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60 
 
 TWO ADDRESSES 
 
 ON 
 
 NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 IN THE SOUTH 
 
 BY 
 
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 OF THE LOUISIANA BAR. 
 
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 H. C. THOMASOIV, 
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 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The two following addresses were delivered before 
 Educational Associations, and cannot be construed to 
 be partisan in any sense of the word. They were pub- 
 lished in volumes of proceedings and met with a fair 
 share of approval at the time of their delivery. Their 
 re-publication now is prompted not by any acuteness 
 in the Race Problem, which is the same now as it has 
 ever been, affecting alike all sections of the country, 
 but by the growing opposition to the education of the 
 negro which is making itself manifest in some 
 quarters. 
 
 Some men of fine intelligence are too ready to 
 
 y despair of the benefits, the moral and intellectual 
 
 ^ advantages of education to the negro race. I am con- 
 
 js, strained to believe that these men are blinded by race 
 
 , prejudice, or suffering from a restricted personal 
 
 narrowness. Within one generation of slavery, with 
 
 no adequate teachers, with all the obstacles and 
 
 horrors of the period of Reconstruction, when one side 
 
 strove to make the negro politically dominant, and 
 
 the other side fought to restore him to a condition of 
 
 slavery, how can it be said that negro education has 
 
 had a fair trial? 
 
 The Southern States have continued to tax them- 
 selves for the support of negro schools, but in many 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 places the funds raised for this purpose have been 
 indifferently and unfairly applied by incompetent or 
 partisan school boards, and this evil is on the increase. 
 Besides, there is the sore evil of want of competent 
 and suitable teachers for negro schools and decent 
 schoolhouses to teach in. It has long since been in- 
 flexibly decreed by unwritten law that white teachers 
 must not teach negro schools. Therefore, these 
 schools must be and are taught by negro teachers 
 only, who are necessarily inferior teachers, in most 
 cases. This inferiority arises from character, prep- 
 aration and environnient, all of which must be slowly 
 overcome. 
 
 It will not do to limit the future by the present. I 
 make these observations for the benefit of those who 
 claim that experience teaches that education does not 
 have the same uplifting and beneficial effect on 
 negroes as it has on other races. Experience teaches 
 nothing of the sort. It has been often said by shallow 
 quidnuncs, that education of the negro spoils a good 
 farm-hand ; and it has been well replied that it makes 
 a good farm-head in place of a farm-hand. Even 
 now, no fair man will deny that the negroes do better 
 work and more work than when they were slaves. 
 
 Educated labor earns most and pays best, no matter 
 w^hether it is white or black. This is true, whether 
 the education be manual or mental, or a proper and 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 harmonious combination of manual, moral and mental 
 training. This is a statistical axiom which the most 
 stupid dare not deny. Every competent observer in the 
 South is bound to agree with me that enlightenment 
 emancipates the negro from superstition, uncleanli- 
 ness, vice and idleness. Education improves the moral- 
 ity and virtue of the negro, just as it improves the moral- 
 ity and virtue of the other races. Education not only 
 strengthens the mind and makes it better able to com- 
 prehend the best way of living, but also fills the mind 
 with ideas, models and facts which stimulate and 
 sustain perseverance in the pathway of virtue and 
 honor. When the mind is fully apprised and keenly 
 understands in what direction the greatest happiness 
 lies, as a rule, it will surely follow that direction. 
 But the road to learning is neither royal nor short, 
 and the South must be patient with the negro in this, 
 as she has been in other matters. 
 
 The danger which must be avoided arises from 
 political partisans, whose fortunes have been fattened 
 on the bugaboo of negro domination, and from book- 
 vendors who seek to whet the demand for their wares 
 by virulent appeals to race prejudice. To this class 
 belongs a recent brilliant writer whose holy calling 
 accentuates his alarms, but- who has "narrowed his 
 mind, and to party gave up what was meant for 
 mankind." 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The most unwholesome feature about The Leopard's 
 Spots is that it puts in the mouth of a pious clergy- 
 man the most unreasonable and inhuman protests 
 against the education of the negro. The author 
 reaches the climax of his crusade against the enlight- 
 enment of the negro when he sagely tells us that this 
 country must all be mulatto or all white. Unfor- 
 tunately for this gospel of extermination, we have 
 always had some mulattoes, even in slave times, and 
 there is no sign that their proportion is increasing. 
 Miscegenation in the South has always been and will 
 always be confined to commerce between white men 
 and colored women, and the number of mulattoes in 
 the future will depend absolutely on the extent to 
 which white men restrain their immoral dealings with 
 negro females. It is certain that no mulattoes will be 
 the offspring of white mothers, and a proper exercise, 
 of the preacher's talents might greatly diminish the 
 mulattoes with white fathers. This is a grave question 
 which demands the serious attention of the friends of 
 both races in the South. Let those who believe in 
 and demand the highest and purest standard of 
 Anglo-Saxon blood and manhood, begin a crusade 
 against the white men who would lower that standard 
 by mixing their blood with that of an inferior race. 
 The gravity of the situation may be appreciated when 
 I state that, in a town of 10,000 inhabitants, five 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 hundred negresses are supported in idleness by white 
 paramours. This is something worse than the Social 
 Evil. 
 
 However, if moral restraints fail, I believe that edu- 
 cation is the best possible means to fortify negro 
 women against the approaches of libertines. Observa- 
 tion proves this to be emphatically true. 
 
 Other equally harmful writers make money by 
 gross and ridiculous caricatures of negro dialect and 
 character. 
 
 The large body of ignorant negroes are thriftless and 
 work and behave themselves alone through fear. But 
 this class is decreasing and scattering. The number 
 of negroes is increasing who have bought and paid 
 for small farms, from forty to sixty acres. Those 
 negroes who are thus acquiring homes make the 
 finest peasantry in the world ; they are law-abiding, 
 frugal and industrious. They pay their debts with 
 wonderful fidelity, as every merchant in the South 
 will testify. Their adaptability and aptitude for 
 acquiring the civilization of the white race is amaz- 
 ing, and broadly distinguishes them from the Indian, 
 the Chinaman and other inferior races. 
 
 Shakespeare has said that, ''Ignorance is the only 
 crime." But whose "crime" is it? Is it not more 
 the crime of the community than of the individual? 
 Whose crime is it that the Southern negroes are so 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 largely illiterate nearly forty years after they were 
 set free? 
 
 I place the responsibility for this crime largely on 
 the shoulders of the Government that emancipated 
 and enfranchised them, and then left them to struggle 
 for an existence among strange and hostile conditions, 
 without the aid and protection that education affords. 
 I have always believed in the principles of the Blair 
 Bill, especially if its aid were limited to the negroes 
 of the South, who have an inalienable and impre- 
 scriptible claim on the National Government for aid 
 in their efforts to make good citizens of themselves. 
 This claim exists in full force to-day, and if reason 
 and justice held full sway in the councils of the 
 nation, public aid to the education of the negro would 
 become a live and burning issue. It is time that 
 barren sentimentality, on both sides of the line, should 
 give way to practical w^ork in the solution of live 
 problems. 
 
 When the white people of the South found that 
 their slaves were not only set free as a result of the 
 civil war, but that these ex-slaves, in their most im- 
 poverished and ignorant state, were made political 
 factors and encouraged to believe that they could rule 
 over their former masters, it was natural that they 
 should resent this humiliating and destructive out- 
 rage ; it was also inevitable that amid the excite- 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 ments and terrors of the internecine servile political 
 warfare of Reconstruction, feelings of unwonted bitter- 
 ness sprang up between the races in the South. In 
 this way the advancement of the emancipated negro 
 was wofully retarded. But even this has not de- 
 terred the States of the South from befriending negro 
 education, to their everlasting credit. It is to keep 
 up and enlarge this generous spirit that I make my 
 plea. I want to counteract the effort being made to 
 discourage and prevent the continuance of aid to 
 negro education. It was with this object that I made 
 these addresses, and for this purpose I here re-publish 
 them. 
 
 One of the most insidious arguments against aid to 
 negro schools is based on the contention that educa- 
 tion will strengthen and benefit the negro in the race 
 conflict which is predicted to be irrepressible. This 
 is a direct appeal to race hatred. It is the argument 
 of those who glory in a fervid race prejudice. To 
 broader minds, it will occur that a race war never 
 takes place under free and civilized institutions. Pro- 
 scription and extermination appertain to despotic 
 governments and barbarous countries. Where the 
 people rule, broad and humane policies are bound to 
 prevail. The right and the expedient dominate 
 passion and fear and selfish greed. Free government 
 makes men cosmopolitan. In slave times it was 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 thought to be necessary to make it a statutory crime 
 to teach the negroes how to read and write. There 
 were many men and women in the South who opposed 
 and evaded this law, and regarded it as inhuman 
 repression of the slave mind. But it was defended 
 on the ground that enlightenment of the slaves would 
 render them more independent and increase the 
 danger of insurrection. There were some in the 
 South and many in the North who believed that the 
 negroes would rise and help destroy their masters at 
 the first opportunity. But John Brown found at 
 Harper's Ferry that this was a woful mistake. The 
 negroes did not rise. They remained faithful and 
 true to their masters, and thus, acting differently 
 from any other race under similar circumstances, they 
 showed gratitude for the care and kind attention of 
 the Southern people. 
 
 And when war came and the North and the South 
 were grappled in deadly struggle, the negro still 
 refused to engage in a race war, although he knew 
 that the victory of the North meant freedom for him. 
 The negroes believed that the Southern people were 
 their friends, and they rejoiced and cheered whenever 
 news came from the field that '^our side" had won a 
 battle. They were obedient and respectful during the 
 entire war. At home they served and took care of 
 their absent masters' property and families. Many of 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 them went to the array and rendered valuable services 
 not only in the camp but in caring for the wounded 
 and burying the dead. I find but one parallel for 
 such fidelity in history. After the assassination of 
 Julius Csesar, Antony and Octavius decreed a pro- 
 scription more terrible and cruel than that of Sulla, 
 and Roman historians tell us of the wonderful de- 
 votion of the slaves of the proscribed. Plotius 
 Plancus was concealed in the woods of his farm by 
 his slaves, who endured the most dreadful tortures 
 rather than disclose the hiding place of their master. 
 At length Plancus, unwilling that such faithful slaves 
 should endure further punishment, came forth and 
 presented his neck to the swords of the soldiers. The 
 slave of a certain Senator, who had been proscribed, 
 put his own garments on his master who escaped, 
 while the slave lay down in his master's bed and was 
 slain in his stead. Most justly Seneca exclaims : 
 ''Quanti viri est cum prsemia proditionis ingentia 
 ostendantur prsemium fidei mortem concupiscere !" 
 
 It has been well said that the greatest exhibition of 
 self-sacrifice is for a man to die for his friend. But 
 many an old Confederate veteran can tell of instances 
 where Southern negroes faced certain death while 
 carrying their wounded masters from bullet-riddled 
 battle-fields. Such heroic fidelity cannot be forgotten. 
 Nor can we forget that a battalion of negroes fought 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 bravely under General Jackson at New Orleans. The 
 time may come in the fortunes of the not distant 
 future when negro soldiers will again be needed to 
 repel the invading hordes that will pour down upon 
 us across the boundaries of Canada. In that emer- 
 gency who doubts the supreme fidelity of the negroes 
 to the highest demands of American citizenship? 
 
 I repeat that there is no danger of a race war in 
 the South, and hence the argument that it is neces- 
 sary to repress the negroes by keeping them in igno- 
 rance falls to the ground. The white man's burden 
 is not to exterminate, but to uplift. Every act of in- 
 humanity is an act of self-degradation. Every act of 
 oppression weakens the oppressor. The superior race 
 not only honors and demonstrates its superiority, but 
 also preserves that superiority by acts of kindness 
 and generous assistance to its inferiors. 
 
 These sentiments prevail very widely in the South, 
 and, I believe, they are endorsed by all classes of 
 people in the North. President Theodore Roosevelt 
 and Ex-President Cleveland have signified their strong 
 sympathy with the proper education of the American 
 negro, and the example of these illustrious patriots 
 will surely bear fruit in National aid to the education 
 of the negroes in the South. This will be better than 
 Senator Morgan's colonization scheme, and a great 
 deal better than Senator Hanna's pension scheme. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 Southern negroes do not need pensions nor colonies. 
 All they want is fair treatment, perfect liberty, edu- 
 cation, and, most of all, a good example and good 
 advice from their white neighbors. These things it 
 is possible for them to get in the South and nowhere 
 else on earth. 
 
 Perhaps, I believe too much in the uplifting power 
 and influence of education on races as well as individ- 
 uals. If so, it is not a grievous fault. I believe that 
 education at such schools as those at Carlisle and 
 Hampton has civilized the Indians, and at last made 
 them fit to be absorbed into the great ocean of Amer- 
 ican citizenhood. I believe that Anglo-Saxon suprem- 
 acy itself is founded, not on might and blood, but on 
 mental and moral enlightenment. I believe that all 
 the evils of society are due to ignorance, which is 
 twice cursed, cursing the ignorant man and also the 
 man who is tempted to cheat, oppress and enslave the 
 ignorant. Let there be universal education and the 
 neck of monopoly will be broken. Let there be uni- 
 versal education, and crimes and wars and strikes 
 and riots will cease for want of cause and motive. 
 Kapacity and greed will die when they no longer 
 have ignorant victims to feed upon. He who eman- 
 cipates the minds and souls of men will be the 
 greatest emancipator of all times. Believing these 
 things, I must still plead for universal education. 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Let the learned author change his shibboleth into 
 this : the South cannot remain half-educated and half- 
 ignorant. Our salvation requires the leavening of the 
 whole lump. The South needs material prosperity, 
 and, thank God, all the signs of the times are harbin- 
 gers of its speedy development, and all the heavens 
 are lighting up with the promise of a splendid future. 
 But we of the South will not forget that some things 
 are better and more important than even material 
 prosperity and industrial progress. These are justice, 
 honor and righteousness in our dealings with all men. 
 
 Then let us keep up and increase our appropria- 
 tions for the education of the negroes. Let us give 
 them more schools and better schoolhouses, and better 
 teachers, and longer terms ; and so present before the 
 great tribunal of history the noble and sublime spec- 
 tacle of a superior race guiding and helping an in- 
 ferior race to a higher plane of character and life ; 
 "For God is marching on." 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM. 
 
 [An address delivered before the National Educational Association, at St. Paul, 
 
 Minn., July, 1890]. 
 
 The honor of addressing this Association on the 
 most important question of the hour brings with it 
 responsibility, as well as pleasure ; apprehension, as 
 well as pride. I should not do justice either to you 
 or to my own sense of inadequacy if I did not begin 
 by disclaiming all hope or ambition to add anything 
 new and important to the discussion of the much- 
 debated race problem. I can but hope, at best, to go 
 over well-trodden ground in a manner not unworthy 
 of this great occasion, and to state some views enter- 
 tained by many others, as well as by myself, in a 
 calm, faithful, and, if possible, judicial spirit. Let 
 me state in the outset, that there is a Southern 
 j)roblem — a serious, pressing problem — which clamors 
 for a solution ; but let me state also that this problem 
 concerns the North as well as the South. It concerns 
 every section and every class of people in this great 
 country ; and it is not only the right, but the solemn 
 duty, of every portion of the people to take an active 
 interest in its solution. I call it a Southern problem 
 because its domicile is in the South ; but, in truth 
 and in fact, it is as much your problem as it is ours, 
 and neither the bigotry which would claim the ex- 
 
16 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 elusive privilege of solving it, nor the cowardice 
 which would shirk responsibility for its solution, can 
 be tolerated in the tribunal of patriotism and pure 
 reason. 
 
 I think I may say that the importance of this 
 question is fully appreciated in the North. I intend 
 no sarcasm when I say that the condition of Southern 
 negroes excites more interest in the North than that 
 of any other people on the globe. The horrors of 
 Siberia, where our fellow-beings are daily victims of 
 incredible tortures ; Ireland, struggling bravely, but 
 painfully, against the fearful odds of oppression and 
 famine ; Australia, where the English shepherd shoots 
 the bushman, on sight, as indifferently as he shoots a 
 rabbit ; Africa, where enslavement and oppression of 
 the blacks continue unabated, and the Germans work 
 them to death in their march from Zanzibar to the 
 lakes ; or, coming nearer home, the bloody assassina- 
 tions of homeless Chinamen in the West, and the bar- 
 barous treatment of the Indians of North America, 
 which has been aptly called '^a century of dishonor" — 
 these, all these tales of wrong and outrage done by 
 man to man, grow dim and insipid beside the reported 
 wrongs of the Southern negroes. I do not blame the 
 precedence given to this question. It has a just 
 basis. We did not bring the Indians nor the China- 
 men to this country. We did not and could not civ- 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 17 
 
 ilize them. From past history, from character and 
 from numbers, the negroes have a greater influence 
 on the affairs of this country than any other alien 
 race can ever have. "When we reflect that the pres- 
 ence of the negro changed the face of our institutions 
 and drew lines across our political geography, that he 
 was the bone of contention that shook the republic 
 for fifty years, and that at length he had the power to 
 embroil the whites in civil strife and bloodshed ; when 
 we consider what his freedom has meant for him and 
 meant for us, we are bound to acknowledge that too 
 much importance has not been and cannot anywhere 
 be attached to the just and proper settlement of all 
 questions bearing on the rights and duties and the 
 destiny of the negro race in America. 
 
 What, then, is the race problem? John C. Calhoun 
 predicted that the abolition of slavery would be fol- 
 lowed by continual riot and the widespread use of the 
 dagger and the torch. Experience has proved that 
 he was mistaken. Thomas Jefl'erson and Abraham 
 Lincoln said, in almost the same words, that the two 
 races of the South could never live together in peace 
 and harmony under a condition of social and political 
 equality. Were these two great men right, or wrong? 
 If the two races cannot live together harmoniously 
 under a condition of social and political equality, how 
 can their relations be modified, without injustice to 
 
18 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 the negroes and without danger to the whites, so that 
 permanent peace and harmony may be secured with- 
 out a separation of the races? This is the question 
 we must study and decide. 
 
 There is a school of thinkers who contend that the 
 way to settle this race problem is to let it alone. 
 "Hands off/' "Let it adjust itself," "Laissez /aire" are 
 their strange watchwords. I do not agree with these 
 gentlemen. Great problems never settle themselves 
 for humanity, except w4th infinite pain and convul- 
 sion. They demand a settlement from a brave and 
 thinking people. This race problem cannot be evaded 
 nor suppressed. It must be settled by wise thought 
 and determined action, or it will lead to the natural 
 consequences of every neglected and evaded human 
 problem. In the ninth decade of the eighteenth 
 century there was an unsettled problem in France — 
 the problem of relieving the peasantry from the ex- 
 actions and oppressions of the nobility ! But the 
 problem was let alone. The peasantry, forsooth, were 
 far too low and helpless to cause trouble, and in time 
 the evil would cure itself. So Monseigueur spurned 
 the canaille with his foot, and drove his carriage over 
 their children. But the shadows were all the time 
 thickening. Madame Defarge was knitting the names 
 of the tyrants in her little wine-shop. The down- 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM " 19 
 
 trodden slowly gathered courage from desperation, 
 and France was deluged with blood. 
 
 It is thus that grave problems always adjust them- 
 selves if let alone too long. 
 
 There have been other writers who have attracted 
 some public notice who suggest amalgamation — or 
 social equality, which means the same thing in the 
 long run — as a settlement or rather as an extinction 
 of the race question. Those who advocate or predict 
 this solution know little of the feelings and aspira- 
 tions of either race. Anglo-Saxons never amalgamate ; 
 and it is simple justice to say that the negroes are 
 also averse to forfeiting the identity of their race. 
 The race instinct which instills a determination to 
 preserve race distinction and race purity is as strong 
 in both races in the South as that which has kept the 
 Jewish blood pure and distinct among all the nations 
 of the world. It is this race instinct which prompts 
 the Southern whites to raise an impassable barrier 
 against all social intermingling and intermarriage 
 between the races. It is this that makes them 
 denounce the man who counsels or approves social 
 (equality or mixed schools as an enemy of both races 
 and a traitor to his own. They have no objection to 
 the negroes attaining and maintaining the highest 
 standard of social worth and virtue. All they wish is 
 for this society to be distinct from theirs. With this 
 
20 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 wish the best negroes are in heart}^ accord. The best 
 colored society in the South is that to which no white 
 person has admittance. There obtains in some social 
 circles of educated negroes a degree of refinement, 
 elegance, taste, gentility, and polished deportment 
 that would surprise and delight every friend of their 
 race. Such social circles do not want nor admit the 
 presence of Whites. Why should they? Would you 
 have the negro despise his own race? On the con- 
 trary, they justly despise the whites who seek to in- 
 termingle with them on terms of social equality. I 
 could give you numberless instances of this. In one 
 instance a white girl ran away with a negro and 
 married him. They fled to a plantation in an adjoin- 
 ing State, and she passed herself off as colored. Some 
 time afterwards a gentleman who had known the girl 
 passed the plantation and saw her washing by the 
 roadside in company with several negro women. He 
 spoke to her and called her name, but she shrank 
 away and almost screamed : "You are mistaken ! I 
 am not white! I am a negro!" The fear of the 
 scorn and contempt in which she would be held by 
 her dusky companions, if they learned that she was 
 white, made her forswear the blood in her veins. 
 
 If the negroes so condemn treason to race, \vhat 
 wonder that the whites should brand it with a mark 
 deeper and darker than that which disfigured the 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 21 
 
 brow of Cain ! The best people of both races abhor 
 miscegeaation. The white paramours of colored 
 women are becoming more and more despised ; and 
 though the races live together ten thousand years, the 
 friends of humanity need not fear that the pure racial 
 types will be lost. 
 
 But the favorite remedy for the race problem has 
 come to be deportation of the negroes. I am prepared 
 to say with the utmost confidence that this remedy 
 does not meet with general approval, although it is 
 fair to concede that it has many able advocates. The 
 negroes do not desire to leave, and the great majority 
 of the whites do not want them to go. The enforced 
 removal of the negroes would be unnatural and 
 unjust ; cruel, bitter cruel, would be the task of tear- 
 ing the negroes from their genial Southern homes, 
 their Southern friends, their churches, their grave- 
 yards, and the haunts they love so well. Sadder than 
 the melancholy procession that moved to the shore 
 from Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," sadder than the 
 doomed band of Acadian farmers that looked for the 
 last time on their burning homes in Grand Pre, would 
 be the final movement of the negroes from the South. 
 It would be worse than slavery ; for the negroes in a 
 colony of their own would degenerate and speedily 
 lose the civilization they have derived from contact 
 with the whites. Such a crime could never be for- 
 
22 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 given. It would raise a protest from whites and 
 blacks alike, and from an indignant world. The very- 
 stones would rise up and cry out against it. 
 
 The argument on which the demand for the deporta- 
 tion of the negroes is based may be divided into three 
 postulates. In the first place, it is said that the races 
 are unequal and, hence, cannot live together on terms 
 of equal freedom. This is not true as a general prop- 
 osition. In all Asiatic countries unequal races live 
 together in peace and harmony. This is true also of 
 Egypt and Morocco ; in the latter, five races differing 
 in language, religion and customs, have lived together 
 for centuries without serious disturbance. As to the 
 inherent inferiority so often and so swiftly assigned 
 to the negroes of the South, it might become those 
 who wish to be philosophical to postpone judgment. 
 Of course, there is an immense difference between the 
 races at present in mental and moral development. 
 But from the best information I can get of the process 
 of mental evolution in man, the white race had at 
 least 10,000 years the start of the black race in the 
 march of social evolution on this planet. No wonder, 
 with this advantage on the side of the whites, that 
 the difference between the races should be stupendous ; 
 but who dares say that it is inherent? The advance 
 made by the negroes during the 200 years they have 
 resided in America is greater than that made by any 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 23 
 
 other people during the same length of time. Their 
 progress in every direction has been amazing. They 
 have improved in mind, and heart, and body. Did 
 you ever see any specimens of the original Africans 
 brought to this country? They were, almost without 
 exception, uncouth savages, and physically despicable. 
 They were small of stature, with flabby muscles, flat 
 noses, prognathus faces, ill-shaped limbs, protruding 
 heels, and prehensile toes. This description does not 
 fit the Southern neo;roes of to-dav. Under the influ- 
 ence of civilized customs and habits, they have im- 
 proved in form and feature, until they have become 
 strong, well proportioned, and can furnish some of the 
 finest specimens of physical manhood in the world. 
 They have improved equally in mental and moral 
 traits. From naked barbarians they have become 
 civilized Christians. From groveling and stupid 
 savages they have become intelligent and industrious 
 workmen, skilled in many of the arts and all of the 
 handicrafts of civilized life. By this vast progress in 
 so short a period, the negroes have demonstrated a 
 capacity, an aptitude for improvement, which should 
 make us hesitate to predict that they cannot finally 
 ascend, under favorable conditions, to the highest 
 heights of human development. In that event the 
 argument based on the inferiority and the color of 
 the neo-ro must vanish. The world will learn ''to see 
 
24 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 his visage in his mind.'^ And in this connection it 
 would be well for my Southern compatriots to ponder 
 the earnest words of Dr. Haygood : ''The negro 
 cannot rise simply because he is black ; the white 
 man cannot stay up simply because he is white. A 
 man rises not by the color of his skin, but by intelli- 
 gence, industry, and integrity. The foremost man in 
 these excellences and virtues must, in the long run, 
 be also the brightest man.'' 
 
 In the next place, it is contended that the two 
 races cannot continue to live together, because there is 
 an ineradicable prejudice between them, and that this 
 race prejudice will always produce hostility, bitter- 
 ness, jealousy and conflict between the races. I deny 
 the premises on which this argument is based. There 
 is no race antagonism in the South. There is nothing 
 which can properly be called race prejudice. Preju- 
 dice implies hatred and dislike. Surely no one would 
 sav that the whites hate the neo;roes or that the 
 negroes hate the whites. Prejudice prompts aversion 
 and avoidance. No such feeling exists among the 
 whites toward the negroes. They desire to have them 
 in their houses, fields, work-shops, and places of en- 
 tertainment. White and colored children delight to 
 play together. Southern ladies prefer colored serv- 
 ants for cooks, nurses and chambermaids, and treat 
 them in the kindest and most amiable manner. Does 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 25 
 
 this look like prejudice? The Southern planter is 
 
 not the foe of the negro laborers. As a rule he treats 
 
 them fairly, justly and kindly, and I have yet to meet 
 
 a respectable Southern white man who does not enjoy 
 
 seeing the negroes exhibit thrift, acquire property, 
 
 surround themselves with comfort, and rise gradually 
 
 in the scale of being. Is there any prejudice in all 
 
 this? 
 
 I know that there is an arbitrary prejudice against 
 
 the negro race which is well-nigh universal. It exists 
 
 in the North and it exists in Europe. Even Charles 
 
 Lamb, the gentlest and humanest of philosophers, has 
 
 said : 
 
 "In the negro coi;intenance you will often meet with strong 
 traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards 
 some of these faces, or rather masks, that have looked out kindly 
 upon one in casual encounters, in the streets and highways. I love 
 what Fuller beautifully calls these 'images of God cut in ebony.' 
 But I should not like to associate with them, to share my meals 
 and my good nights with them — because they are black." 
 
 Candor will compel us all to say the same thing. 
 
 But this is a matter of taste, about which there can 
 
 be no dispute. What I contend is that there is no 
 
 race antipathy, no sentiment on the part of the whites 
 
 toward the negroes that seek to injure or wrong them, 
 
 that would keep them down or prevent their rising in 
 
 all the elements that constitute worth and manhood. 
 
 There has never been any such feeling between the 
 
 races. The negroes reciprocate the kind feelings of 
 
26 THE KACE PROBLEM 
 
 the whites. It is only the grossly ignorant negro who 
 is suspicious of his white neighbor. I have never 
 known a fairly bright negro, uninfluenced by design- 
 ing aliens, that did not have more confidence in the 
 kindness and justice of Southern white men than in 
 anybodv else in the world. Thev show this confi- 
 dence, in spite of all our political troubles, year in 
 and year out. They show their trust in the Southern 
 whites by their labor and devotion, by their happiness 
 and content. Why, the negroes are the happiest 
 peasantry in the world. They never know what it is 
 to want work, the bitterest want that man can feel. 
 Better clothed, better fed, better housed, better paid 
 than the white laborers in England or Pennsylvania, 
 they have a right to be satisfied with their lot, so far 
 as the present is concerned. I wish I could show you 
 one of the plantations of Richardson, the largest 
 cotton planter in the South. A white cottage with 
 three rooms, neatl}^ ceiled, well ventilated, with a nice, 
 cool portico, is furnished to each family. Gardens, 
 orchards, vines and flowers surround these cozv 
 homes. Here live a happy and contented people, 
 with well-clad wives and children, plenty of fuel and 
 provisions, congenial work, good wages, and many 
 holidays and amusements. The man who thinks 
 these people are down-trodden is a fool. The man 
 who thinks they entertain an ineradicable prejudice 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 27 
 
 against the whites is little better. There are many 
 things which the Southern negroes do not know that 
 they ought to know ; but they do know that the 
 Southern whites have been and are their best friends ; 
 and I believe in their heart of hearts they are more 
 grateful, as they ought to be, to the people who gave 
 them Christianity and civilization, than to those who 
 gave them freedom. We may, therefore, dismiss the 
 demand for deportation as unnecessary, and not justi- 
 fied either by the sentiments of the whites or by the 
 character of the negro. 
 
 In my judgment the race trouble in the South 
 springs from the unqualified right of the negro to 
 vote. The apprehension of negro rule, and the total 
 incapacity of the negroes to exercise the power which 
 the right of suffrage gives them for their own good or 
 the good of the community where they live, are the 
 sole causes of whatever race conflict and race bitter- 
 ness have existed in the South since the war. 
 
 The chief difficulty in the way of a proper state- 
 ment and understanding of the race problem has been 
 the total and persistent misconception in the North of 
 the true relations between the races and the true char- 
 acter of the negroes. Ever since Mrs. Stowe painted 
 Uncle Tom as an epitome of the Sermon on the 
 Mount, Northern people have believed that the 
 negroes are supernaturally gentle and pious and 
 
28 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 faithful. Because they are black, you conceived that 
 they were different from the balance of mankind ; 
 were long-suffering under abuse ; self-sacrificing, and 
 ready to forgive injuries. This fairy tale vanishes 
 before the light of truth. The negro, like other 
 mortals, hates his enemies. If you prick him, he 
 bleeds ; if you tickle him, he laughs ; if you poison 
 him, he dies. Likewise, he complains of injustice 
 and resents a wrong. In these respects he is neither 
 better nor worse than the rest of the world. There- 
 fore, the affection and attachment undoubtedly shown 
 by the slaves for their owners during the war is the 
 best possible evidence that they were not abused and 
 oppressed, and that the charge that there is "an un- 
 conscious habit of oppression" in the South is a 
 malicious myth. Water will not run up hill. Op- 
 pression will not beget affection. The Helots of 
 Sparta abandoned their masters when they had most 
 need of their assistance. That was a just retribution 
 for the inhuman crypteia. But the negroes did not 
 desert their masters during the war nor after the war, 
 and this fact will stand forever in rebuttal of the 
 flippant charge that American slavery was a cruel 
 barbarism. I will not lift the coffin-lid which hides 
 the pallid features of that dead institution. I believe 
 that slavery was a curse to the white people of the 
 South. While it cultivated and expanded the affec- 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 29 
 
 tions and sympathies, it also cultivated and encour- 
 aged apathy and lethargy of body and mind, and the 
 sons of the largest slaveholders were rapidly degener- 
 ating when the war broke out. The institution of 
 slavery injured the bone and sinew and brains of the 
 Southern whites, and I hope some day to see them 
 raise a monument to Lincoln and Grant for abolish- 
 ing it ! 
 
 But the final verdict of impartial history will declare 
 that American slavery was an unmixed blessing to the 
 African race, for by no other conceivable means could 
 that race have been prepared for freedom. By no 
 other means, this side the domain of miracle, could 
 they have acquired the knowledge, the discipline, the 
 characters which they possessed when emancipated. 
 
 I do not assume, as some persons do, to speak of 
 the plans and purposes of Divine Providence. But it 
 does seem peculiarly fortunate that the negro found 
 his home in the South. There he found a climate 
 that welcomed him with airs more genial than ever 
 fanned his brow in his native continent. There 
 Nature, in unison with his own warm fancy, took hira 
 in her soft arms, and radiant skies dropped for him 
 the manna of peace and health and sweet content. 
 But above all, there he found a gentle, tolerant, gen- 
 erous, open-hearted race of whites, who took him by 
 the hand and led him like a child. Who can esti- 
 
30 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 mate the blessing of falling into the hands of such 
 liberal, unselfish, humane masters? The negro was 
 not an intellectual being like Hawthorne's Marble 
 Faun ; with nothing abstract or calculating about 
 him, he was endowed with a capacity for strong and 
 warm attachment, with impulsive faith and trusting 
 simplicity. With these endowments it was natural 
 that he should be keenly sensitive to kind impres- 
 sions. He absorbed the virtues and the civilization 
 of his masters ; learned their language ; embraced 
 their religion ; adapted his whole life to their ideas, 
 until there sprang up between the races a relation- 
 ship, peculiar perhaps, but kind and tender as any 
 human tie that ever stretched from heart to heart. 
 Every virtue, every excellence, every good quality 
 that the negro possessed he owed to his contact with 
 the Southern whites ; and he is conscious of his deep 
 and everlasting obligation to them. 
 
 This was the state of feeling between the races of 
 the South when the war ended, and it bade fair to 
 continue and flourish under freedom. Then came 
 that masterpiece of confusion, the granting of suffrage 
 to these simple ex-slaves, and their consequent delivery 
 to the tender mercies of the camp-followers that 
 skulked in the wake of the conquering Northern 
 army. The poor, deluded negro listened to those 
 who claimed to be his special friends, and the Iliad of 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 31 
 
 our woes began. Negro rule, with all its horrors, en- 
 veloped the South. The evils of that rule cannot be 
 exasperated. It was a carnival of crime and cor- 
 ruption. It destroyed all values and burdened all 
 callings. It ruined both whites and negroes. It 
 bankrupted States and municipalities. It drove away 
 commerce. It blighted industry, made law and public 
 order a farce, and rendered all progress impossible. 
 
 Ancient history tells of an ambitious youth who 
 demanded permission to guide the steeds of the solar 
 chariot for one day. The sun god reluctantly con- 
 sented, but warned him of the dangers of the road. 
 Phaeton grasped the reins, the flame-breathing steeds 
 sprang forward, but, not feeling the well-known hand, 
 they ran off the track ; the world was set on fire, and 
 a total conflagration would have ensued had not Jupi- 
 ter launched his swiftest thunderbolt and hurled the 
 young driver from his seat. 
 
 The attempt of the negro to guide the ship of state 
 was as disastrous as Phaeton's ride. The fact that he 
 was checked in his mad course ; the fact that negro 
 domination was overthrown and forever abolished in 
 the South ; this fact alone preserved both races from 
 destruction and enabled the South to become what she 
 is to-day. It was not race prejudice, but self-preserva- 
 tion, that caused this overthrow. 
 
 But the apprehension, the menace of negro rule, 
 
32 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 remains and poisons the political relations of the 
 races. Like a sleeping volcano it causes distrust and 
 alarm, and generates a spirit of hostile watchfulness 
 that is inimical to peace and harmony. To remedy 
 this evil is the true race problem. 
 
 If England, which since the revolution of 1688 has 
 maintained the most rational, consistent, secure and 
 best-balanced government on earth, had to deal with 
 this race problem, there can be no doubt what her set- 
 tlement of it would have been. She might have com- 
 mitted the blunder of giving suffrage and citizenship 
 to the negroes, but she would have speedily retrieved 
 that mistake. Take for example her treatment of the 
 same problem in Jamaica. After the negroes were 
 emancipated there, a colonial government was erected, 
 giving the right of suffrage to the negroes, restricted, 
 however, by a large property qualification which dis- 
 franchised most of them. Even with this restriction, 
 neo;ro suffras^e caused so much conflict and trouble 
 that Jamaica was compelled to surrender her govern- 
 ment and take shelter under the crown. Froude tells 
 us, and he ought to know, that when England adopted 
 a new colonial policy and established practically inde- 
 pendent governments in Canada, Australia,, and South 
 Africa, there was a design to create the same kind of 
 government in the West Indies ; but that design was 
 abandoned because it was considered, in the light of 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 33 
 
 reason and experience, impossible to confer the rights 
 of full citizenship on the negroes. Rather than do so 
 foolish a thing the projectors of the federation of the 
 British Empire gave up their grand conception. If 
 the South had belonged to England she would have 
 disfranchised the negroes twenty years ago and formed 
 a separate code of laws and a separate bureau of ad- 
 ministration for their protection and government. 
 
 But England is always unjust, no matter how wise 
 she may be. The repeal of the fifteenth amendment 
 would be unfair and unjust, and Americans cannot 
 afford to base their policy on injustice. It is also vain 
 and idle to talk about the negroes voluntarily relin- 
 quishing the right to vote as proposed lately by a dis- 
 tinguished writer in "Belford's Magazine." The Dem- 
 ocrats themselves would not permit this. As long as 
 the negro has the right of suffrage he will be deluded 
 or forced into using it by one party or the other. He 
 has been and will continue to be politically the alter- 
 nate victim of fraud and force. 
 
 Nor can the question be settled by Federal election 
 laws. There is nothing statesmanlike about such 
 measures. Every such law can have but one purpose, 
 one tendency, and, if enforced, but one result — the 
 restoration of negro rule. This would not settle the 
 question, but aggravate it, and multiply evils that 
 
34 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 would fall with terrible emphasis on white and black 
 alike, and on the peace, business and -prosperity of 
 the whole country in the end. 
 
 There is but one remedy left, and that is a restric- 
 tion of negro suffrage, and there is but one restriction 
 consonant with justice — the restriction of an educa- 
 tional qualification for the right of suffrage to be 
 adopted and enforced by the General Government. I 
 have no time to elaborate the arguments in favor of 
 this settlement of the race problem. I believe it 
 would be for the best interests of the whole country. 
 I believe it would cure all the conflicts, all the bitter- 
 ness, all the prejudices that spring out of negro citi- 
 zenship. I believe it would be accepted by the 
 negroes as a fair basis of settlement, for it would 
 leave the right of suffrage to all who are fit to exer- 
 cise it, and put it in the power of every one to qualify 
 himself for that high privilege. 
 
 It w^ould, perhaps, be w^asting words to argue with 
 those journalists who argue that education does not 
 benefit the negro and would not improve his capacity 
 to vote. Dazzled by the peculiar brilliancy of their 
 own minds, they only get a dim and imperfect view of 
 the minds of others. Every one competent to speak, 
 and honest enough to be candid, knows that educa- 
 tion benefits and improves the negro. It improves 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 35 
 
 his morals, his character, and his usefuhiess. It 
 makes him a better man and a better citizen, a better 
 neighbor and a better workman, no matter what you 
 put him at. The slave-owners learned that it paid to 
 take good care of their slaves, and the people of the 
 South will learn that it pays to educate their negro 
 employes. Above all things, education of the negro 
 diminishes, if it does not totally banish, all danger of 
 race conflict and trouble. This is the lesson of actual 
 experience. Dr. Hitchcock, the able president of 
 Straight Universitv. in New Orleans, assures me that 
 those students who stay with them until they take a 
 full course and become thorough students never have 
 anv trouble with the whites in the communities where 
 they teach, preach, or follow other professions ; while, 
 on the other hand, those who study six months or a 
 year, and then think they know everything, are 
 almost certain to figure in a race-riot pretty soon 
 after they leave school. This shows how much more 
 thorough negro education should be. There is no 
 doubt that a mere smattering of book-learning, taught 
 by a teacher \vhose mental and moral training is im- 
 perfect, does the negro harm ; and such education 
 would harm white children, too. But we should not, 
 therefore, condemn all education. We should elevate 
 the standard of the character and qualifications of 
 
36 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 teachers of negro schools. We should give the 
 
 negroes moral and industrial training as well as 
 
 literary instruction. Ruskin has most truly said : 
 
 "The entire object of true education is to make people not merely 
 do the right things, but enjoy the right things; not merely learned, 
 but to love knowledge; not merely pure, but to love purity; not 
 merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice." 
 
 Let us give the negroes this sort of education ; edu- 
 ucate not their heads only, but their hearts and their 
 hands, before v^e assume to say that they are not 
 capable of the highest improvement. The South, I 
 admit, is unable to give them such teachers and such 
 instruction ; but the nation is able to pay for it ; and 
 I affirm that it is the duty of the nation to educate 
 the negroes, not only because the education of the 
 negro is for the best interests of the country, and 
 essential to the perpetuity of free institutions, but it 
 is a reparation which the nation owes to the negro for 
 the injustice done him in the past. To serve its own 
 ends, to procure its own safety, the nation emanci- 
 pated the negroes. It severed the old ties, the old 
 checks and supports, and threw them, unprepared and 
 unprotected, into the boiling, seething sea of freedom 
 and politics, and then deserted them to their fate. 
 Blacker and deeper than the sin of slavery was the 
 sin of placing the burdens and responsibilities of full 
 citizenship on the backs of the negroes, and then re- 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 37 
 
 fusing to prepare them for the discharge of those 
 perilous duties. The failure of the Federal Govern- 
 ment to educate the slaves they made freemen is a 
 shame and a disgrace, a scarlet letter on the garb of 
 our history, a stigma, which, like the damned spot 
 that soiled the little hand of Lady Macbeth, will never 
 out until that wrong has been repaired. 
 
 Let the opponents of the Blair bill make the most 
 of their unworthy victory. Let them hide their 
 narrow heads under the thin disguise of constitu- 
 tional scruples ; the fact remains that they are at 
 heart opposed to all public education, and devoid of 
 any sense of justice to the negro race. I trust that I 
 may be permitted to express the hope that when the 
 patriotic Senator renews his proposition, he will make 
 the relief apply exclusively to the negroes who were 
 set free and their children. That will present the 
 issue squarely. 
 
 I cannot sympathize with those who contend that 
 the General Government has no right or ''business" 
 to interfere with or concern itself about education. I 
 know of but one government in which the acquisition 
 of knowledge was discouraged, and that was the dual 
 autocracy established in the Garden of Eden. We all 
 know what a miserable failure that government proved 
 to be. Ever since then the dissemination of learning 
 has been held to be the highest and most natural 
 
38 THE KACE PROBLEM 
 
 function of a true government, no matter what its 
 form or the scope of its powers. Most especially is a 
 free government interested in the education of its 
 people. Enlightenment is the foe of slavery and the 
 friend of freedom. Intelligence is the foster-parent of 
 liberty. I yield to no one in my devotion to the doc- 
 trines of States' rights, home rule, and adherence to 
 the Constitution ; and yet I would be glad to see the 
 flag of the Union float over everv schoolhouse in the 
 land. I believe that the nation would derive nothing 
 but glory from engaging in the business of popular 
 education. The grandest institutions in this country 
 are our common schools. 
 
 There are pearls in our gulfs and bays. There are 
 precious stones of brilliant hue and dazzling ray on 
 our mountain-tops. Veins of gold and silver run 
 through the fretted hills, whose sides are heaped with 
 agate, topaz, ruby, garnet, sapphire, and other gems 
 of rarest form and richest color. But these are not 
 the pride of America. The public schools are the 
 pride of America. Not crowns and scimitars and 
 diamond stars, not gems nor pearls, not silver and 
 gold, but her common schools — these are the crown 
 jewels of America ! And he who preserves them best 
 shall be garlanded with a civic crown. 
 
 Then let us put education into the Constitution of 
 the United States. Let us put a premium on intelli- 
 
THE KACE PROBLEM 39 
 
 gence and build the temple of our national renown 
 upon the bed-rock of popular enlightenment. There 
 will be manv obstacles in the wav of such a settlement 
 of the race question. Chief among these obstacles are 
 a partisan press and a shallow, selfish statesmanship. 
 The amount of misrepresentation on the subject of 
 the race problem constantly made by partisan journals 
 of both parties almost exceeds credibility. The mis- 
 sion of the public press is a grand one. Its powder for 
 good, \vhen independent and honest, is beyond calcu- 
 lation. When its responsibilities are appreciated, 
 when its information is carefully sifted, when its 
 opinions are formed and announced with judicial 
 fairness, purity and wisdom, it surpasses all other 
 agencies as the instructor, guide and friend of man, 
 and champion of right and truth. But this is not the 
 mission of the partisan press of this country. Sub- 
 servient to the demands of party, it lies on one side 
 or the other until well-posted people have ceased to 
 believe or trust anything that appears in the columns 
 of a large majority of partisan papers. In the presence 
 of grave issues partisan journalism is a damnable voca- 
 tion. Such journalism has done infinite harm in the 
 discussion of the race problem, and if that problem, 
 or, indeed, any other, is ever settled on a just and 
 righteous basis, the influence of a bitter, partisan, un- 
 
40 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 reliable press, both North and South, will have to be 
 largely decreased. 
 
 Another obstacle to any wise reform is the super- 
 ficial trimmer style with which our great men treat 
 this troublesome question. There is something in 
 the power and responsibility of high political station 
 which ought to purify and elevate the heart and 
 mind. But what do we see? Men who masquerade 
 as statesmen at Washington dodging this grave issue, 
 or only handling it sufficiently to meet the exigencies 
 of a campaign or tide over the crisis of an election. 
 They will not look to the future and unselfishly 
 provide for the general welfare. 
 
 It was not always so with our statesmen. There 
 was, at least, one great practical statesman who was 
 too broad to be confined by sectional lines, too wise to 
 be swayed by sectional ambition, and too patriotic to 
 be proud of sectional applause. Henry Clay was 
 equally popular at the North and at the South. His 
 heart took in the whole people. Untouched b}^ local 
 issues, unsoiled by love of self, unchecked by the 
 limits of country and clime, his brave soul leaped to 
 the defense of liberty, the chastisement of oppression, 
 and the protection of humanity all over the world. 
 Many-sided, comprehensive, alert, bold and cautious, 
 original and conservative, he defended every bulwark 
 and led in every reform. Conspicuous, pure and 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM ' 41 
 
 fearless^ he wore a white plume on every field of 
 battle. Eloquence, with white wings, hovered above 
 him, and said, ''This is my beloved son !" He walked 
 upon the sea of popular clamor, and bade its waves be 
 still. He felt the pulse of the people, and his great 
 heart throbbed in unison with theirs. He put the 
 right above the expedient in every crisis of life, and 
 in all lands on which the light of history shall shine 
 the patriot must think and speak in the same breath 
 of public virtue and Henry Clay. As I stood at the 
 feet of his recumbent marble statute at Lexington, 
 thinking of all he did, all he was, and all he wrought 
 for, I could not help exclaim : ''0, master, if you had 
 remained with us, there would have been no war 
 between the sections!" Oh, if his spirit could fall 
 like a mantle on the halls of Congress, there would be 
 a revival of broad and lofty statesmanship that would 
 not leave this race problem as an odious heritage to 
 vex the future. But it is not always the men in posi- 
 tion who do most in a free country. As individuals 
 who create and form public sentiment, we can effectu- 
 ally aid in working out this problem. It has been 
 said that none of us is responsible for his thoughts 
 and ideas — that we are but particles of the age in 
 which we live, believing and thinking, working and 
 desiring in common with the great mass, which we 
 cannot control, and from which we cannot separate 
 
42 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 ourselves. I do not accept this doctrine. I believe in 
 individuality. I believe in independent conscience 
 and responsibility. I have had occasion, as no doubt 
 everyone present has, to examine for myself the ques- 
 tion whether life is worth living. And I could not 
 reach an affirmative answer, except by premising that 
 life should be spent in serving others. Self-glorifica- 
 tion is not a sufficient incentive to live. Self-develop- 
 ment, self-improvement will not answer ; or, if it did, 
 it would be found that nothing else so expands and 
 exalts self as altruistic work. 
 
 In this spirit I appeal to you, true men and women 
 of the North. The South calls to you. Not as a men- 
 dicant, but as a sister, she cries, "Come over into 
 Macedonia and help us !" Help us to solve this race 
 problem on a fair and just basis ; a basis that will 
 stand the test of ultimate truth, and right, and honor. 
 The South will welcome your assistance. She harbors 
 no resentment. She seeks no reprisals. I confess 
 that there was a time since the war that we hated the 
 people of the North, and did not like to see them come 
 among us. But 
 
 ^ "Consideration, like an angel, came 
 
 And whipped the offending Adam out of us." 
 
 In the midst of pestilence and flood, we came to 
 
 know that the people of the North are a generous and 
 
 true-hearted people, a chivalrous, patriotic and just 
 
THE RACE PROBLEM 43 
 
 people, who always succor the weak, the suffering, 
 and the oppressed. And now we want your good 
 will, your good words, your trade, your capital, your 
 people. The South is proud of the North, proud of 
 New England, proud of the mighty West, and she 
 wants you to be proud of her. She will yet conamand 
 the admiration of the world, and, if she can, in a fair 
 race, she will outstrip you all in art, industry, com- 
 merce, science, and literature, just as 
 
 ''Captive Greece led captive her proud conqueror." 
 In the feelings I express and the sentiments I utter 
 on this occasion, I represent the generation in the 
 South which did not take part in the war. We were 
 boys beneath our teens when the drama opened at 
 Fort Sumter. We watched with keen delight the 
 Southern soldiers go forth to battle, gay and confi- 
 dent, blessed with the smiles of beauty, with banners 
 flying, in all the 
 
 "Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war." 
 And then we saw them come back, when all was over, 
 come back in silence and defeat, with no banners or 
 music or smiles to welcome them. But in that hour 
 of darkness we heard no word of repining from those 
 men. We saw them wipe the battle-sweat from their 
 brows and take up the raveled threads of life with 
 cheerfulness and zeal, saw them face desolation and 
 poverty with calmness and fortitude, comforting the 
 
44 THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 disconsolate, caring for the wounded and infirm, en- 
 couraging the young and tender, adapting their spirits 
 and their'energies to a new order of things, working 
 with might and main to repair the ravages of war, 
 working amidst obloquy, confusion and obstruction, 
 working with tireless vim, without a murmur and 
 without pausing to shed a natural tear over the grave 
 of buried hopes ! And when we saw this, I tell you 
 we thought those old soldiers were the grandest men 
 on earth. It is no use talking to us about those men ! 
 "Perplexed in the extreme," they may have done 
 something wrong, but their triumph is that the new 
 generation in the South worship them as heroes who 
 never lost their honor and manhood, even at Appo- 
 mattox Court House. 
 
 But we love the Union too. We devoutly believe in 
 the perpetuity of this great government. We thank 
 God that the danger which disturbed the vision of 
 Webster, '^of States dissevered, discordant, bellig- 
 erent," has passed, like a troubled dream, away. We 
 look into the future of our country with hope and 
 gladness, and the further we gaze the further we go 
 into the depths of her career, new honors and new 
 triumphs come out and cluster around her pathway, 
 and in all the myriad of stars that blaze in her firma- 
 ment no star differeth from another star in glory ! 
 
THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION. 
 
 [Address before Southern Educational Association, at Atlanta, Ga., July 5, 1892.] 
 
 There are seven millions of negroes in the South, 
 more than twice as many people as inhabited the 
 American colonies at the time of the Revolution, more 
 than three times as many people as inhabited Alsace- 
 Lorraine, which more than once unsettled the govern- 
 ments of Europe. If the subject which I shall discuss 
 concerned the happiness, welfare, and preservation of 
 these people alone, it would be a subject of tremen- 
 dous import, but it concerns not only the negroes, but 
 also the whites of the South, and embraces in its far- 
 reaching scope the liberties, the progress, the civiliza- 
 tion, and honor of our entire people. 
 
 I speak from the standpoint of one who is proud of 
 the course which the Southern States h-ave pursued 
 with regard to negro education and ready to cham- 
 pion that course against all critics, let them be who 
 they may. 
 
 I shall treat the subject under three general heads : 
 
 1. What the South has done for negro education. 
 
 2. What the South ought to do for negro education. 
 
 3. What the South will do for negro education. 
 
 1. I shall not worry with statistics. One can find 
 rows of figures and tables in books easily accessible to 
 
46 THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 all. I simply wish to state in round numbers that 
 every State in the South during the last twenty years 
 has appropriated and spent millions of dollars for 
 negro education. In all of these States the whites 
 own on the average 19-20 of the property and pay 
 19-20 of the State taxes for all purposes. The negroes 
 own 1-20 of the property and pay less than that pro- 
 portion of the taxes. Yet the school funds are im- 
 partially distributed between the races according to 
 the enrollment of children of school age. The prin- 
 cipal contribution of the negro to the school funds is 
 his poll tax, and in all the States he receives largely 
 more than this. In other words, the Southern people, 
 the much abused whites of the South, for they have 
 had absolute control of the State government for the 
 last 15 years, have constantly and cheerfully paid the 
 taxes to keep up the general expenses of the govern- 
 ment and also paid, freely and promptly, taxes to help 
 educate the negro children. 
 
 In Louisiana the negroes pay less than 1-10 of the 
 taxes and receive more than 1-3 of the school fund. 
 In Mississippi it is the same. In Alabama the negroes 
 pay 1-20 of the taxes and have received more than 2-5 
 of the school funds collected in the last twenty years. 
 In Georgia the disproportion between the amounts 
 paid and the amounts received by the negroes is still 
 more astounding. 
 
THE PROBLEM OP NEGRO EDUCATION 47 
 
 When we remember that some of these school funds, 
 so impartially divided with the negroes, are the inter- 
 est on township funds and other permanent funds 
 acquired long before the war ; when we remember 
 that the negroes cause largely more than their share 
 of the expenses of running the government, and re- 
 member all the facts surrounding and succeeding their 
 emancipation ; how they plunged the white people 
 into a maelstrom of ruin and debt and levied on them 
 a tribute more exacting and more exhausting than 
 ever paid by any other defeated people in ancient or 
 modern times ; when we remember the trouble which 
 their freedom gave the South, the bitterness and abuse 
 poured on them by extremists of the North ; when we 
 remember all these things and then remember that in 
 their exhausted and crippled condition immediately 
 following the distress and desolation and darkness of 
 reconstruction, the Southern whites continued to 
 liberally endow and support schools for the free edu- 
 cation of the negro children, I think all will agree 
 that there is no grander spectacle in the annals of 
 history. Don't say that the negroes by their labor 
 enable the landowner to pay taxes. This is an 
 ingenious fallacy. No more rent is charged than 
 should be if there were no taxes. Taxes come out 
 of the land and not out of the labor. This is a 
 principle of political economy and every one familiar 
 
48 THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 with the business of the South knows that the land- 
 owner keeps up and supports the neojro laborers, as 
 evidenced by the fact that the lar^^est employers of 
 negroes are surely growing bankrupt. The truth is 
 palpable and cannot be averted. The men who own 
 the property pay the taxes and the negroes who do 
 not own the property enjoy the taxes. 
 
 I call the world's attention to this fact. Impover- 
 ished, harassed, abused, cursed with all the burdens 
 and blessed with none of the benefits of federal legis- 
 tion, the white taxpayers and property holders of the 
 South have gone on contributing to the cultivation 
 and upbuilding of a race whose passions and preju- 
 dices have been stirred up against them. When was 
 the like ever seen before? 
 
 It is not meant to be unjust or unkind to anybody. 
 I am w^illing to recognize the philanthropy and muni- 
 ficence of Peabody and Slater and other benefactors, 
 and I do not complain of those who love to eulogize 
 those friends of negro education. But for my part, I 
 rather dwell on the philanthropy and beneficence of 
 -the Southern people themselves, and I cannot place 
 their friendship for the negro race second to any. 
 
 Mark Anton}^, in that wonderful oration which 
 Shakespeare makes him speak to the Romans, when 
 referring to the will of Caesar, says : 
 
THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION- 49 
 
 "Let but the commons hear this testament 
 (Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read) 
 And they would go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds, 
 And dip their napkins in his sacred blood; 
 Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, 
 And, dying, mention it within their wills, 
 Bequeathing it, as a rich legacy, 
 Unto their issue." 
 
 And it seems to me that if the negroes of the South 
 would understand how kind, how generous, how char- 
 itable the whites have been to them, if they would 
 consider and reflect on the self-sacrifice, the loss, the 
 endurance, and the true nobilit}^ of soul involved in 
 the efforts of the whites to educate the negro children 
 under so many provocations and disadvantages — it 
 seems to me if they would know and appreciate all 
 these things, that the negroes would admire and trust, 
 and even adore their white neighbors as their truest and 
 purest friends. I believe they do. Confidence is a 
 plant of slow growth, but it has at last sprung up in 
 the bosom of the negroes. In spite of a thousand 
 drawbacks the negroes again look with confidence, 
 esteem, and affection upon their white fellow-citizens 
 and have forever turned their backs on the radical 
 friends ^vho would convert them into drunken Calibans, 
 and the diabolical lagos, who would mold them into 
 credulous and murderous Othellos. 
 
 I said I would not be unkind to any one, but I have 
 no patience with the Pecksniffian pharisaism of those 
 
50 THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 * 
 
 who dare to criticise the conduct of the South toward 
 the negro while congratulating themselves on their 
 superior virtue. The negroes of Massachusetts have 
 not advanced socially and intellectually during a hun- 
 dred years of freedom. In less than one-fourth the 
 time the negroes of the South have advanced im- 
 mensely in every direction. I would gladly conciliate 
 all the help possible ^from the North to educate and 
 elevate the negro. We need all the help we can get. 
 I devoutly thank the noble men and women, no mat- 
 ter whence the}^ come, who have shown their faith in 
 neo^ro education bv their works. But for those who 
 depreciate and misrepresent the views and actions of 
 the South, who refuse to give her credit for her heroic 
 efforts to enlighten an enfranchised race, I have noth- 
 ing but abysmal contempt and bold defiance. 
 
 The South's treatment of the negro is perfection 
 itself compared with the North^s treatment not only of 
 the Indians and Chinese, but the teeming millions of 
 white slaves that throng her marts. 
 
 There are thousands of able-bodied men in the City 
 of New York who have had no supper to-day and who 
 will get no breakfast to-morrow. There are no sup- 
 perless negroes in the South. To-day there are thou- 
 sands of wretched women in the City of New York with 
 but one garment and that a ragged one. There 
 are no unclad negro women in the South, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 51 
 
 winter or summer. All over the North there 
 are men and women who do not sleep on a 
 bed from beginning to end of the year and do not 
 know in the morning where they will find shelter at 
 night. There are no homeless negroes in the South. 
 All over the North paupers, beggars, and tramps are 
 ceaselessly beating the country witli their weary feet in 
 a race for bread. There are no negro paupers, no negro 
 tramps or beggars in the South. Let the censors of 
 the South look nearer home. While they are busy 
 searching for the mote that is in our eyes, a whole for- 
 est of beams sticks out of their sightless moral sockets. 
 
 2. While we have cause to congratulate ourselves 
 on what the South has done for negro education, we 
 cannot dissiuise from ourselves the fact that there is a 
 growing dissatisfaction with the system and a tendency 
 on the part of many to regard the money spent on 
 negrro education as wasted or as robbery of the white 
 children. Consequently an increasing number of 
 people are disposed to advocate the withdrawal of sup- 
 port from negro schools except to the extent of the taxes 
 paid by the negroes, which would virtually abolish 
 those schools. This is the alarming tendency which 
 all wise and good citizens wish to counteract. 
 
 It is my duty to speak plainly. Love of the South 
 is the lamp by which my feet are guided. I am totally 
 opposed to the South's abridging its aid to negro edu- 
 
52 THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 cation. In my judgment an abridgment would be 
 detrimental and, in the long run, perhaps fatal to her 
 material and moral interests. I believe that the South 
 should educate the negro at the public expense, be- 
 cause it makes of him a more useful and valuable citi- 
 zen. No one can deny that education makes the negro, 
 as it does the whites, more peaceable and orderly, and 
 thereby decreases the criminal expenses of the state. I 
 deny that a reduction of the percentage of the illit- 
 eracy among the negroes increases the percentage of 
 crime. This is not true in any land under the sun. 
 There are instances well marked, like the dreams that 
 come true, where so-called educated negroes have be- 
 come the insolent and lawless leaders of riots — but 
 these are exceptions, or rather it will be found in every 
 such instance that they have but a smattering of educa- 
 cation, "a little learning," which is not only a dangerous 
 but a poisonous thing when it is not mixed with moral 
 character. But in the main the best educated negroes 
 are the most law-abiding, the most respectable and re- 
 spectful, because they perceive and understand the true 
 conditions under which they live. The negro burglars 
 and robbers and assailants of women are without excep- 
 tion most densely and brutishly ignorant. The class 
 of young negroes who are growing up and who are ex- 
 pected to be so dangerous in the future can be saved 
 from a cruel fate only by constant and close teaching 
 
THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 53 
 
 in the public schools. It is said that education ren- 
 ders the negro thriftless and worthless as a laborer. 
 This is not true. The assessment rolls of the Southern 
 States show that the negroes are acquiring more prop- 
 ert3^in towns and cities and in communities where they 
 are largely in the minority than in places where they 
 constitute nearly the entire population, and it is pre- 
 cisely in those places where their constant contact with 
 the whites accelerates enlightenment that they are 
 most thrifty. It must be so. Educated labor is skilled 
 labor. Skilled labor is monev-making labor. It has 
 been said that knowledge is power and again that knowl- 
 edge is beauty. But I preach the new doctrine, that 
 knowledge is wealth — wealth for the individual, 
 wealth for the world, but more especially w^ealth for 
 the nation. Education pays. It can be coined free of 
 charge into dollars and cents at everv mint in the 
 world. 
 
 Skilled .labor is what the South most needs to-day. 
 John C. Calhoun said that the South did not want 
 skilled labor in the days of slavery and he opposed the 
 encouragement of manufactories in the South because 
 he said they would require the introduction of edu- 
 cated labor, which, in his judgment, was hostile to the 
 institution of slavery. For the same reason the laws 
 of the Southern States forbade the teaching of slaves, 
 because education is incompatible with bondage. The 
 
54 THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 result was that in the South the agricultural labor be-, 
 came, and to a considerable extent remains to-day, the 
 most ignorant in the world. But in the glare of battle, 
 by the flash of the musket and cannon, the South saw 
 the necessity of a new industrial policy, and another 
 day dawned on her progress. Since the war our most 
 enlightened people have recognized the imperative 
 duty of establishing manufactories in the South, and 
 where our people have been most enlightened and pro- 
 gressive this new policy has been most adopted. 
 
 In Georgia, where the old labor regime had borne 
 its ripest fruits, whether for good or for evil, the man- 
 ufacturing policy was earliest welcomed and has 
 flourished most. At its touch old things became new. 
 Poverty flew before its approach and new industries 
 sprang up beueath its tread. And across these worn- 
 out fields that were abandoned fifty years ago, there 
 floated a music sweeter to my Southern ears than the 
 wordless songs of Mendelssohn, sweeter than the sym- 
 phonies of Beethoven, sweeter than the oratorios of 
 Handel — the music of the cotton mills, the music 
 of the future for the South. 
 
 To carry this policy to its full fruition is the mission 
 of the highest Southern genius and patriotism. Edu- 
 cation is the instrumentality through which it must 
 be done. Education alone will convert our thriftless, 
 awkward labor into thrifty, skilled labor, ready for 
 
THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION -55 
 
 the mine, the factory, the foundry and all the diver- 
 sified and developed enterprises that accompany them. 
 Ignorant labor is unprofitable labor. It is not over- 
 production that afflicts the South. It is not false econ- 
 omv nor idleness nor apathv that causes the terrible 
 agricultural depression that prevails. It is the agglom- 
 erated ignorance of negro labor that makes it a bur- 
 den, a drain instead of a resource, a load instead of a 
 gain. 
 
 This worthless system of labor binds the South to 
 the juggernaut of borrowed capital. It is the hard con- 
 dition of imperious necessity that makes us the reluct- 
 ant victim of grinding monopoly and the ignorance of 
 our labor prevents our escape. We can never hope to 
 become independent in the South industrially, finan- 
 cially, and commercially, until the great body of our 
 laboring population are more intelligent and product- 
 ive and self-supporting. The ignorance of the blacks 
 makes both them and their employers the worst of 
 slaves to the money power, whose lictors are monopo- 
 lies and trusts. 
 
 In the southern part of this hemisphere, where 
 nature loves to riot in mad excess, there is a man-eating 
 plant of giant size and monstrous form. Its tentacu- 
 lated foliage entraps its victim and safely folds him in 
 the embrace of death, sucking the blood and substance 
 from the bodv and leaving it a dry and shapeless 
 
56 THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 wreck. We have no man-eating plants in this part 
 of the western hemisphere. North America does not 
 produce such monstrous vegetation. But we have an 
 odious institution, a devilish parisitic social growth 
 called the trust, which does the work as well. It, too, 
 is a blood-sucking arrangement and with its horrible 
 monopolistic mouths it devours the life and substance 
 and souls of men and leaves them cold and pallid in 
 its wake. 
 
 What shall deliver us from the body of this death? 
 I know not unless it be education, virtuous, patriotic, 
 thorough, universal education. 
 
 There are other material and utilitarian reasons why 
 
 the South should continue to educate the negroes, who 
 
 form and must for a long time form a large part of the 
 
 citizenhood. But there are higher and more potent 
 
 considerations that enforce the same postulate. One 
 
 of these considerations is that it would be unjust to 
 
 the negroes to deprive them of an opportunity to gain 
 
 an education as long as it is in our power to give them 
 
 such an opportunity. No State or nation can afford 
 
 to do an act of passive or positive injustice. The 
 
 words of Carlyle are worthy to be held in remembrance 
 
 by statesmen : 
 
 "Justice, justice: woe betides us everywhere when, for this 
 reason or for that, we fail to do justice. There is but one thing 
 needful for the world, but that one is indispensable. Justice, 
 justice in the name of heaven ; give us justice." 
 
THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 57 
 
 The negroes imitate and copy the customs aud ways 
 of the Southern whites with absolute accuracy. They 
 imitate us in the churches and in the ballroom. They 
 imitate us in the school and in the theater, and, alas, 
 also in the saloon. They imitate our habits and our 
 language, our style, our dress — the negro girls are sure 
 not to leave a single ribbon off. I do not blame them 
 for such imitation of their superiors. I applaud their 
 taste and good sense. But does it not impose a fear- 
 ful responsibility on us to think that the destiny, the 
 civilization, the weal, or the woe of this entire race de- 
 pends on us? It does not matter what may be the 
 end of it all, or what is the object or plan which the 
 Creator has in view. It is enough for us to know that 
 we can raise ourselves by raising others. To illustrate 
 this point, I hope I may refer without irreverence to 
 a passage of Scripture. 
 
 We are told that when the Son of Man shall come 
 in His glory and call the good to their reward, He will 
 bless them, not for their success as preachers or prose- 
 lyters, but because they fed Him when hungry, gave 
 him drink when thirsty, clothed Him when naked, 
 visited Him when sick or in prision, and showed 
 Him hospitality when a stranger, and when the 
 righteous, overwhelmed with a sense of humility and 
 unworthiness, shall disclaim having done such things 
 for the Lord, the King shall answer in these signif- 
 
58 THE PROBLEM OP NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 icant words : ''Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye 
 have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren 
 you have done it unto me." 
 
 If you will but think of it, there is a world of precious 
 meaning in those words. I may be wrong. I know 
 nothing about the rules of exegesis, but it seems to me 
 that God Alrnighty acknowledges himself under obli- 
 gations for an act of kindness to one of the least of his 
 human creatures. Is it not so? Here we find the 
 fountain of the idea of universal brotherhood of men. 
 Here we find that devotion to the amelioration of 
 humanity is the only road to salvation for individuals 
 and for nations. 
 
 When I was young, in the heyday of my intellectual 
 fervor, I strove to find out what is the highest good of 
 existence — what is the noblest aim of human life. I 
 searched the fields of literature, I interrogated the in- 
 nermost recesses of nature ; I asked the friendly stars 
 that look down upon us from the marble walks of 
 . Heaven, and of the great all-seeing orb of day, as he 
 sank to rest, I asked what is the highest good? And 
 they were silent as the flight of time ; but as I grew 
 older the answer came, not from the all-seeing sun, 
 not from the deep-eyed stars, not from the multitudin- 
 ous voices of nature, but from a still small voice whose 
 whispered accents none but the listening ear of con- 
 science can catch, the answer came, "Man's highest 
 
THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 59 
 
 good is the service of man.^^ This is the lesson of all 
 civilization. It is the song of the ages. It is the 
 psalm of humanity. 
 
 I have been asked as to the limitations that should 
 be fixed to negro education. I think the only limita- 
 tion should be his capacity and desire to learn. I do 
 not believe, on general principles, in the government's 
 extending aid to higher education except in so far as 
 it is necessary to qualify teachers for the common 
 schools. As long as there is a need of elementary 
 education the government should confine its aid to 
 the common schools. I think the negro is capable of 
 comprehending and digesting all that is taught in 
 such schools. I know it is said there is a limit to the 
 negro's capacity to acquire learning and that second- 
 ary education is thrown away on him, and as the 
 proof of this it is argued that his race will have to go 
 through long periods of tutelage before it can grasp 
 the ideas of science and advanced civilization. These 
 are weak speculations. It is a matter of observation 
 and experience that the negroes are deficient in pow- 
 ers of abstraction, generalization and reflection, but 
 what may be their capacity to develop even these fac- 
 ulties is an unknown problem. The human mind 
 during the vast area of prehistoric times advanced 
 from generation to generation with incredible slow- 
 ness. It was only after the substitution of metal for 
 
60 THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 instruments of horn and stone that rapid advance 
 began which has been accelerated with incredible 
 speed during the last few hours of racial existence. 
 The 'human mind, which differs in different races, not 
 in quality, but in degree merely, is like the wheat 
 which lay imprisoned for 3000 years in the Egyptian 
 sarcophagus, but burst into vitality as soon as exposed 
 to the fructifying sunshine. So with the mind. The 
 speed of its development depends more on environment 
 than on race. What the negroes may attain under the 
 highly favoring conditions of surrounding white intel- 
 ligence, to what extent and at what rate of speed their 
 mental faculties may develop must be all conjecture. 
 A safe rule is to give them all the education they will 
 take and improve. So with the question as to what 
 branches should be taught to negroes. I see no reason 
 why they should differ materially from the books taught 
 to white children. Of course, white and negro schools 
 must be and will be always kept separate. It might 
 be well for the special benefit of this race to inculcate 
 certain moral excellencies, such as honesty, truth, 
 cleanliness, etc., but these matters are left properly to 
 the teacher. I am ver}^ positive that the Southern his- 
 tory which is taught in negro schools should be written 
 from a Southern standpoint, and that the true, un- 
 varnished facts about slavery, about the treatment of 
 the negroes before and after the war by the Southern 
 
THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 61 
 
 whites as compared with the treatment of the negroes 
 by all other people should be impressed upon their 
 minds. They would thus grow up to love and es- 
 teem their w4iite fellow-citizens as they have done in 
 the past. 
 
 The schools should be taught for longer terms, and 
 the means with w^hich to support them should be 
 increased by increasing the poll tax and by urging 
 the negroes to supplement the public funds by private 
 subscriptions. But the great reform needed in negro 
 education at the South is better teachers for negro 
 schools. There is not a doubt that nine-tenths of the 
 nec^fro school teachers are totallv unfit to teach the 
 alphabet. The examination for teachers are farces, 
 and in barely any case is the law followed. The re- 
 sult is that all over the South ignorant young colored 
 girls are drawing meagre salaries for pretending to 
 teach overcrowded schools. The few good colored 
 schools are in the towns, and here the negroes have 
 made phenomenal progress. But the sort of teaching 
 carried on in the rural districts is a wanton waste of 
 monev. It would be better, far better and manlier, to 
 stop the colored country schools altogether than to 
 continue paying the people's money for education that 
 is worth nothing. What is the remedy? Obviously, 
 to devote a large portion of the funds now used for 
 common schools to normal colored schools. In fact, 
 
62 THE. PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 it would pay every State in the South to suspend its 
 colored schools for two years and spend all the money 
 now devoted to them in preparing colored teachers for 
 their duty. I do not make this as a suggestion, but 
 as an indication of the greatness of the evil to be 
 eradicated. I call upon every Legislature in the 
 South and charge it to take courageous hold of this 
 subject. The only remedy is to prepare colored 
 teachers for the colored schools, and I admit that 
 colored teachers, when properly educated, are the best 
 in the world for their own race. 
 
 You cannot get white teachers for colored schools in 
 the South. There is a public sentiment which de- 
 mands that the races be kept absolutely distinct, and 
 forbids the least approach to social association. This 
 is the prompting of a divine race instinct and not 
 prejudice. A young lady from my State went out as 
 a missionary and is teaching black children on the 
 west coast of Africa. She has no race prejudice. 
 Another Louisiana young lady is teaching half-blood 
 Indians in South America, but at home she would 
 have shirked from teaching negroes, not from hatred 
 or prejudice, but in obedience to an inflexible and in- 
 exorable public opinion which makes and enforces 
 laws as fixed as those of the Medes and Persians. 
 
 Say what you will, this public opinion is founded 
 in the deepest philosophy. The races were made dis- 
 
THE PROBLEM OP NEGRO EDUCATION 63 
 
 tinct by the Creator, and it would be impiety to efface 
 the distinction. The one way to keep the races in the 
 South distinct is to provide separate schools, sepa- 
 rate churches, separate social walks, separate cus- 
 toms, and separate coaches, and he who censures 
 these provisions is a traitor to nature and a rebel 
 against divine wisdom. I believe in these race 
 distinctions and separations as I believe firmly in 
 the truth itself, and yet I affirm in the presence 
 of ray Maker that I have not a grain of preju- 
 dice against the negroes. I think of them with 
 the utmost kindness. I feel nothing but friendship 
 for them. From my boyhood I have found warm 
 hearts beneath black bosoms, and I here endorse the 
 verdict of Stanley that the Africans are the kindest 
 and most affectionate people on the face of the earth. 
 I have witnessed many such scenes as that which 
 Stanley describes in his march to the Nyanza. 
 
 ^'We have also," says Stanley, '^a Manyumo woman 
 who w^as a hideous object, but her husband tended 
 and served her with surpassing and devoted tender- 
 ness. Death, death everywhere and on every day and 
 in every shape ; but love, supreme love, stood like a 
 guardian angel to make death beautiful. Poor, un- 
 lettered, meek creatures, the humblest of all hu- 
 manity ; yet here unseen and unknown of those who 
 sing of noble sacrifices proving your brotherhood w^ith 
 
64 THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 US amid the sternest realities by lulling your loved 
 ones to rest with the choicest flowers of love." 
 
 I can never speak a harsh word of the negro when 
 his character and disposition have not been perverted 
 and poisoned by designing schemers. Whatever may 
 be the solution of the tremendous race problem that 
 confronts the South, I would never have one act done 
 to mar the gentleness and charity with which we have 
 ever treated the negroes. I shall forever cherish the 
 memory of the friendship and tenderness with which 
 my father treated his servants and the affection with 
 which they responded to his treatment. Stonewall 
 Jackson was the brave chevalier of the South. We 
 are apt to think of him mounted on a steaming charger 
 with drawn sword dashing on the enemy. Yet Jack- 
 son taught a negro Sunday school at Lexington, and I 
 do not think a grander picture of him could be drawn 
 than one which represents him standing with open 
 book before his little school of pickaninies. Such was 
 the character of the Napoleon of the confederacy. 
 
 I will not attempt to discuss the objections urged 
 against the education of the negro. They live among 
 us and here they will remain forever. The idea of 
 exportation is absurd. Total disfranchisement is 
 chimerical. The argument that white supremacy 
 will be endangered by negro education does not de- 
 serve an answer. The claim that their enlightenment 
 
THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 65 
 
 will lead to social equality and amalgamation is equally 
 untenable. The more intelligent the negro becomes the 
 better he understands the true relations and divergen- 
 cies of the races, the less he is inclined to social in- 
 termingling with the whites. Education will really 
 emphasize and widen the social gulf between the whites 
 and the blacks, to the great advantage of the state, for 
 it is a heterogeneous and not homogeneous people 
 that make a republic strong and progressive. 
 
 It is not my purpose nor my province to solve the 
 race problem in all its momentous aspects. It has 
 been my simple and modest duty to make a plea for 
 state aid to negro education, and I want it remembered 
 that I base my plea most of all on the high duty that 
 springs from superiority of the white race. What- 
 ever the effect of education on the negroes, we cannot 
 afford to withhold from them the opportunity to at- 
 tain their full mental and moral stature. Whatever 
 be the imperfections and the incapacity of the negroes, 
 we dare not be base in our treatment of them. 
 
 "It is excellent to have a giant's strength, hut it is tyrannous to 
 use it Hke a giant." 
 
 But it is not my intention to assume the role of 
 mentor, still less of censor. As I said before, lam 
 proud of the record the South has made on the sub- 
 ject of negro education. I own that I am a par- 
 tial witness. I acknowledge that I am an interested 
 
66 THE PROBLEM OF NEGRO EDUCATION 
 
 observer. I admire the North, I respect the East, I 
 esteem the West. But I love tht3 South, I love her dear 
 familiar fields where I have wandered in boyhood's 
 happy days. I love her bright skies, her murmuring 
 streams, her fair flowers, and her soft delicious atmos- 
 phere, whose 
 
 "Gentle gales, fanning their odoriferous wings, 
 Dispense native perfumes, and whisper 
 Whence they stole those balmy spoils." 
 
 I love her institutions, her customs, her ways, her 
 noble men, and all the constellations of her glorious 
 womanhood. 
 
 Heroic South ! Home of my forefathers, home of 
 my kindred, hope of my children, the temple and treas- 
 ury of my heart. 
 
 March on in the pathway of honor, duty, and truth. 
 Keep thy escutcheon bright as the shield of Launcelot 
 in the tower of Elaine. Teach the world lessons of 
 self-sacrifice, magnanimity, and humanity, and show 
 to the ages how sublime and beautiful the lives of men 
 can be made beneath the southern stars. 
 
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