A GRADUATE AND A PORTER.
There appeared in an Atlanta paper a few days ago, a paragraph stating that a young Negro man of Atlanta, who had the best university education, was acting as a porter in a cotton room, and that all but two of his class, perhaps thirty, had dropped back into just such work as he was doing, and saying that perhaps a good deal of higher education was wasted.
This paragraph has been copied by a large number of papers and is likely to injure the cause of education among the colored people, and for this reason it seems necessary to call attention to the errors it contains.
The young man referred to has not a university education, but left school during his freshman year. He was not a member of a class of about thirty, although sometimes when his class recited with one in the normal department, the two combined probably reached about that number.
While he was junior preparatory his class numbered ten, and when he was college freshman, eleven. Of these eleven, three went through the course and were graduated. Two of these are teaching, one in Texas, and the other as principal of a school in Chattanooga. The third graduate is employed by a wealthy resident of Atlanta, at whose home he always has lived, as collector of rents, etc., and may be said to be “in business.”
So, instead of the young man in question having a university education, he did not finish his freshman year; instead of his being a member of a class of thirty, his class numbered only eleven; and instead of thirty falling from the sublime heights of university graduates to the low estate of porters in cotton houses, the three of that class who completed their college course are occupying the important positions mentioned above.
Unfortunately this instance of misrepresentation is not an isolated case, but one of a thousand of similar character. The statement that the graduates from colored colleges are all idle vagabonds, has become too stale to produce an impression any longer when made in the abstract.
Now what are the facts upon this point? Let the published list of graduates from the Atlanta University, with their occupations, answer.