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
Among people of low intellectual development and low moral standards,
family love is below normal. With this defective class, there is much
indifference to the life and death of their dependent relatives. The
young and the aged are shamefully neglected. It is sufficient to be
bereaved--better, the relieved, to say: "The Lord's Will be done."
Remedies for these sad and unfortunate conditions are much more easily
suggested than applied.
Better environment, greater comfort in the homes, come only as a
return for money. Money will come as a return for labor. Money will
come to those who earnestly desire it, because they will work for it.
They will do whatsoever their hands find to do, accepting the pay such
labor brings, but fitting and aspiring for something better. There is
usually plenty of work for all honest, industrious Negroes in Southern
cities.
Even money may not cause the old shanty to give place to a good house
nor raise the standard of general comfort very materially, except as
the demands of the family are enlarged as a result of education. No
one factor will have such weight in the decrease of suffering and the
reduction of the high death rate as enlightenment of mind.
The system of education in vogue in Southern cities will work slowly
because up to the beginning of the twentieth century, school
attendance has not been made compulsory. There are no truant schools,
no reform schools. Idleness tends to vice. Idleness and vice are in no
way conducive to health and longevity.
Many Negroes do not want education for themselves nor for their
children. These people swell the death lists in Southern cities'
health offices to such distressingly large numbers. They are often
cared for and buried by funds from the city treasury. Would it not pay
to try compulsory education? To try teaching them to help themselves,
to save themselves?
To say that the home life of the masses must be improved is but
another way of saying they must be educated.
Among the most potent forces in the uplift of a people are the school,
the press, the courts and the church.
Under a system of compulsory education, the Negro would much sooner
learn to observe the laws of health and thus to extend his life.
When newspapers in Southern cities are fairer in their attitude toward
the black citizen, he will become a better citizen. It will increase
his respect for others and greatly increase his self respect. He will
then make more effort to live and to live well, because his life will
seem more worth living.
Every state included under the "Land of the free and the home of the
brave" should strive to make its criminal laws reformative rather than
revengeful. A very considerable number of Southern Negroes come to
their life's end in the prisons, which in no Southern state are all
that prisons should be. From a health standpoint, most of them are all
that prisons should not be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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