The Future of the American Negro

Transcriber's Note
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies.
In giving this volume to the public, I deem it fair to say that I have yielded to the oft-repeated requests that I put in some more definite and permanent form the ideas regarding the Negro and his future which I have expressed many times on the public platform and through the public press and magazines.
I make grateful acknowledgment to the Atlantic Monthly and Appleton's Popular Science Monthly for their kindness in granting permission for the use of some part of articles which I have at various times contributed to their columns.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., October 1, 1899.

First appearance of Negroes in America—Rapid increase—Conditions during Civil War—During the reconstruction.
Responsibility of the whole country for the Negro—Progress in the past—Same methods of education do not fit all cases—Proved in the case of the Southern Negro—Illustrations—Lack of money—Comparison between outlay for schools North and South—Duty of North to South.
Decadence of Southern plantation—Demoralization of Negroes natural—No home life before the war—Too much classical education at the start—Lack of practical training—Illustrations—The well-trained slaves now dead—Former plantations as industrial schools—The decayed plantation built up by a former slave—Misunderstanding of industrial education.
The Negroes' proper use of education—Hayti, Santo Domingo, and Liberia as illustrations of the lack of practical training—Present necessity for union of all forces to further the cause of industrial education—Industrial education not opposed to the higher education—Results of practical training so far—Little or no prejudice against capable Negroes in business in the South—The Negro at first shunned labor as degrading—Hampton and Tuskegee aim to remove this feeling—The South does not oppose industrial education for the Negroes—Address to Tuskegee students setting forth the necessity of steadfastness of purpose.