Twentieth Century Negro Literature / Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating to the American Negro

by Unknown

The education of our children should no longer be a mere theory, but a matter of real practical nature, such as will benefit the bread-winner, the home-seeker, the higher citizenship, the welfare of the greatest number.

While I favor the higher education of the youth of the nation, I also think the youth ought to learn trades, to wear the overalls at the forge, at the work-bench, to adjust the machinery in the work-shop and the factory. I would have the youth able to design and build a house as well as to live in one, to raise potatoes as well as to eat them, to produce as well as consume. For many years the great majority of the youth must be common laborers, whatever their education, whatever their social condition or station; then it follows as the day follows the night that they should be educated with the trend of the mind and in connection with environment.

In the days of slavery many of our young men and women were trained along certain lines; the young men such as skilled carpenters, blacksmiths, stone masons, bricklayers, and the like, and the young women were trained in dressmaking and the like, and these boys and girls grew up having a kind of monopoly in their respective lines, although controlled by their owners. But for a quarter of a century very little attention has been paid to trade learning in many sections of the South.

This condition confronts us to-day; however, it is claimed that it is no fault of the children that they do not learn trades, and it is further urged by many parents that the blame does not lie at their hands; but that it is the fault of the times, of conditions and circumstances; and still others claim that the trade unions are the main cause. Many claim that, if their children are trained along certain lines, they will be debarred by the opposition of the trade unions. But these excuses seem too trivial. The opposition of the labor organizations should urge greater activity in superior trade learning in every pursuit, so that when the white striker walks out of the shops the black man, skilled, trusted and tried, should walk in and demonstrate his ability to do better and more work than the outgoing striker.

We are to take no steps backward in industrial and intellectual progress in the opening days in the dawn of the new century. A thinking people is a prosperous people. We are to be measured by what we can accomplish, not by the color of the skin, the texture of the hair, the color of the eye or the contour of the head. But we are to be measured as skilled farmers, mechanics, printers, artists and scholars.

This age demands substantial progress in every department of industry, in the home, at the fireside, in the shop and on the farm. To labor with skill, to facilitate and hasten its benign results with trained hands and cultivated brain, must ever be the fiery incentive of our people, in order that they may keep abreast of the times in all practical operations as skilled laborers, and, as such, vindicate their usefulness as citizens.

As laborers and citizens, the black face must stand for integrity in the community, the emblem of sterling worth, the black diamond intrinsic in value.

The time has come when one person ceases to employ another because he is of color, but he employs the one who can give more than value received. The race needs to bring the hand and the head nearer together.

The boy who has completed a college education should, in the course of time, raise more corn to the acre, if he be a farmer, than his uneducated father; for his knowledge of geology should better fit him to know the condition and nature of the soil; if a mechanic, his knowledge of geometry and of physics should enable him to be an adept.

The question of labor during the last few years has become, in many respects, intensely sectional. North of Mason and Dixon's line, the color of the skin has to do with the employment of the colored man along certain lines of skilled labor. While this is true in the South, the prejudice is not so rank as in the North, except where the colored laborer comes in contact with the Yankee or the foreigner.