Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1883-1938, 1904-03-05
THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE
NEGRO.

DR.. w. Il. THtRKtELD understands
the southern situati IN thoroughly when
he says in the Cincinnati. o, CHRISTIAN
EDUCATOR in discussing the higher edu-
cation of the N gro:
Ii is self-evident that the masses of the
Negro race are for generations, to be
tiilers OF the soil; 10 be the toilers i'm our
Industries; TO furnish hands for mental
labor. And the South may thank Provi-
dence that she has this race here instead
OF the hordes of foreigners with which
the North contends-a race that furnish
es for semi-tropical climate the besS
peasant labor III the world. The sober
minded and progressive people of the
South, who hay ITS largest permanent
interests ar heart, are, more and NOR,
coming TO an appreciation of this fact
he Industrial aud commercial future
OF the South is bound up with the black
man.
If six millions of the rank and file of
black workers were to move out of the
South, and III their stead there should
come like number of Italians, Poles.
dungarians, and other un-Americanized
immigrants. who are now the civic and
social problem OF the North within six
months such wall would come mp from
the South as has not been heari since
Appomattox.
Gould argument be more convincing
than the following?
The education of the exceptional men
of the race, who, by their superior skill
and intelligence may be able to COM
mand the respect of the South, and, at
the same time, the confidence of the
masses OF their people as their leaders
and teachers, is in the interest of the
permanent welfare and prosperity of
both races. Let the friends of exclusive.
ly industrial training not forget that it
is the brain back of the arm of the black
smith that turns mere arm power into
the cunning that makes, instead of the
| plowshare, the caligraph and sewing
machine, and enables him to transform
the pruning hook into the mower and
/ binder
| Train the hand alone, and you NAV
raise man to the second power, as a
| digger, planer, a builder q feeder of
his fellows. Train the brain behind the
hand and you may raise q man to the
hundredth power, as the inventor, the
master Of world forces the lnspirer, the
commander of the higher powers of a
thousand men. There is thus given him
larger capacity for securing support for
himself, and for his people. He thus
adds to the wealth and productive
power or the community. This the
South needs.
And again he argues the question with
the skill of trained diplomat, when he
says:
furthermore, the serious problems of
the future are to be industrial and So
clal. The Negro is to face competition.
strenuous and unrelenting. Wage-earn-
ers, black and white, are soon to be or
ganlzed into unions for self protection.
This stage is fast approaching in the
south. The fact that the members of
the labor union would not march in the
procession at the Peace Jubilee in At
ianta, because their colored brothers
were excluded, marks a revolution in
the South. Whites and blacks will in
evitably band themselves together for
seif-defense. Some one is going to lead
these industrial forces. Shall it be a
white man, merely because he is white?
Shall 1t be one, BLACK or white, who has
received the narrow industrial training
alone? One who knows nothing of e.
economic science? TO whom political
economy is but a pane? One whose
powers of will and reason and self con-
troll are undisciplIned?
The unwise strikes, the calamitous
uprisings of industrial forces at the
North, that have often been almost
criminal in view of their effect upon the
badly-led masses, have been the out
como Of just such undisciplined, narrow
and ignorant leadership.
As We before stated, DR.. THIRKIELp
not only cites examples, and names the
students of higher education, but inters-
perses this remarkable dissertation with
excellent portraits of the characters who
are raising the Negro to the proper
plane Of citizenship and proving them
selves to be the creators and founders of
the cases in the great desert of ignor
ance in he Southland.