THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO

By Charles Dudley Warner

At the close of the war for the Union about five millions of negroes wereadded to the citizenship of the United States. By the census of 1890 thisnumber had become over seven and a half millions. I use the word negrobecause the descriptive term black or colored is not determinative. Thereare many varieties of negroes among the African tribes, but all of themagree in certain physiological if not psychological characteristics, which separate them from all other races of mankind; whereas there aremany races, black or colored, like the Abyssinian, which have no othernegro traits. 

It is also a matter of observation that the negro traits persist inrecognizable manifestations, to the extent of occasional reversions, whatever may be the mixture of a white race. In a certain degree thispersistence is true of all races not come from an historic common stock. 

In the political reconstruction the negro was given the ballot withoutany requirements of education or property. This was partly a measure ofparty balance of power; and partly from a concern that the negro wouldnot be secure in his rights as a citizen without it, and also upon thetheory that the ballot is an educating influence. 

This sudden transition and shifting of power was resented at the South, resisted at first, and finally it has generally been evaded. This was dueto a variety of reasons or prejudices, not all of them creditable to agenerous desire for the universal elevation of mankind, but one of themthe historian will judge adequate to produce the result. Indeed, it mighthave been foreseen from the beginning. This reconstruction measure was anattempt to put the superior part of the community under the control ofthe inferior, these parts separated by all the prejudices of race, and bytraditions of mastership on the one side and of servitude on the other. Iventure to say that it was an experiment that would have failed in anycommunity in the United States, whether it was presented as a piece ofphilanthropy or of punishment. 

A necessary sequence to the enfranchisement of the negro was hiseducation. However limited our idea of a proper common education may be, it is a fundamental requisite in our form of government that every votershould be able to read and write. A recognition of this truth led to theestablishment in the South of public schools for the whites and blacks, in short, of a public school system. We are not to question the sincerityand generousness of this movement, however it may have halted and lostenthusiasm in many localities. 

This opportunity of education (found also in private schools) was hailedby the negroes, certainly, with enthusiasm. It cannot be doubted that atthe close of the war there was a general desire among the freedmen to beinstructed in the rudiments of knowledge at least. Many parents, especially women, made great sacrifices to obtain for their children thisadvantage which had been denied to themselves. Many youths, both boys andgirls, entered into it with a genuine thirst for knowledge which it waspathetic to see. 

But it may be questioned, from developments that speedily followed, whether the mass of negroes did not really desire this advantage as asign of freedom, rather than from a wish for knowledge, and covet itbecause it had formerly been the privilege of their masters, and marked abroad distinction between the races. It was natural that this should beso, when they had been excluded from this privilege by pains andpenalties, when in some States it was one of the gravest offenses toteach a negro to read and write. This prohibition was accounted for bythe peculiar sort of property that slavery created, which would becomeinsecure if intelligent, for the alphabet is a terrible disturber of allfalse relations in society. 

But the effort at education went further than the common school and theprimary essential instruction. It introduced the higher education. Colleges usually called universities--for negroes were established inmany Southern States, created and stimulated by the generosity ofNorthern men and societies, and often aided by the liberality of theStates where they existed. The curriculum in these was that in collegesgenerally, --the classics, the higher mathematics, science, philosophy, the modern languages, and in some instances a certain technicalinstruction, which was being tried in some Northern colleges. Theemphasis, however, was laid on liberal culture. This higher education wasoffered to the mass that still lacked the rudiments of intellectualtraining, in the belief that education--the education of the moment, theeducation of superimposed information, can realize the theory ofuniversal equality. 

This experiment has now been in operation long enough to enable us tojudge something of its results and its promises for the future. Theseresults are of a nature to lead us seriously to inquire whether oureffort was founded upon an adequate knowledge of the negro, of hispresent development, of the requirements for his personal welfare andevolution in the scale of civilization, and for his training in usefuland honorable citizenship. I am speaking of the majority, the mass to beconsidered in any general scheme, and not of the exceptional individuals--exceptions that will rapidly increase as the mass is lifted--who arecapable of taking advantage to the utmost of all means of cultivation, and who must always be provided with all the opportunities needed. 

Millions of dollars have been invested in the higher education of thenegro, while this primary education has been, taking the whole mass, wholly inadequate to his needs. This has been upon the supposition thatthe higher would compel the rise of the lower with the undeveloped negrorace as it does with the more highly developed white race. An examinationof the soundness of this expectation will not lead us far astray from oursubject. 

The evolution of a race, distinguishing it from the formation of anation, is a slow process. We recognize a race by certain peculiartraits, and by characteristics which slowly change. They are acquiredlittle by little in an evolution which, historically, it is oftendifficult to trace. They are due to the environment, to the discipline oflife, and to what is technically called education. These work together tomake what is called character, race character, and it is this which istransmitted from generation to generation. Acquirements are nothereditary, like habits and peculiarities, physical or mental. A man doesnot transmit to his descendants his learning, though he may transmit theaptitude for it. This is illustrated in factories where skilled labor ishanded down and fixed in the same families, that is, where the same kindof labor is continued from one generation to another. The child, put towork, has not the knowledge of the parent, but a special aptitude in hisskill and dexterity. Both body and mind have acquired certaintransmissible traits. The same thing is seen on a larger scale in a wholenation, like the Japanese, who have been trained into what seems an artinstinct. 

It is this character, quality, habit, the result of a slow educationalprocess, which distinguishes one race from another. It is this that therace transmits, and not the more or less accidental education of a decadeor an era. The Brahmins carry this idea into the next life, and say thatthe departing spirit carries with him nothing except this individualcharacter, no acquirements or information or extraneous culture. It wasperhaps in the same spirit that the sad preacher in Ecclesiastes saidthere is no "knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest. "

It is by this character that we classify civilized and evensemi-civilized races; by this slowly developed fibre, this slowaccumulation of inherent quality in the evolution of the human being fromlower to higher, that continues to exist notwithstanding the powerfulinfluence of governments and religions. We are understood when we speakof the French, the Italian, the Pole, the Spanish, the English, theGerman, the Arab race, the Japanese, and so on. It is what a foreignwriter calls, not inaptly, a collective race soul. As it is slow inevolution, it is persistent in enduring. 

Further, we recognize it as a stage of progress, historically necessaryin the development of man into a civilized adaptation to his situation inthis world. It is a process that cannot be much hurried, and a resultthat cannot be leaped to out of barbarism by any superimposition ofknowledge or even quickly by any change of environment. We may be rightin our modern notion that education has a magical virtue that can workany kind of transformation; but we are certainly not right in supposingthat it can do this instantly, or that it can work this effect upon abarbarous race in the same period of time that it can upon one moredeveloped, one that has acquired at least a race consciousness. 

Before going further, and in order to avoid misunderstanding, it isproper to say that I have the firmest belief in the ultimate developmentof all mankind into a higher plane than it occupies now. I shouldotherwise be in despair. This faith will never desist in the effort tobring about the end desired. 

But, if we work with Providence, we must work in the reasonable ways ofProvidence, and add to our faith patience. 

It seems to be the rule in all history that the elevation of a lower raceis effected only by contact with one higher in civilization. Both reformand progress come from exterior influences. This is axiomatic, andapplies to the fields of government, religion, ethics, art, and letters. 

We have been taught to regard Africa as a dark, stolid continent, unawakened, unvisited by the agencies and influences that havetransformed the world from age to age. Yet it was in northern andnortheastern Africa that within historic periods three of the mostpowerful and brilliant civilizations were developed, --the Egyptian, theCarthaginian, the Saracenic. That these civilizations had more than asurface contact with the interior, we know. To take the most ancient ofthem, and that which longest endured, the Egyptian, the Pharaohs carriedtheir conquests and their power deep into Africa. In the story of theirinvasions and occupancy of the interior, told in pictures on templewalls, we find the negro figuring as captive and slave. This contact maynot have been a fruitful one for the elevation of the negro, but itproves that for ages he was in one way or another in contact with asuperior civilization. In later days we find little trace of it in thehome of the negro, but in Egypt the negro has left his impress in themixed blood of the Nile valley. 

The most striking example of the contact of the negro with a highercivilization is in the powerful medieval empire of Songhay, establishedin the heart of the negro country. The vast strip of Africa lying northof the equator and south of the twentieth parallel and west of the upperNile was then, as it is now, the territory of tribes distinctly describedas Negro. The river Niger, running northward from below Jenne to nearTimbuctoo, and then turning west and south to the Gulf of Guinea, flowsthrough one of the richest valleys in the world. In richness it iscomparable to that of the Nile and, like that of the Nile, its fertilitydepends upon the water of the central stream. Here arose in early timesthe powerful empire of Songhay, which disintegrated and fell into tribalconfusion about the middle of the seventeenth century. For a long timethe seat of its power was the city of Jenne; in later days it wasTimbuctoo. 

This is not the place to enlarge upon this extraordinary piece ofhistory. The best account of the empire of Songhay is to be found in thepages of Barth, the German traveler, who had access to what seemed to hima credible Arab history. Considerable light is thrown upon it by a recentvolume on Timbuctoo by M. Dubois, a French traveler. M. Dubois findsreason to believe that the founders of the Songhese empire came fromYemen, and sought refuge from Moslem fanaticism in Central Africa somehundred and fifty years after the Hejira. The origin of the empire isobscure, but the development was not indigenous. It seems probable thatthe settlers, following traders, penetrated to the Niger valley from thevalley of the Nile as early as the third or fourth century of our era. Anevidence of this early influence, which strengthened from century tocentury, Dubois finds in the architecture of Jenne and Timbuctoo. It isnot Roman or Saracenic or Gothic, it is distinctly Pharaonic. Butwhatever the origin of the Songhay empire, it became in time Mohammedan, and so continued to the end. Mohammedanism seems, however, to have beenimposed. Powerful as the empire was, it was never free from tribalinsurrection and internal troubles. The highest mark of negro capacitydeveloped in this history is, according to the record examined by Barth, that one of the emperors was a negro. 

From all that can be gathered in the records, the mass of the negroes, which constituted the body of this empire, remained pagan, did notbecome, except in outward conformity, Mohammedan and did not take theMoslem civilization as it was developed elsewhere, and that thedisintegration of the empire left the negro races practically where theywere before in point of development. This fact, if it is not overturnedby further search, is open to the explanation that the Moslemcivilization is not fitted to the development of the African negro. 

Contact, such as it has been, with higher civilizations, has not in allthese ages which have witnessed the wonderful rise and development ofother races, much affected or changed the negro. He is much as he wouldbe if he had been left to himself. And left to himself, even in such afavorable environment as America, he is slow to change. In Africa therehas been no progress in organization, government, art. 

No negro tribe has ever invented a written language. In his exhaustivework on the History of Mankind, Professor Frederick Ratzel, havingstudied thoroughly the negro belt of Africa, says "of writing properly socalled, neither do the modern negroes show any trace, nor have traces ofolder writing been found in negro countries. "

From this outline review we come back to the situation in the UnitedStates, where a great mass of negroes--possibly over nine millions ofmany shades of colors--is for the first time brought into contact withChristian civilization. This mass is here to make or mar our nationallife, and the problem of its destiny has to be met with our own. What canwe do, what ought we to do, for his own good and for our peace andnational welfare?

In the first place, it is impossible to escape the profound impressionthat we have made a mistake in our estimate of his evolution as a race, in attempting to apply to him the same treatment for the development ofcharacter that we would apply to a race more highly organized. Has hedeveloped the race consciousness, the race soul, as I said before, acollective soul, which so strongly marks other races more or lesscivilized according to our standards? Do we find in him, as a mass(individuals always excepted), that slow deposit of training andeducation called "character, " any firm basis of order, initiative ofaction, the capacity of going alone, any sure foundation of morality? Ithas been said that a race may attain a good degree of standing in theworld without the refinement of culture, but never without virtue, eitherin the Roman or the modern meaning of that word. 

The African, now the American negro, has come in the United States into amore favorable position for development than he has ever before hadoffered. He has come to it through hardship, and his severeapprenticeship is not ended. It is possible that the historians centurieshence, looking back over the rough road that all races have traveled intheir evolution, may reckon slavery and the forced transportation to thenew world a necessary step in the training of the negro. We do not know. The ways of Providence are not measurable by our foot rules. We see thatslavery was unjust, uneconomic, and the worst training for citizenship insuch a government as ours. It stifled a number of germs that might haveproduced a better development, such as individuality, responsibility, andthrift, --germs absolutely necessary to the well-being of a race. It laidno foundation of morality, but in place of morality saw cultivated asuperstitious, emotional, hysterical religion. It is true that it taughta savage race subordination and obedience. Nor did it stifle certaininherent temperamental virtues, faithfulness, often highly developed, andfrequently cheerfulness and philosophic contentment in a situation thatwould have broken the spirit of a more sensitive race. In short, underall the disadvantages of slavery the race showed certain fine traits, qualities of humor and good humor, and capacity for devotion, which wereabundantly testified to by southerners during the progress of the CivilWar. It has, as a race, traits wholly distinct from those of the whites, which are not only interesting, but might be a valuable contribution to acosmopolitan civilization; gifts also, such as the love of music, andtemperamental gayety, mixed with a note of sadness, as in the Hungarians. 

But slavery brought about one result, and that the most difficult in thedevelopment of a race from savagery, and especially a tropical race, arace that has always been idle in the luxuriance of a nature thatsupplied its physical needs with little labor. It taught the negro towork, it transformed him, by compulsion it is true, into an industrialbeing, and held him in the habit of industry for several generations. Perhaps only force could do this, for it was a radical transformation. Iam glad to see that this result of slavery is recognized by Mr. BookerWashington, the ablest and most clear-sighted leader the negro race hasever had. 

But something more was done under this pressure, something more thancreation of a habit of physical exertion to productive ends. Skill wasdeveloped. Skilled labor, which needs brains, was carried to a highdegree of performance. On almost all the Southern plantations, and in thecities also, negro mechanics were bred, excellent blacksmiths, goodcarpenters, and house-builders capable of executing plans of higharchitectural merit. Everywhere were negroes skilled in trades, andcompetent in various mechanical industries. 

The opportunity and the disposition to labor make the basis of all ourcivilization. The negro was taught to work, to be an agriculturist, amechanic, a material producer of something useful. He was taught thisfundamental thing. Our higher education, applied to him in his presentdevelopment, operates in exactly the opposite direction. 

This is a serious assertion. Its truth or falsehood cannot be establishedby statistics, but it is an opinion gradually formed by experience, andthe observation of men competent to judge, who have studied the problemclose at hand. Among the witnesses to the failure of the result expectedfrom the establishment of colleges and universities for the negro areheard, from time to time, and more frequently as time goes on, practicalmen from the North, railway men, manufacturers, who have initiatedbusiness enterprises at the South. Their testimony coincides with that ofcareful students of the economic and social conditions. 

There was reason to assume, from our theory and experience of the highereducation in its effect upon white races, that the result would bedifferent from what it is. When the negro colleges first opened, therewas a glow of enthusiasm, an eagerness of study, a facility ofacquirement, and a good order that promised everything for the future. Itseemed as if the light then kindled would not only continue to burn, butwould penetrate all the dark and stolid communities. It was my fortune tosee many of these institutions in their early days, and to believe thatthey were full of the greatest promise for the race. I have no intentionof criticising the generosity and the noble self-sacrifice that producedthem, nor the aspirations of their inmates. There is no doubt that theyfurnish shining examples of emancipation from ignorance, and of usefullives. But a few years have thrown much light upon the careers andcharacters of a great proportion of the graduates, and their effect uponthe communities of which they form a part, I mean, of course, with regardto the industrial and moral condition of those communities. Have thesecolleges, as a whole, --[This sentence should have been further qualifiedby acknowledging the excellent work done by the colleges at Atlanta andNashville, which, under exceptionally good management, have sent outmuch-needed teachers. I believe that their success, however, is largelyowing to their practical features. --C. D. W. ]--stimulated industry, thrift, the inclination to settle down to the necessary hard work of theworld, or have they bred idleness, indisposition to work, a vaporousambition in politics, and that sort of conceit of gentility of which theworld has already enough? If any one is in doubt about this he cansatisfy himself by a sojourn in different localities in the South. Thecondition of New Orleans and its negro universities is often cited. It isa favorable example, because the ambition of the negro has been aidedthere by influence outside of the schools. The federal government hasimposed upon the intelligent and sensitive population negro officials inhigh positions, because they were negroes and not because they werespecially fitted for those positions by character or ability. It is mybelief that the condition of the race in New Orleans is lower than it wasseveral years ago, and that the influence of the higher education hasbeen in the wrong direction. 

This is not saying that the higher education is responsible for thepresent condition of the negro. 

Other influences have retarded his elevation and the development ofproper character, and most important means have been neglected. I onlysay that we have been disappointed in our extravagant expectations ofwhat this education could do for a race undeveloped, and so wanting incertain elements of character, and that the millions of money devoted toit might have been much better applied. 

We face a grave national situation. It cannot be successfully dealt withsentimentally. It should be faced with knowledge and candor. We mustadmit our mistakes, both social and political, and set about the solutionof our problem with intelligent resolution and a large charity. It is notsimply a Southern question. It is a Northern question as well. For thetruth of this I have only to appeal to the consciousness of all Northerncommunities in which there are negroes in any considerable numbers. Havethe negroes improved, as a rule (always remembering the exceptions), inthrift, truthfulness, morality, in the elements of industriouscitizenship, even in States and towns where there has been the leastprejudice against their education? In a paper read at the last session ofthis Association, Professor W. F. Willcox of Cornell University showed bystatistics that in proportion to population there were more negrocriminals in the North than in the South. "The negro prisoners in theSouthern States to ten thousand negroes increased between 1880 and 1890twenty-nine per cent. , while the white prisoners to ten thousand whitesincreased only eight per cent. " "In the States where slavery was neverestablished, the white prisoners increased seven per cent. Faster thanthe white population, while the negro prisoners no less than thirty-nineper cent. Faster than the negro population. Thus the increase of negrocriminality, so far as it is reflected in the number of prisoners, exceeded the increase of white criminality more in the North than it didin the South. "

This statement was surprising. It cannot be accounted for by colorprejudice at the North; it is related to the known shiftlessness andirresponsibility of a great portion of the negro population. If it couldbe believed that this shiftlessness is due to the late state of slavery, the explanation would not do away with the existing conditions. Schoolsat the North have for a long time been open to the negro; though colorprejudice exists, he has not been on the whole in an unfriendlyatmosphere, and willing hands have been stretched out to help him in hisambition to rise. It is no doubt true, as has been often said lately, that the negro at the North has been crowded out of many occupations bymore vigorous races, newly come to this country, crowded out not only offactory industries and agricultural, but of the positions of servants, waiters, barbers, and other minor ways of earning a living. The generalverdict is that this loss of position is due to lack of stamina andtrustworthiness. Wherever a negro has shown himself able, honest, attentive to the moral and economic duties of a citizen, eithersuccessful in accumulating property or filling honorably his station inlife, he has gained respect and consideration in the community in whichhe is known; and this is as true at the South as at the North, notwithstanding the race antagonism is more accentuated by reason of thepreponderance of negro population there and the more recent presence ofslavery. Upon this ugly race antagonism it is not necessary to enlargehere in discussing the problem of education, and I will leave it with thesingle observation that I have heard intelligent negroes, who werehonestly at work, accumulating property and disposed to postpone activepolitics to a more convenient season, say that they had nothing to fearfrom the intelligent white population, but only from the envy of theignorant. 

The whole situation is much aggravated by the fact that there is aconsiderable infusion of white blood in the negro race in the UnitedStates, leading to complications and social aspirations that areinfinitely pathetic. Time only and no present contrivance of ours canameliorate this condition. 

I have made this outline of our negro problem in no spirit of pessimismor of prejudice, but in the belief that the only way to remedy an evil ora difficulty is candidly and fundamentally to understand it. Two thingsare evident: First, the negro population is certain to increase in theUnited States, in a ratio at least equal to that of the whites. Second, the South needs its labor. Its deportation is an idle dream. The onlyvisible solution is for the negro to become an integral and anintelligent part of the industrial community. The way may be long, but hemust work his way up. Sympathetic aid may do much, but the salvation ofthe negro is in his own hands, in the development of individual characterand a race soul. This is fully understood by his wisest leaders. Hisworst enemy is the demagogue who flatters him with the delusion that allhe needs for his elevation is freedom and certain privileges that weredenied him in slavery. 

In all the Northern cities heroic efforts are made to assimilate theforeign population by education and instruction in Americanism. In theSouth, in the city and on plantation, the same effort is necessary forthe negro, but it must be more radical and fundamental. The common schoolmust be as fully sustained and as far reaching as it is in the North, reaching the lowest in the city slums and the most ignorant in theagricultural districts, but to its strictly elemental teaching must beadded moral instructions, and training in industries and in habits ofindustry. Only by such rudimentary and industrial training can the massof the negro race in the United States be expected to improve incharacter and position. A top-dressing of culture on a field with nodepth of soil may for a moment stimulate the promise of vegetation, butno fruit will be produced. It is a gigantic task, and generations mayelapse before it can in any degree be relaxed. 

Why attempt it? Why not let things drift as they are? Why attempt tocivilize the race within our doors, while there are so many distant andalien races to whom we ought to turn our civilizing attention? The answeris simple and does not need elaboration. A growing ignorant mass in ourbody politic, inevitably cherishing bitterness of feeling, is anincreasing peril to the public. 

In order to remove this peril, by transforming the negro into anindustrial, law-abiding citizen, identified with the prosperity of hiscountry, the cordial assistance of the Southern white population isabsolutely essential. It can only be accomplished by regarding him as aman, with the natural right to the development of his capacity and tocontentment in a secure social state. The effort for his elevation mustbe fundamental. The opportunity of the common school must be universal, and attendance in it compulsory. Beyond this, training in the decenciesof life, in conduct, and in all the industries, must be offered in suchindustrial institutions as that of Tuskegee. For the exceptional cases ahigher education can be easily provided for those who show themselvesworthy of it, but not offered as an indiscriminate panacea. 

The question at once arises as to the kind of teachers for these schoolsof various grades. It is one of the most difficult in the whole problem. As a rule, there is little gain, either in instruction or in elevation ofcharacter, if the teacher is not the superior of the taught. The learnersmust respect the attainments and the authority of the teacher. It is atoo frequent fault of our common-school system that, owing to inadequatepay and ignorant selections, the teachers are not competent to theirresponsible task. The highest skill and attainment are needed to evokethe powers of the common mind, even in a community called enlightened. Much more are they needed when the community is only slightly developedmentally and morally. The process of educating teachers of this race, fitto promote its elevation, must be a slow one. Teachers of variousindustries, such as agriculture and the mechanic arts, will be morereadily trained than teachers of the rudiments of learning in the commonschools. It is a very grave question whether, with some exceptions, theschool and moral training of the race should not be for a considerabletime to come in the control of the white race. But it must be kept inmind that instructors cheap in character, attainments, and breeding willdo more harm than good. If we give ourselves to this work, we must giveof our best. 

Without the cordial concurrence in this effort of all parties, black andwhite, local and national, it will not be fruitful in fundamental andpermanent good. Each race must accept the present situation and build onit. To this end it is indispensable that one great evil, which wasinherent in the reconstruction measures and is still persisted in, shallbe eliminated. The party allegiance of the negro was bid for by thetemptation of office and position for which he was in no sense fit. Nopermanent, righteous adjustment of relations can come till this policy iswholly abandoned. Politicians must cease to make the negro a pawn in thegame of politics. 

Let us admit that we have made a mistake. We seem to have expected thatwe could accomplish suddenly and by artificial Contrivances a developmentwhich historically has always taken a long time. Without abatement ofeffort or loss of patience, let us put ourselves in the common-sense, thescientific, the historic line. It is a gigantic task, only to beaccomplished by long labor in accord with the Divine purpose. 

 "Thou wilt not leave us in the dust; Thou madest man, he knows not why, He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him; thou art just. 

 "Oh, yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood. 

 "That nothing walks with aimless feet, That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete. "