The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Sheet 98

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

Dr. Edwin L. Clarke of Rollins College, Winter
Park, Florida, urged that every student become ac-
quainted with the leading Negro magazines dealing
with race problems. He said it was highly de-
sirable, where local sentiment permits, to have a
Negro speak to the class occasionally and to have the
class take trips to Negro schools, churches, business
districts, and social agencies, when these are of a
high standard and creditable. He emphasized that
students should be led to formulate scientific atti-
tudes and views. If the student does this, he will
learn that Negroes are not all alike and that it is
a mark of gross ignorance or extreme prejudice for
one to assume that they are.

Dr. Howard W. Odum of the University of
North Carolina pointed out that it is proverbial that
the Southern white man really knows very little
about the Southern Negro and that the white people
have assumed many facts, many situations, and
many relationships to be quite different from what
they really are. He emphasized that a desirable goal
would be to bring about a situation in the South in
which the white people would look at the Negro and
the race problems instead of “feel about them.”
Look at the Negro’s remarkable contributions in
folk-music and folk-song and in other aspects of
creative effort and center intellectual activities to-
ward objective processes rather than subjective
emotions.

VII.

In 1930 there were, according to the census re-
port, 11,891,143 Negroes in the United States.
These former slaves and descendants of former
slaves have acquired, in two generations, a property
in the United States having a total value of over
two billion dollars. The total number of Negro
schools doing college work in the United States is
120, divided as follows: United States land-grant
schools, seventeen; State and city normal schools
and colleges, nineteen; private colleges, enrolling
from 150 to 250 in college work, ten; private col-
leges enrolling 250 in college work, nineteen;
private colleges enrolling fifty to 150 in college
work, thirty; private colleges enrolling less than
fifty in college work, thirty-five.

Over one thousand Negroes have graduated from
Northern universities during the past ten years.
There are over sixty Negroes holding the Ph. D.
degree, which means that these men have made ap-
preciable contributions to the sum total of the
world’s worth-while knowledge and are listed among
the learned of the world. During the past five years
the number of Negroes holding graduate degrees

95

has increased by leaps and bounds because in that
period high schools and colleges seeking Class A
rating have demanded a master’s degree of their in-
structors. Practically every Negro college of
Class A rank, or even B rank, is now demanding
that all new instructors must have a graduate de-
gree, and all old instructors who have not such a
degree must take additional work during the sum-
mer months and on leave to secure it.

Sixteen Southern States now boast 1,000 public
high schools for Negroes. In these same States there
are, in addition, 160 private high schools. The in-
structors in these high schools, in order to receive
State recognition, must hold college degrees. There
are at the present time some 250 Negro magazines
and newspapers published in the United States.

The former slave has received world recognition
in the field of art, literature, science, education,
industry, finance, and war. This is no mean step
from the days of Berry, Calhoun, and Dew.

VIII.

The portrait is not complete. There are still
many dark shadows and untouched spots on the
painter’s canvas, and it will take years of patient
painting to get all these spots “touched up.” The
following figures, having to do with the Negro’s
educational opportunities in the South, are very
significant. In 1930 eleven Southern States spent
for public schools an average of $35.42 a year per
white child enrolled as against $12.57 for the col-
ored child. In South Carolina the respective figures
were $60 for the white child and $7.84 for the col-
ored; in Mississippi the figures were $45.34 for the
white and $5.45 for the Negro child. Within these
averages there are some unbelievable extremes. In
Alabama, for example, where the averages for the
State are $36.43 for the white child and $10.09 for
the Negro child, there is one county where in 1924
the figures were $57 for the white child and $1.51
for the Negro child. In hundreds of counties in
some States the proportion runs as high as ten to
one in favor of the white child, or even twenty to
one. In the light of these conditions we may well
say that the portrait is far from finished. Is the
Negro to be further penalized for his relative
poverty by denying education to his children? If
he is thus penalized, what sort of citizen may the
South expect him to be?

IX.

Will you, dear reader, help to finish this portrait
by sending the light of the Gospel into the Negro’s
religious world and thus help to call him from dark-