The Training of Negroes For Social Power
The Training of Negroes For Social Power
The Training of Negroes For Social Power
of Negroes for
Social Power 03
What is this all about?
Importance of training
of “Negroes” for social
power, equality, and
abolition of racial
discrimination
Summary
The responsibility for dispelling their own
ignorance implies that the power to overcome
ignorance is to be placed in black men’s hands;
the lessening of poverty calls for the power of
effective work, and one responsibility for lessening
crime calls for control over social forces which
produce crime.
The Negro problem, it has often been
said, is largely a problem of ignorance-
not simply of illiteracy, but a deeper
ignorance of the world and its ways, of
the thought and experience of men; an
ignorance of self and the possibilities of
human souls.
It is, therefore, of crying necessity
among Negroes that the heads of their educational
system-the teachers in the normal schools, the heads of
high schools, the principals of public systems, should be
unusually well-trained men; men trained not simply in
common-school branches, not simply in the technique of
school management and normal methods, but trained
beyond this, broadly and carefully, into the meaning of
the age whose civilization it is their peculiar duty to
interpret to the youth of a new race, to the minds of
untrained people.
Not all men-indeed, not the majority of men,
only the exceptional few among American
Negroes or among any other people-are
adapted to this higher training, as, indeed, only
the exceptional few are adapted to higher
training in any line; but the significance of such
men is not to be measured by their numbers,
but rather by the numbers of their pupils and
followers who are destined to see the world
through their eyes, hear it through their
trained ears, and speak to it through the music
of their words
Their chief function is the quickening
and training of human intelligence; they
can do much in the teaching of morals
and manners incidentally, but they
cannot and ought not to replace the
home as the chief moral teacher; they
can teach valuable lessons as to the
meaning of work in the world, but they
cannot replace technical schools and
apprenticeship in actual life, which are
the real schools of work.
It is, however, quite possible to
combine some of the work of the
secondary schools with purely
technical training, the necessary
limitations being matters of time and
cost: the question whether the boy can
afford to stay in school long enough to add
parts of a high school course to the trade
course, and particularly the question
whether the school can afford or ought to
afford to give trade-training to high-school
students who do not intend to become
artisans.
The existence and growth of such a class, far from
causing surprise, should be recognized as the natural
result of that social disease called the Negro problem;
nearly every untoward circumstance known to human
experience has united to increase Negro crime: the
slavery of the past, the sudden emancipation, the
narrowing of economic opportunity, the lawless
environment of wide regions, the stifling of natural
ambition, the curtailment of political privilege, the
disregard of the sanctity of black men’s homes, and
above all, a system of treatment for criminals calculated
to breed crime far faster than all other available
agencies could repress it.
We believe that a rationally arranged college
course of study for men and women able to
pursue it is the best and only method of putting
into the world Negroes with ability to use the
social forces of their race so as to stamp out
crime, strengthen the home, eliminate
degenerates, and inspire and encourage the
higher tendencies of the race not only in
thought and aspiration, but in everyday toil.
But the danger lies in the fact
that the best of the Negro
colleges are poorly equipped,
and are today losing support
and countenance, and that,
unless the nation awakens to
its duty, ten years will see the
annihilation of higher Negro
training in the South.
We need a few strong, well-equipped Negro
colleges, and we need them now, not
tomorrow; unless we can have them and
have them decently supported, Negro
education in the South, both common-
school and the industrial, is doomed to
failure, and the forces of social regeneration
will be fatally weakened, for the college
today among Negroes is, just as truly as it
was yesterday along whites, the beginning
and not the end of human training, the
foundation and not the capstone of popular
education.
Conclusion
He concludes the article
with a challenge to the
Outlook’s white readers:
“Are you afraid to let them
try?” In doing so, he calls
for the empowerment of
Negro people through the
education of its most
talented individuals – its
future leaders. In this
process, education is key
to black social
empowerment.
THANK
YOU!