We know that our race is weak and that the white race is strong. We know also that our race is sick and that the white race is well or whole. Now, how should the strong treat the weak? How should the whole treat the sick? Would a strong man say, here is a weak man with a heavy burden, therefore, I will put more upon him? Would a well man say, here is a sick man, therefore, I shall give him less medical treatment? Then why do you say, here is the ignorant Negro, therefore let us give him less educational opportunities than we give the white man? If the white man would be logical in this particular, he would say in the courts, because he is ignorant let us make his punishment less severe; because he is weak, let us protect him, because he is ignorant, let us give him greater educational opportunities. But this has not been done. There has not been one dollar increase in the Negro public school fund in the rural districts in twenty years; if anything, it is less today than it was twenty years ago.
Sometimes we hear it said that the white man of the South knows the Negro better than anybody else, but the average white man of the South only knows the ignorant, vicious and criminal class of Negroes better than anybody else. He knows little of the best class of Negroes. I am glad to say, however, that there are a few Southern white men who know the better class and know them intimately and are doing what they can to better the Negro’s condition. I would to God that the number of these few could be increased a hundred fold.
We used to deride the North for giving the Negro a chance to spend a dollar while withholding from him the opportunity to make one. But in the Providence of God all this has been changed by the great war in Europe, which has created a labor scarcity in the North, East and West, and the Negro is now being given a chance to make a dollar there as well as spend one. The white man of the North is due no special credit for this, the credit belongs to God. He is the Righteous Judge of all the earth and in the end He will do right.
We will hear many tales of the sufferings of these people who go from this section. Many will die and some will come back, but still some will never return. You remember the fate of the Pilgrims, and the early colonists who first came to this country. You also know the fate of the men in the world war; many must die that some be saved. It behooves us of the South who remain here, both white and black, to re-dedicate ourselves to unselfish service and try more and more each day of our lives to live up to the great principle laid down in the memorable Atlanta speech by the immortal Booker T. Washington when he said: “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”
CHAPTER 16.
The Negro and the Public Schools of the South.
Too much praise cannot be given to the General Education Board, Dr. Dillard and Mr. Rosenwald, and others for what they have done and are doing to improve Negro public schools of the South, for in the last analysis it is there where the great masses of Negro children must be educated.
We have in the South, as every one knows, a dual system of public schools, one for the whites and one for the Negroes. This accounts in part for our poor schools for both white and colored. Such a system is expensive and, of course, the Negro gets the worst of the bargain. This is not surprising to him; he expects it in all such cases. He has been taught to expect only a half loaf where others get a whole one, but in some cases he gets practically nothing from the State for education. For an instance, I know four or five Negro public schools in the Black Belt that get $37.00 for the school term of four months. It would be hard to figure out how a teacher can live in these days on $9.25 per month. But, as I have said, the agencies that I have mentioned above have done much and are doing more to improve these conditions.