The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1903-04-21

Of the South, and that the Northern members OF
the Board-even if they we're the monsters that
some would have us believe, instead OF the broad
minded men that they are known to be-are too
intelligent to think that such an object could ever
be ACCOMPLISHED through the agencies that they
have decided to use. The charge does not deserve
even this much notice, but since it has been re-
printed in one of the States most influential DIAL
lies, it may be worth while to quote the words OF
Rev. Edgar Gardner Murphy, executive secretary
of the Southern Education Board, in his address
at the University of Virginia, December 10, l9O2;
"There are certain things which the South has
once for all decided, which she has a right to de-
eide, and which I believe she has decided wisely.
First, therefore,, in dealing with the question OF
popular education, she has begun by placing her
negro children in one schoolhouse and her white
children in another. These races must be edu-
Gated apart. That question = X \ is closed, and
no member of the Southern Education Board or
of the General Education Board desires to open
it. Rather than give countenance to anything
which might look directly or indirectly toward
the mutual assimilation or amalgamatiOn of these
races in the South, I would prefer to see an utter
end Of both"
And the Board will not p~auperize Southern ed
u~cation. Its chief purpose is not to give indls-
criminately or lavishly to Southern schools, but
to stimulate the Southern people to help them
selves, to give better support to their own schools.
This fact was also very clearly set forth by Secre-
tary Murphy in his University of Virginia ad-
dress:
II would, if I could, persuade men of the ma
tional temper and the national heart, men like
Mr.. Carnegie, Mr.. Peabody, Mr.. Ogden q would
ask not a dollar from the sectionalistic North
erner)-I say I would gladly persuade men of the
national temper and the national heart to spend
their thousands in my own State,-for our chill
dren are the Nations children. But, my friends,
if I could persuade one reluctant community in
Alabama to spend it's own upon it's own, to further
tax itself not merely for roads and jails and court
houses, but for the training of its children and
for the future of its citizenship, I would count
any one hundred dollars thus given through local
effort and local sacrifice, a nobler and happier re-
suit than any one hundred thousand dollars that
might be brought to us from without the borders
of our State"
The $4,000 that the Board has given to
rural schools in Guilford, Mecklenburg, and Hen
derson Counties in this State has been given on
condition that the people of the localities tax
themselves to an amount equal to the gifts they
desire. In every gift made the great object has
been to stimulate self-help.
In fact, it seems to us that in the present war
fare on the Board we have a pitiable exhibition
of the narrowness and prejudice that still exists
in spots in the South as we'll as in other sections
-paralleled only by the petulant narrowness of
that antiQuated New Highlander, DR.. Edward
Everett Hale, in his new book, "Memories of a
Hundred Years" We ought to be broad enough,
here forty long years after the Civil War, to vel
come a common movement of Northern and
Southern men-Americans ALTO bring I'D the
rear of our educational column. It happens that
the rear is here in the South, because of the de-
v%astatiOn wrought by war and the burden of a
dual system of schools. And it happenr that the