Elizabeth Christophers Kimball Hobson

“ The negro problem of which we hear so much does not seem to us as difficult to solve as the labor problem of the North, complicated as that is by the mixture of races and religions. The negroes, on the contrary, are a homogeneous race, Afro-Americans, knowing no other country than the United States, and desiring no other ”

“ But the negro women of the South are subject to temptations, of which their white sisters of the North have no appreciation, and which come to them from the days of their race enslavement. They are still the victims of the white man under a survival of a system tacitly recognized, which deprives them [7] of the sympathy and help of the Southern white women, and to meet such temptations the negro woman can only offer the resistance of a low moral standard, an inheritance from the system of slavery, made still lower from a life-long residence in a one-roomed cabin. ”

“ The leaders of the race, both white and black, are now alive to the importance of industrial education, and most of the schools we visited had introduced manual labor of various kinds as a part of the curriculum, and where it had not been done the additional expense had been the obstacle. Everywhere we found the strongest desire on the part of a large number of girls to learn the profession of nursing, and those who have already acquired it have been very successful, the whites willingly employing them at high wages—from $10 to even $20 a week. ”

“ We would propose to employ pious, intelligent women, white or colored, to travel in the rural districts of say Virginia and Alabama, and to start Mothers’ meetings, where the average ignorant [14] woman, who cannot now hope to receive an education, may at least be taught the way to keep a decent home and to elevate the moral standard of her humble life. ”

“ Remove a girl early from such degrading environment, send her home to her people with the changed idea of personal decency acquired by residence at one of the training schools, and she becomes at once a powerful agent for good in her family and neighborhood. ”

“ The Afro-American to-day in the five central Southern States is not so degraded or ignorant as was the French peasant before the revolution of 1792. In fact he is less degraded, for while his poverty and ignorance are no greater, he is not unjustly oppressed nor weighed down by taxation. ”

“ It is perhaps unwise at this time to give full expression to our views regarding the moral condition of the negro women. It is sufficient to say that the reports that had been made to us by others, before we undertook our investigations, were fully confirmed, and we hope that in the near future the women of the South will become so interested and roused to the importance of the subject that they may be inclined to cooperate with the women of the North in some plan for the elevation of these descendants of their former servants. ”

“ The people can neither read nor write, girls and women terribly ragged, if possible worse clad than with no clothes at all. All without shoes and stockings. People so ignorant that they know nothing of their own weights and measures. ”

“ Those men who have acquired a profession or trade, or learned how to cultivate the land on scientific principles, refuse to enter the employ of the whites at six or eight dollars a month, because independently they can earn more, and then the whites say ‘there is a negro spoiled by education.’
“The girls who graduate from the schools have acquired knowledge which enables them to support themselves at good wages until they marry, which they generally do five years after they graduate, generally to the men with whom they have been educated. ”

“ Husbandry is not much further advanced [11] than among the Hurons, and the people almost as wild as their country. Their houses brutally filthy, no windows, no other light than the door, mud floors and chimneys. ”

“ Those who cannot pay, work ten hours a day for the privilege of two hours schooling in the evening. It was in this way Booker Washington obtained his education, working his way one hundred miles to reach Hampton. The day scholars in two rural schools we visited in the black belt of Alabama paid one dollar a month for their tuition for eight months, as the state only pays, on an average, thirty dollars a month to a teacher for three months, and provides neither school-house nor books. ”

“ With this example before us, one may reasonably expect, judging from his progress in the last twenty-five years, that the Afro-American, by the middle of the 20th century, may stand side by side with the other races now crowding into the Republic. We were told at Hampton that the students who now apply for entrance are nearly as advanced as those who graduated twenty years ago, and at the Scotia School for girls they are commencing to receive the daughters of their first graduates, and find these know nearly as much on entering as their mothers did when they left. ”

“ Matters have not yet so adjusted themselves in the South as to warrant the leaving the educational interests of the colored race altogether to the hands of the Southern whites, and the negroes instinctively turn to the Northern teachers for education and guidance, notwithstanding the large appropriations made for schools by the Southern whites. ”

“ We teach them it is a part of their duty in life to encourage and guide their ignorant sisters. We strive in this school to found our education upon a strong Christian basis, and we feel that God has already blessed our work.”
“What occupations are open to your young people?”
“The men become clergymen, doctors, lawyers, apothecaries and teachers. Many of the trades are now open to them, thanks to the industrial schools. They are buying land, and through the education they obtain at Hampton and Tuskegee they are cultivating it more intelligently. ”

“ These examinations would enable the teacher to determine the capacity of the girls and their fitness to be sent to the higher schools, where many now go when unfitted to enter and occupy places which should be filled by girls of superior ability. By this process of selection, the most intelligent and ambitious could enter Hampton, Tuskegee, Spelman, etc., while those of less ability will have learned the decencies of life, the elements of school education, and those feminine occupations which will fit them to be good wives and mothers. ”

“ No board of education appointed by any Government or State authority can choose such agents. Each woman who undertakes it, must go for the love of the work, and must be selected by those who know its needs. The money so liberally expended by the North would never have produced the results we have seen, if it had been given to the State ”

“ As a rule they marry within five years after they graduate, and their chief ambition is to have comfortable, Christian homes. As they generally marry the young men who have had educations like their own, both work for the same object. In fact,” he added, “the character and intelligence of the negro, like the whites, is the result of environment and heredity, and these factors produce corresponding results upon each.”
In this opinion all the white teachers we saw agreed, from Hampton to Montgomery, without exception. ”

“ Through her to inspire her husband and children with the same aspirations, so that if there be no public school in their vicinity they may both learn to desire and seek to obtain one started by the State. ”

“ They are striving to have more decent homes, to educate their children, and to get out of debt. They have taken the first step toward elevation; they have learned what is better, and are willing and anxious to work for it. ”