The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
$1,828,602, making a total of $5,187,269. This amounted to 44.6 per
cent of the entire running expenses of the institutions.[58]
The attitude of the Negro immediately after the war was that of
opposition to all kinds of labor. He had not as then learned the
distinction between working as a slave and working as a freedman. What
he wanted most was an education, a literary education, such as the
white man had. He did not want his education for any definite purpose,
except as an end in itself. The chief reason probably may have been
that of a desire to put himself on a par with the white man, and to
prove his intellectual equality. The attitude to-day is radically
different, being represented by men like Washington and DuBois.
Washington preached the gospel of industrial education, believing
strongly that that method would lead to an increase of the economic
wealth of the race, whereby they could acquire the so-called higher
education. DuBois, however, although he believed in the efficiency of
industrial training, also felt that the race should not neglect to
educate leaders even at the present time, so that his attitude differs
from that of Washington in a slight degree. Two short quotations from
Washington's writings may illustrate to a certain extent the attitude
of the leaders of Negro education: "What Negro education needed most,"
said he, "was not so much more schools or different kinds of schools,
as an educational policy and a school system,[59] and "I want to see
education as common as grass, and as free for all as sunshine and
rain.[60]
Prejudice is an important factor in the attitude of the white race
toward Negro education. This prejudice seems to be in all sections of
the country, but it is the southerner who is heard from the most,
possibly because he is more in contact with the real problem and then
because it seems to be a policy of southern politicians to attempt to
outdo each other in their speeches along the line of race prejudice.
According to Weatherford prejudice has arisen out of the fear that
education will lead to the dominance of the Negro in politics and to
promiscuous mingling in social life. "The southern white man will
never be enthusiastic for Negro education, until he is convinced that
such education will not lead to either of these."[61] This feeling of
a group is expressed in the following statement in a report to the
Baltimore Council by a committee in 1913: "No fault is found with the
Negroes' ambitions," said the report, "but the Committee feels that
Baltimoreans will be criminally negligent as to their future
happiness, if they suffer the Negroes' ambitions to go unchecked."[62]
Mr. Thomas Dixon, Junior, deplores the fact that Washington was
training the Negroes to be "masters of men," stating that "if there is
one thing the southern white man cannot endure it is an educated
Negro."[63]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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