Title: Brief for the higher education of the negro
Author: Miller, Kelly
Language: English
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THE NEGRO ***

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BRIEF FOR THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO


BY

PROF. KELLY MILLER

HOWARD UNIVERSITY

[Illustration: Decoration]

WASHINGTON, D. C.

1903



The Negro’s Traditional Place in Society.


Ridicule and contempt have characterized the habitual attitude of
the American mind toward the Negro’s higher strivings. The African
was brought to this country for the purpose of performing manual and
menial labor. His bodily powers alone were required to accomplish
this industrial mission. No more account was taken of his higher
susceptibilities than of the mental and moral faculties of the lower
animals. As the late Mr. Price used to say, the white man saw in the
Negro’s mind only what was apparent in his face, “darkness there,
and nothing more.” His usefulness in the world is still measured by
physical faculties rather than by qualities of mind and soul. The
merciless proposition of Carlyle that, the Negro is useful to God’s
creation only as a servant, still finds wide acceptance. It is so
natural to base a theory upon a long-established practice that one
no longer wonders at the prevalence of this belief. The Negro has
sustained servile relation to the Caucasian for so long a time that it
is easy as it is agreeable to Aryan pride to conclude that servitude is
his ordained place in society. When it was first proposed to furnish
means for the higher development of this race, some, who assumed the
wisdom of their day and generation, entertained the proposition with a
sneer, others, with a smile.


MANIFESTATIONS OF HIGHER QUALITIES.

As the higher susceptibilities of the Negro were not wanted, their
existence was at one time denied. The eternal inferiority of the
race was assumed as a part of the cosmic order of things. History,
literature, science, speculative conjecture, and even Holy Writ were
ransacked for evidence and argument to support the ruling dogma.
While the slave holder had proved beyond all possibility of doubt the
incapacity of the Negro for knowledge, yet he, prudently enough, passed
laws forbidding the attempt. His guilty conscience caused him to make
assurance doubly sure by re-enacting the laws of the Almighty.

For three hundred years the Negro by his marvelous assimilative power
and by striking individual emanations has been constantly manifesting
the higher possibilities of his nature, until now whoever assumes to
doubt his susceptibility for better things needs himself to be pitied
for his incapacity to grasp the truth. The same Carlyle who regards the
Negro as an “amiable blockhead,” and amenable only to the white man’s
“beneficent whip,” also declares: “That one man should die ignorant who
had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen
forty times in a minute.” When it is known that the Negro has capacity
for knowledge and virtue there can be no further justification for
shutting him out from the higher cravings of his nature.


IS THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO WORTH WHILE AS A PRACTICAL
PHILANTHROPY?

The education of the Negro is not of itself a thing apart, but is an
integral factor of the general pedagogic equation. Race psychology has
not yet been formulated. No reputable authority has pointed out just
wherein the two races differ in any evident mental feature. The mind
of the Negro is of the same nature as that of the white man and needs
the same nurture. The general poverty of the Negro, however, and his
inability to formulate and direct his own scheme of culture, render
the question not so much one of abstract pedagogics, as of practical
philanthropy. The philanthropist is supremely indifferent as to whether
an individual, white or black, should study Kant or Quaternious,
except, in so far as the resulting development reacts beneficially
upon the common welfare. Does the higher education of the few capable
Negroes possess sufficient advantage to the race at large to justify
its continuance by a wise and discriminating philanthropy? The great
missionary societies, representing the philanthropic arms of the
Congregational, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist denominations after
forty years of arduous, earnest endeavor and the expenditure of many
millions of dollars in this field, answer this question emphatically
in the affirmative. An ounce of opinion from such sources should be
worth a ton of speculation from those who reach their conclusions by a
process of “pure reasoning.”


THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION TO A BACKWARD RACE.

The African was snatched from the wilds of savagery and thrust into the
midst of a mighty civilization. He thus escaped the gradual progress
of evolution. Education must accomplish more for a backward race than
for a people who are in the fore-front of progress. It must not only
lead to the unfoldment of faculties but must equip for a life from
which the recipient is separated by many centuries of development.
The African chieftain who would make a pilgrimage from the jungle to
Boston might accomplish the first part of his journey by the original
modes of transportation--in the primitive dugout or on the backs of his
slaves; but he would complete it upon the steamship, the railway, the
electric car and the automobile. How swift the transformation and yet
how suggestive of centuries of toil, struggle and mental endeavor. It
required the human race thousands of years to bridge the chasm between
savagery and civilization, which must now be crossed by a school
curriculum of a few years’ duration. In a settled state of society,
the chief function of education is to enable the individual to live
the life already attained by his race, but the educated Negro must be
a pioneer, a progressive force in the uplifting of his race, and that,
too, notwithstanding the fact that he belongs to a backward breed that
has never taken the initiative in the progressive movements of the
world.


THE HIGHER TRAINING OF CHOICE YOUTH.

The first great need of the Negro is that the choice youth of the
race should assimilate the principles of culture and hand them down
to the masses below. This is the only gate-way through which a new
people may enter into modern civilization. Herein lies the history of
culture. The select minds of the backward race or nation must receive
the new cult and adapt it to the peculiar needs of their own people.
Japan looms up as the most progressive of the non-Aryan races. The
wonderful progress of these Oriental Yankees is due in a large measure
to their wise plan of procedure. They send their picked youth to the
great centers of western knowledge; but before this culture is applied
to their own needs it must first be sifted through the sieve of their
native comprehension. The graduates of the schools and colleges for the
Negro race are forming centers of civilizing influence in all parts of
the land, and we confidently, believe that these grains of leaven will
ultimately leaven the whole lump.


SELF-RELIANT MANHOOD.

Another great need of the race, which the schools must in a large
measure supply, is self-reliant manhood. Slavery made the Negro as
dependent upon the intelligence and foresight of his master as a
soldier upon the will of his commander. He had no need to take thought
as to what he should eat or drink or wherewithal he should be clothed.

Knowledge necessarily awakens self-consciousness of power.

When a child learns the multiplication table he gets a clear notion
of intellectual dignity. Here he gains an acquisition which is his
permanent, personal possession, and which can never be taken from
him. It does not depend upon external authority; he could reproduce
it if all the visible forms of the universe were effaced. It is said
that the possession of personal property is the greatest stimulus to
self-respect. When one can read his title clear to earthly possessions,
it awakens a consciousness of the dignity of his own manhood. And so
when one has digested and assimilated the principles of knowledge he
can file his declaration of intellectual independence. He can adopt the
language of Montaigne “Truth and reason are common to everyone, and are
no more his who spake them first than his who speaks them after; ’tis
no more according to Plato than according to me, since he and I equally
see and understand them.”

Primary principles have no ethnic quality. We hear much in this day and
time of the white man’s civilization. We had just as well speak of the
white man’s multiplication table. Civilization is the common possession
of all who assimilate and apply its principles. England can utilize
no secret art or invention that is not equally available to Japan. We
reward ingenuity with a patent right for a period of years upon the
process that has been invented; but when an idea has been published to
the world it is no more the exclusive property of the author than gold,
after it has been put in circulation, can be claimed by the miner who
first dug it from its hiding place in the earth. No race or nation can
preempt civilization any more than they can monopolize the atmosphere
which surrounds the earth, or the waters which hold it in their liquid
embrace.

I have often noticed a young man accommodate his companion with a
light from his cigar. After the spark has once been communicated, the
beneficiary stands upon an equal footing with the benefactor. In both
cases the fire must be continued by drawing fresh supplies of oxygen
from the atmosphere. From whatever source a nation may derive the
light of civilization, it must be perpetuated by the exercise of their
own faculties. Self-reliant manhood is the ultimate basis of American
citizenship.


TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP.

The work of the educated colored man is largely that of leadership.
He requires, therefore, all the discipline, judgment and mental
equipment that long preparation can afford. The more ignorant and
backward the masses the more skilled and sagacious should the leaders
be. If a beneficial and kindly contact between the races is denied
on the lower plane of flesh and blood, it must be sought in the
upper region of mental and moral kinship. Knowledge and virtue know
no ethnic exclusiveness. If indeed races are irreconcilable, their
best individual exponents are not. All dignified negotiation must be
conducted on the high plane of individual equality.


     “For east is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall
       meet,
     ’Till earth and sky stand presently at God’s great judgment seat;
     But there is neither east nor west, border nor breed nor birth,
     When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the
       ends of the earth”


The irreconcilable become reconciled only after each has manifested
the best possibilities of a common nature. The higher education tends
to develop superior individuals who may be expected to exercise
controlling influence over the multitude. The individual is the proof,
the promise and the salvation of the race. The undeveloped races
which, in modern times, have faded before the breath of civilization
have probably perished because of their failure to produce commanding
leaders to guide them wisely under the stress and strain which an
encroaching civilization imposed. A single red Indian with the capacity
and spirit of Booker T. Washington might have solved the red man’s
problems and averted his pending doom.


THE MORAL IMPOTENCY OF ELEMENTARY AND MECHANICAL KNOWLEDGE.

Again, the higher education should be encouraged because of the moral
impotency of all the modes of education which do not touch and stir
the human spirit. It is folly to suppose that the moral nature of the
child is improved because it has been taught to read and write and cast
up accounts, or to practice a handicraft. Tracing the letters of the
alphabet with a pen has no bearing on the Golden Rule. The spelling of
words by sounds and syllables does not lead to the observance of the
Ten Commandments. Drill in the multiplication table does not fascinate
the learner with the sermon on the mount. Rules in grammar, dates in
history, sums in arithmetic, and points in geography do not strengthen
the grasp on moral truth. The ability to saw to a line or hit a nail
aplomb with a hammer does not create a zeal for righteousness and
truth. It is only when the pupil comes to feel the vitalizing power of
knowledge that it begins to re-act upon the life and to fructify in
character. This is especially true of a backward race whose acquisitive
power outruns its apperceptive faculty.


THE SOCIAL SEPARATION OF THE RACES.

The Negro has now reached a critical stage in his career. The point
of attachment between the races which slavery made possible has been
destroyed. The relation is daily becoming less intimate and friendly,
and more business-like and formal. It thus becomes all the more
imperative that the race should gain for itself the primary principles
of knowledge and culture.

The social separation of the races in America renders it imperative
that the professional classes among the Negroes should be recruited
from their own ranks. Under ordinary circumstances, professional
places are filled by the most favored class in the community. In a
Latin or Catholic country, where the fiction of “social equality”
does not exist, there is felt no necessity for Negro priest, teacher,
or physician to administer to his own race. But in America this is
conceded to be a social necessity. Such being the case, the Negro
leader, to use a familiar term, requires all the professional
equipment of his white confrere, and special knowledge of the needs
and circumstances of his race in addition. The teacher of the Negro
child, the preacher of a Negro congregation, or the physician to Negro
patients, certainly requires as much professional skill as those who
administer to the corresponding needs of the white race. Nor are
the requirements of the situation one whit diminished because the
bestower is of the same race as the recipient. The Negro has the same
professional needs as his white confrere and can be qualified for his
function only by courses of training of like extent and thoroughness.
By no other means can he be qualified to enlighten the ignorant,
restrain the vicious, care for the sick and afflicted, or administer
solace to weary souls, plead in litigation the cause of the injured.


THE PROFESSIONAL NEEDS OF THE CITY NEGRO.

According to the census of 1900, there were 72 cities in the United
States with a population of more than 5,000 persons of color, averaging
15,000 each, and aggregating 1,000,000 in all. The professional
needs of this urban population for teachers, preachers, lawyers and
physicians call for 5,000 well-equipped men and women, not one of whom
would be qualified for his function by the three R’s or a handicraft.


THE EFFECT OF HIGHER EDUCATION UPON THE RURAL MASSES.

The supreme concern of philanthropy is the welfare of the unawakened
rural masses. To this end there is need of a goodly sprinkling of well
educated men and women to give wise guidance, direction and control.
Let no one deceive himself that the country Negro can be uplifted
except through the influence of higher contact. It is impossible to
inaugurate and conduct a manual training or industrial school without
men of sound academic as well as technical knowledge. The torch which
is to lighten the darksome places of the South must be kindled at the
centers of light.


THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTIVATED TASTE.

Rational enjoyment, through moderation, is perhaps as good a
definition as can be given of culture. The reaction of culture on
conduct is a well known principle of practical ethics. The Negro race
is characterized by boisterousness of manner and extravagant forms
of taste. As if to correct such deficiencies, his higher education,
hitherto, has largely been concerned with Greek and Latin literature,
the norms of modern culture. It is just here that our educational
critics are liable to become excited. The spectacle of a Negro wearing
eye-glasses and declaiming in classic phrases about the “lofty walls of
Rome,” and the “wrath of Achilles” upsets their critical calmness and
composure. We have so often listened to the grotesque incongruity of a
Greek chorus and a greasy cabin and the relative value of a rosewood
piano and a patch of early rose potatoes that if we did not join in the
smile in order to encourage the humor, we should do so out of sheer
weariness. And yet we cannot escape the conviction that one of the
Negro’s chief needs is a higher form of intellectual and esthetic taste.


THE RELATIVE CLAIMS OF INDUSTRIAL AND HIGHER EDUCATION.

Whenever the higher education of the Negro is broached, industrial
training is always suggested as a counter irritant. Partisans of
rival claims align themselves in hostile array and will not so much
as respect a flag of truce. These one-eyed enthusiasts lack binocular
vision. The futile discussion as to whether industrial or higher
education is of greater importance to the Negro is suggestive of a
subject of great renown in rural debating societies: which is of
greater importance to man, air or water. We had as well attempt to
decide whether the base or altitude is the more important element of a
triangle. The two forms of training should be considered on the basis
of their relative, not rival, claims.


THE HIGHER EDUCATION STIMULATES INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY.

Indeed, one of the strongest claims for the higher education of the
Negro is that it will stimulate the dormant industrial activities of
the race. The surest way to incite a people to meet the material
demands of life is to teach them that life is more than meat. The
unimaginative laborer pursues the routine rounds of his task, spurred
on, only by the immediate necessities of life and the taskmaster’s
stern command. To him, it is only time and the hour that run through
the whole day. The Negro lacks enlightened imagination. He needs
prospect and vista. He does not make provision because he lacks
prevision. Under slavery he toiled as the ass, dependent upon the daily
allowance from his master’s crib. To him the prayer, Give us this day
our daily bread, has a material rather than a spiritual meaning. If you
would perpetuate the industrial incapacity of the Negro, then confine
him to the low grounds of drudgery and toil and prevent him from
casting his eyes unto the hills whence come inspiration and promise.
The man with the hoe is of all men most miserable unless, forsooth,
he has a hope. But if imbued with hope and sustained by an ideal, he
can consecrate the hoe as well as any other instrument of service, as
a means of fulfilling the promise within him. When a seed is sown in
the ground it first sends its roots into the soil before the blades
can rise out of it. But is it not actuated by the plant consciousness
to seek the light of heaven? For what is the purpose of sending its
roots below, if it be not in order to bear fruit above? The pilgrim
fathers in following the inspiration of a lofty ideal developed the
resources of a continent. Any people who attempt to reach the sky on a
pedestal of bricks and mortar will end in confusion and bewilderment as
did the builders of the Tower of Babel on the plains of Shinar in the
days of Eld. It requires range of vision to stimulate the industrial
activities of the people. The most effective prayer that can be uttered
for the Negro is “Lord, open thou his eyes.” He can not see beyond
the momentary gratification of appetite and passion. He does not look
before and after. Such stimulating influence can be brought to bear
upon the race only through the inspiration of the higher culture.


MEN OF HIGHER TRAINING THE LEADERS OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

It requires men of sound knowledge to conceive and execute plans
for the industrial education of the masses. The great apostles of
industrial education for the Negro have been of academic training, or
of its cultural equivalent. The work of Hampton and Tuskegee is carried
on by men and women of a high degree of mental cultivation.


DR. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON AN EXAMPLE OF HIGHER CULTURE.

Doctor Booker T. Washington, note the title, is the most influential
Negro that the race under freedom has produced. He is the great apostle
of industrial training. His great success is but the legitimate outcome
of his earnestness and enthusiasm. And yet there is no more striking
illustration of the necessity of wise, judicious and cultivated
leadership as a means of stimulating the dormant activity of the
masses than he who hails from Tuskegee. His success is due wholly to
his intellectual and moral faculties. His personal opportunities of
association and contact have been equivalent to a liberal education.
Two of America’s greatest institutions of learning have fittingly
recognized his moral and intellectual worth by decorating him with
their highest literary honors. Mr. Washington possesses an enlightened
mind to discover the needs of the masses, executive tact to put his
plans in effective operation, and persuasive ability to convince
others as to the expediency of his policies. He possesses no trade
or handicraft, if so he has never let the American people into the
secret. Nor can it be easily seen what possible benefit such trade or
handicraft would be to him in the work which has fallen to his lot.
Tuskegee has been built on intellect and oratory. If Mr. Washington had
been born with palsied hands, but endowed with the same intellectual
gifts and powers of persuasive speech, Tuskegee would not have suffered
one iota by reason of his manual affliction. But, on the other hand,
had he come into the world with a sluggish brain and a heavy tongue,
whatever cunning and skill his hands might have acquired, he never
could have developed the institution which has made him justly famous
throughout the civilized world.


THE DEFICIENCY OF THE SLAVE MECHANIC.

Slavery taught the Negro, to work but at the same time to despise those
who worked. To them all show of respectability was attached to those
whom circumstances placed above the necessity of toil. It requires
intellectual conception of the object and the end of labor to overcome
this mischievous notion. The Negro mechanics produced under the old
slave regime are rapidly passing away because they did not possess
the power of self-perpetuation. They were not rooted and grounded in
rational principles of the mechanical arts. The hand could not transmit
its cunning because the mind was not trained. They were given the Knack
without the knowledge.


MONEY SPENT FOR THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO NOT WASTED.

The charge has recently been made that money spent on the higher
education of the Negro has been wasted. Does this charge come from
the South? When we consider that it was through Northern philanthropy
that a third of its population received their first impulse toward
better things; that these higher institutions prepared the 30,000 Negro
teachers whose services are utilized in the public schools; that the
men and women who were the beneficiaries of this philanthropy are doing
all in their power to control, guide and restrain the South’s ignorant
and vicious masses, thus lightening the public burden and lifting the
general life to a higher level: that these persons are almost without
exception earnest advocates of peace, harmony and good-will between
the races; to say nothing of the fact that these vast philanthropic
contributions have passed through the trade channels of Southern
merchants, it would seem that the charge is strangely incompatible
with that high-minded disposition and chivalrous spirit which the
South is so zealous to maintain. Does this charge come from the North?
It might not be impertinent to propound a few propositions for their
consideration. Is it possible to specify a like sum of money spent upon
any other backward race that has produced greater results than the
amount spent upon the Southern Negro? Is it the American Indian, upon
whom four centuries of missionary effort has produced no more progress
than is made by a painted ship on a painted sea? Is it the Hawaiian,
who will soon be civilized off the face of the earth? Is it the Chinese
upon whom the chief effect of Christian philanthropy is to incite them
to breathe out slaughter against the stranger within their gates? It is
incumbent upon him who claims that this money has been wasted to point
out where, in all the range of benevolent activity the contributions of
philanthropy have been more profitably spent.

It is true that forty or fifty millions of dollars have been thus
spent, but when we consider the magnitude of the task to which it was
applied, we find that it would not average one dollar a year for each
Negro child to be educated. Why should we marvel, then, that the entire
mass of ignorance and corruption has not put on enlightenment and
purity?


NOT MERE THEORIZERS.

We often hear that the advocates of higher education are mere theorists
without definite, tangible plans and propositions. There has recently
sprung into prominence a class of educational philosophers who deny
the value of stored up knowledge. We are informed that only such
information as will be honored at the corner grocery or is convertible
on demand into cash equivalent is of practical value, while all else is
an educational delusion and a snare. The truth is, that all knowledge
which clarifies the vision, refines the feelings, broadens the
conception of truth and duty and ennobles the manhood is of the highest
and most valuable form of practicability. An institution which sends
into the world a physician to heal the sick, a lawyer to plead the
cause of the injured, a teacher to enlighten the minds of the ignorant,
or a preacher to break the bread of life to hungry souls is rendering
just as practical a service to the race as those schools which prepare
men to build houses and plant potatoes.


NEED FOR THE NEGRO COLLEGE.

It is sometimes claimed that the few capable Negroes can find
opportunity for higher training in the institutions of the North. It
is by no means certain to what extent these institutions would admit
colored students. The Northern College is not apt to inspire the
colored pupil with the enthusiasm and fixed purpose for the work which
Providence has assigned him. It is the spirit, not the letter that
maketh alive. The white College does not contemplate the special needs
of the Negro race. American ideals could not be fostered in the white
youth of our land by sending them to Oxford or Berlin for tuition. No
more can the Negro gain racial inspiration from Harvard or Yale. And
yet they need the benefit of contact and comparison, and the zeal for
knowledge and truth which these great institutions impart. The Negro
College and the Northern institutions will serve to preserve a balance
between undue elation for want of sober comparison, and barren culture,
for lack of inspirational contact with the masses.


DOES THE HIGHER EDUCATION LEAD AWAY FROM THE RACE?

It is often charged that the higher education lifts the Negro above
the needs of his race. The thousands of graduates of Negro Schools and
Colleges all over the land are a living refutation of this charge.
After the mind has been stored with knowledge it is transmitted to
the place where the need is greatest and the call is loudest, and
transmuted into whatever mode of energy may be necessary to accomplish
the imposed task.

The issues involved in the race question are as intricate in their
relations and far reaching in their consequences as any that have
ever taxed human wisdom for solution. No one can be too learned or
too profound in whose hands are entrusted the temporal and eternal
destiny of a human soul. Even if the educated Negro desired to flee
from his race, he soon learns by bitter experience that he will be
thrown back upon himself by the expulsive power of prejudice. He soon
learns that the Newtonian formula has a social application: “The force
of attraction varies directly as the mass.”


A CONCRETE ILLUSTRATION.

But Wisdom is justified of her children. As an illustration of the
value of the higher education of the Negro race, I point to Howard
University, which is the largest and best equipped institution of its
class. The establishment and maintenance of this institution during the
past 35 years has cost between two and three millions of dollars. As
returns on this investment it has sent into the world 200 ministers of
the Gospel, 700 physicians, pharmacists and dentists, 300 lawyers, and
600 persons with a general academic and collegiate training, together
with thousands of some time pupils who have shared the partial benefits
of its courses. These graduates and some time pupils are to be found
in every country and district where the Negro population resides and
are filling places of usefulness, honor and distinction, as well as
performing works of mercy and sacrificial service. They serve as
inspiration and stimulus, quickening the dormant energies of the people
and urging them to loftier ideals and nobler modes of life. It devolves
upon the complainant to present some plan by which a like sum of money,
in a like space of time, can be spent upon an institution of whatever
designation so as to produce a more wholesome and more wide-spread
effect upon the general social uplift.



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