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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 41. The Negro School - 3. The Development of Negro Education in the South
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888 An American Dilemma
ing and supporting schools for Negroes. Missionary and church organiza-
tions in the North contributed not only by sending down teachers but
also by giving money for buildings and support of the students. Indeed,
most of the Negroes who received education in the South between 1865
and 1880 were schooled in institutions supported by the charity of Northern
churches.^® Fisk, Atlanta, Howard and Hampton were founded in these
years. The Negro communities themselves collected much money for their
schools, particularly on the elementary level.
As a part of this movement the Reconstruction governments laid the basis
for a public school system in the South for both whites and Negroes. In all
Southern states the great American principle of free public schools for all
children was written into the new constitutions or other statutes. The
Restoration governments only continued what their predecessors had
organized for the whites. The Negroes were severely discriminated against j
in many parts of the South Negro education deteriorated for decades. This
period of reaction was a most crucial time for Negro education. Du Bois
is probably right when he says that ^^had it not been for the Negro school
and college, the Negro would, to all intents and purposes, have been driven
back to slavery.”^®
The great wonder is that the principle of the Negroes’ right to public
education was not renounced altogether. But it did not happen. One
explanation is the persistency and magnanimity of Northern philanthropy.
But this activity was pursued under the indulgence of the Southern state
and municipal authorities. And, though their own contributions to Negro
education in many regions were not much more than face saving, the
imfortant thing is that face saving was deemed necessary and that the
Negroes^ statutory right to ’public education rernained unassailable in the
South, The American Creed, backed by the Constitution, showed itself
strong enough not to allow the sacred principle of public education to
succumb. Even in the South—as it came out of the Civil War and Recon-
struction—the caste interest could never be pursued wholeheartedly. The
moral dilemma, and the apologetic attitude, growing out of the partial
allegiance to the American Creed, is illustrated in a pronouncement like
the following from Thom^is Nelson Page:
The South has faithfully applied itself during all these years to giving the
Negroes all the opportunities possible for attaining an education, and it is one of the
most creditable pages in her history that in face of the horror of Negro-domination
during the Reconstruction period; of the disappointment at the small results; in face
of the fact that the education of the Negroes has appeared to be used by them only
as a weapon with which to oppose the white race, the latter should have persistently
given so largely of its store to provide this misused educationd^
Almost as soon as the movement for the education of Negro youth began,
the quarrel started as to whether Negro education should be ‘^classical” or
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