As poets, Mrs. Frances E. N. Harper and Paul Lawrence Dunbar are samples of a splendid class.
As musicians it might suffice to say that Blind Tom, Black Patti and Madam Selika are only samples of a large class.
Negro education has furnished us pulpits better filled with intelligent men, devout and pious; and with modern churches that are in harmony with the Christian demands of the age. In the Ecumenical Conference recently held in London, the Negro clergy represented there were from all parts of the civilized world, and the high tribute paid to their ability and ecclesiastical character was the comment of all the English papers. Our bishops and eminent pulpit divines are largely young men, the product of our Negro schools. Dr. C. T. Walker, now of the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, New York, and the foremost pulpit orator in all the Baptist ranks, perhaps, is a native of Georgia soil, and a product of our Georgia schools. But I must not prolong this account with a long list of bishops, D. D's., LL. D's., M. D's., diplomats, artists, painters, mechanics, inventors, and successful business men, who are the product of Negro education, but before closing this humble effort it is but proper that we should make mention of some of the men who are universally regarded as masters in the profession of teaching, and who in themselves are great benefactors of the Negro race. The following educators have wrought much in the matter of elevating their race in all the essentials of right-living. The most conspicuous figure just now in the firmament of Negro educators is President Booker T. Washington, who has at his command both the hand and the heart of the American people. The far-reaching influences of his work at Tuskegee, Alabama, where, perhaps, more than 1,300 Negro youths are taught all the useful and honorable methods of labor, are too well understood to merit further comment here. President J. H. Lewis, president of Wilberforce University, Ohio, has and is still doing a work that will tell on ages and tell for God in the matter of developing Negro ability along the lines of higher intellectual manhood. Prof. R. R. Wright, president of the State Industrial College, Savannah, Georgia, is a pioneer in the work of uplifting the Negro youth, and his excellent work recently begun at the state college is already teeming with fruit. Miss Lucy C. Laney is a woman of rare and well-developed intellectual attainments. The Haines Normal and Industrial School, with all of its influence for good, will ever be an imperishable monument to her memory. Her reputation as a woman of ability and culture is universal. Prof. W. H. Council, of Alabama, is hardly second to President B. T. Washington in his noble work in Alabama of uplifting Negro youth.
In professors, W. S. Scarborough, who holds the chair of Latin and Greek in Wilberforce University, Ohio; Prof. W. H. Crogman, chair of Latin and Greek, Clark University, Atlanta, Georgia; Prof. Kelly Miller, chair of mathematics, Howard University, Washington, D. C.; Prof. J. W. Gilbert, chair of Latin and Greek, Paine College, Augusta, Georgia; and Prof. W. E. B. DuBois, chair of science and economics, Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia, we have the ripest examples of high-class scholarship. These men, steeped in the love and sciences of all ages and people, have won respect and recognition in all the institutions, and among all educators of world-wide reputation, both European and American. They are only samples of a large class of educated Negroes who have given a very high literary tone to Negro intelligence. In an account like this, which necessarily must be brief, it must not be expected that we could elaborate into details about any one of the features above mentioned. In mentioning them thus briefly it is only our purpose to call attention to the great work now being accomplished by the Negro teachers.
In closing these brief lines it might be well to consider several charges made against the educated Negro. It is charged that education teaches Negroes how to commit crime, etc. Because some educated Negroes commit crime and do wrong that is no more of an argument against the education of the Negro race than it would be an argument against the education of the Caucasian race, because some educated white men commit crime and do wrong. If a man has indigestion from eating the wrong kind of food that ought not to be taken as an argument against eating. Educated Negroes as a class are among our best American citizens.
Again, there are still some "back numbers" belonging to the old school of thought who still charge a lack of ability on the part of Negro scholars to absorb and assimilate the same amount of intelligence that the Caucasian race does.
In our humble school career in the state of Georgia we have sat on the same seat with the boys and girls of the Caucasian race, and, often, in the recitation room, under the same professor in the higher classics and sciences, we have shared the same book with them, and yet at the time of reckoning term standing we have seen those white professors give the members of these mixed classes their class rating in their various subjects, and the average percentage of Caucasian and Negro pupils in all these subjects would be a matter of significant comment.
In many instances like these, both in the North and South, the ability of our Negro scholars is so forcibly demonstrated; and what the Negro teachers may yet do for their race and for civilization will be left as a rich inheritance for the enjoyment of an advancing civilization. Of all teachers it may be said that he who shapes a soul and fits it for an eternal habitation in the blissful Beyond has erected for himself a monument that eclipses in grandeur and architectural beauty all the conceptions of a Solomon, though Solomon was the wisest of men.