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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 41. The Negro School - 1. Negro Education as Concerted Action
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88o An American Dilemma
of life—are so closed to them that severe conflicts in their minds are bound
to appear.
Their situation is, however, not entirely unique. Even among the youths
from other poor and disadvantaged groups in the North the ideals im-
planted by the schools do not fit life as they actually experience it.^ The
conflicts are, of course, accentuated in the case of Negroes. Often they
become cynical in regard to the official democratic ideals taught by the
school. But more fundamentally they will be found to have drunk of them
deeply. The American Creed and the American virtues mean much more
to Negroes than to whites. They are all turned into the rising Negro
protest.
The situation is more complicated in the South. The Negro schools are
segregated and the Negro school system is controlled by different groups
with different interests and opinions concerning the desirability of preserv-
ing or changing the caste status of Negroes. Looked upon as a ^^move-
ment,” Negro education in the South is, like the successful Negro organ-
izations, an interracial endeavor. White liberals in the region and Northern
philanthropists have given powerful assistance in building up Negro educa-
tion in the South. They have thereby taken and kept some of the controls.
In the main, however, the control over Negro education has been preserved
by other whites representing the political power of the region. The salaried
officers of the movement—the college presidents, the school principals, the
professors, and the teachers—are now practically all Negroes j
in the
elementary schools and in the high schools they are exclusively Negroes.
With this set-up, it is natural and, indeed, necessary that the Negro school
adhere rather closely to the accommodating pattern.®
Negro teachers on all levels are dependent on the white community
leaders. This dependence is particularly strong in the case of elementary
school teachers in rural districts. Their salaries are low, and their security
as to tenure almost nothing. They can be used as disseminators of the
whites^ expectations and demands on the Negro community. But the ex-
treme dependence and poverty of rural Negro school teachers, and the
existence of Negroes who are somewhat better off and more independent
than they, practically excluded them from having any status of leadership
in the Negro community. In so far as their teaching is concerned, they are,
however, more independent than it appears. This is solely because the
white superintendent and the white school board ordinarily care little
about what goes on in the Negro school. There are still counties where the
superintendent has never visited the majority of his Negro schools. As long
as Negro stool pigeons do not transfer reports that she puts wrong ideas
into the children’s heads, the rural Negro school teacher is usually ignored.
In cities the situation is different. Negro elementary and high schools
• See Chapter 34,
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