Historically Black Colleges and Universities

“ The land saw glimpses of a new destiny and the stirring of new ideals. The educational system striving to complete itself saw new obstacles and a field of work ever broader and deeper. The Negro colleges, hurriedly founded, were inadequately equipped, illogically distributed, and of varying efficiency and grade; the normal and high schools were doing little more than common-school work, and the common schools were training but a third of the children who ought to be in them, and training these too often poorly. ”

“ On the foundation of emancipation in the aftermath of the Civil War, historically Black colleges have erected an impressive edifice of educational experience and excellence. Their legacy of learning and their sustained success will surely remain a tribute to their students, staffs, graduates, and friends and a blessing for every American in the years to come. ”

“ We need a few strong, well-equipped Negro colleges, and we need them now, not to-morrow; unless we can have them and have them decently supported, Negro education in the South, both common-school and industrial, is doomed to failure, and the forces of social regeneration will be fatally weakened, for the college to-day among Negroes is, just as truly as it was yesterday among whites, the beginning and not the end of human training, the foundation and not the cap-stone of popular education. ”

“ Who would do it if Negroes did not? How could Negroes do it if they were not trained carefully for it? If white people need colleges to furnish teachers, ministers, lawyers, and doctors, do black people need nothing of the sort? ”

“ But, however divergent the views of different people may be upon these questions, there certainly is no immediate occasion for a howl against the higher education of the Negro, for there is not enough of it to feed the flames of a respectable controversy. Only a fraction of the so-called universities south of Washington open to colored students have a collegiate course of study, and the entire number of graduates from such a course can be expressed by two ciphers and a small significant figure. What are a hundred or two of college graduates among six or seven millions of people? ”

“ Fisk, Howard, Atlanta, Hampton, Tennessee Central, Virginia Central, and Straight, are some of the most prominent. These are all under the control and management of the whites, and are accordingly conducted upon the principle of whites for teachers and blacks for pupils. And yet each of the above institutions are indebted to the sympathy felt for the negro, for their very existence. Some of these colleges give more encouragement to the negro to become an instructor, than others; but, none however, have risen high enough to measure the black man independent of his color. ”

“ At present the Negro race, to say the least, is too poor to take on itself the complete control of its colleges. Such a transfer would be a calamity, indeed, for under the white management these institutions are leading only a tolerable existence, are progressing but slowly and some of them not at all. ”

“ It is not a matter of mere emphasis, for we would be glad to see ten industrial schools to every college. It is not a fact that there are to-day too few Negro colleges, but rather that there are too many institutions attempting to do [504] college work. But the danger lies in the fact that the best of the Negro colleges are poorly equipped and are to-day 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. ”

“ They already dimly perceive that the paths of peace winding between honest toil and dignified manhood call for the guidance of skilled thinkers, the loving, reverent comradeship between the black lowly and the black men emancipated by training and culture.
The function of the Negro college, then, is clear: it must maintain the standards of popular education, it must seek the social regeneration of the Negro, and it must help in the solution of problems of race contact and cooperation. And finally, beyond all this, it must develop men. ”

“ If the ratio of colored population in secondary and higher education is to be equal to the average for the whole country, it must be increased to five times its present average." And if this be true of the secondary and higher education, it is safe to say that the Negro has not one-tenth his quota in college studies. How baseless, therefore, is the charge of too much training! We need Negro teachers for the Negro common schools, and we need first-class normal schools and colleges to train them. This is the work of higher Negro education and it must be done. ”

“ At Nashville, at Atlanta, at Raleigh, at Memphis, and at New Orleans institutions were founded which have become great schools and have contributed beyond measure to the process of civilizing the Negro as a mass—a process confessedly still far from completion. Complicated and annoying as the race problem assuredly is and will be for years to come at the South, it would be far worse—much farther away from even a hopeful degree of solution—but for the work done by the missionary colleges. ”

“ Why not here, and perhaps elsewhere, plant deeply and for all time centres of learning and living, colleges that yearly would send into the life of the South a few white men and a few black men of broad culture, catholic tolerance, and trained ability, joining their hands to other hands, and giving to this squabble of the Races a decent and dignified peace? ”

“ In reply, it was remarked that the establishment of a colored college was attempted many years ago, and could not succeed, being regarded by many as an extravagant and uncalled-for measure; that it was too late in the day for colored people themselves to found any exclusive institution; there are, now, colleges and academies where they can be admitted on equal terms with white students, and that, therefore, the necessity did not exist ”

“ The teachers in these institutions came not to keep the Negroes in their place, but to raise them out of their places where the filth of slavery had wallowed them. The colleges they founded were social settlements; homes where the best of the sons of the freedmen came in close and sympathetic touch with the best traditions of New England. They lived and ate together, studies and worked, hoped and harkened in the dawning light. In actual formal content their curriculum was doubtless old-fashioned, but in educational power it was supreme, for it was the contact of living souls. ”

“ He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates. ”

“ The better off of the Negroes send their sons to Northern white colleges where they may receive the best instruction but have little contact with their fellow students. So far from the number of negro college graduates being too great, it is entirely too small for the immediate needs of the race. They must have educated teachers and trained professional men; the negro schools will never flourish without competent teachers and supervisors of the negro race. In many respects the colleges are the weakest part of negro education. ”

“ From the first the Special Programs Unit had rejected the clamor for forming V-12 units in predominantly black colleges, arguing that in the long run this could be considered enforced segregation and hardly contribute to racial harmony. Although candidates were supposed to attend the NROTC school of their choice, black candidates were restricted to institutions that would accept them. If a black school was added to the program, all black candidates would very likely gravitate toward it. ”