Southern States -- Social conditions; United States -- Race relations
It must not be forgotten that there are more than a hundred institutions
for training the colored people, which draw nothing from the public funds.
These schools, in part supported by the colored people themselves, in part
by Northern gifts, which during the last forty years have amounted to
between thirty and fifty million dollars, are usually better than the
public schools, and have more opportunities for those lessons of
cleanliness and uprightness which the Negro needs quite as much as book
learning. Those schools are a thorn in the side of the South--so much so
that for years it was hardly possible to get any Southern man to act as
trustee; they are supposed to teach the negro youth a desire for social
equality; they are thought to draw the Negroes off from cordial relations
with the Southern Whites; above all, they include the higher institutions
which are credited with spoiling the race with too much Greek and Latin.
To a considerable degree the schools of this type are mulatto schools,
probably because the people of mixed blood are more intelligent and
prosperous, and more interested in their children's future; but many of
them are planted in the darkest part of the Black Belt--such as the Penn
School in the Sea Islands. Wherever they exist, they appeal to the
ambition and the conscience of the Negro, and help to civilize the race;
they are not only schools but social settlements. Alongside the earlier
schools and colleges planted by Northerners in the regular academic type,
during the last thirty years have arisen first Hampton, then Tuskegee, and
then many like schools, built up on the principle of industrial training,
which will be described in the next chapter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account