Martin Luther King Jr. Day Anthology - - (comprehension books .TXT) 📗

of the war. On nearly every question growing out of the war, which was debated in Congress, or in political campaigns, there was the keenest difference and often the deepest feeling. There was almost no question of even a semi-political nature, or having a remote connection with the Negro, upon which there was not sharp and often bitter division between the North and South. It is needless to say that in many cases the Negro was the sufferer. He was being ground between the upper and nether millstones. Even to this day it is well-nigh impossible, largely by reason of the force of habit, in certain states to prevent state and even local campaigns from being centred in some form upon the black man. In states like Mississippi, for example, where the Negro ceased nearly a score of years ago, by operation of law, to be a determining factor in politics, he forms in some way the principal fuel for campaign discussion at nearly every election. The sad feature of this is, that it prevents the presentation before the masses of the people of matters pertaining to local and state improvement, and to great national issues like finance, tariff, or foreign policies. It prevents the masses from receiving the broad and helpful education which every political campaign should furnish, and, what is equally unfortunate, it prevents the youth from seeing and hearing on the platform the great political leaders of the two national parties. During a national campaign few of the great Democratic leaders debate national questions in the South, because it is felt that the old antagonism to the Negro politically will keep the South voting one way. Few of the great Republican leaders appear on Southern platforms, because they feel that nothing will be gained.

 

One of the saddest instances of this situation that has come within my knowledge occurred some years ago in a certain Southern state where a white friend of mine was making the race for Congress on the Democratic ticket in a district that was overwhelmingly Democratic. I speak of this man as my friend, because there was no personal favor in reason which he would have refused me. He was equally friendly to the race, and was generous in giving for its education, and in helping individuals to buy land. His campaign took him into one of the “white” counties, where there were few colored people, and where the whites were unusually ignorant. I was surprised one morning to read in the daily papers of a bitter attack he had made on the Negro while speaking in this county. The next time I saw him I informed him of my surprise. He replied that he was ashamed of what he had said, and that he did not himself believe much that he had stated, but gave as a reason for his action that he had found himself before an audience which had heard little for thirty years in the way of political discussion that did not bear upon the Negro, and that he therefore knew it was almost impossible to interest them in any other subject.

 

But this is somewhat aside from my purpose, which is, I repeat, to make plain that in all political matters there was for years after the war no meeting ground of agreement for the two races, or for the North and South. Upon the question of the Negro’s civil rights, as embodied in what was called the Civil Rights Bill, there was almost the same sharp line of division between the races, and, in theory at least, between the Northern and Southern whites,—largely because the former were supposed to be giving the blacks social recognition, and encouraging intermingling between the races. The white teachers, who came from the North to work in missionary schools, received for years little recognition or encouragement from the rank and file of their own race. The lines were so sharply drawn that in cities where native Southern white women taught Negro children in the public schools, they would have no dealings with Northern white women who, perhaps, taught Negro children from the same family in a missionary school.

 

I want to call attention here to a phase of Reconstruction policy which is often overlooked. All now agree that there was much in Reconstruction which was unwise and unfortunate. However we may regard that policy, and much as we may regret mistakes, the fact is too often overlooked that it was during the Reconstruction period that a public school system for the education of all the people of the South was first established in most of the states.

Much that was done by those in charge of Reconstruction legislation has been overturned, but the public school system still remains. True, it has been modified and improved, but the system remains, and is every day growing in popularity and strength.

 

As to the difference of opinion between the North and the South regarding Negro education, I find that many people, especially in the North, have a wrong conception of the attitude of the Southern white people. It is and has been very generally thought that what is termed “higher education” of the Negro has been from the first opposed by the white South. This opinion is far from being correct. I remember that, in 1891, when I began the work of establishing the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, practically all of the white people who talked to me on the subject took it for granted that instruction in the Greek, Latin, and modern languages would be one of the main features of our curriculum. I heard no one oppose what he thought our course of study was to embrace. In fact, there are many white people in the South at the present time who do not know that instruction in the dead languages is not given at the Tuskegee Institute. In further proof of what I have stated, if one will go through the catalogue of the schools maintained by the states for Negro people, and managed by Southern white people, he will find in almost every case that instruction in the higher branches is given with the consent and approval of white officials. This was true as far back as 1880. It is not unusual to meet at this time Southern white people who are as emphatic in their belief in the value of classical education as a certain element of colored people themselves. In matters relating to civil and political rights, the breach was broad, and without apparent hope of being bridged; even in the matter of religion, practically all of the denominations had split on the subject of the Negro, though I should add that there is now, and always has been, a closer touch and more cooperation in matters of religion between the white and colored people in the South than is generally known. But the breach between the white churches in the South and North remains.

 

In matters of education the difference was much less sharp. The truth is that a large element in the South had little faith in the efficacy of the higher or any other kind of education of the Negro. They were indifferent, but did not openly oppose; on the other hand, there has always been a potent element of white people in all of the Southern states who have stood out openly and bravely for the education of all the people, regardless of race.

This element has thus far been successful in shaping and leading public opinion, and I think that it will continue to do so more and more. This statement must not be taken to mean that there is as yet an equitable division of the school funds, raised by common taxation, between the two races in many sections of the South, though the Southern states deserve much credit for what has been done. In discussing the small amount of direct taxes the Negro pays, the fact that he pays tremendous indirect taxes is often overlooked.

 

I wish, however, to emphasize the fact that while there was either open antagonism or indifference in the directions I have named, it was the introduction of industrial training into the Negro’s education that seemed to furnish the first basis for anything like united and sympathetic interest and action between the two races in the South and between the whites in the North and those in the South. Aside from its direct benefit to the black race, industrial education has furnished a basis for mutual faith and cooperation, which has meant more to the South, and to the work of education, than has been realized.

 

This was, at the least, something in the way of construction.

Many people, I think, fail to appreciate the difference between the problems now before us and those that existed previous to the civil war. Slavery presented a problem of destruction; freedom presents a problem of construction.

 

From its first inception the white people of the South had faith in the theory of industrial education, because they had noted, what was not unnatural, that a large element of the colored people at first interpreted freedom to mean freedom from work with the hands. They naturally had not learned to appreciate the fact that they had been WORKED, and that one of the great lessons for freemen to learn is to WORK. They had not learned the vast difference between WORKING and BEING WORKED. The white people saw in the movement to teach the Negro youth the dignity, beauty, and civilizing power of all honorable labor with the hands something that would lead the Negro into his new life of freedom gradually and sensibly, and prevent his going from one extreme of life to the other too suddenly. Furthermore, industrial education appealed directly to the individual and community interest of the white people. They saw at once that intelligence coupled with skill would add wealth to the community and to the state, in which both races would have an added share. Crude labor in the days of slavery, they believed, could be handled and made in a degree profitable, but ignorant and unskilled labor in a state of freedom could not be made so. Practically every white man in the South was interested in agricultural or in mechanical or in some form of manual labor; every white man was interested in all that related to the home life,—the cooking and serving of food, laundering, dairying, poultry-raising, and housekeeping in general. There was no family whose interest in intelligent and skillful nursing was not now and then quickened by the presence of a trained nurse. As already stated, there was general appreciation of the fact that the industrial education of the black people had direct, vital, and practical bearing upon the life of each white family in the South; while there was no such appreciation of the results of mere literary training. If a black man became a lawyer, a doctor, a minister, or an ordinary teacher, his professional duties would not ordinarily bring him in touch with the life of the white portion of the community, but rather confine him almost exclusively to his own race. While purely literary or professional education was not opposed by the white population, it was something in which they found little or no interest, beyond a confused hope that it would result in producing a higher and a better type of Negro manhood. The minute it was seen that through industrial education the Negro youth was not only studying chemistry, but also how to apply the knowledge of chemistry to the enrichment of the soil, or to cooking, or to dairying, and that the student was being taught not only geometry and physics, but their application to blacksmithing, brickmaking, farming, and what not, then there began to appear for the first time a common bond between the two races