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CHAPTER 21

PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION

Negro Common Schools in the South-Percentage of Negro Children EnrolledProgress in Diminishing Illiteracy-Increase in Length of the School TermHigher Qualifications and Salaries for Teachers-Comparative Cost of Negro and White Schools-Development of High Schools, State Normals, and Local Training Schools-Movement for Model Schoolhouses

FOLLOWING the proclamation of emancipation the center of inter

est in the education of the Negro was at once transferred from the North to the South. There was a general sentiment in the North in favor of giving to the liberated Negroes the rudiments of an education, and throughout the South provision was made for Negro schools through the agency of the Freedmen's Bureau. This Bureau, during the period of its activities, established a total of 4,239 schools which employed 9,307 teachers and had enrolled 247,333 students. These schools opened a new and large field of employment for educated Negroes. In 1867 the Bureau reported 1,056 Negro teachers and in 1870 it reported 1,324.

When the Freedmen's Bureau went out of existence in 1870, many of its schools which had been financed by Northern religious organizations continued to exist under the control of these organizations. In the meantime, schools for Negroes had been set up by some of the reconstructed states.

The Southern people were not at all friendly to the school systems established by the Reconstruction legislatures. In several of the states the carpet-baggers attempted to force the white and colored children to attend the same schools. Where separate schools for the races were not provided the white children were practically excluded from the benefits of public education. The teachers and supervisors of the schools were largely carpet-baggers. Many of the white people regarded the public schools and also the Freedmen's Bureau schools as only a disguised scheme of the carpet-baggers to enslave the white people, and place them under the domination of their former slaves. When, however, the carpet-bag régime was overthrown, the Southern people

heartily supported the public schools which in several of the States. had been long established before the Civil War, but provision was made for separate schools for the Negroes in each state.

The Southern people took up the burden of maintaining public schools at a time when they were sorely stricken as a consequence of the Civil War, and the plunder of Reconstruction. The amount of illiteracy among both the whites and blacks was appalling, and such schools as the states were able to support for either race were very inadequate as to length of the school term, efficiency of the teachers, and character of the schoolhouses.

As economic conditions in the South improved and more taxes could be levied, the public schools always came in for a larger share of the increased income. The public-school idea has steadily won its way, and to-day there is no people in the world more devoted to the democratic ideal of an educated citizenship than the people of the Southern states. Beside the maintenance of elementary schools, the South has had to establish a system of high schools and normal schools, and to reconstruct her state universities.

According to the census of 1920 there were, in the Southern states, including Oklahoma and the District of Columbia, 3,471,277 Negro children of school age, i. e., from five to twenty years old, and of these 50.7 percent were enrolled in school. In the individual states the percentage of Negro children enrolled varies from fifty-nine percent in Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina to forty-two percent in Louisiana. The percentage of Negro enrolment has been gradually catching up with that of the whites, the difference at present being, for instance, in South Carolina 59.1 percent for Negro children and 60.7 percent for white children.

In the matter of literacy also the Negroes have been catching up with the white people. From 1880 to 1920 the white people of the United States reduced their illiteracy from seventeen percent to six percent, while the Negroes reduced theirs from seventy percent to 22.9 percent. The percent of Negro illiteracy in the South varies from 12.1 in Missouri, 12.4 in Oklahoma, and 15,3 in West Virginia to 31.3 in Alabama and 38.5 in Louisiana.

In length of the school term the Negro schools in the South have been gradually gaining on the white schools. In the District of Columbia and in Virginia the school term is the same for both Negro and white schools, in Oklahoma the difference in favor of the whites is only twelve days, and in North Carolina, only thirteen days. The

greatest disparity is in Louisiana, where the white schools run sixtytwo days longer than the Negro schools.1

In

As for the expenditures per child of school age in the Southern states, the contrast is in favor of the whites in all of the states. the District of Columbia, Kentucky, and Missouri there is scarcely any difference in the per capita cost, the figures being $74 and $62.75 respectively for the white and Negro children in the District of Columbia; $10.29 and $9.46 respectively for the white and Negro children in Kentucky; and $22.24 and $19.46 respectively for the white and Negro children in Missouri. The contrast in per capita cost per child of each race is most striking in Georgia, where the figures are $16.31 for the white child and $2.83 for the Negro child; in Louisiana, where the figures are respectively $25.37 and $3.49, and in South Carolina, where the figures are respectively $19.33 and $2.06.

For the smaller expenditure for the education of the Negro child as compared to the white, there are several outstanding causes, some of which are justifiable, or at least unavoidable under existing conditions, while others are entirely indefensible.

For illustration, in all of those Southern states which embrace a part of the Appalachian Mountains, there are counties in which the Negro population is so small and scattered that it is impossible to locate a school where it would be accessible to any considerable number of Negro children. Therefore, the Negro schools in these counties are few and of the cheapest character. For similar reasons, but to a less extent, many white children cannot attend a public school. "Even to-day" (1919), says the state agent for rural schools in Louisiana, "in six parishes of Southern Louisiana, fewer than 50 percent of the white educables between the ages of six and eighteen are enrolled in our schools. In two of these parishes there are twice as many white children out of school as in school." Throughout the region of the Dismal Swamp, from Maryland to Florida, and in all of the Appalachian region, there are many children so remote from a school that they practically have no educational opportunities. For these scattered populations, both white and black, the Southern states should inaugurate a system of individual house-to-house instruction such as South Carolina has had in operation for several years among her scattered mountain people.

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In many Southern cities the Negro population is congested in one, 1U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 90, p. 126.

'L. M. Favrot's address before the N. A. A. C., p. 5.

or several, circumscribed districts, where a few schools can be located which are accessible to the Negro population. In the same cities the white population is scattered over a wide area, including many suburban residential districts, and it is necessary to have many schools in order to accommodate the scattered white population. In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, because of the contrasting distribution of the Negro and white population, the Negroes, with relatively fewer schools, can reach them more easily than the white people can their more numerous schools.

In Negro communities of the South land is cheap as compared to land in white communities, and the general character of the Negro residences is greatly inferior to the character of the residences of the whites. Therefore, the land for a Negro school costs much less than the land for a white school, and a Negro schoolhouse can be erected at much less cost than a school for the whites and, at the same time, be an ornament to the neighborhood and stand out in as great a contrast to the residences of the neighborhood as the more expensive white school would stand out in contrast to the residences of a white neighborhood.

In Northern and Western cities one may often observe a striking contrast in character between the Negro and the white schools. For instance, O. J. Milliken, superintendent of the Chicago and Cook County School for Boys, in referring to a Negro residential district, says:

"The schools are only boxes for them to go to school in. You don't find any of the $900,000 school buildings in the colored population district." 4

In New York City the value of a Negro school in Harlem in 1924 was $157,269.95 as compared to School No. 62 in a white district which was valued at $1,262,359.13.

In any of our large cities the difference between the cost of a schoolhouse in a fashionable district and one in the poorer districts corresponds somewhat to the difference in the cost of white and Negro schools in Norfolk, Atlanta, Charlotte, or Memphis. For example, in Greater New York the site for School No. 12, Manhattan, New York, cost $272,264.56 and the building $508,428.33; whereas the site for School No. 33, Borough of Richmond, cost only $2,500 and the build'Jones, "Negro Education," U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 38, p. 8.

Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 334.

ing only $22,475.60. The Washington Irving High School of New York City cost $1,824,434.41, whereas the one at Throgg's Neck cost only $29,398.26.5

In all cities North and South the cost of primary and high schools varies greatly according to location, the date of erection, and the whims of the school-boards.

The only object in presenting these illustrative figures is to make clear the fact that a mere difference in the outlay for Negro and white schools in the South is not conclusive evidence that the Negro is denied a square deal.

However, in conceding that some difference, and even a considerable difference, in the outlay for Negro and white schools is justifiable, we do not admit that an extreme difference can be defended on rational grounds. Where, as in several Southern States, the outlay for the white child is nearly ten times as great as that for the colored child, the only rational inference is that the Negro is not getting a square deal.

Owing partly to topography, a considerable number of Southern white people have had very little in the way of educational opportunities, and among them there is a notion that education spoils the Negro. In a lecture I heard Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina deliver in Madison, Wisconsin, he made it very plain that the only "nigger" he liked or had faith in was one of the kind on his plantation who could neither read nor write.

And, among this same class of white people, the idea widely prevails that, since the Negro pays very little of the taxes he is not entitled to any large share of public revenue for his education. These white people, mostly small farmers, have little realization of the fact that the wage class of people of any country pay indirectly for whatever benefits they receive from the state, through their labor in producing the taxable wealth.

Furthermore, among all classes of Southern people there has been a good deal of indifference to Negro education for the reason, first, that most of the white classes have been poor, and have concentrated their energies upon their own welfare; and for the reason, second, that the South has until recently lacked leaders of large enough vision to direct public attention to the development of the natural resources and social institutions of the individual states. For a long time after the "From the records of the New York City Board of Education.

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