African Americans; United States -- Race relations
In Wilcox County, Alabama, where there are 2,000 white children and
10,758 colored children, $32,660.48 is devoted to education. Of this
amount the 10,758 colored children receive one-fourth—$6,532.09, or
sixty cents each per annum—while the 2,000 white children receive the
remaining four-fifths—$26,128.13, or about $13 each per annum.
Mr. Booker Washington, who lives in this state sends his own children
to the best colleges and to Europe while advising the rest of his
people to "make your condition known to the white people of the
state." Now, if education—of any sort—is a training for life, is it
not evident here that black children are being robbed of their chance
in life? Why? Is it to be supposed that their fathers are so stupid as
to allow this if they could vote their own needs? Yet Mr. Washington
decries the agitation for the ballot as unwise and never loses an
opportunity of sneering at these who see something of value in it. But
to continue The number of white children of school age in Alabama is
364,266; the number of colored children of school age is 311,552. But
the teachers of the white children receive in salaries $2,404,062.54,
while the teachers of the colored children receive $202,251.13. The
value of all schoolhouses, sites and furniture for white children is
$6,503,019.57; for colored children, $273,147.50.
In South Carolina there are 316,007 Negro children of school age and
201,868 white children; but the state spends on its Negro children
$368,802, and on its white children $1,684,976. Thus does America keep
knowledge from Negroes. She is afraid of the educated black man. Of
such are the people who taunt Negroes with ignorance.
IV—Social.
When a group has been reduced to serfdom, political and economic, its
social status become fixed by that fact. And so we find that in "the
home of the free and the land of the brave" Negroes must not ride in
the same cars in a train as white people. On street-cars, certain
sections are set apart for them. They may not eat in public places
where white people eat nor drink at the same bar. They may not go to
the same church (although they are foolish enough to worship the same
god) as white people; they may not die in the same hospital nor be
buried in the same grave-yard. So far as we know, the segregation ends
here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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