African Americans; United States -- Race relations
Before the Twelfth Annual Conference for Education in the South (1910)
Mr. Charles L. Coon, superintendent of schools in North Carolina, read
a paper on Negro Education in the South. His investigation extended
over eleven states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and
Tennessee. In these states the Negroes make up 40.1 per cent of the
population, but receive only 14.8 per cent of the school fund. He
showed that even if the school fund as disbursed were apportioned to
each race according to taxes paid the colored people of Virginia
should receive $507,305 instead of the $482,228 which they now
receive; in North Carolina they should get $429,127 instead of
$402,658, and in Georgia $647,852 instead of $506,170. So that these
three states expend for Negro education $93,278 less than what the
Negroes themselves pay for—and that sum is contributed by Negroes to
the white children of the state!
But, as a matter of fact, in no modern country is education made to
depend upon the tax-paying power of the parents. If that were so, the
children of 40,000,000 American proletarians would live and die
without schooling. So that the case is really much worse than it
seems.
South Carolina spent in 1910 $10.34 for the education of each white
child and $1.70 for the =education= of each colored child. In Lawrence
county the state gave to each colored child 97 cents worth of
education that year; in Lexington county, 90 cents; in Bamberg, 89
cents; in Saluda, 68 cents, and in Calhoun, 58 cents worth. The
smallest sum spent on a white child for education that year was $4.03.
In Georgia it was quite as bad. One county of this state owned 19 of
the 27 school houses for Negroes. The valuation of the entire 19 was
$2,500; that is, $131.58 for each school house for Negroes! =The
annual cost of the education of a Negro child in six counties of this
civilized state was 39 cents.= Meanwhile the whites of Baltimore were
protesting against the building of a new Negro school! In Louisiana
the report of the Department of Education shows that the average
monthly salary of white male teachers is $75.29, while that of colored
male teachers is $34.25. The average monthly salary of white female
teachers is $50.80 and that of the colored female teachers is $28.67.
The average length of the annual school term for white children is
eight months and a quarter; for colored children, four months and a
half.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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