SOME ACTUAL RESULTS—POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS
In the ordinary sense, neither General Armstrong nor Booker Washington would have been put down as a statesman; but, of course, each had his own individual sentiments as a citizen of the Republic. Thus each was well aware that both the North and the South had to deal with a population problem of an exceptionally difficult kind. The North had an unceasing tide of foreign immigration; the South had its Black Belt and a negro population, which appeared to be competent to double itself in course of a generation. General Armstrong was as large-hearted a friend of the coloured race as could have been found, and he appears to have protested against "either coddling the blacks or hampering the whites" on the part of the North. In an article in The International Monthly on the Southern question, Mr Edward P. Clark tells us that General Armstrong "opposed alike Federal Election Laws, designed and administered in the interest of the blacks, and Federal Education Laws, appropriating money for the South in the same interest. He urged that a negro could never become an ordinary citizen until he should cease to be the 'ward of the nation.'" Booker Washington appears to hold views on this matter which essentially are in close agreement with the policy of his late master. E.g.:—
"General Armstrong did not regard it as a serious misfortune for the negro that he was discouraged and even prevented from voting. He condemned unfair methods, but he believed that the cure of such methods might and should be left to local public sentiment. Mr Washington opposes unjust race legislation, like the recent proposition in Georgia to disfranchise the black man, as a black man; but he does not urge the negroes in his own State of Alabama to make voting the chief end of life. The keynote of the advice given by both of these leaders to the negro always has been to make himself a good citizen, worthy to share in the government of town, State and Republic, and trust to his white neighbour to recognise his right to such share when that time should come. 'Be a voter, and then think about being a man'; that was long the only watchword of the Northern Republican politician for the negro. 'Be a man, and then think about being a voter'; such is the message to him from the Armstrongs and the Washingtons."
Mr Clark adds this cheerful note:—
"It is easy enough to make a catalogue of outrage and injustice upon the Southern blacks, so long and gloomy as to justify a feeling of profound discouragement regarding the future. The most hopeful feature of the situation is the fact that those friends and champions of the negro who have studied the question most carefully upon the spot, have grown more confident all the time that ultimately things would work out right. General Armstrong died full of faith in the future. Mr Washington grows more hopeful every year. Outsiders may well feel that there is no occasion for despair when the voice of cheer is heard from the very heart of the Black Belt."
We learn from an article by Mr Pitt Dillingham, in The Outlook of New York (April 12, 1902), that Booker Washington is a trustee of the Calhoun Coloured School in Lowndes County, a part of the Black Belt in Alabama, where the negroes greatly outnumber the whites. The school may possibly take its name from the family of John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850), a well-remembered statesman of the Republic, who was Vice-President 1825-1832; an uncompromising defender of slavery, and propounder of the political doctrine of Nullification—the rejection of any State of any Act which was judged to be unconstitutional. The students in the Calhoun School receive just such an industrial education as would be given at Hampton or Tuskegee; but to us the institution is the more noteworthy because it has become identified with a kind of land-movement, which may have the most far-reaching consequences, so far as the coloured race is concerned. Practically, the school is an illustration of the way in which those who have been trained at Hampton, or under Booker Washington at Tuskegee, in turn become teachers and leaders to their own people. Mr Dillingham remarks:—
"The two young women from New England—one from Boston, one from New Haven—Hampton teachers who first rang a school-bell ten years ago on the old Shelby plantation in Lowndes County, simply desired to get into the Black Belt, to identify themselves with a community of cotton-raisers as neighbours, to know the people at first hand, and then to meet the human need about them in any way possible; above all, helping the people to help themselves ... in the Black Belt of Alabama, a county containing the largest proportion of blacks to whites. The average ratio for the seventeen counties in Alabama's cotton-belt is less than three to one. In Lowndes County in 1892 the ratio was seven to one—28,000 to 4000. This meant maximum conditions of ignorance and poverty—a county likely to be Africanised if it could not be Americanised."
The school at Calhoun had 300 students, and its land extended over 100 acres. As there were such great opportunities, if the right means were taken to secure them, the teachers were moved by a desire to provide openings for their students in the county instead of their being obliged to seek uncertain employment in the distance. Why not buy land and divide it into small holdings, which even negroes could purchase for their own? That would be to show practical sympathy with the native sentiment—"I always did want to own something that wouldn't die; your mule, he'll die, but the land is gwine to live."
That idea gained favour; it was strictly in accordance with the negro's economic programme; and thus, when a plantation of nearly 1100 acres was purchased and was divided into over twenty farms, the enterprise was well in hand. In time other estates were purchased; the movement, which is favoured by the whites and ex-planters, is so extremely popular with the blacks that "one man recently sent five cents ten miles by a friend to go towards his farm!" As might be expected, all this has not been carried out without there being some failure and discouragement, but, on the whole, the movement has realised the hopes of its promoters. Mr Dillingham adds:—
"On the economic side, Calhoun's scheme means buying a plantation at wholesale price, and breaking up the plantation into small farms, by a group of men who make advance payments and then finish buying by paying rent for a term of years. The fifty-acre farm means a basis for a new agriculture or intensive farming, also sharp, individual responsibility of buyer, plus family life and labour and friendly co-operation of a neighbourhood. The plantation, with its 'quarters' and renters and croppers, who 'stay' to make and pick crops, but have no home—the plantation, the old, before-the-war, economic unit, is transformed into an American neighbourhood of farms and homes, within sound of church and bell. This is the light set on the hill."
This is how the work, commenced at Hampton and Tuskegee, can develop or expand; and, while benefiting the State, is also found to bring the white people and the coloured race into friendly contact, the former doing what lies in their power to advance the cause. Thriving neighbourhoods of coloured people promise to come into existence, for "the South is not shutting the industrial door, or the educational door, or the church or the house door on the negro."
There are doubtless persons in the Republic who are disposed to think that, so far as education is concerned, Nashville, the capital and largest town of Tennessee, is the paradise of the negroes. The place is famous for its schools, churches and colleges, Fisk College and some others ranking as universities. The coloured race are in the minority. The fact tends to promote their own peace and happiness, that they are not overmuch fascinated by politics; and, according to common report, the coloured people in the town are more eager than others to obtain an education. Three great colleges, one named after Roger Williams, have been founded for their special benefit. A certain small proportion of negroes may advance to higher scholarship, but the main part do not get beyond what used to be called grammar-learning; while it is a most happy thing, both for whites and blacks, that the industrial programme of General Armstrong and Booker Washington is in large measure carried out. As a writer in the Century Magazine remarks:—
"All boarding pupils are required to devote an hour a day to such forms of labour as may be required of them, and the cleanest school building I ever saw is Livingstone Hall of Fisk University, which is kept clean by the pupils. A certain number of young men at Fisk learn printing every year, and others will henceforth learn carpentry and other useful handicrafts; while the young women are taught nursing the sick and the rules of hygiene, cooking, dressmaking and plain sewing. The course of industrial training in Central Tennessee College and Roger Williams University is about the same."
The majority of those who are thus educated become teachers of their own people, and in this service there are plenty of openings for them. The negroes seem to be as amenable to the civilising influences of education as any race with whom they might be compared, and in Nashville they are peculiarly fortunate in their teachers. You may meet with thriving negro business men whose honesty and tact are much commended by the whites. They see that the acquisition of property gives them a good standing in the world, so that they may sometimes need a little wholesome advice to check their excessive eagerness to become rich. Then the character of their well-furnished and comfortable houses shows how completely they have been raised from the squalid one-room life of their former cabins. "These well-kept houses," says one who visited a number of them in the town for purposes of inspection, "are not only the best proof of the progress in civilisation of the negro race, but they are also the best security for the welfare of the whites in property and in morals, and I have never had so much hope for the future of this region as since I learned these things. Granted that these may be the picked few, it is most hopeful that there is a picked few, whose example will inspire others to lift themselves up." In proportion as they advance they show commendable enthusiasm for embarking in philanthropic enterprise. Thus, as a writer in the Century Magazine tells us:—
"The only negro church publishing-house in the world" is located at Nashville, a large building five storeys high. "It was purchased with the contributions of the children of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. A home for aged and indigent negroes is the latest enterprise, while a shop for teaching mechanical trades was opened.... The number of church societies is, of course, legion."
All this shows how far-reaching was the influence of such institutes as Tuskegee and Hampton, when their methods were thus copied. To come back to Booker Washington's own work, however, we find that at the end of fourteen years the two old buildings in which he had commenced in 1881 had given place to forty buildings on an estate of two thousand acres. At that time there were rented fifteen cottages not on the school estate, while many of the teachers had houses of their own. The annual cost was then under £15,000, the number of persons to be supported exceeding a thousand. It is not often that the students are able to pay wholly for their board; and at the time in question less than £2000 in the year was received under this head. Various funds, including a grant from the State, supplied near £2000 annually. The cost of each student is £10 a year, board being paid for partly in money and partly in labour. £40 suffices one to complete the four years' course, while a sum of £200 provides a permanent scholarship. A carpenter, a bricklayer, or a blacksmith must, under all circumstances, pass some part of each day in the school. The aim is to have all well taught, and to inspire a laudable ambition, hoping to excel and to succeed by hard work, perseverance and honest, upright lives. The training is also partly religious, for to come short of that would not yield satisfaction to the negro. The following from the article by Mr Speed, already referred to, gives a word-picture of what takes place on a high public day at Tuskegee, when friends from far and near assemble to see and hear what is being done not only in the schools, but by those who also represent the thirty or more industries which are carried on:—
"At the commencement, held at the end of May, the exercises included not only music and speaking, but an exhibition of the handiwork of the pupils, who were called on to show how each kind of work was done. One showed the method of putting tires on a buggy, another the construction of a house, another the pinning of the same, and still another the painting of the structure; the girls showed the process of ironing a shirt, of cleaning and lighting a lamp, of making bread, cake and pie, of cutting and fitting a dress, and so on. Other boys illustrated wheelwrighting, bricklaying, plastering, mattress-making, printing, and various agricultural processes. To the crowds of interested negroes at this commencement this seemed something worth while, because it was practical and within the range of their own experience and attainment.... Among all the educational efforts among the negroes there is probably none more interesting, wise or successful than this work of Mr Washington's at Tuskegee."
To understand what progress has been made, we have to contrast the present outlook with that of forty years ago, when negroes were considered to be incapable of living as free people with credit to themselves, and when certain States actually had laws prohibiting their being set free.