Brief for the higher education of the negro

by Kelly Miller

THE DEFICIENCY OF THE SLAVE MECHANIC.

Slavery taught the Negro, to work but at the same time to despise those who worked. To them all show of respectability was attached to those whom circumstances placed above the necessity of toil. It requires intellectual conception of the object and the end of labor to overcome this mischievous notion. The Negro mechanics produced under the old slave regime are rapidly passing away because they did not possess the power of self-perpetuation. They were not rooted and grounded in rational principles of the mechanical arts. The hand could not transmit its cunning because the mind was not trained. They were given the Knack without the knowledge.

MONEY SPENT FOR THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO NOT WASTED.

The charge has recently been made that money spent on the higher education of the Negro has been wasted. Does this charge come from the South? When we consider that it was through Northern philanthropy that a third of its population received their first impulse toward better things; that these higher institutions prepared the 30,000 Negro teachers whose services are utilized in the public schools; that the men and women who were the beneficiaries of this philanthropy are doing all in their power to control, guide and restrain the South’s ignorant and vicious masses, thus lightening the public burden and lifting the general life to a higher level: that these persons are almost without exception earnest advocates of peace, harmony and good-will between the races; to say nothing of the fact that these vast philanthropic contributions have passed through the trade channels of Southern merchants, it would seem that the charge is strangely incompatible with that high-minded disposition and chivalrous spirit which the South is so zealous to maintain. Does this charge come from the North? It might not be impertinent to propound a few propositions for their consideration. Is it possible to specify a like sum of money spent upon any other backward race that has produced greater results than the amount spent upon the Southern Negro? Is it the American Indian, upon whom four centuries of missionary effort has produced no more progress than is made by a painted ship on a painted sea? Is it the Hawaiian, who will soon be civilized off the face of the earth? Is it the Chinese upon whom the chief effect of Christian philanthropy is to incite them to breathe out slaughter against the stranger within their gates? It is incumbent upon him who claims that this money has been wasted to point out where, in all the range of benevolent activity the contributions of philanthropy have been more profitably spent.

It is true that forty or fifty millions of dollars have been thus spent, but when we consider the magnitude of the task to which it was applied, we find that it would not average one dollar a year for each Negro child to be educated. Why should we marvel, then, that the entire mass of ignorance and corruption has not put on enlightenment and purity?

NOT MERE THEORIZERS.

We often hear that the advocates of higher education are mere theorists without definite, tangible plans and propositions. There has recently sprung into prominence a class of educational philosophers who deny the value of stored up knowledge. We are informed that only such information as will be honored at the corner grocery or is convertible on demand into cash equivalent is of practical value, while all else is an educational delusion and a snare. The truth is, that all knowledge which clarifies the vision, refines the feelings, broadens the conception of truth and duty and ennobles the manhood is of the highest and most valuable form of practicability. An institution which sends into the world a physician to heal the sick, a lawyer to plead the cause of the injured, a teacher to enlighten the minds of the ignorant, or a preacher to break the bread of life to hungry souls is rendering just as practical a service to the race as those schools which prepare men to build houses and plant potatoes.

NEED FOR THE NEGRO COLLEGE.

It is sometimes claimed that the few capable Negroes can find opportunity for higher training in the institutions of the North. It is by no means certain to what extent these institutions would admit colored students. The Northern College is not apt to inspire the colored pupil with the enthusiasm and fixed purpose for the work which Providence has assigned him. It is the spirit, not the letter that maketh alive. The white College does not contemplate the special needs of the Negro race. American ideals could not be fostered in the white youth of our land by sending them to Oxford or Berlin for tuition. No more can the Negro gain racial inspiration from Harvard or Yale. And yet they need the benefit of contact and comparison, and the zeal for knowledge and truth which these great institutions impart. The Negro College and the Northern institutions will serve to preserve a balance between undue elation for want of sober comparison, and barren culture, for lack of inspirational contact with the masses.