education, until he is convinced that such education will not lead to either of these."61 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."62 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."63 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."64 Thomas Nelson Page states that "the Negro may individually attain a fair and in uncommon instances a considerable degree of mental development. ''65 Another states that "We must educate him because ignorant men are dangerous, especially to a democracy pledged to educate all 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.''67 men. 9966 Illiteracy which in 1863 equaled about 95 per cent of the Negro population has been decreasing rapidly since the 61 Weatherford, Negro Life in the South, p. 87. 62 Bailey, Race Orthodoxy in the South, p. 265. 63 Hart, The Southern South, p. 319. 64 Ibid., p. 326. 65 Ibid., p. 327. 66 Bailey, Race Orthodoxy in the South, p. 269. 67 Hart, The Southern South, p. 327. 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.68 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.69 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.70 The illiteracy for all Negro children was 25 per cent, whereas the illiteracy for all white children was only 10.5 per cent." The illiteracy of our Negroes does not seem so great when a comparison is made with some foreign countries:72 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.73 In the Mississippi penitentiary where they had 450 convicts of Negro blood one half of them could neither read nor write, and less 68 Work, Negro Yearbook, 1915, p. 226. 69 Ibid., p. 226. 70 Hart, The Southern South, p. 294. 71 Ibid., p. 292. 72 Washington in the Forum, p. 270. 73 Review of Reviews, p. 318. than 10 per cent had anything like a fair education.74 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.75 The records of the southern prisons show that at least 90 per cent of those in prison are without trades of any sort.76 According to Booker T. Washington, "Manual training is as good a prevention of criminality as vaccination is of smallpox." 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 arrests for misdemeanors, 14 white and one black.78 The general opinion of the southerner may be judged by the answers to a questionnaire sent out to prominent southern men in each of the Southern States. To the question "Does crime grow less as education increases?" there were 102, answered "yes" and 19 answered "no."'79 One of the charges against the Negro has been his shiftlessness, both as far as his personal industriousness is concerned, and as far as the care of his home and things about him. Now, however, education has increased his standards and his wants, so that since he desires to have land, homes, 74 Review of Reviews, p. 319. 75 Ibid., p. 319. 76 Weatherford, Negro Life in the South, p. 110. 77 Washington and Du Bois, The Negro in the South, p. 64. 78 Ibid., p. 71. 79 Washington, Working with the Hands, p. 239. churches, books, papers, and education for his children, he will labor regularly and efficiently to supply these. The graduates of Tuskegee Institute are kept in touch with by one of the school officials, who reported that not 10 per cent. could be found in idleness and that only one was in a penitentiary.80 LORETTA FUNKE so Washington and Du Bois, The Negro in the South, p. 61. THE NEGRO MIGRATION TO CANADA AFTER THE PASSING OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT When President Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Bill1 on September 18, 1850, he started a Negro migration that continued up to the opening of the Civil War, resulting in thousands of people of color crossing over into Canada and causing many thousands more to move from one State into another seeking safety from their pursuers. While the free Negro population of the North increased by nearly 30,000 in the decade after 1850, the gain was chiefly in three States, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. Connecticut had fewer free people of color in 1860 than in 1850 and there were half a dozen other States that barely held their own during the period. The three States showing gains were those bordering on Canada where the runaway slave or the free man of color in danger could flee when threatened. It is estimated that from fifteen to twenty thousand Negroes entered Canada between 1850 and 1860, increasing the Negro population of the British provinces from about 40,000 to nearly 60,000. The greater part of the refugee population settled in the southwestern part of the present province of Ontario, chiefly in what now comprises the counties of Essex and Kent, bordering on the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair. This large migration of an alien race into a country more sparsely settled than any of the Northern States might have been expected to cause trouble, but records show that the Canadians received the refugees with kindness and gave them what help they could.2 At the close of the Civil War 1"One of the most assailable laws ever passed by the Congress of the United States. . . . Under this act . . . the Negro had no chance; the meshes of the law were artfully contrived to aid the master and entrap the slave." Rhodes, History of the United States, I, 185. 2"A large proportion of the colored persons who have fled from the free states have sought refuge in Canada where they have been received with remarkable kindness and have testified the grateful sense of their reception by their exemplary conduct." American Anti-slavery Society, annual report for 1851, p. 31. |