The Conquest: The Story of a Negro PioneerMicheaux, Oscar
General
The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Micheaux, Oscar
African American pioneers -- Fiction; Autobiographical fiction; South Dakota -- Fiction; Western stories
The Reverend seemed to be carried away with our lives on the Little
Crow, and we got along fine until he and I got to arguing the race
question, which brought about friction. It was as I had feared but it
seemed impossible to avoid it. He had the most ancient and backward
ideas concerning race advancement I had ever heard. He was filled to
overflowing with condemnation of the white race and eulogy of the negro.
In his idea the negro had no fault, nor could he do any wrong or make
any mistake. Everything had been against him and according to the
Reverend's idea, was still. This he would declare very loudly. From the
race question we drifted to the discussion of mixed schools.
The Reverend had educated his girls with the intention of making
teachers of them and would speak of this fact with much pride, speaking
slowly and distinctly like one who has had years of oratory. He would
insist that the public schools of Chicago have not given them a chance.
"I am opposed to mixed schools," he would exclaim. "They are like
everything else the white people control. They are managed in a way to
keep the colored people down."
Here Orlean dissented, this being about the only time she did openly
disagree with him. She was firm in declaring there was no law or
management preventing the colored girls' teaching in Chicago if they
were competent.
"In the first place," she carefully continued, "the school we attended
in Ohio does not admit to teach in the city."
In order to teach in the city schools it is either necessary to be a
graduate of the normal, or have had a certain number of years'
experience elsewhere. I do not remember all the whys, but she was
emphatic and continued to insist that it was to some extent the fault of
the girls, who were not all as attentive to books as they should be;
spending too much time in society or with something else that kept them
from their studies, which impaired their chances when they attempted to
enter the city schools.
She held up instances where colored girls were teaching in Chicago
schools and had been for years, which knocked the foundation from his
argument.
There are very few colored people in a city or state which has mixed
schools, who desire to have them separated. The mixed schools give the
colored children a more equal opportunity and all the advantage of
efficient management. Separate schools lack this. Even in the large
cities, where separate schools are in force, the advantage is invariably
with the white schools.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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