BY C. H. TURNER.
PROF. CHARLES HENRY TURNER, M. S.
Charles Henry Turner was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, February 3, 1867. Both parents were of Negro descent. His mother was a Kentucky girl and his father a Canadian. Both parents were temperate and Christian in habits. Neither parent was college-bred, yet Charles' father was a well-read man, a keen thinker, and a master of debate. He had surrounded himself with several hundred choice books and one of the earliest ambitions of Charles was to learn to read these books.
The only education of our subject was obtained in the excellent public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio. From the Walnut Hills District School Charles passed to the Gaines High School, from which he graduated valedictorian of his class. From High School he passed to the University of Cincinnati, from which he graduated in 1891 with the B. S. degree, and in 1892 with the M. S. degree.
When a youth in college, Charles hoped some day to be the head of a technological or agricultural school for Negroes, and much time and money was expended mastering those essentials that the head of a school should know. That youthful day dream has never been realized, but Charles has been an active teacher for years. Even before graduation he taught one year in the Governor Street School at Evansville, Indiana, and occasionally taught, as a substitute, in the public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1891 to 1893 he was assistant in Biology at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. Since then he has been Professor of Biology at Clark University, South Atlanta, Ga. In 1901 he was dean of the Georgia Summer School.
By training Prof. Turner is a biologist who has contributed his mite towards the advancement of his favorite science. In the following list of some of the principal publications of Prof. Turner, those marked with an asterisk are contributions to biology.
*Morphology of the Avian Brain; "Jour. of Comp. Neur." (1891), 100 pp. 8 pls.
*A Few Characteristics of the Avian Brain. "Science" (1891).
*Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider. "Jour. of Comp. Neur." (1892).
*Notes on the Clodocera, Ostracoda and Rotifera of Cincinnati. "Bull. Sci. Lab. of Den. Univ." (1892), 17 pp., 2 pls.
*Additional Notes on the Clodocera and Ostracoda of Cincinnati, 18 pp., (1893), 2 pls. Ibid.
*Notes on the American Ostracoda. Ibid, 11 pp., 2 pls.
*Preliminary Note on the Nervous System of the Genus Cypris. "Jour. Comp. Neur." (1893), 5 pp., 3 pls.
*Morphology of the Nervous System of Cypris. Ibid, (1896), 24 pp., 6 pls.
*Synopsis of the Entomostraca of Minnesota, etc., C. L. Herrick and C. H. Turner (1895), 525 pp., 81 pls. [C. H. Turner is only part author of this.]
Numerous abstracts and translations from German and French published in the Jour. of Comp. Neur.
Reason for Teaching Biology in Negro Schools. "Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1897).
Object of Negro Memorial Day (1899).
New Year Thoughts About the Negro. "Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1899).
*Notes on the Mushroom Bodies of the Invertebrates. "Zoological Bulletin" (1899), 6 pp., 6 figs.
*A Male Erpetocypris Barbatus, Forbes. "Zool. Bulletin" (1899).
*Synopsis of North American Invertebrates. V. Fresh-Water Ostracoda. "Amer. Naturalist" (1899), 11 pp.
Living Dust. "Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1901), xiii chapter.
*The Mushroom Bodies of the Crayfish and their Histological Environment. "Jour of Comp. Neur." (1901), 50 pp., 4 pls.
The War of the rebellion is over, Negro slavery in America is no more, and the days of reconstruction have passed into history.
Dr. DuBois in speaking of that period wrote: "Amid it all two figures ever stand to typify that day to coming men: the one a gray-haired gentleman, whose fathers had quit themselves like men, whose sons lay in nameless graves; who bowed to the evil of slavery because its abolition boded untold ill to all; who stood at last, in the evening of life, a blighted, ruined form, with hate in his eyes. And the other a form black with the mist of centuries, and aforetime bent in love over the white master's cradle, rocked his sons and daughters to sleep, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife to the world; aye, too, had laid herself low to his lusts, and borne a tawny man child to the world, only to see her dark boy's limbs scattered to the winds by midnight marauders riding after niggers. These were the saddest sights of that woeful day; and no man clasped the hands of these two passing figures of the present-past, but hating they went to their long home, and hating their children's children live to-day."
Would some power had clasped the hands of these "two fleeting figures of the present-past!" Then those "marauders chasing niggers" would have been subdued and there would not be so many bloody threads in the weft of the history the New South has been weaving.
The "gray-haired gentleman" has left a grandson who has all the culture and education money and thrift can buy. He is thrifty and enterprising, law-abiding and conscientious. He has inherited prejudices, yet he is sincere. He loves the South no less than did his grandfather; but he loves the Union more. He would die to save the Union; he lives to glorify the South. He is known as the new Southerner and he is evolving a New South.
The "marauder chasing niggers" has left a grandson who is illiterate, uncultured and thriftless. He despises manual labor, but is too poor and too ignorant to live without doing it. Unfit to be the associate of the new Southerner, and feeling himself too superior to mingle with Negroes, he broods over his hardships and bemoans his fate. He is a Negro hater and thirsts for the excitement of a lynching bee. This condoned clog to the progress of Southern civilization is known as white trash.