future development of the South might the
Negro college and college-bred man to occupy? That the present social
separation and acute race sensitiveness must eventually yield to the
influences of culture as the South grows civilized is clear. But such
transformation calls for singular wisdom and patience. If, while the
healing of this vast sore is progressing, the races are to live for
many years side by side, united in economic effort, obeying a common
government, sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet subtly and
silently separate in many matters of deeper human intimacy--if this
unusual and dangerous development is to progress amid peace and order,
mutual respect and growing intelligence, it will call for social surgery
at once the delicatest and nicest in modern history. It will demand
broad-minded, upright men both white and black, and in its final
accomplishment American civilization will triumph. So far as white men
are concerned, this fact is to-day being recognized in the South, and a
happy renaissance of university education seems imminent. But the very
voices that cry Hail! to this good work are, strange to relate, largely
silent or antagonistic to the higher education of the Negro.

Strange to relate! for this is certain, no secure civilization can be
built in the South with the Negro as an ignorant, turbulent proletariat.
Suppose we seek to remedy this by making them laborers and nothing more:
they are not fools, they have tasted of the Tree of Life, and they will
not cease to think, will not cease attempting to read the riddle of
the world. By taking away their best equipped teachers and leaders,
by slamming the door of opportunity in the faces of their bolder and
brighter minds, will you make them satisfied with their lot? or will you
not rather transfer their leading from the hands of men taught to
think to the hands of untrained demagogues? We ought not to forget that
despite the pressure of poverty, and despite the active discouragement
and even ridicule of friends, the demand for higher training steadily
increases among Negro youth: there were, in the years from 1875 to 1880,
twenty-two Negro graduates from Northern colleges; from 1885 to 1895
there were forty-three, and from 1895 to 1900, nearly 100 graduates.
From Southern Negro colleges there were, in the same three periods,
143, 413, and over 500 graduates. Here, then, is the plain thirst for
training; by refusing to give this Talented Tenth t