The educated Negro and his mission

by W. S. Scarborough

The consequence is that, in this determined reach for all that humanity craves for itself and for its civilization, the oscillations of thought and endeavor are oftimes marked by notable extremes. Especially has this been true in lines of education. Again and again has it been sought to wheel the educational car upon new tracks where exaggerated views, revolutionary ideas, radical methods have caused the eyes of the world to be focused upon the attempt, and no movement within the arc that the world’s opinions have traversed has been unnoticed.

These changing sentiments in regard to education have been most noticeable in their bearing upon the Negro race. It is conceded that material tendencies are characteristic of the present age. Romance, sentiment, idealism in life and letters, struggle as they may, are swept aside by the vigorous commercialism that has taken possession of the nation at large. Meat has become more than life and raiment more than body. One question is being intensely pressed forward—how to learn a living? and the swing of the pendulum concerning the Negro’s education has swept a degree beyond any heretofore measured.

That manual training is needful no one will deny for a moment; that some of all races must inevitably be sons of toil is readily admitted; and that such education has its share in the development of every race there is no contention. We all know that Learning and Labor traveled hand in hand, with the emphasis upon the former, when the Anglo Saxon first wrestled with the wilderness of America. We know too that when the desert wastes were changed to smiling plains the ways of the two drifted apart, and learning took the path for culture and high scholarship, untrammeled, while labor plodded on, gaining slowly comparative ease in its varied lines. It is only when limitation is placed upon a race that objection comes—when one race is selected for more than a fair share of experimentation in the exploitation of a theory. Then danger seems imminent. In this case the danger lies in the tendency to lose sight of Negro scholarship—of Negro higher learning. There are other questions of equal importance to that of how to earn a living, and that college president who expressed it in these words “How to live on what one earns—how to live higher lives,” understood well their relative worth when pre-eminence was claimed for the latter, and pointed to a fact too largely ignored—that the lessons which teach these last mentioned come from a different training from that represented by industrial training alone.

We repeat that the suggestions bearing upon the education of the Negro race have caused too decided a swing of the pendulum in many quarters and higher education is in danger of being swallowed up, if not to a great extent abandoned, in the extreme importance attached to that other education we denominate as Industrial.

The error arises in confounding race with the individual, which is not only radically unphilosophic, but morally wrong. The recognition of individual limitation is right and proper, and it is the individual that must be considered. As Dr. Ward has pertinently observed, “To the man who wants to lift a mass of people out of lower into higher conditions they are people, individual people, not races,” and he adds further with just emphasis, “When it comes to nurture and education they are to be considered as individuals, each to be lifted up and their children surrounded by a superior environment.” Now, this cannot be done if limitations are set which must by the very nature of things press heavily upon the individual. The race must be left free as air to take in higher learning.

Still, it is true that with a general change in ideas as to education—its use and end—higher education, pure scholarship, has everywhere been placed upon the defensive. President Hadley has felt compelled to say that it must be prepared to prove its usefulness. This being true, so much the more must Negro scholarship be prepared to prove its right to continuance, to support and to freedom of choice.

The educated Negro is an absolute fact. The day is past when his ability to learn is scoffed at. But on the other hand is born that fear that he may go too far—excel or equal the Anglo-Saxon,—and that fear is a prime motive in the minds of many who seek to hedge the onward path of the race. But this path will not be hedged. This educated class, though few in number, has been keeping for years the torch aloft for the race. It must be with us for the future. It has a mission in the world and it is working in a brave endeavor to fulfill that mission. For the good of the whole country this class must multiply, not decrease in number.

There are no two definitions of a scholar to be applied to different races. The Negro scholar must be the same as any other—endowed as Milton would have him “with that complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.” And he should have, in order to meet this requirement, what Emerson has emphasised as necessary—“the knowledge that comes from three great fields—from nature, from books and from action.”

The Negro like any other scholar is not the man who has simply been through college, but the one “through whom the college has been”—the one who has not only gathered from contact with college life varied stores of knowledge, but who has grown in strength of character and breadth of culture; one who has become imbued with the spirit of high ideals; one who does not scorn the old-fashioned virtues of truth, honesty and virtue; one who has views crystalized into definite aims; one who has a settled purpose in life; one who is strenuously determined to realize a worthy ambition; one who has both microscopic and telescopic capacity, able to look into the minutest details and sweep a broad range with clear vision; and one (slightly changing a potent phrase) whose “reach upward is ever exceeding his grasp.” Added to this the Negro scholar above all must be one who makes himself a reforming force for the world’s betterment. Here is the Negro’s opportunity—to combine in himself those characteristics Mr. Austin mentioned not long ago—the purely scholarly qualities of the German, the statesmanlike qualities of the English and then to be a propagandist.

The Negro who is an educated man must be a practical man, and zealous in getting to work to show that thinking and doing go together. If the world needs such men from the white race, so much the more are educated Negroes needed. Educated men are the ones to take a place in affairs, national and municipal, aiding to solve great problems, cure great evils and guide the destinies of a people. What else can it mean when we see such a scholar as President Seth Low step from the administration of college affairs to the administration of the affairs of a great city in a righteous endeavor to help cleanse a corrupt government? Again, President Roosevelt takes up the reins for the entire nation after active service in literature, in camp, on field and in the executive chair of a great state. Still again we instance Dr. Gladden who has shown in the west what a scholar’s service may and should be to his city, when he chose to sit in its council. These examples can be multiplied many times to show that the educated man has taken for his motto that highest one—“Ich dien”—I serve—a service by leading and made both necessary and fitting by attainments and worth.