CHAPTER 23

INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING (CONT.)

Institutions of Higher Learning Supported by the Negroes Themselves--Endowed and Variously Supported Professional and Industrial Schools-The Work of Hampton and Tuskegee-Public Libraries for Negroes

TH

HE first step by the Negroes themselves in the direction of higher education for their race was taken by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which during the Civil War had come into sole possession of Wilberforce University in Ohio. At the close of the war the Negroes educated at the university were sent into the South to organize churches and schools. The work of the African Methodist Episcopal Church has expanded from year to year until to-day it maintains one or more schools or colleges in each Southern state. The chief institutions of this organization are Morris Brown College, Georgia; Western University, Kansas; Allen University, South Carolina; Paul Quinn College, Texas; and Kittrell College, North Carolina. These institutions are supported by collections from the members of the numerous African Methodist churches.

The African Methodist Zion Church next undertook an educative work in the South similar to that of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It established four colleges, one theological school, and seven academies. The leading institution of this organization is Livingstone College, North Carolina.

The Colored Methodist Church, a minor section of Methodists, joined in the educational crusade, and established Lane College, Tennessee; Miles Memorial College, Alabama; and Mississippi Industrial College, Holly Springs, Mississippi, beside contributing to the support of others.

In more recent years, the Negro Baptists have undertaken an immense educational scheme in the South. Mention has been made elsewhere of the institutions of learning established by the American Baptist Home Mission Society, which was mostly under the control of white Baptists in the North. After a time, the Negro Baptists began

to inaugurate an educational work independent of that of their white brethren, and have succeeded so far as to outdo them in the number of schools established. At present they have in operation over a hundred schools of varying types and standards. Most of them, of course, are miserably poor in every essential. Their schools of higher learning are Selma University, Alabama; Arkansas Baptist College, Little Rock; Florida Baptist College, Jacksonville; Florida Institute, Live Oak; Americus Institute, Walker Baptist Institute, Jeruel Academy, and Central City College, Georgia; State University and Eckstein University, Kentucky; Morris College and Seneca Institute, South Carolina; Central Texas College, Texas; Howe Institute and Roger Williams University, Tennessee; and Virginia Seminary, Lynchburg. The Negro Baptists alone raise for the support of their institutions about $200,000 annually, but this sum, with donations from outside, is altogether inadequate for the efficient maintenance of such a multiplicity of schools.

While much of the educational work undertaken by the Negroes has been ill-directed, no one can fail to admire the ambitious spirit and heroic sacrifices which they have made in behalf of educating their people.

Many Southern Negroes are educated in Northern universities. There are about 6,000 Negro graduates in the United States and more than two-thirds of them live and work in the South.

Among the institutions which prepare for professional careers, Howard University in Washington, D. C., is foremost. It is an institution of high rank and has excellent schools of law, medicine, pharmacy, and dentistry. It is supported by the federal government.

Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, is an institution of respectable rank and turns out well-educated physicians, pharmacists, and dentists; and Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, also of respectable rank, gives degrees in medicine. The University of West Tennessee in Memphis gives degrees in medicine, pharmacy, and dentistry. In Kentucky the Negroes who aspire to enter the legal profession may be educated at the Central Law School of Louisville.

As for training for the ministry, there are innumerable colleges and universities in the South which profess to have departments of theology. Among these, however, only two or three are of respectable rank. The others are not prepared to offer courses of college rank for the reason that nine-tenths of their pupils are pursuing elementary and secondary courses, and the teachers are qualified only for such instruc

tion. They are greatly handicapped by holding to the old classical curriculum with no electives and no instruction in the social sciences.

The wiser friends of the Negro in both the North and the South have, from the inception of Negro education, had the good sense to perceive that a backward race needs, above all, an education having to do with the kind of work which is available for earning a living. The need of industrial education among the Negroes is shown in the fact that less than two percent of the Negroes gainfully employed are engaged in any kind of skilled or professional work.1

Among the earliest friends of the newly emancipated Negro none stands out more prominently than General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who founded Hampton Institute for the practical education of Negroes and Indians. He was of Scotch-Irish stock and chanced to be born in the Hawaiian Islands while his parents were doing missionary work there. He graduated at Williams College, and there came under the inspiring influence of Mark Hopkins. In 1862 he enlisted in the Union army, and rose to the rank of brigadier-general. At one time he was in command of Negro troops. After the war he entered the service of the Freedmen's Bureau, and was assigned to the Jamestown peninsula in Virginia, where he had to do with thousands of freedmen.

General Armstrong believed that the salvation of all men, white or black, was to be found in hard work, and his knowledge of the Hawaiian and the Negro enabled him to perceive that they were childish, and that what they needed more than anything else was not political power, but education to develop thrift and moral stamina.

In 1868 he put his idea into practice by starting an industrial school for Negroes at Hampton, Virginia. He received a small appropriation from Congress and donations from friends, which enabled him to put up a building and employ one teacher and a matron.

Maurice S. Evans, in his book Black and White in the Southern States, writes of Hampton and its founder as follows: "This farseeing and devoted man, the greatest benefactor to the Negro and American Indian peoples, was born in Hawaii of American parents, and commanded a corps of Negro soldiers in the Civil War. A man of unusual insight, he was convinced that for the true uplift of these peoples an education should be given that would form character, and at the same time be calculated to help them and fit them for their work in life, and make them worthy men and citizens. And so Hampton 'Jones, "Negro Education," U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 38.

was founded, and from small beginnings it has gradually grown to the great undertaking I found. It is now presided over by Dr. Hollis B. Frissell, who is carrying on the work in the spirit of the founder. What that is may be expressed in his own words: 'To train selected youth who shall go out and teach and lead their people, first by example by getting land and homes, to give them not a dollar that they can earn for themselves, to teach respect for labour, to replace stupid drudgery with skilled hands, and to these ends to build up an industrial system, for the sake not only of self-support and intelligent labour, but also for the sake of character.'

"I found on my visit a large park-like area of 185 acres of beautifully kept lawns shaded by forest trees, and in this park numerous isolated substantial buildings, 113 in number, suited to the numerous and varied requirements of such an institution. The students are both male and female and are all resident. They number over 1,600. The faculty, instructors and officers are for the greater part white, and number about 200, and the policy pursued is laid down by a Board of seventeen Trustees, including prominent men from both North and South.

"Every year a larger number of students apply for admission than can be accepted, but they are not necessarily denied because of poverty; they may, by working during the day, learn and work at a trade and thus earn their board, and academic instruction, which in that case is given in the evening.

"There are thirteen Trade Courses, including all the principal handicrafts, which are practically taught in thoroughly equipped workshops. All male students must also take a course in agriculture, as well as manual training. In the same spirit girls must learn housekeeping in all its branches, gardening and hygiene. This training is of course linked to an academic course. In addition, at a distance of some six miles, is a farm of 587 acres with 175 head of cattle, 31 horses and mules, 300 hogs, and 1000 fowls, with 400 acres under cultivation, and with 22 houses and farm buildings. At both places the greater part of the buildings have been erected by the students, and all repairs are done by them.

"All this and much more may be gleaned from the admirable catalogue issued annually, but it does not exhaust by any means the activities which centre in Hampton. Annual conferences are held to discuss subjects of interest to the Negro people, when such matters are on the agenda, as 'The Negro labourer in his relation to Trades Unions,' 'The

progress of Education in rural communities,' and the like. Twice a year a Farmers' Conference is convened on the lines I have previously indicated. A mass of literature is issued by the publication department, including an excellent monthly, 'The Southern Workman,' and a large number of educative leaflets which are distributed free of charge, or at nominal rates. I select a few of the subjects dealt with in these pamphlets: 'Sheep, their care and management,' 'Dairy Cattle,' 'Drainage,' 'Mosquitoes,' 'Milk and butter,' 'Seed planting,' 'Rotation of Crops,' 'Farm manures,' 'Patent medicines,' 'Proper use of certain words.'

"Very wisely, as I think, the male students are organized into a cadet corps, and wear neat uniforms made at the place. The Negro is peculiarly susceptible to mass movement and discipline, and this establishes an esprit de corps and mutual feeling and action that could not otherwise be provided for." 2

The other great industrial school for Negroes is Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, founded by Booker T. Washington, who as a poor and friendless boy had worked his way through Hampton. Filled with the enthusiasm and spirit of his alma mater, he resolved to build another institution of the same kind in another part of the South.

Tuskegee comprises 2,345 acres and 113 buildings. Its total equipment is valued at over $2,000,000. The number of students is about 2,500.

"As at Hampton," says Evans, "these students are compelled to learn a trade, they cannot attend for purely academic instruction and, as there, the poor student gets a chance of working out his fees. At first entrance all must do their share of manual work, whether they pay for their course or work it out, they must undertake janitor's work, scrubbing floors, cleaning windows and the like.

"The work and influence of Tuskegee extend beyond the school grounds, large as these are, and every year sees an increase of this outside extension work. An annual Negro Farmers' Conference is held on the lines I have previously described. This was established twenty-three years ago, and was then only attended by the local farmers of Macon County; now they gather from all over the South. A Farmers' Institute was formed in 1897, and the members meet monthly at Tuskegee in the large Agricultural Building. A short course is given which consists of two weeks' concentrated observation and study. When "Evans, Black and White in the Southern States, p. 131.