THE SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN.
The Glenn Bill in the Georgia Legislature, to impose a penalty commensurate with a felony upon the teaching of persons of the two races in any public or private school in the State, is an outburst of barbaric sentiment which will do a vast deal of harm. We may as well say at the outset that we do not favor co-education of the races at the South, so long as the people there do not want it. In Massachusetts, white and black children attend the same school, and are treated just the same. If half or more of our population were colored, we do not doubt it would be a different question, but we do not see that the mingling of youth at school produces any social mixing, or mixture of races. At the South, where there is a large body of each race, separate schools and institutions are well enough, but separate streets, railroad cars, ferry-boats and other public utilities would be a ridiculous and uncalled-for extension of the effort to separate the races.
While a State may plainly indicate its policy by providing separate schools for the two races, and assigning the colored youth to one and the white to the other, to make it a felony for any person to teach youth of different races together, is essentially barbarous, more barbarous than Turkey.
The great Southern excuse for such doings is that the social intercourse of the races is against nature. Very well; if it is against nature, let nature take care of the problem. But the bald and naked fact is that while the South is dreadfully sensitive about the appearance of the two races in the same parlor, or school-room, or opera house, or in the same Episcopal Convention, it is profoundly indifferent to their association together immorally.
Now if the State of Georgia proposes to condemn the Northern men who have gone there to teach, to the chain-gang, for instructing their own children in the classes, it will be guilty of a ridiculous display of race feeling and petty insularity, of a fine exhibition of ingratitude, and of a political blunder of some magnitude. We trust Gov. Gordon, who has been about the world a little, may be able to view this matter in a broader light than the backwoods members of the Legislature.
THE BOSTON EVENING TRAVELLER.
It is possible that the aroused public sentiment of the nation may force the Legislature to drop this shameful, barbarous measure, but nothing short of this will. This is the Empire State of the South—the New South which Editor Grady so eloquently described last Forefathers’ Day in New York, about which so much gush and sentiment have been spoken and written. The question cannot help suggesting itself, whether a little less of boastful sentiment and a little more of civilized humanity would not become the much-talked-of New South.
THE PHILADELPHIA PRESS.
Whether the prejudice against mixed schools is justified or not, the attempt to enforce such penalties as those prescribed in the Glenn Bill, and which are aimed especially against the Atlanta University, would arouse a whirlwind of wrath that even the Southern whites in their stolid indifference to public opinion could not withstand. No white children, except those belonging to the professors in the University, have been taught with the colored pupils. One of the professors writes to the Springfield Republican as follows: “I have taught twelve years in the Atlanta University. The Glenn Bill will cut off my four children and those of the other white teachers from their best educational opportunity in Georgia—in fact, as matters now stand, practically from their only opportunity.” As the funds for founding this institution were given by Northern whites, and as most of the money for sustaining it is derived from the same source, it would seem wise to permit the Northern white teachers some discretion in conducting the enterprise.
According to the census of 1880, Georgia had 446,683 persons over ten years of age who could not read, and 128,934 whites over ten who could not write. With such a discouraging mass of ignorance, it would be supposed that the State would gladly welcome any educational assistance. And yet, judging from this Glenn Bill and the burning of the school at Quitman, the people appear to be more anxious to increase than to lessen the amount of ignorance in the State.