theory at least, between the
Northern and Southern whites,--largely because the former were
supposed to be giving the blacks social recognition, and encouraging
intermingling between the races. The white teachers, who came from
the North to work in missionary schools, received for years little
recognition or encouragement from the rank and file of their own race.
The lines were so sharply drawn that in cities where native Southern
white women taught Negro children in the public schools, they would
have no dealings with Northern white women who, perhaps, taught Negro
children from the same family in a missionary school.

I want to call attention here to a phase of Reconstruction policy which
is often overlooked. All now agree that there was much in Reconstruction
which was unwise and unfortunate. However we may regard that policy, and
much as we may regret mistakes, the fact is too often overlooked that it
was during the Reconstruction period that a public school system for the
education of all the people of the South was first established in most
of the states. Much that was done by those in charge of Reconstruction
legislation has been overturned, but the public school system still
remains. True, it has been modified and improved, but the system
remains, and is every day growing in popularity and strength.

As to the difference of opinion between the North and the South
regarding Negro education, I find that many people, especially in the
North, have a wrong conception of the attitude of the Southern white
people. It is and has been very generally thought that what is termed
"higher education" of the Negro has been from the first opposed by the
white South. This opinion is far from being correct. I remember that,
in 1891, when I began the work of establishing the Tuskegee Institute
in Alabama, practically all of the white people who talked to me on the
subject took it for granted that instruction in the Greek, Latin, and
modern languages would be one of the main features of our curriculum. I
heard no one oppose what he thought our course of study was to embrace.
In fact, there are many white people in the South at the present time
who do not know that instruction in the dead languages is not given at
the Tuskegee Institute. In further proof of what I have stated, if one
will go through the catalogue of the schools maintained by the states
for Negro people, and managed by Southern white people, he will find in
almost