Twentieth Century Negro Literature. Various
had already been projected by him to meet a want among the colored people in the community which he soon saw that the public school could not meet, viz.: a deeper ethical culture and the training of the youth of the community, not only in books, but also in some useful handicraft which would the sooner furnish the basis for strong personal character and sound home-life. His first step in this direction had been the founding of the settlement known as "Columbian Heights," to serve as a background for the Institution, which would do this. The settlement was founded in 1891, and the Institution projected in 1892. Prof. Atkins, as the first settler on Columbian Heights, and as the organizer and both Secretary and agent of the Board of Trustees, pushed the work of The Slater Industrial School, encouraged and supported by the industrious efforts of the members of the Board, until in 1895 he was called to the Presidency of the Institution. From that date to the present his labors have been an inseparable part of the history of the school.
Hon. C. H. Mebane, Superintendent of Public Instruction for North Carolina, says of him: "If I had fifty such men as Prof. Atkins in North Carolina, I could make a complete revolution in educational work in a short while, a complete revolution as to moral uplift and general good of the negro race."
In addition to his work as an educator, Prof. Atkins has taken much interest in the work of the American Academy of Social and Political Science, of which he is a member. He is also a member of the American Statistical Association, and has been twice elected Secretary of Education of the A. M. E. Zion Church.
The esteem in which he is held by leading men of the nation wherever he is known is fairly indicated in the following statement of Hon. J. L. M. Curry, LL. D., ex-minister to Spain and agent of the great Peabody and Slater Trusts for educational purposes. Dr. Curry says: "I regard President Atkins, of The Slater Industrial and State Normal School at Winston, N. C., as one of the most worthy and capable men connected with the education of the Negroes in the South. His intelligence, courtesy, good deportment, high character and efficiency as the head of a school have won the confidence and goodwill of the people among whom he lives, and of all who best know his work and worth."
"The education of a Negro is the education of a human being. In its essential characteristics the human mind is the same in every race and in every age. When a Negro child is taught that two and two are four he learns just what the white child learns when he is taught the same proposition. The teacher uses the same faculties of mind in imparting the truth as to the sum of two and two. The two children use the same faculties in learning the truth; it means the same thing to them both. In further teaching and training the methods may vary, but variations will depend less on differences of race than on peculiarities of the individual."—Bishop Haygood.
The above quotation from Bishop Haygood indicates my answer to the question. This question is simply a revival of the old superstition concerning the Negro that manifested itself in the inquiry as to whether the Negro had a soul. Civilization and fraternity have so far developed that it would be hard in these days to find a person whose skepticism concerning the Negro would find a doubtful expression as to the Negro's humanity. The light has become too strong for the existence of that kind of mist; hence the unsympathetic critic has been forced to find a new way of putting his wish begotten thought.
There is still a higher authority for a negative answer to the question, "Should the Negroes be given an education different from that given to the whites?" in the following language: "God had made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of all the earth."
This declaration of St. Paul goes to the core of the matter, unless it is proposed to revive the old superstition that the Negro is not included as a part of the "nations of men." It is a strange fact that nobody ever proposes a modified or peculiar form of education for any other nationality.
It is the glory of the backward peoples of the earth that they are adopting the forms and methods of education which have made Western civilization the touch-stone of the world's progress.
But the implied contention that the Negro should be given an education of a different kind is not absolute. Most disputants on this subject—so far as published statements go—allow that after a long period of adaptation and modified training the American Negro may reach a stage in his mental evolution that he may assimilate the same kind of mental food that is admittedly suited to the Caucasian, Mongolian and others. This view of the matter leaves out of the count another great fact, viz., that the American Negro is more American than anything else, that he is not an alien either by birth or blood. Whatever exceptions might be alleged against Africa can no longer be made a bar to him.
But let us recur again to the evolution theory, and I will not undertake to consider this theory as Darwinian.
It is not generally advanced as a presumption that the Negro is not yet a thoroughbred, but it is presented in certain catchy and specious phrases such as suggest the necessity of beginning at the bottom rather than at the top, the necessity of giving to the colored American a kind of colored education, the necessity of making his civilization earthbound and breadwinning rather than heavenbound and soul-satisfying—the necessity of keeping him close to mother earth—as he "is of the earth earthy."
In those assumptions it is forgotten that education is not a question of mechanics; it is rather a question of ethics and immortality. Education is primarily an effort to realize in man his possibilities as a thinking and feeling being.
Man's inheritance is first from heaven, from above. That is the respect in which education differs from all merely constructive processes. The stimulating and quickening power is from above. Historically this is eminently true.
Education has been a process from above. It is not my intention to enter upon the discussion of the merits of any particular kind of education. My contention is that because the Negro is a part of humanity, because he is an American with an American consciousness and with a demonstrated capacity to take on training after the manner of an ordinary man he should not be treated as a monstrosity. Bishop Haygood sets forth the only proper line of distinction in education in the following sentence: "In further teaching and learning the methods may vary, but variations will depend less on differences of race than on peculiarities of the individual." The "peculiarities" here indicated unquestionably exist. They may be noted even in the same family, but these peculiarities are found in differences which lie deeper than the skin. There is no philosopher, unless he "is joined to idols," so bold as to base his presumption of difference in human beings upon the skin, for then his judgment might have to depend on whether the skin is dark, copper-colored, brown, white, yellow, freckled, red, etc. Human differences, all will admit, are essentially differences of individual souls, and this does not preclude the importance of environment and other incidental influences.
The great fact is that mind is mind—of like origin and like substance—and that it has been found to yield to like treatment among all nations and in all ages. There is no system of pedagogy that would hold together for a moment if the idea of the unity of the human race and the similarity of mind were invalidated. Philosophy itself would be threatened and all science would be in jeopardy. Investigation and practice never fail to support this theory of the solidarity of the human race. In the schools where it has been tried it has been found not to be a matter of color, nor even of blood—and certainly the differences have not depended on race affiliation. It has been a question of the individual and of local environment.
But so positive and indivisible is the human identity that even the influence of individualism and environments is overcome by the great universal processes of education, the great processes of mind quickening and mind development. In many of our best institutions there sit side by side the representatives of many nationalities and races, and it has never been found in the work of these institutions—as far as I have been able to discover—that any one color or race could monopolize the benefits, but, on the contrary, it has been found that the benefits were realized according to individual temperament and power.
My position is not one in reference to non-essentials but essentials; it is not a contention based even so much on degree, but rather on quality and capability. I would not contend that environment would not make a whole group of children more or less backward, and I do not dispute the fact that because of better environments the whites represent as a whole