Contemporary American History, 1877-1913Beard, Charles A. (Charles Austin)
History
Contemporary American History, 1877-1913
Beard, Charles A. (Charles Austin)
United States -- History -- 1865-1921
Thus the negro, suddenly elevated to a great height politically, was
almost as suddenly dropped by his new friends and thrown largely upon
his own ingenuity and resources for further advance. His emancipation
and enfranchisement had come almost without effort on his own part,
without that development of economic interest and of class consciousness
that had marked the rise of other social strata to political power. It
was fortuitous and had no solid foundation. It became evident,
therefore, that any permanent advance of the race must be built on
substantial elements of power in the race itself. The whites might help
with education and industrial training, but the hope of the race lay in
the development of intellectual and economic power on its own account.
In relative numerical strength the negro is not holding his own, because
of the large immigration from Europe. In 1790, the negro population
formed 19.3 per cent of the whole, and since that time it has almost
steadily declined, reaching at the last census 10.7 per cent of the
whole. Even in the southern states where the stream of foreign
immigration is the least, the negro population has fallen from 35.2 per
cent in 1790 to 29.8 per cent in 1910. In education, the negro has
undoubtedly made great progress since the War, but it must be remembered
that he was then at the bottom of the scale. The South, though poor as
compared with the North, has made large expenditures for negro
education, but it is authoritatively reported that "nearly half of the
negro children of school age in the South never get inside of the
schoolhouse."[6] The relative expenditures for the education of white
and colored children there are not ascertainable, but naturally the
balance is heavily in favor of the former. When we recall, however, the
total illiteracy of the race under slavery and then discover that in
1910 there was an average daily attendance of 1,105,629 colored children
in the southern schools, we cannot avoid the conclusion that decided
changes are destined to be made in the intellectual outlook of the race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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