A report from a State Superintendent of Schools of Florida stated that in the Black Belt Counties the Negro schools cost $19,457 and the direct and indirect contributions on the part of the Negroes amounted to $23,984. There were $4,527 remaining which was used for the benefit of the white schools.56 It is thought on the part of some that the Negro, although he may not pay in direct taxes a sum sufficient to provide for his schools, may in reality be paying his full share indirectly. I believe, however, that it is quite safe to say that he probably pays as much for his education as any other poor class of the population, especially so in comparison with some of the immigrant classes. There have also been quite a number of Negro philanthropists, the most prominent of whom have been Bishop Payne who gave several thousand dollars to Wilberforce, Wheeling Grant who gave $5,000 to Wilberforce, Mary E. Shaw who left $38,000 to Tuskegee, Nancy Addison who left $15,000 for education in Baltimore, Louis Bode who left $30,000 and George Washington of Jerseyville, Illinois, who left $15,000 for education. Thomy Lafon, of New Orleans, left $413,000 to be used for educational purposes with no distinction regarding race or color. Colonel John McKee, of Philadelphia, left about $1,000,000 in real estate to be used for education.57 The Negro Baptist Churches alone raised in 1907 $149,332.75.58 In nine years the Negro students paid in cash to 74 Negro institutions $3,358,667 and in work $1,828,602, making a total of $5,187,269. This amounted to 44.6 per cent of the entire running expenses of the institutions.59
The attitude of the Negro immediately after the war was that of opposition to all kinds of labor. He had not as then learned the distinction between working as a slave and working as a freedman. What he wanted most was an education, a literary education, such as the white man had. He did not want his education for any definite purpose, except as an end in itself. The chief reason probably may have been that of a desire to put himself on a par with the white man, and to prove his intellectual equality. The attitude to-day is radically different, being represented by men like Washington and DuBois. Washington preached the gospel of industrial education, believing strongly that that method would lead to an increase of the economic wealth of the race, whereby they could acquire the so-called higher education. DuBois, however, although he believed in the efficiency of industrial training, also felt that the race should not neglect to educate leaders even at the present time, so that his attitude differs from that of Washington in a slight degree. Two short quotations from Washington's writings may illustrate to a certain extent the attitude of the leaders of Negro education: "What Negro education needed most," said he, "was not so much more schools or different kinds of schools, as an educational policy and a school system,60 and "I want to see education as common as grass, and as free for all as sunshine and rain.61
Prejudice is an important factor in the attitude of the white race toward Negro education. This prejudice seems to be in all sections of the country, but it is the southerner who is heard from the most, possibly because he is more in contact with the real problem and then because it seems to be a policy of southern politicians to attempt to outdo each other in their speeches along the line of race prejudice. According to Weatherford prejudice has arisen out of the fear that education will lead to the dominance of the Negro in politics and to promiscuous mingling in social life. "The southern white man will never be enthusiastic for Negro education, until he is convinced that such education will not lead to either of these."62 This feeling of a group is expressed in the following statement in a report to the Baltimore Council by a committee in 1913: "No fault is found with the Negroes' ambitions," said the report, "but the Committee feels that Baltimoreans will be criminally negligent as to their future happiness, if they suffer the Negroes' ambitions to go unchecked."63 Mr. Thomas Dixon, Junior, deplores the fact that Washington was training the Negroes to be "masters of men," stating that "if there is one thing the southern white man cannot endure it is an educated Negro."64
School officials and educators on the other hand show an entirely different attitude. Mr. Glenn, recently Superintendent of Education of Georgia, made the declaration that "The Negro is … teachable and susceptible to the same kind of mental improvement characteristic to any other race."65 Thomas Nelson Page states that "the Negro may individually attain a fair and in uncommon instances a considerable degree of mental development."66 Another states that "We must educate him because ignorant men are dangerous, especially to a democracy pledged to educate all men."67 Some believe that we must also educate him for self-protection from vice and disease. The Southern Educational Association in 1907 passed the following resolution: "We endorse the accepted policy of the States of the South in providing educational facilities for the youth of the Negro race, believing that whatever the ultimate solution of this grievous problem may be, education must be an important factor in that solution."68
Illiteracy which in 1863 equaled about 95 per cent of the Negro population has been decreasing rapidly since the Civil War. The illiteracy of the Negro during the last three decades has been as follows: in 1890, 57.1 per cent; in 1900, 44.5 per cent; and in 1910, 30.4 per cent. In the North in 1910 the illiteracy was 18.2 per cent in the South 48.0 per cent, and in the West 13.1 per cent.69 The urban Negro in 1910 showed 17.6 per cent illiteracy and the rural 36.5 per cent. Louisiana showed 48 per cent, whereas Minnesota and Oregon showed only 3.4 per cent.70 In 1900 when the Negro illiteracy was 44.5 per cent, the children between ten and twenty-five years of age showed only 30 per cent and those between 10 and 14 years in Mississippi showed only 22 per cent.71 The illiteracy for all Negro children was 25 per cent, whereas the illiteracy for all white children was only 10.5 per cent.72 The illiteracy of our Negroes does not seem so great when a comparison is made with some foreign countries:73
The percentage of Negro illiteracy in America is less than any one of these foreign races.
The criminality of the Negro seemingly has decreased as the illiteracy has decreased. Out of every 100 criminals only 39 could read and 61 could not, whereas in the general population 43 could read and 57 could not.74 In the Mississippi penitentiary where they had 450 convicts of Negro blood one half of them could neither read nor write, and less than 10 per cent had anything like a fair education.75 Atlanta University has graduated 800 Negro men and women, not one of whom has ever been convicted of crime. Fisk University has only one graduate who has ever been convicted. Greensboro Agricultural and Technical College has had 2,000 students since its establishment, and only five have ever been convicted of crime. Two of these had been expelled students, and none were among the three hundred graduates of the college. Negro students who have gone to high school show a remarkably low percentage of crime. Of the 200 graduates from the Winston-Salem High School (North Carolina) only one has a criminal record. Waters Normal Institute at Winton, North Carolina, has graduated more than 130 students and not one of these has ever been arrested or convicted of any crime.76 The records of the southern prisons show that at least 90 per cent of those in prison are without trades of any sort.77 According to Booker T. Washington, "Manual training is as good a prevention of criminality as vaccination is of smallpox."78 In 1903, in Gloucester County, Virginia, twenty-five years after education had been introduced, there were 30 arrests for misdemeanors, 16 white and 14 black; and in the next year there were 15
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