The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial IssueVarious
History
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue
Various
African Americans -- Social conditions -- To 1964; Civil rights movements; Martin Luther King, Jr., Day; United States -- History
Yet after all they are but gates, and when turning our eyes from
the temporary and the contingent in the Negro problem to the broader
question of the permanent uplifting and civilization of black men in
America, we have a right to inquire, as this enthusiasm for material
advancement mounts to its height, if after all the industrial school is
the final and sufficient answer in the training of the Negro race; and
to ask gently, but in all sincerity, the ever recurring query of the
ages, Is not life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? And
men ask this to-day all the more eagerly because of sinister signs in
recent educational movements. The tendency is here born of slavery and
quickened to renewed life by the crazy imperialism of the day, to regard
human beings as among the material resources of a land to be trained
with an eye single to future dividends. Race prejudices, which keep
brown and black men in their "places," we are coming to regard as useful
allies with such a theory, no matter how much they may dull the ambition
and sicken the hearts of struggling human beings. And above all, we
daily hear that an education that encourages aspiration, that sets
the loftiest of ideals and seeks as an end culture and character than
bread-winning, is the privilege of white men and the danger and delusion
of black.
Especially has criticism been directed against the former educational
efforts to aid the Negro. In the four periods I have mentioned, we find
first boundless, planless enthusiasm and sacrifice; then the preparation
of teachers for a vast public school system; then the launching and
expansion of that school system amid increasing difficulties; and
finally the training of workmen for the new and growing industries. This
development has been sharply ridiculed as a logical anomaly and flat
reversal of nature. Soothly we have been told that first industrial
and manual training should have taught the Negro to work, then simple
schools should have taught him to read and write, and finally, after
years, high and normal schools could have completed the system, as
intelligence and wealth demanded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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