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1418 An American Dilemma
prejudices. Of course they are Southerners themselves and know how far they can go>
but they are restrained in their eflforts by the milieu. They have to be extremely
careful not to arouse sentiments that would impede the progress of their work. For their
success they must depend upon the traditional paternalistic attitude towards the Negro
who keeps in his place. They have a definite task, but they are subordinate to the state
superintendent of education, who may be an educator and an organizer, but who may
also be a politician, playing partisan politics.^* (B. Schrieke, Alien Americans [1936],
pp. 163-164.)
The present writer has been equally impressed by the activity of the state agents for
Negro education. To Schrieke’s evaluation 1 should like to add a few observations. The
independence of the agents, since they drew their salaries not from state funds but from
an outside agency which could keep a control over their selection, has given this group
of public servants a rare spirit of zeal and devotion which is now upheld as a great
tradition. To the outsider, it is striking that this group contains individuals who are
extraordinary in their surroundings on account of freedom from prejudice and
thorough knowledge and understanding not only of the Negro school but of the whole
setting of social and economic problems in which it is enclosed. Their policy could be
called “progressive opportunism.”
Between 1913 and 1932, some 5,357 Negro school buildings in 15 Southern
states were constructed with Rosenwald aid. “The total cost of these buildings was
$28,408,520 of which $18,104,155 (64%) came from tax funds, $1,211,975 (4%)
from personal contributions of white friends, $4,366,519 (15%) from the Julius
Rosenwald Fund . . . and $4,725,871 (17%) in a flood of small contributions from
Negroes themselves—striking evidence of the desire of members of this race for
schooling for their children.” (Edwin R. Embree, Julius Rosenwald Fund: Review of
Two Decades^ [1936], p. 23.)
Doxey Wilkerson makes the following comparison:
“When the number of ‘Rosenwald buildings* constructed during this 20-year period
is compared with the total number of Negro schools in 1 2 States for which information
is available, it will be seen that the number of buildings constructed with Rosenwald
aid is equivalent to about one-fifth (20 per cent) of the total number of Negro school
buildings in 1935-36. More than one-fourth of the Negro school buildings in
Arkansas, Louisiana, and Maryland, and nearly one-third in North Carolina and
Tennessee were constructed with Rosenwald aid. Similarly, in the 10 States for which
information is at hand, the amount of money invested in ‘Rosenwald buildings* is
equivalent to nearly one-third (32 per cent) of the total value of Negro school
property in 1935-36. In South Carolina the corresponding proportion is more than
one-haif, in Arkansas nearly three-fourths, and in Mississippi nearly nine-tenths.’*
(Doxey A. Wilkerson, Special Problems of Negro Education [1939], pp. 32-53;
Wilkerson *s sources are David T. Blose and Ambrose Caliver, Statistics of the Education
of Negroes: 1933-34 and 1933-36, U.S. Office of Education, Bulletin No. 13 [1938],
p. 22, and Negro Year Book: 1937-38 [1937], p. 185.) See also, U.S. Office of
Education, Biennial Survey of Education in the United States: 1934-36, Bulletin No. 2
(1938), Vol. I, pp. 80-89.
For a recent, good impressionistic survey of both white and Negro colleges and
universities in the South, see Virginius Dabney, Below the Potomac (1942), pp. 139-
176 and 226-233.
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