With our needs pressing upon us we see as no other people the importance of all this to bring about a change in the environment of the race. It has a bearing upon this desired change that the virtues resulting from manual labor alone cannot exert. Industrial training is needed too to teach how to earn a living, but, as intimated in this paper, something else—the higher education—must be counted upon to teach how to live better lives, how to get the most and best out of life.
There is much involved in the attempt of the educated Negro to fulfil his mission. The fact that there is such a swing of the pendulum away from higher training for the race, makes it more difficult for those who possess it to-day to carry out the mission. The Negro scholar who sets out to pursue the paths pointed out does it at a great amount of self-sacrifice. He must expect to meet rebuff, discouragement, misinterpretation, lack of recognition, hardships, and these do not by any means come alone from the Anglo-Saxon. The foes are often of his own race. It will take all the philosophy he can summon to contend with the opposition that comes from ignorance, from coarseness, from the unthinking and the malicious. It will need all his self-control and forbearance to move along under grasping, bullying ignorance that seeks to ride rough shod over superior knowledge and breeding; it will demand all his logic to meet the arguments from without that the Negro has no time now for scholarship—that he must get money and get land first; that learning possesses little mercantile value now; that the way to advancement along scholarly lines is barred; that the cook, the carpenter, the shoemaker, are all better paid than the scholar for the use of the sum of their knowledge which costs far less than his. He must face the facts no matter how unjust or inconsistent such things are and meet the final question—Is it worth striving for?—Is it worth while to put ambitions and longings on the altar, to work unceasingly, uncomplainingly amidst stolid indifference, absolute contempt and often open hostility?
We are face to face here with the question whether scholarship pays, whether the educated Negro is to be encouraged to multiply and push forward determinedly on his mission. If there was but the present moment to contemplate, the race might be excused for pausing, for acquiescing in the limitations set for its education, and for saying the game is not worth the candle. But to-day does not end all. There is a future and that Negro is lacking in proper manhood who does not determine to help on that future. The future is always bound up in the present and if this future is to make men and women out of the race in coming generations the question is answered. Negro scholarship is worth striving for, because the educated Negro is to lead for that future. Education, learning, scholarship will make the undying lustre of a people—will prove their greatest glory. Thinkers will give an immortality to a people that neither wealth, nor industry, nor strength of arm, nor even virtue can procure for it.
So the educated Negro must keep this in view, must see his mission clearly and stand courageously ready to undertake it—
“Cleansed of servile panic,
Slow to dread or despise,
Humble because of knowledge,
Mighty by sacrifice.”
But there must be united effort among the leaders of the race along all lines to this end. Advocates of higher learning and of industrial education must accord respect to each other’s opinions and work unitedly, in order that neither may fall a sacrifice to the “Nemesis of Neglect.” And the race must sustain its leaders of thought and action. There is no time to lose, none to waste in eternal strife. The field is large enough for all to glean and work in. The race must make a common cause, meet a common enemy and win common friends.
W. S. Scarborough.
Wilberforce, Ohio.
Transcriber’s Note: Printer’s inconsistencies in hyphenation usage have been retained.