p. 13 | Negro Education by A. J. Haysmer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 7, 1911

Negro Education

By A. J. Haysmer

“THE first school for colored people was opened under the protection of the guns of Fortress Monroe in 1861, for the avowed purpose of educating the contrabands of war.

“In 1862 several more schools were opened with a similar object, and in 1864 the government issued an order through the military department creating a board of education to look after the rudimentary instruction of the freedmen.

“Following the war much money appropriated for Negro education was expended with few practical results. However, in 1866 the government recommended that free colored schools be established everywhere.

“The South having lost so much property was unable to support such a school system, and at the same time educate its own children. Even to-day in some of these States, the public schools reach only a small per cent of the white children.

“But the need of the hour is a system of education that will reach all the colored children. As the Negro must be a profitable producer, it is doubly important that this system of education should be strong along industrial and mechanical lines. It will be a long time before the Southern States, unaided, can bring this about.

“‘Some time ago,’ says Booker T. Washington, ‘one of our young men invited me to make a visit in a back country of Alabama, where he had been teaching school. I went out there, and one day he had a farmers’ institute. An old farmer was asked to go up on the platform. He had a handful of cotton stalks. He picked up one stalk and began his address: “I never had no chance to study no science, but I has been trying to make some science for myself. This stalk o’ cotton growed only one boll to the stalk.” He picked up another stalk of cotton, and told how he had fertilized his land until he got three bolls to the stalk. Then he picked up another, and another, until he showed one with six; and, “las’ year,” he concluded, “I got to the p’int where on one stalk growed fourteen bolls.” After he had taken his seat, somebody said, “Uncle, what is your name?” “In the ole days when I didn’t hab no larnin’ an’ lived in an ole log cabin, they used ter call me Ole Jim Hill. Now I owns houses, I is edicatin’ my chilluns, I has no mortgage on my buildin’s, and I has some money in the bank. Now they calls me Mister James Hill,” was his reply.’”

“The Negro naturally looks to the land for support. He was brought to America to till the soil. His home was on the plantation. It is only within the last decade that he has left the farm, in large numbers, to seek an existence in the city. The people of the United States can not afford to allow this. The Negro problem, always a perplexing one, becomes ten times as difficult when he leaves the land.

“Schools for the Negro should be on the land. Teachers of Negroes should be lovers of the farm. Text-books for Negro schools should deal with farm problems. Every legitimate means should be employed to make him a landowner, capable of supporting himself from his acres, capable of building for himself a suitable and comfortable cottage, of keeping it clean and hygienic, and of serving on his table well prepared foods that come from his garden, and of caring in a rational way for his sick.”

In connection with the foregoing, I wish to give a few extracts from “Testimonies for the Church,” Volume IX, on this subject:—

“Promising young men and young women should be educated to become teachers. They should have the very best advantages. Schoolhouses and meeting-houses should be built in different places, and teachers employed.”

“The children and youth in these schools are to be taught something more than merely how to read. Industrial lines of work are to be carried forward. The students are to be provided with facilities for learning trades that will enable them to support themselves.”

“We should be deeply interested in

the establishment of schools for the colored people. And we must not overlook the importance of placing the present truth before the teachers and students in the large colleges for colored people that have been established by men of the world.”

“Schools and sanitariums for colored people should be established, and in these the colored youth should be taught and trained for service by the very best teachers that can be employed.”

The October collection is for the work among this people. We feel very anxious that, as the work is increasing so rapidly among them, our offerings shall increase proportionately.

A. J. HAYSMER, Sec. North American Foreign Dept.