Chapter XXXVIII: How to Help the Negro to Help Himself 468 (9)

"I was conversing not long ago with the warden of one of our mining prisons, containing about 500 convicts. The warden is a practical man, who has been in charge of prisoners for more than fifteen years, and has no theories of any kind to support. I remarked to him that I wanted some information as to the effect of manual training in preventing criminality, and asked him to state what per cent of the prisoners under his charge had received any manual training, besides the acquaintance with the crudest agricultural labor. He replied: 'Perhaps about one per cent.' He added: 'No; much less than that. We have here at present only one mechanic; that is, there is one man who claims to be a house painter.'

"'Have you any shoemakers?'

"'Never have had a shoemaker.'

"'Have you any tailors?'

"'Never have had a tailor.'

"'Any printers?'

"'Never have had a printer.'

"'Any carpenters?'

"'Never have had a carpenter. There is not a man in this prison that could saw to a straight line.'"

Now, these facts seem to show that manual training is almost as good a preventive for criminality as vaccination is for smallpox.

We can best judge further of the value of industrial and academic education by using a few statistics bearing upon the state of Virginia, where graduates from the Hampton Institute and other schools have gone in large numbers and have had an opportunity, in point of time, to make their influence apparent upon the Negro population. These statistics, based on census reports, were compiled mainly by persons connected with the Hampton Negro Conference:

"Taking taxation as a basis, the colored people of the State of Virginia contributed, in 1898, directly to the expenses of the State government, the sum of $9,576.76, and for schools $3,239.41 from their personal property, a total of $12,816.17; while, from their real estate, for the purpose of the commonwealth there was paid by them $34,303.53, and for schools $11,457.22, or a total of $45,760.75--a grand total of $58,576.92.

"The report for the same year shows them to own 987,118 acres of land, valued at $3,800,459, improved by buildings valued at $2,056,490, a total of $5,856,949. In the towns and cities, they own lots assessed at $2,154,331, improved by buildings valued at $3,400,636, a total of $5,554,976 for town property, and a grand total of $11,411,916 of their property of all kinds in the commonwealth. A comparative statement of different years would doubtless show a general upward tendency.

"The counties of Accomac, Essex, King and Queen, Middlesex, Mathews, Northampton, Northumberland, Richmond, Westmoreland, Gloucester, Princess Anne and Lancaster, all agricultural, show an aggregate of 114,197 acres held by Negroes in 1897, the last year accounted for in official reports, against 108,824 held the previous year, an increase of 5,379, or nearly five per cent. The total valuation of land owned by Negroes in the same counties for 1897, is $547,800, against $496,385 for the year next preceding, a gain of $51,150, or more than ten per cent. Their present property, as assessed in 1897, was $517,560, in 1896, $527,688, a loss of $10,128. Combining the real and personal property for 1897, we have $1,409,059, against $1,320,504 for 1896, a net gain of $88,555, an increase of six and one-half per cent.

"The records of Gloucester, Lancaster, Middlesex, Princess Anne, Northumberland, Northampton, King and Queen, Essex, and Westmoreland, where the colored population exceeds the white, show that the criminal expense for 1896 was $14,313.29, but for 1897 it was only $8,538.12, a saving of $5,774.17 to the State, or a falling off of forty per cent. This does not tell the whole story. In the first named year twenty-six persons were convicted of felonies, with sentences in the penitentiary, while in the year succeeding only nine, or one-third as many, were convicted of the graver offences of the law."

According to these returns, in 1892, when the colored people formed 41 per cent of the population, they owned 2.75 per cent of the total number of acres assessed for taxation, and 3.40 per cent of the buildings; in 1898, although not constituting more than 37 per cent of the population (by reason of white immigration), they owned 3.23 per cent of the acreage assessed, and 4.64 per cent of the buildings--a gain of nearly one-third in six years.

According to statistics gathered by a graduate of the Hampton Institute, in twelve counties in Virginia, there has been in the part of the state covered by the investigation an increase of 5,379 acres in the holdings of colored people, and an increase of $51,150 in the value of their land. In nine counties there has been a decrease in the number of persons charged with felonies and sent to the penitentiary from twenty-six in 1896 to nine in 1897.

I do not believe that the Negro will grow weaker in morals and less strong in numbers because of his immediate contact with the white race. The first class life insurance companies are considered excellent authorities as to the longevity of individuals and races; and the fact that most of them now seek to insure the educated class of blacks, is a good test of what these companies think, of the effect of education upon the mortality of the race.

The case of Jamaica, in the West Indies, presents a good example by which to judge the future of the Negro of the United States, so far as mortality is concerned. The argument drawn from Jamaica is valuable, chiefly because the race there has been free for sixty-two years, instead of thirty-five, as in our own country. During the years of freedom, the blacks of Jamaica have been in constant contact with the white man. Slavery was abolished in Jamaica in 1838. The census of 1844 showed that there were 364,000 Negroes on the island. In 1871 there were 493,000, and in 1891 there were 610,597. In a history of Jamaica written by Mr. W. P. Livingston, who spent ten years studying the conditions of the island, we find that, immediately after emancipation on the island, there was something of the reaction that has taken place in some parts of our country; but that recently there has been a settling down to real, earnest life on the part of a large proportion of the race. After calling attention to certain weak and unsatisfactory phases in the life of the Jamaica Negro, Mr. Livingston says:

"This, then, is the race as it exists to-day, a product of sixty years of freedom; on the whole, a plain, honest, Anglicized people, with no peculiarity except a harmless ignorance and superstition. Looking at it in contrast with what it was at the beginning of the period, one cannot but be impressed with the wonderful progress it has made; and where there has been steady progress in the past, there is infinite hope for the future. * * * The impact of Roman power and culture on the northern barbarians of the United Kingdom did not make itself felt for three hundred years. * * * Instead of dying off before civilization, he (the Negro) grows stronger as he comes within its best influences."

In comparing the black race of Jamaica with that of the United States, it should be borne in mind that the Negro in America enjoys advantages and encouragements which the race in Jamaica does not possess.

What I have said, I repeat, is based largely upon my own experience and observation, rather than upon statistics. I do not wish to convey the impression that the problem before our country is not a large and serious one; but I do believe that in a judicious system of industrial, mental and religious training we have found the method of solving it. What we most need is the money necessary to make the system effective. The indications are hopeful, not discouraging; and not the least encouraging is the fact that, in addition to the munificence of Northern philanthropists and the appropriations of the Southern state governments from common taxation, with the efforts of the Negro himself, we have now reached a point at which the solution of this problem is drawing to its aid some of the most thoughtful and cultured white men and women of the South, as is indicated by the article to which I have already referred, from the pen of Professor John Roach Straton.

SECOND PAPER.

WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM?

BY PROF. J. R. HAWKINS.

JOHN RUSSELL HAWKINS.

John Russell Hawkins, the oldest son of Ossian and
Christiana Hawkins, was born in the town of Warrenton,
Warren County, North Carolina, on May 31, 1862. At the age
of six years, he began attending the public school of his
native town and made rapid progress in his studies.

When old enough to help his father work, he had to stop
attending school regularly and apply himself to work on his
father's farm. In the mean time, he kept up studies by
attending night school and employing private tutors. At the
age of fifteen, he went with four members of the highest
class in the regular graded school to take the public
examination for school teacher. Of the five examined, he
made the highest grades and received an appointment as
assistant teacher in the same school where he had received
his first training.

In 1881, he left home and went to Hampton Institute,
Hampton, Va., where he spent one year in special study
preparatory for business.

In 1882, he left Hampton and accepted a position in the
Government service, as railway postal clerk, on the line
between Raleigh, N. C., and Norfolk, Va. Here he soon made a
record that classed him among the best clerks in the
service. In 1885, Mr. Hawkins returned to his native town
and was elected as principal of the graded school. Here he
spent two years teaching and reading law under private
tutors.

In 1887, he was asked to go to Kittrell, N. C., to fill the
position as business manager and treasurer of Kittrell
College, then known as Kittrell Normal and Industrial
Institute. So acceptably did Mr. Hawkins fill this position
that in 1890 he was elected to the Presidency of Kittrell
College, which position he has filled with credit.

During the first eight years of his work at Kittrell, he
developed that work so rapidly that the trustees deemed it
wise to accept his recommendations and broaden the work so
as to cover a regular college course. Mr. Hawkins has always
been an ardent advocate of higher education for the Negro
and worked hard to fit himself for giving such advantages to
his students. For five years he spent his summers in the
North, where he could get the best school advantages and
keep himself in touch with best school methods.

Mr. Hawkins has been one of the most successful educators of
the South and has raised large sums of money by public
canvass among the philanthropists of the country. In his
native State, North Carolina, he is a recognized leader
among his people, and by his ability and standing has won
the confidence and respect of all classes. A ripe scholar, a
deep thinker, a ready writer and a polished orator, his
services are almost constantly in demand. Indeed, it has
been said of him that he is one of the finest public
speakers on the stage. He speaks with such power of
conviction as to touch the heart of his audiences and at
once lead them into the subject under consideration with
interest and profit.

In 1896 he was elected by the General Conference of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church as Commissioner of
Education and filled that office so acceptably that at the
end of his first term in 1900, he was re-elected by
acclamation. He is regarded as among the strongest laymen in
his church and one of the best financiers of the race.

One of the finest qualities of Mr. Hawkins is his devotion
to his family and his high ideals in home life.

In 1892 he married Miss Lillian M. Kennedy, of Sioux Falls,
South Dakota, whose companionship and devotion has been a
most important factor in contributing to her husband's
success. They are the happy parents of two children, a girl
and a boy, and are pleasantly located at Kittrell, N. C., in
a very beautiful home.

Every nation of recognized merit and ability, chronicled in the world's history, is proud to revert to some special feature of its life, and point with pride to some one thing that has given character to its institutions and added to its national glory. As far back as history runs, we find nations, classes and races, pointing out different things as the stronghold, the ground work, the pillars on which their fame rests.

The thing to which the Negro can point with most pride, is the activity and progress made in the development of an ideal home life and the providing of a liberal education for his people. Indeed, it is worthy of note, that in both church and state, there is a growing interest in behalf of extending to all classes the privileges and benefits of at least a limited education. Nations that once thought of nothing but war and conquest are throwing their influence in the scale of popular education.

Countries that have long wielded the scepter of power, and held thousands subject to the will and opinion of one man or set of men, are being aroused to the importance of individual thought and individual responsibility. Churches and organizations that necessarily began their work with one or two as leaders, who had to do the thinking for hundreds of others, are now turning their attention to the work of training and developing the faculties and character of each one so as to enable him to think and act intelligently for himself; this is the spirit of the present age. In this lies the hope and destiny of all classes and all races.

Hence, if there be any particular problem as connected with the Negro race, in my opinion the solution of that problem will come only by following the rule of action applied to the uplifting and development of others.

The Negro is no new specie of nature; he is no new issue in the category of life; no new element in the citizenship of this country, and needs no special prescription to suit his needs. His case is one common to a people whose surroundings and environments have placed, or caused them to be placed, in a dependent attitude, and his only hope for rising above the common level of a menial slave is to so husband his resources as to change these environments and become the master of, rather than the helpless creature, of circumstances. The faithful pioneers who carried the torch of knowledge into darkened regions and cheered the lives of thousands with rays of hope and promise, opened the way for the liberation of great forces that had long lain dormant and smothered. Knowledge has been the torch in the civilizer's hand, and carrying this still we can find treasures still unearthed and truths still unlearned.

The glories already achieved in the field of science, art and literature have but aroused us to seek for still greater honors. The ray of light that has fallen across our pathway, giving hope and promise of better and brighter things further on, has but fired the zeal within us, and there is no way of satisfying this burning zeal save the feasting on the coveted goal--the riches and beauties of wisdom. One writer says: "As long as one's mind is shrouded in ignorance he is but the tool of others, and the victim of foolishness and gross absurdities. He will never experience those pleasures which come from a well-directed train of thought and which is akin to the dignity of a high nature. On the other hand, the person whose mind is illumined with the light of knowledge, and whose soul is lit up, is introduced as it were into a new world. He can trace back the stream of time to its commencement, and gliding along its downward course, can survey the most memorable events and see the dawnings of Divine Mercy and the manifestations of the Son of God in our nature." 'Tis not enough to know that we have faculties. 'Tis not sufficient to say that there lives in us the power to see, to hear, to feel, to reason, to think and to act; we must develop these powers until we can feel the benefit of the blessings that come from their use. We will never be able to reason for ourselves unless we learn to think for ourselves. The thinking mind is the active mind, and the active mind is the growing mind; the growing mind moves the man, and the man that moves helps to move the world. He moves step by step from the common level of events to things of greater height. He rises from pinnacle to pinnacle, never ceasing, never tiring, never stopping, ever growing, ever moving, ever rising till he finds the fountain head of all truth and all virtue. We are now face to face with a new order of things. Under this new regime we witness the foreshadowing of a higher sense of civilization, a higher standard of morals, a broader field of culture and a purer realm of thought.

Indeed, we are only in the shadow of this great light. 'Tis not the promise alone that brightens our sky. The dawn has appeared. The music of the morn has already been heard, and nations are awaking and rushing to crowd around the altar as worshippers at the shrine of learning. What lover of letters would doubt for a moment that if Thomas Carlyle could re-enter the world of letters and dignify the profession with the fertility of his brain, instead of captivating the world with his beautiful outline of heroes and hero worship, he would summon all his powers as an agency to do reverence, as a worshipper at the shrine, not of things material, not of men, but of _ideas_. This is the school to which we are crowding. In the development of our educational system we are enabled to find the highest ideals and center our thoughts on the highest and purest standard of life.

Only those who think, or those who seek to know the virtues of intelligence, and to enjoy the beauties of a pure and ideal life, can enter into the spirit of rejoicing over the approach of the time when each person will be measured by what is represented in his ability to exert a potent influence in shaping the destiny of things and helping to mold public sentiment. The mind can no more be allowed to remain dormant or inactive than the turf of the field, or the muscles of the body. It must be stirred up; it must be awakened from its stupor and quickened into a newness of life.

The opportunity for this general awakening was denied our parents, who were the victims of slavery, and they suffered the loss of the prestige and influence that naturally follows; but what was lost to our ancestry must be redeemed to posterity. We must center our work in the youth of our land and give them the broadest, deepest and highest training. The most liberal education should be provided for all. An education free from bias, free from proscription, free from any label that will mark them as Negro laborers, as Negro mechanics, as Negro scholars, but an education that will mark them as artisans, as skilled mechanics, as scholars, thinkers, as men and women with master minds and noble souls. In this will we find the reward for our labors and the hope of the race. I agree with the writer who says: "There is nothing to be compared with the beauty of an excellent character and the usefulness of a noble life. To the unlimited, unfettered spirit of man's mind that can rise above the mountain peaks and sweep across the ocean bounds. To that unequaled beauty of a pure and spotless soul. The whole earth, with all its beauties of art and skill, are counted as naught in the sight of God, as compared with a living creature, that represents in his body the image of his Creator, and in his mind and soul the divine principles of the mystery, the power, and glory of His Son."

'Tis not enough to know that schools and colleges exist, and to boast of the advantages, and opportunities afforded us. We must lay hold upon them and become a part of them. We must, by our own efforts, out of our own means, build, own and control our own institutions for the training of our youths, and then establish enterprises of business for the practical display and use of the training received.

The great trouble about our system of education is that the masses have not yet felt the real good of it. To some it is no good, because they have simply gotten enough to misuse. You cannot satisfy a man's appetite by stopping him at the door of your dining room, where he can get only a smell of the dinner while he sees others eating. Of course he would turn away in disgust and call it all a farce. You cannot teach a man to swim by stopping him at the water's edge. You cannot convince a man that he is at the top of a mountain when you stop him at the base, where he can look up and see others above him; and you cannot show a man the virtue of education when you stop him at the school house door and deny him entrance while others crowd by and pass through. Let him in. Open the doors wide and let all come in and sit down to the intellectual feast. We want to bring the people out into the middle of the stream, into the deep water where they can be borne up by the strong tide of intellect and follow the current of popular ideas.

We must take them up and away from the foot of the mountain, place them on top, where they can bask in the sunlight of intelligence, where the atmosphere is pure and the virtue of education beams in every eye. God made man in his own image, prepared him a body, arranged for his food and raiment, stretched nature before him, and then commissioned him to go forth and subdue, replenish and have dominion over all. Yea more than this. He endowed man with reasoning faculties and for these faculties fixed no bounds; but left them to work out their own destiny and achieve their own triumphs.

I do not believe God intended for man's mind to remain undeveloped. He did not intend that His creatures should forever remain ignorant and shrouded in ignorance. Wherever He places talents there he expects to find evidence of growth and increase. Hence it is our duty to educate and prepare all for the intelligent use of what God has given them. If we expect to have a part in shaping events in this life; if we expect to be numbered among the learned, the strong, the molders of public sentiment, the masters of things material, free from abject menial servitude, we must educate the people.

Let this idea run all through our schools until it permeates the life of every boy, every girl, every man, every woman; making its influence felt in every home, every clime and among all nations.

THIRD PAPER.

WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM?

BY PROF. KELLEY MILLER.

It is a hopeful sign when those who are vitally concerned in the outcome of the Negro problem are guided in their discussion by the light of evidence and argument, and are not impelled to foregone conclusions by transmitted prejudice and traditional bias. The article of Professor John Roach Straton in the North American Review for June, 1900, is notable for its calm, dispassionate, argumentative treatment, and for its freedom from rancor and venom. His conclusions, therefore, if erroneous, are all the more damaging because of the evident sincerity and helpful intention of the author.

With much erudition and argumentative skill Professor Straton sets forth the proposition that education has failed to check the Negro's degenerating tendencies or to fit him for his "strange and abnormal environment."

There are two leading divisions of the race problem:

1. The development of a backward race.

2. The adjustment of two races with widely divergent ethnic characteristics.

These two factors are, in the mind of many, antagonistic to each other. The more backward and undeveloped the Negro, the easier is the process of his adjustment to the white race; but when you give him "Greek and Latin and eyeglasses" frictional problems inevitably arise. Under slavery this adjustment was complete, but the bond of adjustment was quickly burst asunder when the Negro was made a free man and clothed with full political and civil privilege. The one great question which so far remains unanswerable is, can the two be readjusted on terms of equality? The solution of social problems belongs to the realm of statesmanship, philanthropy and religion. The function of education is to develop latent faculties. It was a shallow philosophy which prophesied that a few years of schooling on the part of the Negro would solve the race question. If the education of the colored man has not worked out the fulfillment which its propounders prophesied, it simply proves them to be poor prophets. The Negro, too, believed that if he could only learn to read and write, and especially if he could go to college, that he would be relieved of every incumbrance that beset him. Education was looked upon as an end and not as an agency. As his friends were destined to disappointment, the Negro himself was doomed to humiliation and chagrin. Education creates as many problems as it solves. It is both static and dynamical. When Professor Straton says, therefore, that education has not solved the race problem, he utters a truism. But if he means to imply that it has not had a wholesome effect upon the life of the Negro, his conclusion verges upon the absurd.

We are apt to be misled by the statistics showing the decline of illiteracy among Negroes. All those who can read and write are set apart as educated persons, as if this mere mechanical information had worked some great transformation in their nature. The fact, is a very small per cent of the race is educated in any practical or efficient sense. The simple ability to read and write is of the least possible benefit to a backward race. What advantage would it be to the red Indians to be able to trace the letters of the English alphabet with a pen, or to vocalize the printed characters into syllables and sentences? Unless the moral nature is touched and the vital energies aroused there would be no improvement in conduct or increase in practical efficiency. Education has a larger function for a backward than for a forward race. To the latter it merely furnishes a key to an existing lock, while to the former it must supply both lock and key. The pupil who is already acquainted with the nature and conditions of a problem may need only a suggestion as to a skillful or lucky combination of parts in order to lead to its solution; whereas to one ignorant of the underlying facts and factors such suggestion would be worse than useless.

Even much of the so-called higher education of the Negro has been only a process of artificially forcing a mass of refined information into a system which had no digestive or assimilative apparatus. Such education produces no more nourishment or growth than would result from forcing sweetmeats down the throat of an alligator. Of education in its true sense the Negro has had very little. The great defect of the Negro's nature is his lack of individual initiative, growing out of his feeble energy of will. To overcome this difficulty, his training should be judiciously adapted and sensibly applied to his needs. Industrial training will supply the method and the higher culture the motive.

Professor Straton tells us that $100,000,000 have already been expended upon the education of this race. Princely as this sum seems to be, it is nevertheless utterly insignificant when compared with the magnitude of the task to which it has been applied. The city of New York alone spends $15,000,000 annually for educational purposes. And yet if we are to believe the rumors of corruption and the low state of municipal morality it will be seen that education has not yet done its perfect work in our great metropolis. Then why should we rave at the heart and froth at the mouth because a sum of money, scarcely equal to a third of the educational expenditure of a single American city, though distributed over a period of thirty years and scattered over a territory of a million square miles, has not completely civilized a race of 8,000,000 degraded souls?

The whites maintain that they impose taxes upon themselves for the education of the blacks. This is only one of the many false notions of political economy which have done so much to blight the prosperity of the South. Labor pays every tax in the world; and although the laborer may not enjoy the privilege of passing the tribute to the tax taker, he is nevertheless entitled to share in all of the privileges which his toil makes possible. And besides children are not educated because their parents are taxpayers, but in order that they may become more helpful and efficient members of the community. It would be wisdom on the part of the South to place the future generations under bonded debt, if necessary, for the education of its ignorant population, white and black. This would be far more statesmanlike than to transmit to them a legacy of ignorance, degradation and crime. Pride in a political theory should no longer prevent the appeal to national aid to remove the threatening curse.

Professor Straton underestimates the effect of culture upon a backward race when he minimizes the value of individual emergence. The individual is the proof of the race. The conception of progress has always found lodgment in the mind of some select individuals, whence it has trickled down to the masses below. May it not be that the races which have withered before the breath of civilization, have faded because they failed to produce individuals with sufficient intelligence, courage and good sense to wisely guide and direct their path? What names can the red Indian present to match Benjamin Banneker or Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass or Paul Laurence Dunbar? The Negro has contributed four hundred patented inventions to the mechanical genius of his country; how many has the aborigine contributed? The congressional library has collected fourteen hundred books and pamphlets by Negro authors. These works are, of course, in the main, commonplace or indifferent. But a people who have the ambition to write poor books will soon gain the ability to make good ones. Have any of the vanished races shown such aptitude for civilization? But these are exceptions. So are the eminent men of any race. When the exceptions become too numerous it is rather poor logic to urge them in proof of the rule. It is also a mistake to suppose that these picked individuals are without wholesome influence upon the communal life. They are diffusive centers of light scattered throughout the whole race. These grains of leaven will actually leaven the whole lump.

"We take these savages from their simple life and their low plane of evolution and attempt to give them an enlightenment for which the stronger races have prepared themselves by ages of growth." There is in this utterance a tinge of the feeling which actuated the laborers who had borne the heat and burden of the day when they objected to the eleventh hour intruders being received on equal terms with themselves. One answer suffices for both: "Other men have labored, and ye are entered into their labors." It is true that the Negro misses evolution and his adjustment to his environment is made the more difficult on that account. Education, therefore, is all the more essential and vital. The chasm between civilization and savagery must be bridged by education. The boy learns in a few years what it took the race ages to acquire. A repetition of the slow steps and stages by which progress has been secured is impossible. Attachment to civilization must take place at its highest point, just as we set a graft upon the most vigorous and healthy limb of a tree, and not upon a decadent stem. Must the Negro dwell for generations upon Anglo-Saxon stems and Cancerian diction before he is introduced to modern forms of English speech? The child of the African slave is under the same linguistic necessity as the offspring of Depew and Gladstone. He must leap, _instanter_, from primitive mode of locomotion to the steamboat, the electric car and the automobile. Of course many will be lost in the endeavor to sustain the stress and strain. Civilization is a saver of life into life and death into death. Japan is the best living illustration of the rapid acquisition of civilization. England can utilize no process of art or invention that is not equally invaluable to the oriental islanders. This has been accomplished by this young and vigorous people mainly through the education of picked youth. Herein lies the only salvation of the Negro race.

In the meantime the dual nature of the solution and its relative importance to both races is clearly indicated by Voltaire, the great French savant: "It is more meritorious and more difficult to wean men from their prejudices than to civilize the barbarian."

FOURTH PAPER.

WILL THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO SOLVE THE RACE PROBLEM?

BY C. H. TURNER.

PROF. CHARLES HENRY TURNER, M. S.

Charles Henry Turner was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, February
3, 1867. Both parents were of Negro descent. His mother was
a Kentucky girl and his father a Canadian. Both parents were
temperate and Christian in habits. Neither parent was
college-bred, yet Charles' father was a well-read man, a
keen thinker, and a master of debate. He had surrounded
himself with several hundred choice books and one of the
earliest ambitions of Charles was to learn to read these
books.

The only education of our subject was obtained in the
excellent public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio. From the
Walnut Hills District School Charles passed to the Gaines
High School, from which he graduated valedictorian of his
class. From High School he passed to the University of
Cincinnati, from which he graduated in 1891 with the B. S.
degree, and in 1892 with the M. S. degree.

When a youth in college, Charles hoped some day to be the
head of a technological or agricultural school for Negroes,
and much time and money was expended mastering those
essentials that the head of a school should know. That
youthful day dream has never been realized, but Charles has
been an active teacher for years. Even before graduation he
taught one year in the Governor Street School at Evansville,
Indiana, and occasionally taught, as a substitute, in the
public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1891 to 1893 he was
assistant in Biology at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Since then he has been Professor of Biology at Clark
University, South Atlanta, Ga. In 1901 he was dean of the
Georgia Summer School.

By training Prof. Turner is a biologist who has contributed
his mite towards the advancement of his favorite science. In
the following list of some of the principal publications of
Prof. Turner, those marked with an asterisk are
contributions to biology.

*Morphology of the Avian Brain; "Jour. of Comp. Neur."
(1891), 100 pp. 8 pls.

*A Few Characteristics of the Avian Brain. "Science"
(1891).

*Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider. "Jour. of
Comp. Neur." (1892).

*Notes on the Clodocera, Ostracoda and Rotifera of
Cincinnati. "Bull. Sci. Lab. of Den. Univ." (1892), 17
pp., 2 pls.

*Additional Notes on the Clodocera and Ostracoda of
Cincinnati, 18 pp., (1893), 2 pls. _Ibid._

*Notes on the American Ostracoda. _Ibid_, 11 pp., 2 pls.

*Preliminary Note on the Nervous System of the Genus
Cypris. "Jour. Comp. Neur." (1893), 5 pp., 3 pls.

*Morphology of the Nervous System of Cypris. _Ibid_,
(1896), 24 pp., 6 pls.

*Synopsis of the Entomostraca of Minnesota, etc., C. L.
Herrick and C. H. Turner (1895), 525 pp., 81 pls. [C. H.
Turner is only part author of this.]

Numerous abstracts and translations from German and French
published in the Jour. of Comp. Neur.

Reason for Teaching Biology in Negro Schools.
"Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1897).

Object of Negro Memorial Day (1899).

New Year Thoughts About the Negro. "Southwestern Christian
Advocate" (1899).

*Notes on the Mushroom Bodies of the Invertebrates.
"Zoological Bulletin" (1899), 6 pp., 6 figs.

*A Male Erpetocypris Barbatus, Forbes. "Zool. Bulletin"
(1899).

*Synopsis of North American Invertebrates. V. Fresh-Water
Ostracoda. "Amer. Naturalist" (1899), 11 pp.

Living Dust. "Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1901),
xiii chapter.

*The Mushroom Bodies of the Crayfish and their
Histological Environment. "Jour of Comp. Neur." (1901), 50
pp., 4 pls.

The War of the rebellion is over, Negro slavery in America is no more, and the days of reconstruction have passed into history.

Dr. DuBois in speaking of that period wrote: "Amid it all two figures ever stand to typify that day to coming men: the one a gray-haired gentleman, whose fathers had quit themselves like men, whose sons lay in nameless graves; who bowed to the evil of slavery because its abolition boded untold ill to all; who stood at last, in the evening of life, a blighted, ruined form, with hate in his eyes. And the other a form black with the mist of centuries, and aforetime bent in love over the white master's cradle, rocked his sons and daughters to sleep, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife to the world; aye, too, had laid herself low to his lusts, and borne a tawny man child to the world, only to see her dark boy's limbs scattered to the winds by midnight marauders riding after niggers. These were the saddest sights of that woeful day; and no man clasped the hands of these two passing figures of the present-past, but hating they went to their long home, and hating their children's children live to-day."

Would some power had clasped the hands of these "two fleeting figures of the present-past!" Then those "marauders chasing niggers" would have been subdued and there would not be so many bloody threads in the weft of the history the New South has been weaving.

The "gray-haired gentleman" has left a grandson who has all the culture and education money and thrift can buy. He is thrifty and enterprising, law-abiding and conscientious. He has inherited prejudices, yet he is sincere. He loves the South no less than did his grandfather; but he loves the Union more. He would die to save the Union; he lives to glorify the South. He is known as the new Southerner and he is evolving a New South.

The "marauder chasing niggers" has left a grandson who is illiterate, uncultured and thriftless. He despises manual labor, but is too poor and too ignorant to live without doing it. Unfit to be the associate of the new Southerner, and feeling himself too superior to mingle with Negroes, he broods over his hardships and bemoans his fate. He is a Negro hater and thirsts for the excitement of a lynching bee. This condoned clog to the progress of Southern civilization is known as white trash.

The "form black with the mist of centuries" has left two grandsons.

One is a thrifty, law-abiding gentleman; too thrifty to be a beggar and too busy acquiring an education or accumulating wealth or educating his race to be a loafer or criminal. In his home are all the comforts of modern life that his purse can afford. He loves his country and his Southland, and is educating his children to do likewise. He even contributes his mite to the literature, science and art of to-day. He is modest and retiring and is known as the new Negro.

The other grandchild is a thriftless loafer. He is not willing to pay the price of an education; but he likes to appear intellectually bright and entertaining. He often works, but merely to obtain the means for gratifying his abnormally developed appetites. He laughs, he dances, he frolics. He knows naught of the value of time nor of the deeper meanings of life. In the main he is peaceable and law-abiding; but, under the excitement of the moment, is capable of even the worst of crimes. This thriftless slave of passion, this child-man, this much condemned clog to the progress of Southern civilization is called the vagrant Negro.

Prejudice is older than this age. A comparative study of animal psychology teaches that all animals are prejudiced against animals unlike themselves, and the more unlike they are the greater the prejudice. A comparative study of history teaches that races are prejudiced against races unlike themselves, and the greater the difference the more the prejudice. Among men, however, dissimilarity of minds is a more potent factor in causing prejudice than unlikeness of physiognomy. Races whose religious beliefs are unlike the accepted beliefs of our race we call heathens; those whose habits of living fall below the ideals of our own race we call uncivilized. In both cases we are prejudiced. When a highly civilized race is brought in contact with another people unlike it in physiognomy but in the same stage of intellectual advancement, at first each is prejudiced against the other; but when they become thoroughly acquainted prejudice gives way to mutual respect. For an example of this recall the relations of the nations of Europe to the Japanese.

The new Southerner is prejudiced against the new Negro because he feels that the Negro is very unlike him. He does not know that a similar education and a like environment have made the new Negro and himself alike in everything except color and features. Did he but know this he and the new Negro would join hands and work for the best interest of the South and there would be no Negro problem. At present he does not and cannot know this, for the white trash and vagrant Negro form a wedge separating the new Southerner from the new Negro so completely that they cannot know each other. Every unmentionable crime committed by the vagrant Negro, every lynching bee conducted by white trash, every Negro disfranchisement law passed by misguided legislators, every unjust discrimination against the Negro by the people drives this wedge deeper and deeper.

Render this wedge so thin that it will no longer be a barrier and the Negro problem is solved. This cannot be done by banishing white trash and the vagrant Negro; for that is neither possible nor practicable. The only way to accomplish the thinning of this wedge is to transform a large number into the new Southerners and the new Negroes. Will education do this?

In order to transform the majority of white trash and vagrant Negroes into new Southerners and new Negroes it will be necessary to instill into them the following regenerating virtues:

1. The manners of a gentleman. Not the swagger of the dude nor the cringing of a scapegoat, but the manners of a being permeated with the Golden Rule.

2. Cultured homes. Not necessarily extravagant mansions, but comfortable dwellings, wherein impoliteness, intemperance, slander and indecent tales have given place to politeness, temperance, intelligent conversation and refined pleasantries.

3. Business honesty. Not only punctual in the payment of debts, but also truthful in making sales.

4. Thrift. Not the ability to hoard as a miser does, but the ability to spend one's earnings economically, to purchase property and to lay by a little for a rainy day.

5. Christian morality. Not the ability to shout well, and pray well and testify well, but the ability to live the Christ life.

6. The ability to do something well that the world desires bad enough to be willing to pay a good price for it. This includes not only mechanical but also commercial and scholastic achievements.

7. Ability to lead in the light of modern civilization.

8. Love for justice and contempt for lawlessness.

Experience and thought convince me that the "highest education" is the only agency that will instill all of these virtues into a people without detriment to the multitudes that are forced to stop school before graduation. Highest education is a new phrase; but can we not truthfully say that there are three system of education in the world to-day: the lower or industrial education, the higher education and the highest education?

In each of these three systems the student begins his education by an attempt to master the English branches, and in each attention is given to developing the moral side of the pupil.

In the lower or industrial education, parallel with the elementally English training, or after its completion, the student learns how to work at one or more trades, but he gets no training in the higher English branches nor in languages nor science. This system may instill into students the majority of the regenerating virtues mentioned above, but it is impossible for this system to impart the ability to lead in the light of modern civilization. Without this virtue one is not fit to lead in this strenuous age. A race without competent leaders is doomed, and any system of education which does not furnish such leaders is defective and doomed. It has been well said that the advocates of the lower or industrial education are welding a chain that will bind the race in industrial servitude for ages.

In the higher education, after completing an elementary English training, the individual takes a collegiate course in science, literature, history and language; but no attention is given to industrial training. Such a course does instill into those who complete it all of the regenerating virtues mentioned above; but how about the multitudes that necessity forces to drop out before the course is completed? It is a sad, sad fact that the taste they have had of something different renders them not content to be servants, yet their training is not sufficient to enable them to be anything else.

In the highest education a thorough training is given in the common English branches, but parallel with it instruction is imparted in the care and practical use of tools. The elementary course is followed by a secondary course, in which, along with instruction in the elements of languages, literature and sciences, is given a thorough training in some trade. Above this come the colleges and technological schools, wherein the pupil specializes according to his natural tastes. In its ability to instill into those who complete it the regenerating virtues mentioned above this highest education ranks with the higher education. In this respect neither is superior to the other. But when it comes to fitting those who stop before the complete course has been mastered to successfully fight the battle of life, then highest education is infinitely superior to the higher education. Indeed it is the only education that helps abundantly not only the graduates, but also those unfortunate legions that drop out while yet undergraduates.

In attempting to solve the Negro problem, the industrial or lower education has been tried on the Negro and found wanting; the higher education has been tried upon both races and has succeeded but little better than the lower education; if we will cast aside our prejudices and try the highest education upon both white and black, in a few decades there will be no Negro problem.

Clark University, December 1, 1901.

TOPIC X.

WHAT ROLE IS THE EDUCATED NEGRO WOMAN TO PLAY IN THE UPLIFTING OF HER RACE?

BY MRS. R. D. SPRAGUE.

ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE.

The subject of this sketch was born in New Bedford, Mass.,
June 24, 1839. She is the oldest child and the only living
daughter of the late Frederick Douglass. At the age of five
years she moved with her parents to Lynn, Mass., where the
first narrative of Frederick Douglass, written by himself,
was published. Its publication attracted widespread notice
and stirred the ire of slaveholders in the vicinity from
which he escaped. His many friends fearing for his safety
arranged to send him abroad.

His wife has often told of the demonstrative and
enthusiastic young father catching up his infant daughter
and fervently thanking God that his child was born free and
no man could separate them. Among the many friends who were
solicitous for the family were two maiden ladies, Abigail
and Lydia Mott of Albany, New York, who were cousins of
Lucretia Mott, the well-known philanthropist and friend of
the Negro. These women, who conducted a lucrative business
on Broadway, opposite Bleeker Hall, were also staunch
Abolitionists. Being anxious for the welfare of the little
six-year-old daughter of Douglass, they sought the privilege
of caring for her while the father was abroad. The wife and
three sons remained at their home in Lynn during the
father's absence. Mrs. Sprague has frequently spoken of her
stay with the Motts, who were in good circumstances, and
with their one servant lived in comfort. Their little charge
was amply provided for, and was made contented and happy.
She had a time for play and a time for study. Miss Abigail
gave her instruction in reading and writing and Miss Lydia
taught her to sew.

At the age of seven Rosetta wrote her first letter to her
father, and when her eighth birthday had passed she made a
shirt to give him on his return from England. At this early
age the child was painfully conscious of the trials and
misery resulting from slavery. Many slaves had sought and
obtained shelter with the Motts, and the anxious moments of
their stay made a deep impression on her childish mind.

After the establishment of the "North Star," by her father
in Rochester, N. Y., in 1847, the family were reunited in
that place, a governess secured and for several months the
children pursued their studies at home. Later the father was
convinced that as he was a taxpayer he ought to avail
himself of the privilege of the public schools: and,
accordingly, sent his sons there. But the little daughter
was sent to a private school but recently opened for girls.
Tuition was paid in advance, the little girl was sent, but
never saw the inside of the school-room nor met any of the
pupils. Finally she with her brothers attended the public
schools until the year 1850, when the Board of Education
decided that Colored children should no longer be permitted
to remain in the public schools. At the next meeting of the
Board Mr. Douglass and some Anti-Slavery friends were
present to debate the question why such distinction should
be made. As the result of that conference the doors were
opened to Colored children in that city.

Rosetta being the only girl of color in her room was
subjected for a time to such indignities as only the vulgar
are capable of inflicting. Her complaints pained her fond
father, but his counsel was, "Daughter, I am sending you to
school for your benefit; see to it that you are punctual in
attendance, that you do not offend in your demeanor and cope
with the best of them in your lessons--and await the
results." The daughter strove to obey, and soon found
herself appreciated by her teachers, who classed her as one
of their best pupils. Her companions also changed and sought
her aid in the preparation of their lessons. At the age of
eleven years Rosetta became her father's assistant in the
library. She copied for him, wrapped, addressed and mailed
eight hundred copies of the "North Star" each week.

Rosetta Douglass married December 24, 1863, Nathan Sprague,
who, like her father, had been a victim of the slave-holding
power.

The problems of life are manifold. Wherever we turn questions of moment are presented to us for solution and settlement. At no period in the history of the American Negro has his status as a man and an American citizen been so closely scrutinized and criticised as at the present time.

The galling chain and merciless lash were the instruments used to accomplish the humiliation and degradation of the African. Avarice was the factor in the composition of the character of a large number of the white men of America that wrought such ravishes in the well-being of the African.

To-day, after the short space of thirty-six years has passed over him, from the deep degradation of centuries the descendants of these Africans are wrestling with the situation as it exists to-day. Through the avarice of the white man in the past the black man's physical, moral and mental development was sacrificed. To-day egotism stalks abroad to crush, if possible, his hopes and his aims, while he is struggling from the effects of his thraldom.