The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
Following the multiplication of Reconstruction studies, there appeared
a number of others of a controversial nature. Among these may be
mentioned the works of A. H. Stone and Thomas Pierce Bailey adversely
criticizing the Negro and those of a milder form produced by Edgar
Gardner Murphy, and Walter Hines Page. Then there are the writings of
William Pickens, and W. E. B. DuBois. These works are generally
included among those for reference in classes studying Negro life, but
they throw very little light on the Negro in the United States or
abroad. In fact, instead of clearing up the situation they deeply
muddle it. The chief value of such literature is to furnish facts as
to sentiment of the people, which in years to come will be of use to
an investigator when the country will have sufficiently removed itself
from race prejudice to seek after the truth as to all phases of the
situation.
The Negro, therefore, has unfortunately been for some time a
negligible factor in the thought of most historians, except to be
mentioned only to be condemned. So far as the history of the Negro is
concerned, moreover, the field has been for some time left largely to
those sympathetically inclined and lacking scientific training. Not
only have historians of our day failed to write books on the Negro,
but this history has not been generally dignified with certain brief
sketches as constitute the articles appearing in the historical
magazines. For example, the _American Historical Review_, the leading
magazine of its kind in the United States, published quarterly since
1895, has had very little material in this field. Running over the
files one finds Jernagan's _Slavery and Conversion in the American
Colonies_, Siebert's _Underground Railway_, Stevenson's _The Question
of Arming the Slaves_, DuBois's _Reconstruction and its Benefits_, and
several economic studies of the plantation and the black belt by A. H.
Stone and U.B. Phillips. It has been announced, however, that the
Carnegie Institution for Historical Research will in the future direct
attention to this neglected field.
In schools of today the same condition unfortunately obtains. The
higher institutions of the Southern States, proceeding doubtless on
the basis that they know too much about the Negro already, have not
heretofore done much to convert the whites to the belief that the one
race should know more about the other. Their curricula, therefore, as
a general thing carry no courses bearing on Negro life and history.
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