William James Edwards

“ Washington takes us upon the mountain and reveals to us Tuskegee in all of her beauty and splendor, we are likely, in such a state of ecstasy, to cry out saying, Principal Washington, it is good for us to be here, and let us build three tabernacles; one for thee, one for Armstrong, and one for Douglas. But my friends, we cannot abide here. We must go down to the foot of the mountain among the masses. ”

“ We all agree that ignorant Negroes should not be entrusted with this power, but we all feel that where a Negro has been smart and industrious in getting an education and property and pays his taxes, he should be represented. Taxation without representation is just as unjust today as it was in 1776. It is just as unfair for the Negro as it is to the white man, and we all, both white and black, know this. ”

“ As for my part, it is not a question in my mind as to the cause of this increasing class among my people. It is plain to me that ignorance is the cause of inefficiency, inefficiency the cause of vagrancy, and vagrancy the cause of crime. We must, therefore, seek the remedy in the removal of the cause. If ignorance be the mother of inefficiency, inefficiency the mother of vagrancy, and vagrancy the mother of crime, it is plain that the removal of ignorance will stop the others. This can only be done by education and civic righteousness. ”

“ Let us grant that most of our farm lands in the South have been in cultivation for fifty or seventy-five years, and in many instances for one hundred years, it is readily seen that practically all of the phosphorus and nitrogen in the plowed soil have been exhausted. Is it any wonder then that we are having such poor crops? The wonder is that our crops have kept up so well. Unless a radical change is made in our mode of farming, we must expect less and less crops each year until we have no crops, or such little that we can hardly pay the rent. ”

“ Will it be possible for a Negro travelling from Alabama to California or Massachusetts, to find a place to sleep at night?
Will the baggage masters and the conductors of the South ever treat the Negro passengers with courtesy and respect and finally will the white man in the South after making the laws for the qualifications of voters, allow a Negro to vote if he measures up to these qualifications?”
The Negro does not care what these qualifications may be. He only wants a fair chance in case he measures up to them. ”

“ The right has always been more powerful than the wrong, even more powerful than might and it will prove true in this case.
I am being constantly asked by white men in both the North and South, “How does the Negro regard this war and what about his willingness to share in its responsibilities.” I have only one answer for such questions: “The Negro now knows but one word ‘Loyalty.’ He is no alien, he owes no allegiance to any other country, there is no hyphen to his name, he is all American, he is willing to fight and die, that the world might be made safe for democracy.” ”

“ These humble and often imperfect utterances have sprung up spontaneously from the soul of a primitive and untutored folk. The rich emotion, the individual humor, the simple wisdom, the naive faith which are its birthright, have here for the first time found voice. It is sufficient to say of Waverley Carmichael that he is a full blooded southern Negro, that until last summer he has never been away from his native Alabama, that he has had but the most limited advantages of education, and that he has shared the portion of his race in hardship, poverty and toil. ”

“ I have had to endure endless hardships during these twenty-five years, in order that thousands of poor negro youths might receive an industrial education,—boys and girls who might have gone into that demoralized class that is a disgrace to any people and that these friends may continue their interest in not only Snow Hill but all the schools of the South that are seeking to make better citizens of our people. ”

“ If the shiftless, ignorant, superstitious, and criminal class of Negroes is increasing, it is because the ruling class of white men have been limiting his education, disfranchising him, and in other ways trying to doom him to serfdom. The great race riot in Atlanta was simply the culmination of the ten months’ campaigning of race hatred. Men who are now writing resolutions and sound and sane editorials, were then rivaling each other in their abuse of the Negro. ”

“ The Negro has remained in the South almost as a solid mass since his emancipation. This, in itself shows that he loves the South, and if he is now migrating to the East, North and West by the hundreds and thousands, there must be a cause for it.
We should do our best to find out these causes and at least suggest the remedy, if we cannot accomplish it. The time has come for plain speaking on the part of us all. It will do us no good to try to hide the facts, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.” ”

“ Education, in order to be real, must be applied; in order to be effective, it must be digested and assimilated. It must become a part of your flesh and blood; it must transform you into a new creature and then go out and move, live and dwell among us.
“And now a final word for the class of ’93. What of its loyalty to Tuskegee, our Alma Mater? It is true that at times our purposes and aims have been misunderstood and misconstructed; at times your attitude towards us has been misinterpreted, but not once have we doubted your love. ”

“ I wish here to emphasize the fact that education is the source of all we have and the spring of all our future joys. Our religion, our morality, and that which is highest and best in our social and civic life, all come from education. ”

“ But the dawn of a new day is breaking and industrialism seems to be the spirit of the age. The very fact that the Negro was not allowed to attend the white man’s school in the South gave the Negro a Tuskegee. The fact that no white educator was willing to bear the black man’s burden gave him a Booker Washington. For similar reasons the Negro has been forced to build his own libraries, his own theatres, his own hotels, and to establish many other business enterprises.
Hardships, trials, persecution, and offences are a primary necessity in life. ”

“ As a result of the educational offences committed against the Negro, today he has 35,000 Negro teachers and more than seventeen million dollars’ worth of school property in this country. The Negro has been disfranchised, but he is more capable of the ballot today than ever before. Though the disfranchisement of the Negro has wrought great harm to our Democratic form of government, it has increased in the Negro the spirit of patience, self-reliance, self-sacrifice, and, in fact, it has enhanced in him all of those virtues which make for true manhood and womanhood. ”

“ All great men as well as races and nations suffered their offences. Washington, Lincoln and Grant were great because they had to endure hardships. Robert Small, Frederick Douglas and Booker Washington are great because they were slaves.
The Negro of the South was emancipated 50 years ago without education, without money, without clothes, without food, without even a place to rest his head, and, in many instances, without a name. ”

“ When Waverley Carmichael, as a student in my summer class at Harvard, brought me one day a modest sheaf of his poems, I felt that in him a race had become or at least was becoming articulate. We have had, it is true, sympathetic portrayals of Negro life and feeling from without; we have had also the poems of Dunbar, significant of the high capabilities of the Negro as he advances far along the way of civilization and culture. ”

“ The condition of the public schools for our people in the Black Belt section of this state is disheartening. As unreasonable as it may seem, it is a fact that as the Negro population increases, in this section, the appropriation for Negro schools decreases. In many places the schools have been abolished altogether.
From almost every nook and corner of the South there comes a cry that the Negro as a laborer is unsatisfactory. It is said that he is inefficient, unreliable, indolent, lazy, in short, that he is unfit to do the work the South wants done. ”

“ Now, Negro domination may be a menace to the South, but it is certainly not the greatest. Neither is the extermination of our forests to be greatly feared. There are organizations and societies on foot in all parts of the South for the conservation of our forests.
Southern citizenship is suffering much from child labor, but even this, although being a great danger to our future development and prosperity, cannot rightly be classed as our greatest menace. The one thing today, in which we stand in greatest danger, is the loss of the fertility of the soil. ”

“ There are thousands of white men and women throughout the length and breadth of the South, who are today, laboring almost incessantly for the advancement of the Negro. To these, we owe a great debt of gratitude, and to these should be given much credit for what has been accomplished. This class of white southerns are not, as a rule, politicians and it is seldom, if ever, they are elected to office. When we speak of the average southern white man then, we have particular reference to the great horde of office seekers and politicians that infest the entire south-land. ”

“ I hail from Snow Hill, which is located in the heart of the Black Belt of this State, in a section where the colored people outnumber the white seven to one, and in the center of a colored population of more than 200,000. When we started work there twenty-five years ago the people as a whole were poor, ignorant, superstitious and greatly in debt. They had no special love for industrial training and not much general love for any kind of education. The so-called public schools were then running three months in the year and paying the teachers nine and ten dollars per month. ”

“ They have grown by reason of the obstacles which they have overcome. It is singular, yet it is true, that offences have never destroyed a nation. Those nations which have been destroyed have been destroyed not by attack from without, but by their own internal weakness.
Societies that are accomplishing the most good for the uplift of humanity today are those against whom the most offences have been committed. Take the Christian Church, the greatest of all societies. Who can enumerate the offences which have been committed against the church? ”

“ If the Negro in a community be lazy, indifferent, and careless about his farm, the white man in the community will soon fall into the same habit. On the other hand, if the white man is smart, industrious, energetic and persevering in his general makeup, the Negro will soon fall into line; so after all, whatever helps one race in the South will help the other and whatever degrades one race in the South, sooner or later will degrade the other. ”

“ A large majority of the white men in the South believe that this problem is to be solved by the Negro “learning his place” and keeping in it. Though they do not say just what this place is, they purpose to teach it to the Negro by disfranchisement, by limiting his education, by discrimination on the streets and on the railroads, by barring him from public parks, public libraries, and public amusements of any kind, by insulting replies to courteous questions, by conviction for trivial offences, and, finally, by judge lynch and the shot gun. This class is called the rabble. ”

“ This committee holds meetings in the various communities to arouse in the people an interest in education. It encourages them to build better school-houses, to extend the school term and it keeps their children in school. It is the duty of the committee on labor to gather together those of our race who still work as contract-hands, wage-hands, day-laborers, and domestic servants, and impress upon them the necessity of rendering the best service, tell them that the race is judged more by what they do than what we do, and how great their responsibility is. ”

“ We judge the teacher by the process rather than by the product, and we introduce a number of extraneous criteria to hide the absence of a real criterion. We watch the way in which he conducts a recitation, how many slips he makes in his diction and syntax, inspect his personal appearance, ask of what school he is a graduate and how many degrees he possesses, inquire into his moral character, determine his church membership, and judge him to be a good or a poor teacher according to our findings. ”

“ Will they give us an equal part of the money spent for education? (In many places in the Black Belt the Negro child receives thirty cents a year for education, while the white child receives fifteen dollars.) Will the Negro be given any work that he is capable of doing and not be denied it on account of his color? ”

“ Sometimes we have been compelled to work night and day, but they have always been willing to serve. Not only have the officers been willing to serve, but the rank and file of our teachers have shown the same spirit of willingness from year to year. Sometimes they would get their pay promptly and at other times they would have to wait for months, but always they have been willing to do what they could to cheer and help me in the darkest hour of the struggle. I believe that the spirit of the officers and teachers of Snow Hill Institute is: “Not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” ”

“ Many great problems confront the people of the rural South, namely, this Negro Problem and the problem of sufficient labor supply. In a practical way I wish to consider the relation of the Negro to the labor problem of the rural South. It is a fact that today many of the best farms of the South have been turned into pastures because of the lack of labor; other farms have been sold, and still others are growing up in weeds because there is no one to till them. ”

“ Another suggestion is, that as you go out to work, you will find that for the most part Negro society is built upon a false basis. Instead of being built upon [Pg 130] the sound basis of merit and character, it is built upon display; instead of being built upon substance, it is built upon shadow.
“We need young men and women who have confidence in themselves; confidence in the race, and abiding faith in God. We need young men and women who are more interested in the opportunity to make a dollar than in the privilege to spend one. ”