African Americans; African Americans -- Politics and government -- 20th century; African Americans -- Social conditions -- To 1964
I was told, in so many words, two years ago, by the Superintendent of
Public Schools of a Southern city that "there was no place in the modern
world for the Negro, except under the ground." If gentlemen holding such
opinions are to instruct the white youth of the South, would it be at all
surprising if these, later on, should devote a portion of their leisure to
the improvement of civilization by putting under the ground as many of
this superfluous race as possible?
The sole excuse made in the South for the prevalent injustice to the Negro
is the difference in race, and the inequalities and antipathies resulting
therefrom. It has nowhere been declared as a part of the Southern program
that the Negro, when educated, is to be given a fair representation in
government or an equal opportunity in life; the contrary has been
strenuously asserted; education can never make of him anything but a
Negro, and, therefore, essentially inferior, and not to be safely trusted
with any degree of power. A system of education which would tend to soften
the asperities and lessen the inequalities between the races would be of
inestimable value. An education which by a rigid separation of the races
from the kindergarten to the university, fosters this racial antipathy,
and is directed toward emphasizing the superiority of one class and the
inferiority of another, might easily have disastrous, rather than
beneficial results. It would render the oppressing class more powerful to
injure, the oppressed quicker to perceive and keener to resent the injury,
without proportionate power of defense. The same assimilative education
which is given at the North to all children alike, whereby native and
foreign, black and white, are taught side by side in every grade of
instruction, and are compelled by the exigencies of discipline to keep
their prejudices in abeyance, and are given the opportunity to learn and
appreciate one another's good qualities, and to establish friendly
relations which may exist throughout life, is absent from the Southern
system of education, both of the past and as proposed for the future.
Education is in a broad sense a remedy for all social ills; but the
disease we have to deal with now is not only constitutional but acute. A
wise physician does not simply give a tonic for a diseased limb, or a high
fever; the patient might be dead before the constitutional remedy could
become effective. The evils of slavery, its injury to whites and blacks,
and to the body politic, was clearly perceived and acknowledged by the
educated leaders of the South as far back as the Revolutionary War and the
Constitutional Convention, and yet they made no effort to abolish it.
Their remedy was the same--time, education, social and economic
development;--and yet a bloody war was necessary to destroy slavery and
put its spirit temporarily to sleep. When the South and its friends are
ready to propose a system of education which will recognize and teach the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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