Twentieth century Negro literature : $b or, A cyclopedia of thought on the vital topics relating to the American Negro
History
Twentieth century Negro literature : $b or, A cyclopedia of thought on the vital topics relating to the American Negro
African Americans -- History
Besides, even if their financial support were guaranteed, at present a
more serious obstacle would present itself. It would be impossible
from the present supply of educated Negro men and women to get
faculties for them. I mean, to get faculties every whit prepared for
their progressive management. An up-to-date college must have not only
strong financial backing but it must also have strong intellectual and
moral backing. Each teacher should be so trained, intellectually and
morally as to have a very keen appreciation of the deep significance
of the work in which he is engaged. This means that he must in
addition to a careful formal training, have a sort of intellectual and
culture background to cause him to stand out in clear relief before
his students as an embodiment of what he would have them become. He
should, in very truth, be "a scholar and a gentleman."
The fact that a man or a woman is a graduate from some of these
misnamed Southern "_universities_" or "_brevet_" colleges does not
argue that he has a liberal education. The fact is that there are no
Negro universities in this country and less than half a dozen "_bona
fide_" colleges. These reputed "universities" and colleges are but
indifferent high-schools for the most part, and their graduates
without additional study, are not prepared to take a place on a
college faculty. Strange to say, very few of these graduates feel the
necessity of doing additional study before becoming anxious candidates
for presidents of colleges or for professorships.
I stand by the statement that there are not enough really educated men
fully equipped to manage the colleges such as we have, not to say
anything of those that we ought to have. The race is not yet far
enough removed from slavery to have that intellectual and moral
background necessary to the bringing out of college professors and
college presidents. It has taken the white race many generations to
develop an Eliot, a Dwight, a Hadley, and an Angell, not to say
anything about the Butlers, the Harrises, and the Wheelers. These men
are developments--the very cream of the intellectual history of the
Anglo-Saxon race in America. As I have indicated elsewhere, the
trustees find it hard to fill their places when vacant.
The incipient Negro teacher and educator might as well admit the fact
of their incompetency and with the admission bend themselves with
renewed energy to hard study, laying aside all bogus degrees and
meaningless titles, and acknowledge the fact that they are yet
intellectual pigmies. If they will do this, perchance they themselves
may not only add to their own statures but they may also become the
ancestors of intellectual giants, fully competent to occupy the
positions which they fain would hold in the educational world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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