Part 31

[Note 52: An address at the opening of Howard University Law School, Washington, D. C., Oct. 1st, 1913.]

_Gentlemen:_

The legal profession is without doubt in the lead. Its devotees outrank all others in service to the government and they come the closest in personal contact to the individual. This is denied of course, and always will be denied by men of all other professions, but when the roster of the world's lawyers who have faithfully and efficiently served humanity in every conceivable way is pitted against that of the others, the question is relieved of all doubt. The Negro lawyer is no longer an experiment. He has been severely tried from within and without, and he has proved his worth. His place in our economy is fixed. He has demonstrated his capacity to serve, and to serve well, and for all of this both the lawyer and the race he is helping to advance are under lasting obligations to Howard University. She has to her credit more men who are actively and successfully pursuing their calling than any other institution of learning in this land.

* * * * *

The Negro race is probably to-day in greater need of consecrated lawyers than it is of pious priests. The time has come for the lawyer to take his place in the lead. We are celebrating this year the 50th anniversary of our emancipation, and, paradoxical though it may be, we appear further from emancipation to-day than when Lincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation, or when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. It is quite true that we have an immensely larger realty-holding to our credit, that our financial worth is constantly on the increase, that our illiteracy is rapidly reaching the vanishing-point, and that in all matters, spiritual as well as temporal, we seem to have improved, but the closer we approximate the standard of life and living of the dominant race, all the harder apparently have we to fight to maintain our self-respect, and preserve the rights and privileges which the letter of our American law guarantees. When we were slaves and had nothing except our muscles, there was no thought of separate-car laws. When we were ignorant and powerless to think coherently, there were no efforts at our disfranchisement. When we were poverty-stricken and satisfied if we might live in the alleys of our great American cities, there was no thought of segregation, whether in the matter of our residences, or in that of the employees of our much-heralded republican government. With every increase in accomplishment, or worth, or demand for the better things of life, comes the burden of wrongs, injustice, and rash discrimination. It would be idle here to attempt to recount in detail the grievances we justly have against the government in city, state and nation; to do so further than the purpose I have in view would be but to tell you what you full well know. The Negro race needs a change of viewpoint; another leadership is an absolute necessity, and I see no reason why men of our profession should not attain it. For years we have had in the ascendency the prophets of submission and silence, and we have been taught to declare for peace when we knew there was no peace. No other element in our great nation, except that of ourselves is content with things as they are, accepting without protest every new injustice, in the vain hope that some day would bring about a change for the better. We have lulled ourselves to sleep with this fatalism, and what is the result? We have noted the practical nullification of every act suggested or inspired by the changing conditions in the lives and property of freedmen brought about by the Civil War. Disfranchisement in every Southern State is as fixed and determinate, as the indifference of the Negroes of those sections, or the practises of all political parties can make it. Separate, and therefore inferior, accommodations on public conveyances are the rule, and we have endured these conditions so long that it would appear almost cruel now to undertake, or to ask a change. We have noted further, and this is the saddest of all, that our inactivity in claiming our rights, or our indifference about their recognition, has not only emboldened our enemies, but it has silenced our friends.

We have seen with increasing alarm the judicial construction of statutes and the Constitution itself, which all but vitiate and annul the basis of our citizenship; we have seen repeated attempts made to discredit the War amendments to the national Constitution, and some have in all seriousness gone so far even as to question their constitutionality. Every student of our common law has always been sure of the right to private property, and the corollaries thereto, but it is just in the present year that a court of last resort in a neighboring State, in an interpretation of one of these new conceptions, a segregation ordinance, declared that while the one under investigation was invalid, that the municipality enacting it might under its police powers make provision for the segregation of the races in the matter of their residences, schools, churches, and places of public assembly. The law is not a fixed science; it is more properly growth, a development. What is not regarded as law to-day may, by the inactivity or indifference of those most deeply concerned, become the law of the next decade. So we behold to-day our rights and liberties drifting away from us, and that regarded as the law which years ago we deemed impossible. What are we to do, you say? What can we do? The lawyers trained here and in other institutions of learning must answer these questions, and in finding their answers will be their opportunity. The adjudication of the conflicting interests of mankind, the interpretation of our statutes and our common law the determination of rights and privileges of all men, is a judicial function. What rights we enjoy to-day have come in the final analysis from the courts. What rights we find ourselves to-day deprived of, and which we hope to enjoy to-morrow, must come, if at all, from the same source. The courts have the last word, and it is to that instrument of government we must appeal, and to that last word we must look for our safety, or fear our doom. But courts are not self-acting institutions, and they are not engaged in academic discussions of abstractions. They are severely serious. It may be that, like so many Americans, we have lost faith in the courts, and Heaven knows we have had abundant reason for so doing, but there's hope. They have too often and too long listened to the clamors of public opinion, put too much faith and credit in the utterances of latter-day journalism, coloring their opinions to suit the one, or to escape the criticism of the other. Under the pernicious doctrine of public policy and in fortifying that undefined and indefinable legal notion of police power, courts have wiped aside Constitutional limitations, and disregarded what the profession at least had learned to consider as almost fixed precedents of the law, but even with all these defects admitted, there remains the startling truth that to these governmental agencies we must look for the righting of our wrongs and the redress of our grievances. We have shunned the courts too often in our temporal affairs, fearing, it seems, further adverse decisions, or waiting a proper adjustment at some other forum. In my own State it might now be compulsory upon you, or any other decent self-respecting person of the race, in travelling from here to New York or elsewhere in the North, to ride in the so-called "Jim-Crow" cars provided by an indulgent Maryland legislature for Negro patrons of its railroads, had it not have been for a member of the Faculty of this institution. William H. H. Hart knew that legislation of that character was an attempt to restrict interstate traffic, and the Court of Appeals of Maryland agreed with him. The case of State vs. Hart, reported in 100 Md. at page 595, is a landmark in our Maryland law, and under its influence "Jim-Crow" cars have almost disappeared from the railroads of our State. Another distinguished member of the Faculty of Howard University, but of another department, in travelling over the railroads in the eastern part of our State last fall, discovered that the compartments provided by the roads for their colored passengers, in point of cleanliness, appointment, and convenience, were notably inferior to those furnished others. He complained to the Public Service Commission and, after a full hearing, the Commission passed a decree requiring these railroads to furnish accommodations to its colored passengers equal in all respects to that furnished others. This is exactly what the Separate-Car Law provides, but it is exactly what the railroads had never intended to furnish and, without the complaint of Professor T. W. Turner, no other course would have been followed. Here are two, and there are numerous other concrete examples of what may be accomplished by sane and timely appeals to our judicial tribunals. Our government has three well defined departments separate and distinct, each operating in a manner as a check on the other, and all together working for the common good of the whole. We have resorted generally to the executive and have been satisfied with its appointment of a few men to office, and with its passive execution of the laws affecting us. In recent years we have arisen to the point of seeking legislation in the defense of our civil rights, and it is hoped that as the years pass more of this will be done. But in the judicial branch of the government is where, after all, we must place our reliance. We need a body of trained lawyers in full sympathy with our community life, eager, anxious, and capable, prepared at any emergency to present our cause fairly and intelligently before any tribunal; and with this accomplished, I have faith in the American people that justice will prevail, and right triumph over every wrong. I do not mean that the lawyer is to seek such service by the fomenting of litigation; far from it, but let him be prepared for it by study and devotion to racial ideals, and when the hour comes he will be called on to marshal its forces and take charge of the legal contests of a race. This will never be if he dreams only of his money, if he thinks only of present material gain, if he counts his successes in terms of houses and lands. He must be willing to serve for the sake of the service. The failures in our professional life come almost wholly from those who had no high ideals of their calling, and no devotion to the interests of their race or country. Country and race in this matter are synonymous; you can't serve one without at the same time serving the other. The lawyer who advocates the protection of the lives, the property, and the civic welfare of ten millions of Americans of whatever hue, or origin, is not a racial zealot, but a patriot of the highest character, and his worth in preserving the nation's ideals is beyond calculation.

Young men, you who are either about to leave these halls for the active life of the lawyer, or you who are just beginning the pursuit of your studies here looking to the same end, I bring you, I hope, no discouraging note. My aim is to do the contrary. The heavy burdens the race is bearing in the form of unjust laws and practises, in strained constructions of statutes, constitutions, and the common law; in the thousand ways which the ingenuity of the prejudiced find to bar us from the full enjoyment of American liberty and freedom, these will some day, along with those of us who are now at the bar, furnish your greatest opportunity. Your duty then, as now, will be to fortify yourselves with all the learning which this institution provides, with all that the libraries in your reach contain, with all that close and intimate association with others of your profession will secure, with sincere devotion to the ideals and traditions of our noble profession, and with no less devotion to the interest of your clients, and a determination faithfully and loyally and efficiently to serve your race, your nation and your God.

THE TRAINING OF NEGROES FOR SOCIAL REFORM[53]

BY W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS, PH. D.

_Editor and Founder "The Crisis"_

[Note 53: From the New York _Outlook_.]

The responsibility for their own social regeneration ought to be placed largely upon the shoulders of the Negro people. But such responsibility must carry with it a grant of power; responsibility without power is a mockery and a farce. If, therefore, the American people are sincerely anxious that the Negro shall put forth his best efforts to help himself, they must see to it that he is not deprived of the freedom and power to strive. The responsibility for dispelling their own ignorance implies that the power to overcome ignorance is to be placed in black men's hands; the lessening of poverty calls for the power of effective work; and the responsibility for lessening crime calls for control over social forces which produce crime.

Such social power means, assuredly, the growth of initiative among Negroes, the spread of independent thought, the expanding consciousness of manhood; and these things to-day are looked upon by many with apprehension and distrust. Men openly declare their design to train these millions as a subject caste, as men to be thought for, but not to think; to be led, but not to lead themselves.

Those who advocate these things forget that such a solution flings them squarely on the other horn of the dilemma: such a subject child-race could never be held accountable for its own misdeeds and shortcomings; its ignorance would be part of the nation's design, its poverty would arise partly from the direct oppression of the strong and partly from thriftlessness which such oppression breeds; and, above all, its crime would be the legitimate child of that lack of self-respect which caste systems engender. Such a solution of the Negro problem is not one which the saner sense of the nation for a moment contemplates; it is utterly foreign to American institutions, and is unthinkable as a future for any self-respecting race of men. The sound afterthought of the American people must come to realize that the responsibility for dispelling ignorance and poverty, and uprooting crime among Negroes cannot be put upon their own shoulders unless they are given such independent leadership in intelligence, skill, and morality as will inevitably lead to an independent manhood which cannot and will not rest in bonds.

Let me illustrate my meaning particularly in the matter of educating Negro youth.

The Negro problem, it has often been said, is largely a problem of ignorance--not simply of illiteracy, but a deeper ignorance of the world and its ways, of the thought and experience of men; an ignorance of self and the possibilities of human souls. This can be gotten rid of only by training; and primarily such training must take the form of that sort of social leadership which we call education. To apply such leadership to themselves and to profit by it, means that Negroes would have among themselves men of careful training and broad culture, as teachers and teachers of teachers. There are always periods of educational evolution when it is deemed quite proper for pupils in the fourth reader to teach those in the third. But such a method, wasteful and ineffective at all times, is peculiarly dangerous when ignorance is widespread and when there are few homes and public institutions to supplement the work of the school. It is, therefore, of crying necessity among Negroes that the heads of their educational system--the teachers in the normal schools, the heads of high schools, the principals of public systems, should be unusually well trained men; men trained not simply in common-school branches, not simply in the technique of school management and normal methods, but trained beyond this, broadly and carefully, into the meaning of the age whose civilization it is their peculiar duty to interpret to the youth of a new race, to the minds of untrained people. Such educational leaders should be prepared by long and rigorous courses of study similar to those which the world over have been designed to strengthen the intellectual powers, fortify character, and facilitate the transmission from age to age of the stores of the world's knowledge.

Not all men--indeed, not the majority of men, only the exceptional few among American Negroes or among any other people--are adapted to this higher training, as, indeed, only the exceptional few are adapted to higher training in any line; but the significance of such men is not to be measured by their numbers, but rather by the numbers of their pupils and followers who are destined to see the world through their eyes, hear it through their trained ears, and speak to it through the music of their words.

Such men, teachers of teachers and leaders of the untaught, Atlanta University and similar colleges seek to train. We seek to do our work thoroughly and carefully. We have no predilections or prejudices as to particular studies or methods, but we do cling to those time-honored sorts of discipline which the experience of the world has long since proven to be of especial value. We sift as carefully as possible the student material which offers itself, and we try by every conscientious method to give to students who have character and ability such years of discipline as shall make them stronger, keener, and better for their peculiar mission. The history of civilization seems to prove that no group or nation which seeks advancement and true development can despise or neglect the power of well-trained minds; and this power of intellectual leadership must be given to the talented tenth among American Negroes before this race can seriously be asked to assume the responsibility of dispelling its own ignorance. Upon the foundation-stone of a few well-equipped Negro colleges of high and honest standards can be built a proper system of free common schools in the South for the masses of the Negro people; any attempt to found a system of public schools on anything less than this--on narrow ideals, limited or merely technical training--is to call blind leaders for the blind.

The very first step toward the settlement of the Negro problem is the spread of intelligence. The first step toward wider intelligence is a free public-school system; and the first and most important step toward a public-school system is the equipment and adequate support of a sufficient number of Negro colleges. These are first steps, and they involve great movements: first, the best of the existent colleges must not be abandoned to slow atrophy and death, as the tendency is to-day; secondly, systematic attempt must be made to organize secondary education. Below the colleges and connected with them must come the normal and high schools, judiciously distributed and carefully manned. In no essential particular should this system of common and secondary schools differ from educational systems the world over. Their chief function is the quickening and training of human intelligence; they can do much in the teaching of morals and manners incidentally, but they cannot and ought not to replace the home as the chief moral teacher; they can teach valuable lessons as to the meaning of work in the world, but they cannot replace technical schools and apprenticeship in actual life, which are the real schools of work. Manual training can and ought to be used in these schools, but as a means and not as an end--to quicken intelligence and self-knowledge and not to teach carpentry; just as arithmetic is used to train minds and not skilled accountants.

Whence, now, is the money coming for this educational system? For the common schools the support should come from local communities, the State governments, and the United States Government; for secondary education, support should come from local and State governments and private philanthropy; for the colleges, from private philanthropy and the United States Government. I make no apology for bringing the United States Government in thus conspicuously. The General Government must give aid to Southern education if illiteracy and ignorance are to cease threatening the very foundations of civilization within any reasonable time. Aid to common school education could be appropriated to the different States on the basis of illiteracy. The fund could be administered by State officials, and the results and needs reported upon by United States educational inspectors under the Bureau of Education. The States could easily distribute the funds so as to encourage local taxation and enterprise and not result in pauperizing the communities. As to higher training, it must be remembered that the cost of a single battle-ship like the Massachusetts would endow all the distinctively college work necessary for Negroes during the next half-century; and it is without doubt true that the unpaid balance from bounties withheld from Negroes in the Civil War would, with interest, easily supply this sum.

But spread of intelligence alone will not solve the Negro problem. If this problem is largely a question of ignorance, it is also scarcely less a problem of poverty. If Negroes are to assume the responsibility of raising the standards of living among themselves, the power of intelligent work and leadership toward proper industrial ideals must be placed in their hands. Economic efficiency depends on intelligence, skill and thrift. The public school system is designed to furnish the necessary intelligence for the ordinary worker, the secondary school for the more gifted workers, and the college for the exceptional few. Technical knowledge and manual dexterity in learning branches of the world's work are taught by industrial and trade schools, and such schools are of prime importance in the training of colored children. Trade-teaching can not be effectively combined with the work of the common schools because the primary curriculum is already too crowded, and thorough common-school training should precede trade-teaching. It is, however, quite possible to combine some of the work of the secondary schools with purely technical training, the necessary limitations being matters of time and cost: _e. g._, the question whether the boy can afford to stay in school long enough to add parts of a high-school course to the trade course, and particularly the question whether the school can afford or ought to afford to give trade training to high-school students who do not intend to become artisans. A system of trade-schools, therefore, supported by State and private aid, should be added to the secondary school system.

An industrial school, however, does not merely teach technique. It is also a school--a center of moral influence and of mental discipline. As such it has peculiar problems in securing the proper teaching force. It demands broadly trained men: the teacher of carpentry must be more than a carpenter, and the teacher of the domestic arts more than a cook; for such teachers must instruct, not simply in manual dexterity, but in mental quickness and moral habits. In other words, they must be teachers as well as artisans. It thus happens that college-bred men and men from other higher schools have always been in demand in technical schools. If the college graduates were to-day withdrawn from the teaching force of the chief Negro industrial schools, nearly every one of them would have to close its doors. These facts are forgotten by such advocates of industrial training as oppose the higher schools. Strong as the argument for industrial schools is--and its strength is undeniable--its cogency simply increases the urgency of the plea for higher training-schools and colleges to furnish broadly educated teachers.