A PERMANENT NECESSITY.
Temporary evils call for temporary agencies and remedies, but permanent conditions of society require permanent and adequate provisions to meet these demands. The confident prediction that the freedman would rapidly fade away before the superior white races, suggested to the humane that he should be made comfortable in some sort of field hospital while he lingered, and made ready, if possible, for a speedy departure to a more congenial world, where perhaps the conditions of life would not be so unfavorable for his continued existence.
The figures given by the unsentimental census-taker showing that during the past decade there has been an increase of about 34 per cent. of this race in our population does not indicate that the black belt stretching along our Southern horizon is likely to fade away. The negro is here to stay, and in adjusting him to our natural life we are faced by a permanent, not a temporary problem.
We must either take counsel of the Egyptians and “deal wisely” with this people and so prevent their increase, or broadly and comprehensively deal with the question of fitting them for a large and permanent place as an integral part and most important factor of our Republic. If we deal wisely with them we must bear in mind first of all that they are here and will remain here, and their character and condition will enter largely into that of our national life and character.
It is not beyond the limits of modest truth to say that the victory which has been gained over Southern prejudices against the free common school systems was gained, not by the political conventions which established them by constitutional provisions, but by the missionary training-schools and the teachers sent out by them; but the fact that these are established does not supersede a necessity for the schools which gained this victory. An intelligent gentleman who was appealed to for aid in the endowment of one of these said: “Private charity has demonstrated the possibility and value of negro education, but it is a work for which it is altogether inadequate. It must be done in the South as in the North by the States themselves. These rapidly increasing millions must be, and can be, cared for alone in schools sustained by government. Your missionary, pioneer, experimental work has been done so wisely and so well that its success has superseded the necessity of its continuance.”
The answer to this is of course not far to seek. Yale and Harvard did not grow out of the common school systems of Massachusetts and Connecticut, but made these possible and efficient by supplying the prime conditions of a good school-trained teachers. These colleges were founded not by the State, but by private philanthropy, as all such schools have been, for on no theory which has been accepted as to the functions of government can such be built by the State. The primary and preparatory work which has been done by the schools of the A. M. A. will indeed be remitted, more and more, to the common schools of the States, but there will always be a demand and a necessity for fully endowed colleges and universities for the higher education of the teachers and leaders of this people; and neither the highest efficiency of the public school, nor the fullest development of such universities as Vanderbilt and similar schools for the white race, will lessen the need of such schools as Fisk and Atlanta Universities. If the day shall ever come, as come it certainly will, when these schools for whites shall strike out the word white, and admit all who seek their advantages, it will come as the result of a work which they are not doing now.
The prejudice which now excludes the negro will yield only to established facts, but will not, from the nature of the case, create these facts. When educated negroes in all the public callings of life shall have proved “that a man is a man for all that,” that what entitles him to respect and honor lies deeper than the color of his skin, and is not to be determined at all by its peculiar shade, so that separate schools will not be demanded for him, he will come in such numbers that those now established for him will be urgently needed for the accommodation of students, regardless of color. Thus are we led by our just and reasonable views to the conclusion that the schools for higher training of the negro, established by the A. M. A. and kindred societies, are demanded for a permanent work most vitally related to all that is dear to us as Christians and patriots, and that permanent and adequate endowments for them must be made if these interests are to be conserved.