This Institution is the most northern State School now in operation for the education of the race.
CHAPTER XIII.
ATLANTA UNIVERSITY.
Atlanta University—Rev. Horace Bumstead, D. D., President—located at Atlanta, Ga., has special claims for recognition and support because of the somewhat unique character of its work for the Negro. It is not duplicating the educational work done by the State or most other private institutions. It is supplementing and strengthening the work of the public schools and of private industrial and trade schools by furnishing thoroughly trained teachers and manual training superintendents to carry on the elementary and industrial education of the masses. It is elevating and purifying the domestic and civic life of the Negroes, by furnishing those moral and spiritual forces needed to counteract the gross materialism which threatens to engulf them. It is providing intelligent and conscientious leaders for this race so sadly deficient in power of organization, so that it may become self-directing and cease to be, what it has so long been, a dependent race. To accomplish all this Atlanta University is now, more than almost any other institution in the South, confining itself to the work of Higher Education. It receives no students who have not had a good grammar-school training or its equivalent.
Higher Education is not given to the Negro in Atlanta University in any merely sentimental spirit, but with a practical end in view. No attempt is made to force it upon the masses of the race, but to give it to the few for the sake of the masses. It is not given to these selected few as a luxury, but as a trust; not as a mere means of personal profit and enjoyment, but as an equipment for the service of others. It does not educate the students away from labor, but from lower to higher forms of labor, more profitable to himself and others. It does not dishonor manual toil even in its humblest forms.
INDUSTRIAL BUILDING.BOYS' HALL.STONE HALL.GIRLS' HALL.
Industrial training is an integral part of the Higher Education which Atlanta University gives, and it is compulsory upon all students. It differs, however, from that which is found in the more distinctively industrial or trade schools. No attempt is made at productive industry. The methods are educational rather than commercial. The shop exists for the boy rather than the boy for the shop. As soon as skill is acquired that might have some commercial value in some one particular direction, the boy is set to learning something else that he may have skill in many directions. He is himself the product of the shop rather than the table or wheelbarrow which he might make for the shop.