complain too much
about equipment and salaries even if the per capita appropriation for the
education of the Negroes be one fourth of that for the whites.[23]
In the higher institutions of learning, especially the State schools, it
is exceptional to find a principal who has the confidence of the Negroes.
The Negroes will openly assert that he is in the pay of the reactionary
whites, whose purpose is to keep the Negro down; and the incumbent himself
will tell his board of regents how much he is opposed by the Negroes
because he labors for the interests of the white race. Out of such
sycophancy it is easily explained why our State schools have been so
ineffective as to necessitate the sending of the Negro youth to private
institutions maintained by northern philanthropy. Yet if an outspoken
Negro happens to be an instructor in a private school conducted by
educators from the North, he has to be careful about contending for a
square deal; for, if the head of his institution does not suggest to him
to proceed conservatively, the mob will dispose of the complainant.[24]
Physicians, lawyers and preachers, who are not so economically dependent
as teachers can exercise no more freedom of speech in the midst of this
triumphant rule of the lawless.
A large number of educated Negroes, therefore, have on account of these
conditions been compelled to leave the South. Finding in the North,
however, practically nothing in their line to do, because of the
proscription by race prejudice and trades unions, many of them lead the
life of menials, serving as waiters, porters, butlers and chauffeurs.
While in Chicago, not long ago, the writer was in the office of a graduate
of a colored southern college, who was showing his former teacher the
picture of his class. In accounting for his classmates in the various
walks of life, he reported that more than one third of them were settled
to the occupation of Pullman porters.
The largest number of Negroes who have gone North during this period,
however, belong to the intelligent laboring class. Some of them have
become discontented for the very same reasons that the higher classes have
tired of oppression in the South, but the larger number of them have gone
North to improve their economic condition. Most of these have migrated to
the large cities in the East and Northwest, such as Philadelphia, New
York, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit and Chicago.
To understand this
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