of Ma.s.sachusetts but then a banker of London, who had laid the foundation of his fortune in Baltimore, placed in the hands of trustees $2,100,000 in securities to be used for the encouragement of education in the Southern States. The Fund was increased to $3,500,000 in 1869, though a considerable part consisted of bonds of Mississippi and Florida which those States refused to recognize as valid obligations. The chairman of the trustees for many years was Robert C. Winthrop of Ma.s.sachusetts, and the other members of the board were distinguished men, both Northern and Southern. The first general agent, as the active administrator was called, was Barnas Sears, who at the time of his election was president of Brown University.

Dr. Sears was an unusual man, who comprehended conditions in the South and was disposed to improve them in every feasible way by using the resources at his command. He had no inflexible program and was willing to modify his plans to fit changing conditions. The income of the Fund appears small in this day of munificent foundations, but it seemed large then; and its effects were far-reaching. Sears was not an educational reformer in the modern sense. He seems to have had no new philosophy of education but took the best schools of the nation as a standard and strove to bring the schools of the South up to that standard. Through the aid of the Fund model schools were established in every State. The University of North Carolina opened its doors to the teachers of the State for professional training during the summer and was apparently the first of the summer schools now so numerous and popular. Direct appropriations in aid of schools were made out of the Fund, provided the community by taxation or subscription raised much larger sums. The Peabody Normal College at Nashville, Tennessee, was founded, and no effort was spared to develop a general interest in public education. Advice to legislatures, trustees, or communities was given when asked but so tactfully that neither resentment nor suspicion was aroused.

Before his death, Dr. Sears had chosen Dr. J.L.M. Curry as his successor, and the choice was promptly ratified by the trustees. Dr. Curry was a thorough Southerner, a veteran of both the Mexican and the Civil War. He had first practiced law and had sat in the House of Representatives of the United States and of the Confederate States. At the time of his election to the management of the Peabody Fund he was a professor in Richmond College, Virginia, and a minister of the Baptist Church. He had a magnetic personality, an unyielding belief in the value of education for both white and black, and the temperament and gifts of the orator. As a Southerner, he could speak more freely and more effectively to the people than his predecessor, who had done the pioneer work. During the years of his service, Curry therefore gave himself chiefly to the development of public sentiment, making speeches at every opportunity before societies, conventions, and other gatherings. As he himself said, he addressed legislatures "from the Potomac to the Rio Grande."

While the influence of the Peabody Fund and its agents was large, it was not the only influence upon the educational development of the South. There were throughout that section men who saw clearly that the main hope centered in education for black and white. They talked in season and out, though sometimes with little apparent result, for the opposing forces were strong. Among these forces poverty was perhaps the strongest. It is difficult to convince a people who must struggle for the bare necessities of life that taxation for any purpose is a positive good; and a large proportion of the families of the rural South handled little money. This was true even for years after the towns began to feel the thrill of growing industrialism. It has sometimes seemed that the poorer a man and the larger the number of his children, the greater his dread of taxes for education.

Then, too, the Southern people had followed the tradition of Jefferson that the best government is that which a.s.sumes the fewest functions and interferes least with the individual. Many honest men who meant to be good citizens felt that education belonged to the family or the church and could not see why the State should pay for teaching any more than for preaching, or for food, or clothing, or shelter. There were, of course, those claiming to hold this theory whose underlying motives were selfish. They had property which they had inherited or acc.u.mulated, and they objected to paying taxes for educating other people's children. It must be said, however, that as a cla.s.s, the larger taxpayers have been more ready to vote higher taxes for schools than the poor and illiterate, whose morbid dread of taxation has been fostered by the politician.

There were others who were cold to the extension of public education on account of the schools already existing. In many towns and villages there were struggling academies, often nominally under church auspices. Towns which could have supported one school were trying to support two or three. In few cases was any direct financial aid given by the religious organization, but the school was known as the Methodist or the Presbyterian school, because the teaching force and the majority of the patrons belonged to that denomination. The denominational influence behind these schools was often lukewarm toward the extension of public education, and the ministers themselves had been known to make slighting references to "G.o.dless schools." There was still another cla.s.s of people who really opposed public schools because they did not believe that the ma.s.ses should be educated. This cla.s.s was, however, small and is perhaps more numerous in other sections of the Union than in the South.

Last, but by no means the least, of the obstacles to general public education was the question of its influence upon the negro. The apparent effects of negro education were not likely to make the average white man feel that the experiment had been successful. The phrase that "an educated negro was a good plough-hand spoiled" seemed to meet with general acceptance. The smattering of an education which the negroes had received-it would be difficult to call it more-seemed to have improved neither their efficiency nor their morals. As a result there were many white people so shortsighted that they would starve their own children rather than feed the negro.

To all of these obstacles in human nature were added the defects of the tax system. Almost invariably the tax was levied by the Legislature upon the State as a whole or upon the county, and the const.i.tutions or the laws in some cases forbade the progressive smaller division to levy special taxes for any purpose. Graded schools began, however, to appear in the incorporated towns which were not subject to the same tax limitations as the rural districts, and in time it became easier to levy supplementary local taxes by legislative act, judicial interpretation, or const.i.tutional changes.

Gradually public sentiment in favor of schools grew stronger. The legislatures raised the rate of taxation for school purposes, normal schools were established, log schoolhouses began to be replaced by frame or brick structures, uniform textbooks became the rule and not the exception, teachers' salaries were raised, and the percentage of attendance climbed upward, though there was still a remnant of the population which did not attend at all. The school term was not proportionately extended, since a positive mania for small districts developed-a school at every man's door. In the olden days large districts were common, and many of the children walked four or five miles to school in the morning and back home in the afternoon. No one then dreamed of transporting the children at public expense. The school authorities were often unable to resist the pressure to make new districts, and necessarily a contracted term followed. In 1900 the average school term in North Carolina was not longer than in 1860, though much more money was spent, and the salaries were little higher. It must be remembered, of course, that no appropriations were made for negro education before the Civil War.

Both during and after the War many schools were opened for negroes by Freedmen's Aid Societies, various philanthropic a.s.sociations, and denominational boards or committees. As public schools were established for negroes, some of these organizations curtailed their work and others withdrew altogether. Others persisted, however, and new schools have been founded by these and similar organizations, by private philanthropy, and also by negro churches. As a result there are independent schools, state schools, and Federal schools. The recent monumental report of the Bureau of Education reports 653 schools for negroes other than regular public schools[1]. Of these 28 are under public control, 507 are denominational schools (of which 354 are under white boards and 153 under negro boards), and 118 are cla.s.sed as independent. This last group includes not only the great national schools, such as Tuskegee and Hampton, but small private enterprises supported chiefly by irregular donations. These private and independent schools owned property valued at $28,496,946 and had an income of over $3,000,000. State and Federal appropriations at the date of the report reached about $963,000.

[Footnote 1. Negro Education, Bureau of Education Bulletins 38 and 39 (1916). This work supersedes all previous collections of facts upon negro education.]

During the first years after the downfall of the Reconstruction governments the negro received a fair proportion of the pittance devoted to public schools. Governor Vance of North Carolina, in recommending in 1877 an appropriation to the University for a "professors.h.i.+p for the purpose of instructing in the theory and art of teaching" went on to state that "a school of similar character should be established for the education of colored teachers, the want of which is more deeply felt by the black race even than the white.... Their desire for education is a very creditable one, and should be gratified so far as our means will permit." Instead of establis.h.i.+ng the chair of pedagogy recommended by Governor Vance, the Legislature appropriated the money to conduct the summer school for teachers at the University. An appropriation of equal amount was made for negroes and similar allowances have been continued to the present. Proportionately larger appropriations have been made for the whites in recent years. Other States have established normal schools for negroes, but in none of them is the supply of trained negro teachers equal to the demand.

The negro public schools were organized along the same lines as the white, so far as circ.u.mstances permitted, but the work was difficult and remains so to this day. The negro teachers were ignorant, and many of them were indolent and immoral. In only a few places in the South do whites teach negroes in public schools. The enthusiasm for education displayed just after emanc.i.p.ation gradually wore off, and many parents showed little interest in the education of their children. Education had not proved the "open sesame" to affluence, and many parents were unwilling or unable to compel their children to attend school. As a contributory cause of this reluctance the poverty of the negro must be considered. It was difficult for the negro to send to school a child who might be of financial aid to the family. To many negro parents it seemed a matter of little moment to keep a child away from school one or two days a week to a.s.sist at home. It must also be remembered that the negro tenant farmer is migratory in his habits and that he often moved in the middle of the short term. Consequently the whole value of the term might easily be lost by the transfer. It is not surprising that the final product of such unstable educational conditions was not impressive.

The idea of the first educational missionaries to the negroes of the South was to turn them into white men as soon as possible by bringing them into contact with the traditional culture of the whites through the study of Latin, Greek, mathematics, and sometimes Hebrew, especially in the case of students for the ministry. The attempt was made to take the negro, fresh from slavery and with no cultural background, through the course generally pursued by whites. Numerous "universities" and "colleges" were founded with this end in view. Hampton Inst.i.tute with its insistence upon fitting education to the needs of the race was unique for a time, though later it received the powerful support of Tuskegee Inst.i.tute and its noted princ.i.p.al and founder, Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton. The influence of this educational prophet was great in the North, whence came most of the donations for private schools. In imitation many mushroom schools have recently added "rural" or "industrial" to their names, but few of them are doing work of great value. Where the school appeals chiefly to the negro for support, liberal use is made of such high-sounding names as "college" and "university." The negro still thinks that the purpose of education is to free him from manual labor, and he looks with little favor upon a school which requires actual industrial training. For the same reason he is quick to protest when the attempt is made to introduce manual training into the public schools.

Partly because of this opposition on the part of the negroes themselves, partly because industrial training is more expensive than purely academic training, and partly because such training has only recently been recognized as part of education, the South has made little provision for the industrial education of the negro at public expense. According to the Report on Negro Education, few of the agricultural and mechanical schools maintained partly by the Federal land grants and partly by the States are really efficient. A few state or city schools also give manual training. About one-third of the private schools for negroes offer industrial courses, but much of this work is ineffective-either so slight as to be negligible or straight labor done in return for board and tuition and without regard to educational value. Hampton and Tuskegee are known to do excellent work, and a few of the smaller schools are to be cla.s.sed as efficient; but in the great majority of negro schools the old curriculum is still followed, and the students gladly submit to its exactness. Why study something so plebeian as carpentry when one may study such scholarly subjects as Latin or Greek?