MIXED SCHOOLS.
Opposition to mixed schools in the South is not confined to the white race. Intelligent colored people see that these mean no opportunity for them as teachers, at least for some years to come. Those who would be willing to wield the birchen rod over colored children are as yet largely in excess of those who would consent to have a colored teacher wield it over them.
Mixed schools are needed in all the sparsely settled neighborhoods, which includes, of course, all the country outside of the larger villages, as none other can be effectively maintained. None others can be harmonized with the democratic ideas upon which our institutions are based, and it is safe to say that anything which is favored by every public and private interest, and is opposed only by prejudice, will in the end gain the day. Victories are being won with such rapidity that we can afford to wait patiently for this one, which when gained will prove the Appomattox of this war.
Almost all that can be gained for the negro by legislation has been accomplished; to overcome prejudices which wrong and hinder him, will now depend largely upon himself. The gratifying fact, attested by prominent men all over the South, is that he is playing his part with commendable manliness, and is gaining what will never be long withheld from those who deserve it—the respect of his white neighbors.
It would be well for those who complain of the slow progress made for better feelings and sentiments among the Southern whites in regard to the negroes, and their manifest unwillingness to accord to them their rights, quietly to digest a recent letter from the Superintendent of Schools in Cambridge, Mass., who explains that he has not employed properly qualified colored teachers in that city, simply because there is so much color prejudice among the people that he deems it inexpedient to do so.
We know of a young colored woman, a graduate of the high-school of the town in which she lives, admitted by all parties to be the best scholar of her class, and one of the best ever graduated from the school, who cannot find employment in the profession for which she has so ably qualified herself, only because she has a trace of negro blood in her veins. When Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and we may as well include the whole of New England, have reached and occupied sufficiently long to feel comfortable upon it, the ground which they insist the South ought to take at one bound, the South may be more favorably affected by their preaching of equal rights.