It is axiomatic to say that the education given to the Negro should be of the kind which will benefit him most. A few plain principles may be stated: He should be taught that education consists of something more than a mere ability to read and write and speak; that education includes moral elevation as well as intellectual development; that religion includes morality and is more than emotional excitement. He should be taught that one of the strongest elements in racial development is purity of family life; he should be taught that the duties of citizenship are much more than the ability to cast a ballot, or even to hold an office; that elevation to superiority among the people of his own race is of far greater moment to him at this time than external equality with another race, and that true superiority is founded on character. He should be taught to become self-sustaining, self-reliant, and self-respecting. A people, like a class, to advance must either be strong enough to make its way against all hostility, or must secure the friendship of others, particularly of those nearest it. If the Negro race in the South proposes, and is powerful enough to overcome the white race, let it try this method—it will soon find out its error; if not, it must secure the friendship of that race. Owing to conditions, the friendship and the sympathy of the Southern section of that race are almost as much more important to the Negro race than is that of the North, as the friendship of the latter is more important than that of the yet more distant Canadian section of the white race.
The best way—perhaps the only way—for the Negro race to progress steadily is to secure the sympathy and aid of the Southern whites. It will never do this until the race solidarity of the Negroes is broken and the Negroes divide on the same grounds on which the whites divide; until they unite with the whites and act with them on the questions which concern the good of the section in which they both have their most vital interests.
The urgent need is for the Negroes to divide up into classes, with character and right conduct as the standard for elevation. When they make distinctions themselves, others will recognize their distinctions.
As a result of the above principles, it would appear, first, that elementary education should be universal. Even the commonest laborer, speaking in general terms, profits by it.
This education should be of the kind best adapted to the great body of those for whom it is provided. The wisest and most conservative teacher of the Negro race, following the precepts of his own great teacher, General Armstrong, has attained his distinction largely by the success he has achieved in applying methods of industrial, rather than of mere literary education. In this view he is bitterly opposed by many, perhaps by most, of the “educated Negroes,” who are fond of declaring that they act upon principle; that the object of education is to make men, not to make potatoes, or even to make carpenters; little realizing that “men,” in the sense in which the term is, or should be used, are no more made by the superficial and counterfeit education which most of their so-called college graduates display, than are vegetables or mechanics. It has taken a generation and something like $150,000,000, including the entire input from public and private sources, to produce one Booker T. Washington, and—to select from the other school—one Professor Du Bois, though I take pleasure in stating my belief that there are a considerable and possibly an increasing number of modest, unassuming, faithful, and devoted teachers and representatives of both schools not so distinguished, but, perhaps, not less worthy than these. But, the question arises, or should arise, How many thousands are there who, in the making of these, have been ruined for the life for which they were fitted?
It might seem that the true principle should be elementary education for all, including in the term “industrial education,” and special, that is, higher education of a proper kind for the special individuals who may give proof of their fitness to receive and profit by it.
A college education should be the final reward and prize only of those who have proven themselves capable of appreciating it and who give promise of being able to use it for the public good.
To ignore rules founded on such plain common sense is worse than folly. The money so expended is not merely thrown away; this might be tolerated; it is an actual and positive injury. It unfits the recipient for the work for which alone in any case he might be fit, and gives him in exchange only a bauble to amuse himself with, or a weapon with which to injure himself and others.
Finally, and as the only sound foundation for the whole system of education, the Negro must be taught the great elementary truths of morality and duty. Until he is so established in these that he claims to be on this ground the equal of the white, he can never be his equal on any other ground. When he is the equal of the white, it will make itself known. Until then, he is fighting not the white race, but a law of nature, universal and inexorable—that races rise or fall according to their character.