Booker T. Washington, Builder of a CivilizationScott, Emmett J. (Emmett Jay)
History
Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization
Scott, Emmett J. (Emmett Jay)
African Americans -- Biography; Educators -- United States -- Biography; Washington, Booker T., 1856-1915
He then pointed out that the last enumeration in Mississippi, where
this crime was committed, indicated that 64 per cent. of the colored
children had had no schooling during the past year. That in Charleston
County, South Carolina, another backward State in Negro education,
there was expended on the public education of each white child $20.2;
for the colored child $3.12; in Abbeville County $11.17 for the white,
69 cents for the colored child. This 69 cents per capita expense was
incurred by maintaining a one-room school for two and one-half
months, with a teacher paid at the rate of $15 a month. In another
county the Negro school was in session but one month out of the
twelve. Throughout the State, outside the cities and large towns, the
school term for the colored children is from two to four months. Thus
200,000 colored children in South Carolina are given only three or
four months of schooling a year. "Under these conditions it would
require twenty-eight years for a child to complete the eight grades of
the public school.... But South Carolina is by no means the only State
that has these breeding spots for ignorance, crime, and filth which
the nation will sooner or later have to reckon with."
In the article in the _Century Magazine_ from which quotations have
already been made Mr. Washington cites this statement made by W.N.
Sheats, former Superintendent of Education for the State of Florida,
in explanation of an analysis of the sources of the school fund of the
State: "A glance at the foregoing statistics indicates that the
section of the State designated as 'Middle Florida' is considerably
behind all the rest in all stages of educational progress. The usual
plea is that this is due to the intolerable burden of Negro education,
and a general discouragement and inactivity is ascribed to this cause.
The following figures are given to show that the education of the
Negroes of Middle Florida does not cost the white people of that
section one cent. Without discussing the American principle that it is
the duty of all property to educate every citizen as a means of
protection to the State, and with no reference to what taxes that
citizen may pay, it is the purpose of this paragraph to show that the
backwardness of education of the white people is in no degree due to
the presence of the Negro, but that the presence of the Negro has been
actually contributing to the sustenance of the white schools."
Mr. Sheats then shows that the cost of the Negro schools was $19,467,
while the Negroes contributed to the school fund in direct taxes,
together with their proper proportion of the indirect taxes, $23,984.
He concludes: "If this is a fair calculation the schools for the
Negroes are not only no burden on the white citizens, but $4,525 for
Negro schools contributed from other sources was in some way diverted
to the white schools."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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