are in school even the short school term, the evidence is clear that this alarming and unsatisfactory condition of negro common schools demands immediate and vigorous action.

Details are even more startling than the general statement, as revealed in the reports of the individual states. In Alabama, according to the latest figures available from the Department of Education, there are 307,000 negro children of school age. Of these, 118,000 are in school, and 189,000 do not attend because of lack of school facilities. In Georgia, of every one hundred children of school age, fifty-five are white and fortyfive colored; yet, despite this impressive ratio, only 50 per cent of the negro children are permitted to attend school for either a long or short term. Even to accommodate these. double sessions are necessary, and the crowded class room makes good work next to impossible, however competent the teacher. Some one has said that the colored schools are so crowded that children can be seen hanging out of the windows because there are no seats for them. There is a good deal of

truth underlying this humorous remark. Mississippi has the largest percentage of her negro children enrolled of any of these states, though only 76.5 per cent are thus favored; the other 23.43 per cent are entirely destitute of school privileges. North Carolina deprives 37.38 per cent of elementary instruction, and Texas shows the appalling proportion of 41.10 per cent who are thus handicapped in the race of life. Thus the negroes are far worse off educationally than appears on the surface.

The figures given below show the educational conditions. prevailing in the other six Southern States:

*

Compiled from 1908 Report of United States Commissioner of Education.

According to the summary of the analysis above, there are 1,299,344 negro children 5 to 18 years of age enrolled, leaving 1,459,618 who are not enrolled. Furthermore, it should be stated that enrollment as applied to negro common schools means one thing and regular attendance another. Bringing together the percentages of the total negro school population in these states that regularly attend school, we have the following:

Reduced to words, these figures mean that only about one half of the negro children of school age in the Southern States are attending regularly a school whose term averages four months. Or, differently stated, negro children in the United States need about five times as much common school training as they are at present receiving. This condition of things emphasizes three great needs: more and better schools; longer school terms; and compulsory attendance.

It is to be noted that the figures here quoted pertain to elementary instruction, and do not refer to secondary or higher institutions of learning or to industrial schools. The question of higher culture, of that bugbear the "educated negro," is not here involved. It is not a question whether the negro race should be educated as preachers and teachers, or as carpenters and machinists. Clearly, it is a question whether the negro who forms one half of the population of these eleven Southern States shall be taught to read, to write and to cipher; whether

*The Negro Common School, a social study made under Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, Atlanta University, 1901.

his children shall receive sufficient instruction to make them intelligent and capable workers, or be kept as ignorant as brutes. That is a short-sighted policy from the standpoint of the nation, and an inhuman policy from the standpoint of the individual, which condemns 1,500,000 children to mental darkness simply because of their race. Unequipped with the ability to read and write, deprived of the illumination of the written. word, out of all touch with the progress of the world, what a tremendous hindrance these millions are to the highest development of the nation's resources.. Slavery and education were not on friendly terms, but slavery cannot be blamed if the negro children of the present generation are not educated. The fact that in Alabama, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Louisiana one half of the negroes between five and eighteen years of age are entirely denied instruction, plainly evidences that the nation's duty to itself is a duty to the negro.

It is true that in the last twenty-five years the total enrollment of negro common schools has about doubled itself. Yet, the total enrollment is less than one half of the total school population, and the increase of school facilities has lagged far behind the increase in school population. The great fact that stares us frightfully and persistently in the face is that 1,500,000 of the nation's embryonic citizens, for lack of schools and teachers, and lack of funds for securing both, are growing up in ignorance and neglect.

Measured by the facts and figures before us, education on any large scale has not yet been tried for the negroes. Furthermore, unless these young negroes are educated, ignorance will inevitably grow denser. And this simply means that crime, lynchings, lawlessness, poverty and economic inefficiency will increase. The net result will be a vast national loss growing out of the more basic problem of negro ignorance arising from national indifference. In the light of history and in consideration of our own experience as a nation regarding the relationship of illiteracy to crime and race antagonisms, it is clear that the proper provision for the education of every negro child in the land will mean an immense saving to the nation in negro intelligence and thrift. Any other policy will be wasteful and criminal.

It is generally assumed that the whites of the South bear practically all the cost of negro public schools; that the negroes of the South are the "white man's burden" when it comes to paying the bills for public education. It is pertinent, therefore, to go somewhat into this phase of the subject. I waive the moral question of the nation's indebtedness to the negro for two hundred and fifty years of stolen toil, and take the purely economic question: Is the cost of negro education a burden upon the white South? Let us use the testimony of Southern whites themselves.

Charles L. Coon, Superintendent of Schools, Wilson, N. C., after making recently a careful and exhaustive study of public taxation with special reference to the negro schools of Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, has this to say:

"I am confident . . . that any one who takes the pains to ascertain the present sources of the public funds of these states, and then tries to make a fair division of them between the races, will come to the conclusion that the negro school is not very much of a white man's burden."

Said the State Superintendent of Florida in one of his official reports:

"The following figures are given to show that the education of the negroes of middle Florida, which is the Black Belt of Florida, does not cost the white people of that section a cent.

In the nine counties included in this calculation, the total cost of negro schools was $19,457. The total contributed by the negroes in direct and indirect taxes amounted to $23,984, leaving $4,527, which, according to the Superintendent himself, went into the white schools. Moreover, in the South, the negro is the great home renter. As the home renter is an indirect taxpayer, the negro pays an incalculable amount of indirect taxes. As an intelligent and efficient producer and a large and growing consumer, he makes it mighty convenient for others to pay direct taxes. So that, viewed from any standpoint, it appears that the negroes in large measure are paying for their education.

But all this has little bearing on my main purpose, which is to state clearly that with all that the negro is doing for himself, with all that is being done for him by others, his present

educational opportunities are incommensurate with the needs, and that unless the conditions are adequately and speedily met, the loss in brain power to the nation will be tremendous and irreparable. The situation, then, that confronts the nation, so far as negro common schools are concerned, is this: In the Black Belt of our Southland, multitudes of negro children are growing up untaught and in densest ignorance; that the cardinal American principle of a reasonable equality of opportunity for education and development to all our children, wherever they live, whatever their race or color, whatever may be their station in life, is far from recognition in practice when applied to negroes.

What is the remedy? In a word, it lies in more education and less agitation. Under the disadvantage of a dual system of public instruction, and with sparsely settled regions and bad roads, the South has done and is doing something for negro education; the negro himself is doing his best toward the education of the youth of his race; still, the needs far outweigh anything yet done. Sufficient schools, good schoolhouses, necessary apparatus, longer terms, well-qualified and well-paid teachers, are the supreme needs.

The sum of $12,174.50 given in 1909 by the Anna T. Jeanes Foundation toward teachers' salaries, school buildings, equipment and extension of school terms, was only a drop in the bucket compared to the great and pressing needs. As President Emeritus Eliot of Harvard University recently suggested, the nation ought to co-operate with the states in aiding the people to help themselves, through better educational facilities, so that every boy and girl might receive at least common school training. The traditional attitude of states rights should not stand in the way. But if the nation continues to hold "hands off" in this important national matter, and the stronger negro institutions are expected to lead in bettering the rural schools. and communities, manifestly they must be granted more power. They must be put beyond their present material foundation, in order that they may reach an increasing number of those who will lead the negro masses as teachers of elementary

schools.

James H. Dillard, General Agent, A. T. Jeanes Foundation.