Martha Schofield, pioneer Negro educator / Historical and philosophical review of reconstruction period of South Carolina

by Matilda A. Evans

Much of what has been accomplished by the agricultural departments of some of the States and by the Federal Department of Agricultural for the Negro of the cotton district is directly traceable to efforts of Miss Schofield, the pioneer of industrial training for the Negro. Her system to bring the methods by which the Negro could improve his condition within reach of all appears to the author as superior in practicability to any yet advanced. This idea of carrying to the people systems pregnant with practical uses for the regulation of their work in all the arts, that of printing, shoe repairing, harness making, carpentering, school teaching, and business of every kind contemplated a unity of action by each. She enjoined as she taught the principle illustrated by the old man with the seven sons and the bundle of sticks a strict regard for the community of interest underlying all related industry. This has made it possible for every Negro within reach of her influence to have gained some knowledge of a better way of getting along in the world, and combined with the work which is being done and has been done already by other schools and colleges, accounts for the remarkable development of the race in the occupation of farming.

According to the report of the thirteenth census of 1910 there were 920,883 colored farmers in the United States. Twenty six and two-tenths per cent. of these owned their farms, and 73.60 per cent. constituted renters, while 2 per cent. managed farms. The same report also shows that while the value of all farm property of white people almost doubled between the years of 1900 and 1910, the value of all farm property of colored people more than doubled, to be exact, showed an increase of 134 per cent. In the classes of property reported, conspicuously noticeable is the increase in the value of live-stock. The increase of the live stock of the whites showed 58.60 per cent., while that of the Negroes showed an increase of 105.50 per cent. In the value of farm buildings the percentage of increase was 76.70 for the whites and 131.80 for the Negroes. The percentage of increase in the matter of improved farm implements and machinery was 60.80 per cent. for the whites and 81.70 per cent. for the Negroes.

When it is considered that the Negro has had at his disposal but fifty years for self-improvement and growth in all the arts, limited in the pursuit of them by the restrictions placed around him by reason of his race, his progress in every direction except, perhaps, in the exercise of the right of suffrage, becomes more than remarkable—it is phenomenal, especially in the occupation of farming, to which he is unquestionably better adapted than to any other calling.

In the matter of owners of homes both on the farm and in the city, the Negroes, those who did and those who did not come under Miss Schofield’s instructions in this, “the most important matter of their lives,” as she often told her students, appear from the 1910 census, to have made an equally creditable showing. In the Southern States the percentage of the white and Negro population owning their homes, was white 50.50, Negro, 23.10 per cent. The percentage of Negroes who owned their homes entirely, without encumbrance, was 18.10 per cent.; that of the whites 39.50. In 1900 the percentage was, whites 43.50; Negroes 16.80. It will be seen from the official figures of the government that the percentage of whites owning their homes in the decade between 1900 and 1910 decreased 4 per cent., while the percentage of the Negroes increased 1.30 per cent.

If the Negroes were not discriminated against in the pursuit of their occupations in the cities; if they were encouraged to buy homes and beautify and improve them, instead of being discouraged by the many obstacles placed in their way, such for instance, as the agitation by some of the best white people not to rent a home built by Negro labor, and the probability of another riot such as that in Atlanta in 1906, it is entirely within his power to eclipse any race of men the Southern white people could possibly induce to come and make homes among them. In time they will do it in the morality of their lives, just as they now are outstripping the members of the race laying claim to the purest blood that ever flowed in Aryan veins, in the art of farming.

The hope of the race lies in the multiplication of the opportunities for every member to obtain an education, such an education as Martha Schofield contemplated for all; and the demand by the law abiding, God serving element of the white race that the colored people be given every opportunity for the exercise of their powers that equity and justice dictate. The Negroes want nothing more, ask nothing more, but in justice to their own self respect and the rights of man can accept nothing less.

That they have shown themselves worthy of freedom, which certainly cost the white people more than the cost of insuring them certain inalienable rights will entail, is emphatically indicated by comparison of Negro per capita property with that of the freed Russian serfs in 1861, two years before the emancipation of the Negro. The Russians situated in the most fertile sections of the Muscovite empire, numbering over 14 millions, have in the same time it has taken the Negroes to accumulate 700 million dollars worth of property but 500 million dollars in property. The accumulations of the two peoples freed at about the same time are $70 per capita for the Negro and $36.00 for the Russians. In the same Russian province only 30 per cent. of the serfs can read and write, while in the United States 61 per cent. of the Negroes can read and write.

Yet in the face of this wonderful development of the race; in opposition to the aspirations necessary to make achievements of this kind possible, there is race prejudice, degradation and humiliation. This is doing more to produce poverty among both races and hold in check the progress of a great section of the country than all the other agencies for evil combined.

The remedy for this will perhaps be found in the education of the whites, stimulation in this direction being assured by both the compulsory school attendance laws being passed, and the rivalry in education between the races already set in motion by the Negroes.

Almost two million colored children are enrolled in the normal schools and colleges. There are 35,000 colored teachers now actively engaged in the common schools and about four thousand professors in the colleges and normal and industrial institutions. The value of the property devoted to education of the Negro is nearly twenty million dollars. There was expended in 1915 nearly $5,000,000 for the higher and industrial training of the race while $10,000,000 was spent on elementary instructions in the common schools. The stimulating effect which these figures should have and, undoubtedly will have on the education of the whites will serve to increase very largely the facilities for their education, which is the remedy most needed, in the opinion of the leading white people, as well as the author, for the dissipation of much of the race prejudice responsible for the passage of a great number of discriminatory laws and for the arbitrary execution of those having a discriminating effect in their operation, if not in their wording. This enlightening information, however, concerning the facilities for the education of the Negro is very much offset by the announcement that the number not in school in the South is greater than the number in school.