The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1923-07-21
DR.. Du Bois Says Press Garbled
His Speech In Philadelphia
Editor Says Root of Pennsyl-
vania Evil Is in Separate
Public Schools Which Resi-
dents of Philadelphia Have
Allowed to Become Estab-
iShed

Dubois, editor of the Crisis, has is
sued the exact text of his recent
Philadelphia speech in order to show
that press reports that he advocated
separate schools were false. The
statement follows:
Gall my life 1 have fought segre-
cation and separation by race and
color. And of all the sorts of segre-
cation facing us, segregation in the
public schools is the most dangerous
and far-reaching because it inculcates
race prejudice in the young. 1t is
for this reason that the N. A. A. G..
P. has always fought separate public
schools wherever they appear.
"On the other hand, we colored peo-
pie are all living more and more in
a separate world; almost hourly,
from the moment we rise until we
sleep. We live in separate homes
and neighborhoods; we patronize sep
arate stores; we send our children
often to separate schools; we attend
separate churches, we work in larg-
er and larger numbers, for our own
people and in separate industries
we bank in our own banks, subscribe
to colored papers, keep cars in our
own garages, are attended by col
ored physicians, and buried by COL
ored undertakers in colored grave
yards.
"We boast of this internal racial
development and we have right to
boast of it; we have been forced into
it by race prejudice and without
these institutions we could not exist
today; but wither is all this leading {?
Logically it is leading straight to
complete racial segregation, to bitter
group hatred and worldwide race
war on a scale such as we have not
yet Witnessed" -
eve must therefore face firmly
this paradox of race separation and
race organization and fight with care
and thought. l am, for instance, my
self product of Jim Crow school;
my daughter is student in one.
Without Jim Crow schools we could
not today educate our children in the
United States. Does this mean that
Jim Crow schools are right and
should be spread? No, they are
wrong, dangerous, menacing and they
should be fought; but the way to
fight them is not to fight the teach
ers in them. Do not fight Hill. Hill
is not responsible for Cheyney.
Cheyney was established fifty years
before Hill was born. Hill is doing
at Cheyney just what I would do
there-making it the best school pos
sible.
"The real enemy is not Hill-it is
not the excellent and efficient teach
ers in thousands of separate colored
schools throughout the land-it is
the white men and women who foster
race prejudice and compel the estab-
lishment Of separate schools. Fight
them and fight them with the ballot
New York colored people fought
them. They put White, Scottron ano
McCants Stewart on the school boarc
and today there is not Jim Crow
school in the city and there are zoo
colored teachers in the public schools
Philadelphia did not keep up the
fight. They accepted petty politica
jobs and janitorships and positions il
Jim Crow schools for their daugh
ters. Today. Philadelphia has 1:
colored schools and is threatened with
a colored high school. What doe:
Philadelphia do? Instead of fighting
the school board, they attack thu
principal and teachers of a coloret
school established in 1884 (and nov
outside the bounds of Philadelphia
because two years ago, this schoo
was given a state appropriation ant
made state normal school. Do the!
mean thus to acknowledge that NJ
school with colored teachers is fit t.
be state normal school? .
"This is wrong tactics. Cheyne.
is good school. It has done and i
doing splendid work. The colore'
race, with it's curtailed educationa
facilities cannot spare it. Eithe
Cheynev must have state aid o
gradually die. But, say the oppo
nents of Hill and Cheyney, this schoo
was made a normal school in orde
to furnish teachers for Jim Grow
public schools; very well then, fgh
the Jim Crow public schools-mak
it impossible to establish more
Pennsylvania has at least 10000
colored voters. They can if they vii
make the Jim Crow public schoo
system impossible in that state. Blu
the way to do it is not to fight tn
school teachers who are giving thei
best to colored children in schools es
tablished before these teachers wer
born"