The Truth About Lynching and the Negro in the South: In Which the Author Pleads That the South Be Made Safe for the White RaceCollins, Winfield H. (Winfield Hazlitt)
History
The Truth About Lynching and the Negro in the South: In Which the Author Pleads That the South Be Made Safe for the White Race
Collins, Winfield H. (Winfield Hazlitt)
African Americans; Lynching; Southern States -- Race relations
Since 1870 the South has spent on Negro education around $230,000,000
and is now appropriating for that purpose near $10,000,000, annually.
It is doubtful if the Negro contributes in taxes even half the amount
spent on his public schools. In 1912, according to the Educational
Report of that State, North Carolina spent $436,480.08 for Negro
teachers and Negro school buildings, of which the Negro contributed
in taxes for schools $190,378.81, or a little more than two-fifths.
Texas spends not far from $2,000,000 a year on Negro schools, and
Georgia about $850,000. The District of Columbia, indeed, spends more
per capita on Negro pupils than on whites. However, this is a notable
exception.
There are also more than six hundred private and denominational
schools of secondary and college grade in the United States for the
higher education of the Negro. The property of these is valued at
about $28,500,000.[151:5] From 1865 to 1917 about $65,000,000 has been
contributed to Negro education in the South through various religious
and philanthropic organizations.
But notwithstanding the fact that the illiteracy of the Negro race
had been reduced by 1910 to about thirty-three per cent, there is a
widespread feeling of disappointment in Negro education. Not that it
has made the Negro more criminal as has sometimes been said, however,
this is not yet well determined, but rather that it has failed to make
him a greater producer, or to aid him to adjust himself to economic
conditions. Instead of firing him with the desire to do more and better
work, too often he quits it altogether.
As a teacher or a preacher the Negro has a wide field for his race
needs him and the State and the Church pay him. But as a doctor,
lawyer, or other professional, poverty and pauperism (the condition of
the greater part of the Negro race) militate against them. In addition,
the Negro has not yet sufficient confidence in the professional skill
of those of his own race as to cause him to employ them exclusively.
There is a growing conviction in the South that the first aim of
Negro education should be to fit the Negro for the opportunities of
his social and industrial environment. Also that it should endeavor
to strengthen his will power, in order that he may overcome his
constitutional inertia; and that it should give him a knowledge of
sanitary living, thus preventing disease.
In the South Carolina Public School Report for 1915, the State
Superintendent of Schools has this to say:
“The Negro is here and is here to stay. He cannot remain
ignorant without injury to himself, his white neighbors and to
the Commonwealth. His training should fit him for the work that
is open to him. . . . While industrial education is needed for
both races it is especially desirable for the Negro.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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