F ISK DINNER

Chicago April 5

1938

We are here tonight to talk about the education of Negro Americans in gen-
eral, and about Fisk University in particular.

There is no need in these times and in this place to give an apology for
or to make a defense of education for Negroes. There were times when that
had to be done, and, perhaps, there still remain some people who are skeptical
about the matter. But now for a long time the answer both in theory and in
practical results has been so definitely in the affirmative, the question is
no longer a debatable one.

Yet it is in place to evaluate again Negro education.

The schools established for the education of the Negro, especially those
established for his higher education, have more than justified all the money

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and effort put into them. These schools constitute the cornerstone of all that the race has reared since Emancipation.

It is these colleges founded immediately after the Civil War that have made possible the generating of the internal motive power that has kept the Negro moving forward, kept him from slipping backward. For it can be said that however slow and labored the advance may have been, never yet has the Negro American consciously and voluntarily chosen the backward and downward way. Without the internal power generated by these schools the race might have been pulled along a few paces by outside forces, but there could not have been any spontaneous and determined move forward on its own part.

In other words, these colleges accomplished the work of providing from within, intellectual leadership for a group so isolated that, lacking such leadership, it would have remained leaderless altogether.

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After making allowance for all the short-comings and even the failures of the Negro liberal arts colleges, there still remains the indisputable fact that it was from the men and women who were brought under the influence of these schools was formed the vanguard of racial progress. And those men and women have not only formed the vanguard of racial progress for the past seventy years, they have also been the lump of leaven in the whole racial mass.

In this connection I wish to broaden the definition of leadership. I am not talking in terms of leaders of the first magnitude. Leaders of that rank are among the rarest of humans. God makes one only every so many centuries. Nor am I limiting the idea of leadership to those outstanding persons whose names and accomplishments are more or less well known. I am including in the idea of leadership the many men and women in many small communities whose names have never been heard nor their work heard of outside of their narrow boundaries.

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Men and women who in their seemingly insignificant spheres have through their influence done something to raise the level of living and thinking, who have by their example done something to make better American citizens of the people around them. (their neighbors)

In the sense in which I am now using the term, these men and women are also leaders. There is a scale of measurement by which their leadership is the greatest that these schools have produced - a scale of measurement by which the work of these many men and women bulks larger than that of the outstand-
ing individual figures.

I have spoken of what these schools have meant to the Negro; they have meant scarcely less to the white people of the South. The white people of the South could not have survived the conditions left by the Civil War had it not been for the work done by these schools; had it not been for the influences and forces

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which they created and set in motion. When we consider that nearly ten million
Negroes live in the South, we are constrained to conclude that the White South
alone and without those influences and forces could not have sustained the burden,
that it would have gone down under the load. There is an increasing realization
of this fact by thoughtful white Southerners.

Estimating this whole matter on the plane of just dollars and cents, it can
be said that the work done and the results achieved through the education of the
Negro have been secured at an extremely cheap price. The counterpart to this
truth may be reached by considering what it would have cost _not_ to educate the
Negro.

This brief survey of Negro education sounds gratifying, but we must not allow
it to lead us into thinking of the job as accomplished. In fact, only a fair
beginning has been made. There are great lacks in the whole scheme, from primary

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schools to universities.

Take recent figures from Mississippi which show that that state spent annually $45.34 for the education of each white child and $5.45 for each Negro child. Recent figures show that the average for the whole South was $44.31 for each white child, and $12.57 for each Negro child. It is, as Booker T. Washington used to say, an entirely unmerited compliment to the Negro child to infer that it can get as much out of $5.45 worth of educational opportunity as a white child can get out of $45.34 worth.

Of course, there are those who feel that whatever is spent on the Negro child for public education is as much as he is entitled to; that it is actually a gratuity bestowed by those whose names are recorded on the tax rolls. This obsolete theory of economics takes no account of the fact that a Negro tenant in a cabin on a backwoods plantation actually pays taxes. By this theory of

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economics, probably, two thirds of the children in Chicago could be denied the
right to public school education.

But there is a deeper claim for equal educational opportunities for Negro
American youth; for whatever may be the opinions and attitudes on the matter,
the solid fact remains that the Negro is for good or ill, a part of American
civilization. He may be segregated and jim-crowed, but there is no way to
subtract or extract him from American life; so he must be prepared to keep
adjusted to American life, to keep pace with it. The nation can't afford the
cost of having him always lagging behind. And that means that Negro youth must
be given as good, as broad, and as high an education as is correspondingly
given to white youth if they are expected to measure up to good Americanism.

The Negro is, for good or ill, a part of American civilization. There is
no way to change that fact.

(The Pickens Incident)

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But the lacks in the scheme of Negro education are not confined to the public school systems. The colleges and universities are working under the handicapping lack of funds, lack of facilities, lack of means to insure extension and development. These schools must either progress or stand still; and to stand still means to retrograde.

Among the schools for higher education Fisk University stands in the fore-
front. For seventy years Fisk has stood in a strategic center of the South
spreading its influence throughout a widening sphere. It is today not only a
great Negro University; for under the administration of President Jones it has
developed into a great American University. President Jones has not been
satisfied with anything short of the highest standards, and in carrying out
the intention of gaining and maintaining those standards he has gathered around
him - pardon my making the statement - a faculty which in quality is not sur-

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passed by that of any school of like size in the country.

President Jones has also brought a high degree of statesmanship to his work.

In the early days the white South was, as a whole, contemptuous or suspicious of these Negro liberal arts colleges. Only a generation ago there was a general attitude of hostility or aloofness on the part of the white people of the communities in which these schools are located. That attitude has by no means entirely disappeared, but there is an increasing realization of the essential value of these schools to the South. In Nashville, President Jones has, without sacrifice of principles, on which the institution was founded, succeeded in gaining the interest and cooperation, both moral and financial, of enlightened white citizens. Today, Fisk University is in a large measure acknowledged and treated as one of the important educational and cultural factors in the Nashville community. Those who are familiar with the surrounding traditions and

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conditions will not regard this as a minor feat.

However, President Jones is not solely entitled to the whole credit of what he has accomplished at Fisk; Mrs. Jones has valiantly borne that considerable share of the task that inevitably falls upon the wife of a college president.

The influences of Fisk reach beyond Nashville and Tennessee. Beyond the South. Chicago is in a measurable degree a beneficiary of those influences through the two hundred forty graduates of Fisk who live and work in this city.

There is one contribution made by Fisk that puts both America and Europe in her debt. She was the chief agency in preserving and giving to the world that noble body of music which we know as the Negro Spirituals. Except for the work of Fisk, these songs, unsurpassed by the folk songs of any people in the world, and the finest distinctive artistic creation that America has to offer, might have been practically lost.

(Two stanzas of O Black and Unknown Bards)

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Tonight the cause of Fisk, the work of Fisk, the future of Fisk is before you. What has been put into Negro education has proved a sound investment in good Americanism, an investment that justifies expansion. And so, an investment in Fisk University is no hazard; its record is a guarantee that dividends beyond computation will always continue to be paid.

Now, what I have been saying may give the impression that this whole question is concerned with doing something for the Negro. The discussion of our inter-racial situation is generally limited to that approach. The Negro is posited as a receiver, a beneficiary, a burden, even as a liability. Commonly he is, at best, regarded as a sort of neutral mass to be moulded into this shape or that.

Whatever truth there may be in these assumptions, it is also true that the Negro has long been a giver as well as a receiver, a creator as well as a

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creature; that he is and has long been a vital force in the making of America.

In discussions of our interracial situation the most frequent question is:

What shall we do with the Negro?

This question ignores the fact that the Negro is doing something with him-
self, and the equally important fact that he is all the while doing something
with America. Any degree of intelligent thought on this matter will show that
America would not be precisely the America it is except for the influences the
Negro has brought to bear in its making. Even if he tried it would be impossi-
ble for him to remain only a neutral mass or an inert factor. Of necessity
he must be a force in American life, either for good or for ill.

The phrase "For good or for ill" connotes the existence of passive in-
fluences which the Negro has wielded involuntarily and in spite of himself in
the making of America.

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Let us think what it has meant in the forming of the character of the Ameri-
can people for them to have yielded for three hundred years to the temptation
to practice wrong, injustice, and brutality upon a defenseless minority within
their midst. Only one other great nation in the world today has a similar temp-
tation and opportunity; and that nation is Germany.

Or consider an American community in which a lone Negro is chained to a stake,
tortured, baptized with gasoline, and burned to a crisp before a crowd of Amer-
ican men, women, and children - women with babies in their arms, and women with
babies in their wombs; then balance if you can the sufferings of the wretched
victim against the moral and spiritual degradation of that community, and you
begin to get at the appalling effects of these passive influences. It is
disturbing to contemplate these passive influences, but they also have gone in
to make America precisely the America that it is.

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There are phases of the race question that involve the saving of black America's body and white America's soul. The saving of white America's soul becomes as important as the saving of Black America's body.

Serious thought makes it plain that this whole question transcends the interests of the Negro as a special group, and concerns itself with democracy in America.

It would seem that the prospect for full realization of the democratic ideal is brighter in this than in any other country. America is unique. Here, the democratic ideal is the original and traditional one. The United States did not have to struggle through a thousand years of effort toward that ideal.

Government in this country began with and rested upon the declaration:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among

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these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".

No other great nation in the world has had such a beginning.

(Reference to Thomas Jefferson)

But, at the same time, the United States is unique in another situation, a
situation involving potentialities for the development of democracy in the
truest sense, and also involving the possibility of democracy's utter defeat.

This situation grows out of the fact that our national family is made up
of many groups. Among these groups there are varying degrees of difference in
historical and cultural backgrounds. Some of these groups are distinctly minor-
ity groups. Now, we shall not achieve democracy until all these national
minorities possess the same common rights possessed by the dominant groups, and

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on the same terms. For it may be set down as axiomatic that the Republic cannot actually have any more democracy than it accords and guarantees to its least advantaged citizens.

But let us view the situation growing out of our heterogeneous citizenry from another angle. Let us consider it as one that makes the United States a testing ground for the practice of democracy. As a laboratory from which may be derived all the elemental qualities that must go into the making of a real democratic state. As a training ground on which may be gained strength in the civilizing qualities of tolerance, openmindedness, understanding, and intelligent regard and respect on the part of each group for the rights of every other group - In a word, as a training ground where, _because of the difficulties to be overcome_, there might be developed here a stronger sense of right, and justice, and good will between and among men than anywhere else in the world.

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There is, of course, more than one approach to this task. Yet it seems to me that none is surer than the fostering of a knowledge and recognition among all the groups of the elements of merit possessed by each.

For America is rich because each of the groups that go into her making is a bearer of gifts. Negro Americans, like the other groups, are bearers of gifts.

I mentioned in passing the passive influences of the Negro in the making of America. His active contributions far outweigh the passive.

Those contributions have been not only material, but also artistic and cultural. The Negro had an important share in the pioneer work done with ax and plow. One whole section of our country is today a land of roads and railroads, of farms and gardens, of fruits and harvests, largely through the work done by

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Black labor.

(Three stanzas from Fifty Years)

But there are other contributions equally important. Contributions of artistic and cultural values. Contributions that have gone in to help make up our common cultural store.

There are the major folk art contributions of his music, sacred and secular; his folk tales, known as the Uncle Remus stories; and his dancing. There are a number of minor folk arts contributions, such as his contributions to American cookery and to the American language.

In addition, there are the achievements of the individual conscious artist on the theatrical stage, on the concert stage, in music, literature, and art, and not least - in athletics. A list of creditable length could be made of

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those who have made valuable contributions in scholarship and scientific research.

Here, I am merely cataloging. Anything like an adequate presentation of this phase of my subject would actually take hours. So I am compelled to resist the temptation of going on. And for me it is a temptation hard to resist.

It is enough for me to say here that the folk art creations of the Negro have gone in to help make up our national cultural store, have become a part of our national life. The elements of his secular music have been combined, fused, and developed until that music is no longer racial, it is national; it is today the popular medium for our national expression musically. His dances constitute the bases of the general modes of both stage dancing and social dancing in America - also of social dancing in Europe and other parts of the world. The

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idioms of his sacred music and of his jazz music are now considered by serious composers as thematic material for symphonic and operatic forms of music.

For many generations Negro American life has constituted one of the most colorful and dramatic elements in our national literature. The greatest novel ever written in America - mark you I say the greatest, not the best written, and there is a distinction - was based on Negro life. That novel was Uncle Tom's Cabin. And the most popular novel of the day - and I think too, it is a great novel - written in America is largely concerned with Negro life. That novel is Gone With The Wind.

The Negro also comes as a bearer of gifts. Some of his gifts are of peculiar value in a country in which there is a strong tendency to go to the extremes of hardness or drabness relieved only by forced and artificial gaiety,

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for they exemplify in a high degree the simple pleasure that springs from the sheer joy of living.

The gifts of the Negro to America - material, artistic, and cultural entitle him to opportunity for full development. The gifts he has brought and those he has yet to bring are entitled to full recognition and acknowledgement.

I wish here to make reference to another contribution, intangible, nevertheless vital. I refer to the spiritual contribution. I do not doubt that the day will come when the fortitude with which the Negro has met almost overwhelming odds and the courage with which he has struggled forward, in spite of towering difficulties, will be held up as an example to all American youth.

The key to this little considered approach to the realization of the American democratic ideal is education - Education not only of Black America, but also

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of White America. The education of Black America so that it may be enabled to develop to the highest degree possible its powers, actual and potential, which will add to the good of the nation. The education of White America to the point where it will be fully willing to recognize the Negro as a factor in the nation's good, and to make the awards in accordance with the rule of merit.