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Negro teachers are generally paid lower salaries than white teachers for two reasons. First, Negro teachers are not so well trained and are less efficient than white teachers. Second, Negro teachers have a lower standard of living than white teachers. In other words the pay of Negro teachers is governed to a large extent by the same economic laws which determine wages in any other line of work. In hundreds of white schools in the South the salaries of the teachers are very low for the same reason that the salaries of Negro teachers are low. In the mountains of Kentucky, a white school-teacher receives a salary of only $40 per month, but is able to live comfortably on it; whereas a white teacher in Louisville has to be paid $150 a month to cover the higher cost of living in that locality. In Oklahoma the contrast between the salaries of white teachers in the common schools is greater than the contrast between the salaries of Negro and white teachers in the common schools of Richmond, Charlotte, Atlanta, Montgomery, New Orleans, Memphis, or St. Louis. Among teachers of lower grade the Negroes receive less than one-half as much as the whites, but in all of the states the difference between the salaries of the two races diminishes among the teachers of higher grade. In Norfolk, Virginia, the salaries of Negro principals of schools have in recent years increased faster than the salaries of white principals, and the same is true as to increase in the salaries of high-school teachers.

Expenditures for white schools have increased faster than for Negro schools, for the reason chiefly that the needs for white schools have grown faster. It is necessary to remember that in educational progress the white people were a long way ahead of the Negro at the close of the Civil War, and hence it has been necessary to provide a

great many more secondary schools for the whites than for the Negroes. There are ten times as many white children prepared to enter high school as Negro children.17 Not only are few Negro children prepared to enter a high school, but to a greater extent than white children, they have to drop out of school to earn a living. In the entire South there are only 24,034 Negro children pursuing secondary studies.18

The greater cost of building and maintaining high schools as compared to common schools is one of the reasons for the greater expenditure for the education of white children." In this connection it is to be remembered also that the demands for secondary education for Negro children are met in a large measure by schools maintained by Northern philanthropy.

The white schools in the South have suffered, and still suffer, from ill-trained teachers, but slowly, through the development of more and better training-schools, this drawback is being overcome. The Negro schools have suffered more in this respect than the white schools, because of the smaller proportion of Negroes fitted to teach, and the difficulty of providing Negro training-schools. The number of qualified Negroes ready to attend normal schools has been so small that only a half-dozen Southern states have deemed it expedient to establish a Negro normal school. Because very few Negroes are able to attend a school which takes them away from home, it has been found necessary to train Negro teachers in county schools.

Up to 1918 there were seventy-seven county schools for the training of Negro teachers, distributed as follows: Alabama, eleven; Arkansas, five; Florida, one; Georgia, five; Kentucky, two; Maryland, one; Louisiana, four; Mississippi, three; North Carolina, fourteen; South Carolina, six; Tennessee, six; Texas, five; Virginia, eight. The number of such schools is rapidly increasing. They are supported mainly from public-school funds, but receive aid for current expenses from the state fund, the General Education Board, and from private individuals, white and black. In addition to the county training-schools, there are city normals for Negroes in Louisville, Baltimore, and Washington, and teacher-training courses in the Negro high schools of Richmond, St. Louis, and Little Rock. In Virginia public aid is given to private schools giving summer courses in teaching.

17 Jones, op. cit., p. 42.

18 Ibid. p. 42.

19 Ibid., p. 29.

A movement making for general improvement in the Negro schools is the appointment of Negro county supervisors. There are already about 163 counties in the South which have such supervisors. Their salaries are paid partly from the county funds and partly from the Jeanes Fund.20 Ten of the Southern states have state supervisors of Negro schools, but so far only white men have received the appoint

ments.

In the administration of the public-school system in the South it is difficult to do justice to both races under so widely varying conditions, and it is always much easier to find fault with the system than to point out a remedy.

When judging the treatment of the Negroes by the white South, it would be well to consider the treatment of the Negro by the whites in Australia and in South Africa. Maurice S. Evans, a highly intelligent and broad-minded citizen of South Africa, recently visited the South to acquaint himself with our Negro problem through personal observations. He noticed "that on each million of Negro population in the South (1910-11) a million dollars was annually spent for education. In Natal the million natives receive $75,000 worth. In the Transvaal the position is not so good. Here, in this Northern province of the Union of South Africa, it is computed that the native population contribute $1,500,000 to the State Exchequer, and yet barely $15,000 is spent upon their education. It is well sometimes to make such comparisons when one is told that the position in the South in this regard is without parallel, for discrimination and injustice in the civilized. world." 21 He adds that primary education is "within the reach of the great majority of Negro children in the South. I would also say that a special industrial course, or a University education, may be obtained by any intelligent Negro boy or girl, however poor, if endowed with grit and character." 22. . . and: "that though the appropriations towards Negro education are small as compared with those received by the whites, the opportunities for primary education for the Negro child are greater than in many other civilized countries, and the number of institutions for higher learning are surprising to one who had imagined that the opportunity to the Negro ended with a poor elementary education.'

"23

"Jones, op. cit., p. 36.

"Black and White in the Southern States, p. 127.

"Ibid., p. 127.

Evans, op. cit., p. 155.

CHAPTER 22

INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING

Institutions of Higher Learning and for Technical Instruction Supported by the States and the Federal Government-Institutions of Higher Learning Supported by White Religious Organizations-Endowments of White Philanthropists to Aid Negro Education-Donations of the Negroes Themselves for the Education of Their Race

IN

N the South there are about a dozen Negro normal schools supported by the states, and state aid is also given to private institutions offering courses for the training of teachers. There are also sixteen state agricultural and mechanical colleges for Negroes, supported partly by the states and partly by the federal government.

Under the Smith-Lever Act, passed by Congress in 1913 for agricultural extension work in the several states, the Negroes are receiving their share of the funds appropriated. The terms of the act require each state to raise a fund equal to the sum contributed by the federal government. The work for the Negroes, under the operations of this act, has consisted of establishing movable schools giving instruction in agriculture and home economics.

Under the Smith-Hughes Vocational Education Act of 1917, the Negroes, as well as the white people of the South, are receiving a very practical kind of education which the ordinary elementary school is not able to furnish. The vocations included in the scope of the act are agriculture, home economics, trade, and a variety of industries.

This act, like the Smith-Lever Act, requires each state to raise a fund equal to that received from the federal government. The share. of the funds which go to the Negro schools is determined by the percentage of Negroes in the total rural population.

Looked at from the standpoint of numbers, the Negroes of the South are better provided with institutions of higher learning than the whites. In each of the Southern states there are from a half-dozen to a dozen Negro colleges and universities.

The first impulse toward higher education for the Negroes of the

South came from the American Missionary Association, which was strongly anti-slavery, and which planned to establish one school of higher learning in each of the larger Southern states, normal and graded schools in the principal cities, and common and parochial schools in rural centers.

Under this plan arose Hampton Institute in Virginia in 1861, and later Atlanta University, Georgia; Berea College, Kentucky; Fisk University, Tennessee; Straight University, Louisiana; Talladega College, Alabama; Tougaloo University, Mississippi; and Tillotson College, Texas.

In 1862 the American Baptist Home Mission Society began to take interest in the refugees within the lines of the Union army. At first its efforts were purely religious, but they later expanded into an extensive educational program resulting in the establishing of eight institutions, as follows: For men, Atlanta Baptist College and Virginia Union University; for women, Spelman Seminary, Atlanta, and Hartshorn Memorial College, Richmond; and as coeducational institutions, Bishop College, Texas; Benedict College, South Carolina; Shaw University, North Carolina; and Jackson College, Mississippi. In addition to maintaining these schools, the society has given aid to several schools owned by Negroes.

In 1866 the Northern Methodists organized their Freedmen's Aid Southern Education Society, and their efforts have resulted in the establishment of ten institutions of college grade, and numerous others for more elementary study. They have established Clark University in South Atlanta, Georgia, which includes Gammon Theological Seminary, the best equipped and endowed of all theological schools for Negroes; Claflin University, South Carolina; New Orleans University, Louisiana; Rust University, Mississippi; Walden University, Tennessee; Wiley University, Texas; Bennett College, North Carolina; George R. Smith College, Missouri; Morgan College, Maryland; and Philander Smith College, Arkansas.

In 1882 the Presbyterians incorporated a Board of Missions for Freedmen and began educational work in behalf of the Southern Negroes. The chief institutions established by this board are Biddle University, North Carolina, for men, and for women, five seminaries: Ingleside, Virginia; Scotia, North Carolina; Barber Memorial, Alabama; Mary Holmes, Mississippi; and Mary Allen, Texas. Independent of the work of this board, the United Presbyterians have established Knoxville College, Tennessee.

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