Kelly Miller

“ The Northern College is not apt to inspire the colored pupil with the enthusiasm and fixed purpose for the work which Providence has assigned him. It is the spirit, not the letter that maketh alive. The white College does not contemplate the special needs of the Negro race. ”

“ It is so natural to base a theory upon a long-established practice that one no longer wonders at the prevalence of this belief. The Negro has sustained servile relation to the Caucasian for so long a time that it is easy as it is agreeable to Aryan pride to conclude that servitude is his ordained place in society. When it was first proposed to furnish means for the higher development of this race, some, who assumed the wisdom of their day and generation, entertained the proposition with a sneer, others, with a smile. ”

“ It required the human race thousands of years to bridge the chasm between savagery and civilization, which must now be crossed by a school curriculum of a few years’ duration. In a settled state of society, the chief function of education is to enable the individual to live the life already attained by his race, but the educated Negro must be a pioneer, a progressive force in the uplifting of his race, and that, too, notwithstanding the fact that he belongs to a backward breed that has never taken the initiative in the progressive movements of the world. ”

“ THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION TO A BACKWARD RACE.
The African was snatched from the wilds of savagery and thrust into the midst of a mighty civilization. He thus escaped the gradual progress of evolution. Education must accomplish more for a backward race than for a people who are in the fore-front of progress. It must not only lead to the unfoldment of faculties but must equip for a life from which the recipient is separated by many centuries of development. ”

“ We reward ingenuity with a patent right for a period of years upon the process that has been invented; but when an idea has been published to the world it is no more the exclusive property of the author than gold, after it has been put in circulation, can be claimed by the miner who first dug it from its hiding place in the earth. No race or nation can preempt civilization any more than they can monopolize the atmosphere which surrounds the earth, or the waters which hold it in their liquid embrace. ”

“ The higher education tends to develop superior individuals who may be expected to exercise controlling influence over the multitude. The individual is the proof, the promise and the salvation of the race. The undeveloped races which, in modern times, have faded before the breath of civilization have probably perished because of their failure to produce commanding leaders to guide them wisely under the stress and strain which an encroaching civilization imposed. ”

“ Rational enjoyment, through moderation, is perhaps as good a definition as can be given of culture. The reaction of culture on conduct is a well known principle of practical ethics. The Negro race is characterized by boisterousness of manner and extravagant forms of taste. As if to correct such deficiencies, his higher education, hitherto, has largely been concerned with Greek and Latin literature, the norms of modern culture. It is just here that our educational critics are liable to become excited. ”

“ It is often charged that the higher education lifts the Negro above the needs of his race. The thousands of graduates of Negro Schools and Colleges all over the land are a living refutation of this charge. After the mind has been stored with knowledge it is transmitted to the place where the need is greatest and the call is loudest, and transmuted into whatever mode of energy may be necessary to accomplish the imposed task. ”

“ It thus becomes all the more imperative that the race should gain for itself the primary principles of knowledge and culture.
The social separation of the races in America renders it imperative that the professional classes among the Negroes should be recruited from their own ranks. Under ordinary circumstances, professional places are filled by the most favored class in the community. In a Latin or Catholic country, where the fiction of “social equality” does not exist, there is felt no necessity for Negro priest, teacher, or physician to administer to his own race. ”

“ He does not make provision because he lacks prevision. Under slavery he toiled as the ass, dependent upon the daily allowance from his master’s crib. To him the prayer, Give us this day our daily bread, has a material rather than a spiritual meaning. If you would perpetuate the industrial incapacity of the Negro, then confine him to the low grounds of drudgery and toil and prevent him from casting his eyes unto the hills whence come inspiration and promise. The man with the hoe is of all men most miserable unless, forsooth, he has a hope. ”

“ Again, the higher education should be encouraged because of the moral impotency of all the modes of education which do not touch and stir the human spirit. It is folly to suppose that the moral nature of the child is improved because it has been taught to read and write and cast up accounts, or to practice a handicraft. ”

“ THE EFFECT OF HIGHER EDUCATION UPON THE RURAL MASSES.
The supreme concern of philanthropy is the welfare of the unawakened rural masses. To this end there is need of a goodly sprinkling of well educated men and women to give wise guidance, [Pg 9] direction and control. Let no one deceive himself that the country Negro can be uplifted except through the influence of higher contact. It is impossible to inaugurate and conduct a manual training or industrial school without men of sound academic as well as technical knowledge. ”

“ They send their picked youth to the great centers of western knowledge; but before this culture is applied to their own needs it must first be sifted through the sieve of their native comprehension. The graduates of the schools and colleges for the Negro race are forming centers of civilizing influence in all parts of the land, and we confidently, believe that these grains of leaven will ultimately leaven the whole lump. ”

“ Slavery taught the Negro, to work but at the same time to despise those who worked. To them all show of respectability was attached to those whom circumstances placed above the necessity of toil. It requires intellectual conception of the object and the end of labor to overcome this mischievous notion. The Negro mechanics produced under the old slave regime are rapidly passing away because they did not possess the power of self-perpetuation. ”

“ Another great need of the race, which the schools must in a large measure supply, is self-reliant manhood. Slavery made the Negro as dependent upon the intelligence and foresight of his master as a soldier upon the will of his commander. ”

“ The truth is, that all knowledge which clarifies the vision, refines the feelings, broadens the conception of truth and duty and ennobles the manhood is of the highest and most valuable form of practicability. ”

“ It is said that the possession of personal property is the greatest stimulus to self-respect. When one can read his title clear to earthly possessions, it awakens a consciousness of the dignity of his own manhood. ”

“ These graduates and some time pupils are to be found in every country and district where the Negro population resides and are filling places of usefulness, honor and distinction, as well as performing works of mercy and sacrificial service. They serve as inspiration and stimulus, quickening the dormant energies of the people and urging them to loftier ideals and nobler modes of life. ”

“ For three hundred years the Negro by his marvelous assimilative power and by striking individual emanations has been constantly manifesting the higher possibilities of his nature, until now whoever assumes to doubt his susceptibility for better things needs himself to [Pg 4] be pitied for his incapacity to grasp the truth. ”

“ But, on the other hand, had he come into the world with a sluggish brain and a heavy tongue, whatever cunning and skill his hands might have acquired, he never could have developed the institution which has made him justly famous throughout the civilized world. ”

“ Washington possesses an enlightened mind to discover the needs of the masses, executive tact to put his plans in effective operation, and persuasive ability to convince others as to the expediency of his policies. He possesses no trade or handicraft, if so he has never let the American people into the secret. ”

“ Primary principles have no ethnic quality. We hear much in this day and time of the white man’s civilization. We had just as well speak of the white man’s multiplication table. Civilization is the common possession of all who assimilate and apply its principles. England can utilize no secret art or invention that is not equally available to Japan. ”

“ Tracing the letters of the alphabet with a pen has no bearing on the Golden Rule. The spelling of words by sounds and syllables does not lead to the observance of the Ten Commandments. Drill in the multiplication table does not fascinate the learner with the sermon on the mount. Rules in grammar, dates in history, sums in arithmetic, and points in geography do not strengthen the grasp on moral truth. ”

“ Such stimulating influence can be brought to bear upon the race only through the inspiration of the higher culture.
MEN OF HIGHER TRAINING THE LEADERS OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.
It requires men of sound knowledge to conceive and execute plans for the industrial education of the masses. The great apostles of industrial education for the Negro have been of academic training, or of its cultural equivalent. The work of Hampton and Tuskegee is carried on by men and women of a high degree of mental cultivation. ”

“ Knowledge and virtue know no ethnic exclusiveness. If indeed races are irreconcilable, their best individual exponents are not. All dignified negotiation must be conducted on the high plane of individual equality. ”

“ By no other means can he be qualified to enlighten the ignorant, restrain the vicious, care for the sick and afflicted, or administer solace to weary souls, plead in litigation the cause of the injured. ”

“ His usefulness in the world is still measured by physical faculties rather than by qualities of mind and soul. The merciless proposition of Carlyle that, the Negro is useful to God’s creation only as a servant, still finds wide acceptance. ”

“ From whatever source a nation may derive the light of civilization, it must be perpetuated by the exercise of their own faculties. Self-reliant manhood is the ultimate basis of American citizenship.
TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP.
The work of the educated colored man is largely that of leadership. He requires, therefore, all the discipline, judgment and mental equipment that long preparation can afford. The more ignorant and backward the masses the more skilled and sagacious should the leaders be. ”

“ The issues involved in the race question are as intricate in their relations and far reaching in their consequences as any that have ever taxed human wisdom for solution. No one can be too learned or too profound in whose hands are entrusted the temporal and eternal [Pg 14] destiny of a human soul. ”

“ There has recently sprung into prominence a class of educational [Pg 13] philosophers who deny the value of stored up knowledge. We are informed that only such information as will be honored at the corner grocery or is convertible on demand into cash equivalent is of practical value, while all else is an educational delusion and a snare. ”

“ It devolves upon the complainant to present some plan by which a like sum of money, in a like space of time, can be spent upon an institution of whatever designation so as to produce a more wholesome and more wide-spread effect upon the general social uplift. ”

“ But if imbued with hope and sustained by an ideal, he can consecrate the hoe as well as any other instrument of service, as a means of fulfilling the promise within him. When a seed is sown in the ground it first sends its roots into the soil before the blades can rise out of it. ”

“ And so when one has digested and assimilated the principles of knowledge he can file his declaration of intellectual independence. He can adopt the language of Montaigne “Truth and reason are common to everyone, and are no more his who spake them first than his who speaks them after ”

“ I have often noticed a young man accommodate his companion with a light from his cigar. After the spark has once been communicated, the beneficiary stands upon an equal footing with the benefactor. In both cases the fire must be continued by drawing fresh supplies of oxygen from the atmosphere. ”