Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New YorkOvington, Mary White
History
Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York
Ovington, Mary White
African Americans -- New York (State) -- New York
No record is kept of the number of colored teachers in the city's public
schools, but each year Negro graduates from the normal college secure
positions. These are found from the kindergarten through the primary
and up to the highest grammar grade. The colored girl with intellectual
ability, particularly if she comes of an old New York family, is apt to
turn to teaching. Her novitiate is long, but a permanent certificate
secured, she is sure of a good salary, increasing with her years of
service, and ending in a pension. This path of security has perhaps
tended to keep New York colored girls from going into other lines of
work. I have not yet found one who has graduated from a university.
Pratt Institute and the Teachers' College have colored normal students,
but they are usually from the South or West, not New Yorkers born.
Philanthropy is opening up important lines of opportunity to the Negro
woman in New York. In 1903, a colored graduate nurse secured an
interview with the Secretary of the New York Charity Organization
Society, and so ably presented to him the need of Negro visitors among
Negroes that she was appointed visiting nurse for the colored sick who
came under the notice of the Society. In time the position changed into
that of a colored district visitor, other colored nurses entering in
numbers into district nursing work. In 1910, three nurses were employed
by the Nurses' Settlement, two by the Association for Improving the
Condition of the Poor of Manhattan, and two by the District Nursing
Association of Brooklyn. With increased knowledge of the sickness and
suffering amid the Negro poor, and of their need of proper care in their
homes, the number of these nurses will doubtless increase. Colored women
rank high among the trained nurses of New York.
Other philanthropic work lately has been undertaken by Negro women in
New York. In 1910, besides the nurses of whom we have spoken, there were
at the head of societies in salaried positions, two settlement workers,
two matrons of day nurseries, two matrons of homes in which much social
work was carried on, many employees in colored orphan asylums, a teacher
of domestic science in a home-keeping flat, a traveller's aid visitor,
a playground instructor, besides workers in various religious
organizations. This does not include the many colored women doing
social and recreation work in the public schools and on the city's
playgrounds. Indeed, the difficulty in New York is to secure trained
colored women for philanthropic work, the Negro's attitude still being
that of the great majority of white women a few years ago, that love for
children and a sentimental kindness constitute the requisites for work
among the poor. But the school of experience is training workers, and as
the schools of philanthropy of New York, Boston, and Chicago also
graduate colored students, we shall have in the North the intelligent,
trained workers whom we need.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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