It is true, situated as he is among the most advanced people of the world in the very height of their power, with almost all of the ideals before him belonging to that people, the American Negro is greatly handicapped in distinct racial development; but the task is, perhaps, not an impossible one. Some of the most accessible means have not yet been fully employed; for instance, the race has never been made entirely familiar with the deeds and thoughts of the few men of mark it has already produced. In this deeper sense of education the knowing of one Crispus Attucks is worth more to the race than the knowing of one George Washington; and the knowing of one Dunbar is worth more than the knowing of all the Longfellows that America will ever produce.
If the Negro is to remain in this country a separate and distinct race, and is, as such, to reach the highest development of his powers, he ought to be given an education different from that given to the whites; in that, in addition to whatever other instruction he may receive, those virtuous traits and characteristics which are peculiarly his should be developed to the highest degree possible.
If, on the other hand, he is to become, in time, one of the elements in the future American race—and this seems the more plausible answer to the question—his education ought to be purely American and not in any special way Negro.
History affords no precedent of two races, distinct yet equally powerful, living together in harmony; one has always reduced to a secondary position or destroyed the other, or the two have united. So it will be a question, if the Negro succeeds in making himself the equal of the white man in intellectual attainment, wealth, and power, whether or not what is now antipathy between the two races will develop into outright antagonism; and if we are to judge from human experience through all the past we must say that it will. If the Negro shall succeed in making a new record in history so well and so good; but if he is to follow the precedents of the past, it will be a far nobler destiny for him to become an integral part of the future American type than to drop into an acknowledged and permanent secondary position.
And may it not be in the great plan of Providence that the Negro shall supply in the future American race the very elements that it shall lack and require to make it the most perfect race the world shall have seen?
If the Negro is to become an inseparable part of the great American nation his education should be in every way the same as that of other American citizens.
SECOND PAPER.
SHOULD THE NEGRO BE GIVEN AN EDUCATION DIFFERENT FROM THAT GIVEN TO THE WHITES?
BY PROF. JAMES STORUM, OF WASHINGTON, D. C.
