THE NEGRO PAYS MORE THAN HIS SHARE TO EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
IN his annual report for 1900, Mr. Sheats made a thorough analysis of the sources of the school fund in Florida, and of the way in which it is distributed between the white and negro schools. In referring to the figures which he obtained, he said:
A glance at the foregoing statistics indicates that the section of the State designated as “Middle Florida” is considerably behind all the rest in all stages of educational progress. The usual plea is that this is due to the intolerable burden of negro education, and a general discouragement and inactivity is ascribed to this cause. The following figures are given to show that the education of the negroes of Middle Florida does not cost the white people of that section one cent. Without discussing the American principle that it is the duty of all property to educate every citizen as a means of protection to the State, and with no reference to what taxes that citizen may pay, it is the purpose of this paragraph to show that the backwardness of education of the white people is in no degree due to the presence of the negro, but that the presence of the negro has been actually contributing to the sustenance of the white schools.
Mr. Sheats shows that the amount paid for negro schools from negro taxes or from a division of other funds to which negroes contribute indirectly with the whites, amounted to $23,984. The actual cost of negro schools, including their pro rata for administration expenses, was $19,467.
“If this is a fair calculation,” Mr. Sheats concludes, “the schools for negroes are not only no burden on the white citizens, but $4525 for negro schools contributed from other sources was in some way diverted to the white schools. A further loss to the negro schools is due to the fact that so few polls are collected from negroes by county officials.”
Mr. Coon, in an address on “Public Taxation and Negro Schools” before the 1909 Conference for Education in the South, at Atlanta, Georgia, said:
The South is spending $32,068,851 on her public schools, both white and black, but what part of this sum is devoted to negro public schools, which must serve at least forty per cent. of her school population? It is not possible to answer this question with absolute accuracy, but it is possible from the several State reports to find out the whole amount spent for teachers, and in all the States, except Arkansas, what was spent for white and negro teachers separately. The aggregate amount now being spent for public teachers of both races in these eleven States is $23,856,914, or 74.4 per cent. of the whole amount expended. Of this sum not more than $3,818,705 was paid to negro teachers, or twelve per cent. of the total expenditures.
He also brought out the fact that in Virginia, if, in addition to the direct taxes paid by negroes, they had received their proportion of the taxes on corporate property and other special taxes, such as fertilizers, liquor, etc., there would have been expended on the negro schools $18,077 more than was expended; that is, they would have received $507,305 instead of $489,228. In North Carolina there would have been expended $26,539 more than was expended, the negroes receiving $429,197 instead of $402,658. In Georgia there would have been expended on the negro schools $141,682 more than was expended.
In other words, Superintendent Coon seems to prove that negro schools in the States referred to are not only no burden to the white tax-payers, but that the colored people do not get back all the money for their schools that they themselves pay in taxes. In each case there is a considerable amount taken from the negroes’ taxes and spent somewhere else or for other purposes.