The Glenn Bill, now pending in the Georgia Legislature, is intended to carry out a clause of the State constitution. That the people of the State indorse this clause is shown in the large vote by which the constitution was adopted nearly a decade since. The framers of that instrument declared that there should be no mixed schools in Georgia.
This clause has been openly and flagrantly violated by the teachers of Atlanta University. In that institution social equality has been notoriously taught and practiced, and in that institution colored teachers are prepared for places in the public school system of the State. It would matter but little if only the white children of the professors of the Atlanta University were thus taught and trained, but the example is pernicious and is becoming pervasive. Georgia cannot and will not permit the natural line of demarcation between blacks and whites to be broken down. She will countenance nothing now looking to the mixture of the races in the future, to the misery and possible destruction of both.
The school system of the State provides equal facilities to blacks and whites, and the Glenn Bill does not impair or threaten any right or privilege of the Negro. He is being educated now, by the taxes of white men, to better advantage than these same white men were educated years ago. It is the policy, the interest and the safety of Georgia to keep the line of demarcation between white and black as distinctly marked as is the Gulf Stream in the waters of the Atlantic. The most intelligent negroes favor separate schools and teachers of their own race. Everything is satisfactory, except to certain fanatical philanthropists and mischievous politicians, and the present attempt at intimidation will soon fail.
THE ATLANTA (GA.) CONSTITUTION.
It is understood on every hand that public education at the south would be overthrown in a moment if mixed schools were to be ordered now. This is a fact with which every one here is familiar. This being the case, how is it that the professors of the Atlanta University, who have presumably been among us for some time, do not understand the situation? For all we know they may be trying to make martyrs of themselves, but we tell them plainly that they have struck a blow at Negro education in the South from which it will not recover in the next quarter of a century. If they are really the friends of the Negro they would have waited for time to do its perfect work, but in jumping ahead of time they are responsible for sending back the clock. Thus the matter stands.
THE NASHVILLE CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN.
The bill seems to be aimed at the Atlanta University, where there are a few white children—mostly those of the teachers—who have gone there as missionaries to the colored people. A similar state of things exists in the colored schools of this State, and particularly in this city. No harm has ever come of this practice. No white person has ever married a Negro, and there is not the remotest probability that such a thing will ever occur. We think it is far better in the South at least that the two races should be educated in separate schools, and that they should worship in separate churches. But when it comes to making it a crime for missionaries to teach their own children in the schools which they are sustaining with a self-denial that is really sublime, we enter a most emphatic protest in the name of the Christian religion which those people are seeking to propagate among the ignorant and degraded blacks of the South. The author of this bill in the Georgia Legislature attempts to justify it on the ground of his interest in the colored people. He also says that he fears amalgamation. When assured that no such a result is at all probable he explains that he fears intellectual amalgamation even more than physical. This is not even respectable nonsense. If the contact of an inferior with a superior mind produces an intellectual hybrid, then we are all in danger. In denouncing this Georgia bill we do not advocate the co-education of the two races, nor do we believe there is any sensible man in this part of the world who does. If the Georgia legislator’s view is to become the law of the land, then let the Church of God recall its missionaries from heathen lands and acknowledge Christianity a failure. The men and women, all over this land, who have gone among the poor, unfortunate Negroes and taught them knowledge and the way of salvation deserve special honor and thanks at our hands. Every consideration of religion and patriotism ought to make the friends of the Glenn Bill in the Georgia Legislature ashamed of themselves. There is no nobler work in this world than helping the lowly. There is no danger that anybody will be hurt by trying to redeem the negro from ignorance and sin.