The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-09-13
BY JAMES S. ALLEN

when the Workers School opens in
/ Harlem this fall. AS among other
peoples oppressed and forcibly re-
tarded by imperialism, there is
among the Negro people of the
United States an intense desire and
striving for education.
This education has been admins
tered in partial doses for the most
Part directly by the white ruling
class. The cry for equal and free
/ public education was raised by the
Negro people together with other
demands in the period Immediately
following upon the Civil War
Hardly had chattel slavery been
overthrown, when the Negro masses
entered upon the struggle for free
school system equal to that enjoyed
by the white masses, such as it was
For time during the period of the
revolutionary Reconstruction govern
ments in the South, this demand was
at least partially being realized. In
number Of Southern states Ne
groes acted as superintendent of
the state educational system, eloquent
testimony to the fact that the Negro
people were in the forefront of his
tory the principal driving force in
the South against the old slave in
situations.
Lost Few Gains In 1905
With the desertion of the cause
of the Negro people by the Northern
ruling class in the 1905, the Negro
masses in the South were enserfed,
and whatever rights they had won
were taken away from them or
abridged. Among these abridged
rights was the right to public educa-
/ ton. To this day in the South 80
/ per cent Of the Negro children do
not go to school at all, others only
/ for few months or year. The
school facilities are inferior, the
/ teachers paid very little, and state
| appropriations for the jim-crow
! school system discriminate heavily
| against the Negroes.
In the North the Negro people
have been able to participate, with
certain limitations arising out OF
segregation, in the benefits of
school system dominated entirely by
! the white ruling class.
Past Negro Misleaders
Liberals and reformistS generally
| like to point to the Negro schools
as an example of the progress made
! by the Negroes since the Civil War.
Booker T. Washington, who is gen.
orally hailed along with Frederick
Douglass as one of the foremost Of
the earlier Negro leaders, founded
his school at Tuskegee, Alabama, on
the principle that the Negro would
have to lift himself and make him
self equal to the white man" be-
fore he can hope for any equality.
His whole philosophy was based on
an acceptance of the lot of the Ne
gro people and the theory of white
superiority. He became famous,
especially with the white ruling class,
after his speech at the Cotton Ex-
position in Atlanta in 1876, in which
he said, raising his hand with his
fingers as far apart as they would
go:
"In all things that are purely So
cial we can be as separate as the
fingers of this hand, yet one as the
| hand in all things essential to mu-
tuel progress.
Deeds of the Negro Bourgeeisie
Booker r. Washington is the spir-
itual father of the Negro upper class
| today, and his philosophy pervades
the Negro colleges and schools. What
this policy leads to is best shown by
the incident at Tuskegee Institute
during the struggle of the Tallapoosa
choppers with the deputies and land
owners last December, when a
wounded Negro cropper who sought
refuge at the institute was turned
over to the Bourbon authorities to
be killed in Jail. The advancement
that Tuskegee has been able to at
tain is demonstrated by the fact that
the number of Negroes permitted to
vote in that town can be counted on
the fingers of one hand and that its
graduates, as we'll equipped as whites
in their particular field, must work
as porters, janitors or scrub boys, if
they find work at all. The same
holds generally true for the other
NEGRO institutions of higher learn
ing. The present-day followers and
step-children OF Booker +. Washing
ton, including those with tinge of
pink, like Schuyler, are bankrupt,
For it is necessary, not to try to
worm oneself into a comfortable hole
in a rotten system, but strike at the
very roots of that system until it is
overthrown.
Woodworking Glass Education
With the opening of the Workers
School in Harlem beginning is
made towards breaking the monop-
oily in Negro education of the white
ruling class and the Negro REFORM
lists. Here the working class enters
to administer its own education. 1t
is education with a definite class
purpose. There is nothing about it
of meek acceptance of the rule of
American imperialism. The servile
prating of the so-called race leaders
is replaced by new, aggressive, self
assertive tone. The workers of Har-
lem come to this school not merely
to be educated, but to be better
equipped for the struggle for Negro
liberation. The School is in a sense