permanent

museum

never

two

Carrington

operate

Robert

businesses

pushing

public

because

250

public

championed

attended

students

transport

twenty

AFSC

just

close

Academy

Prince

schools

appealed

“Massive

close the public schools should they be ordered to desegregate.

No matter who starts it, thewhites will be blamed. We must not have it

interposition

Prince

Virginia

but it gave nodeadlines.

However,

County

the

Klux

Farmville

official

“Several of them told me that,” he says. But theyfeared retaliation by segregationist leaders and threats to their jobs and businesses.When it became clear that the black community planned to sustain a serious civil rightscampaign, white leaders began a campaign of economic and social intimidation. But theabsence of outright violence in Prince Edward from the time of the strike through thesixties is something white and black residents are proud of to this day.

agitators

Moton

NAACP

NAACP

were

Stokes

teachers

Why don’tyou do something about it?

Barbara

refusing

warm

Classes also met in several tar-paper shacks,which county officials had constructed instead of a new scho

policy

Moton

rights

For five y

part

constructed

Prince

the center of Virginia is the tiny town of Farmville in Prince Edward County. During thecivil rights movement, there were no snarling dogs here, no fire hoses or billy clubs, nolunch counters that made the front page. Driving through the town today, it’s hard toimagine it as a stage for conflic

theoretically,

It is saying in plain English: that aseparate Negro school, where childrenare treated like human beings, trainedby teachers of their own race, whoknow what it means to be black inthe year of salvation 1935, is infinitelybetter than making our boys and girlsdoormats to be spit and trampledupon and lied t o by ignorant socialclimbers, whose sole claim to supe-riorityis ability to kick"niggers" whenthey are down. I say, too, that certainstudies and discipline necessary toNegroes can seldom be found in whiteschools.

sort ought, also, to

t could easily be the mis-sion and duty of American Negroes tomaster this scientific basis of moderninvention, and give it to all mankind

What little has alreadybeen done in this line is scarcely abeginning of what is possible, pro-vided the object is not simpleenter-tainment or bizarre efforts at moneyraising

Here, we have in America, a work-ing class which in our day has achievedphysical freedom, and mental clarity.An economic battle has just begun. I tcan be studied and guided; it canteach consumers' cooperation, de-mocracy, and socialism, and be madenot simply a record and pattern forthe Negro race, but a guide for the riseof the working classes throughout theworld

I t doesnot consist simply in trying to parallelthe history of white folk with similarboasting about black and brown folk,but rather an honest evaluation ofhuman effort and accomplishment,without color blindness, and withouttransforming history into a record ofdynasties and prodigies

rts. I t isillustrated by these facts: Negroesmust know the history of the Negrorace in America, and this the

In the past, this fact has been notedand misused for selfish purposes. Onthe ground that Negroes needed atype of education "suited" to them,we have an attempt to train them asmenials and dependents; or in thecase of West Indians, an attempt t

Negroesare not welcomed in public schoolsand universities nor treated as fellowhuman beings. But beyond this, thereare certain positive reasons due to thefact that American Negroes have, be-cause of their history, group experi-ences and memories, a distinct entity,whose spirit and reactions demand acertain type of education for its de-velopment

Does the Negro need separateschools? God knows he does.

power and ability, they are going to

onceive a Negro teachingin a Southern school the econhicswhich he learned at the Harvard Busi-ness School! Conceive a Negro teacherof history retailing to his black stu-dents the sort of history that is taughtat the University of Chicago

I am no fool; and Iknow that race prejudice in the Uni-ted States today is such that mostNegroes cannot receive proper edu

If the American Negro reallybelieved in himself; if he believed thatNegro teachers can educate childrenaccording to the best standards ofmodern training; if he believed thatNegro colleges transmit and add toscience, as well as or better than othercolleges, then he would bend his ener-gies, not to escaping inescapable as-sociation with his own group, but toseeing that his group had every op-portunity for its best and highest de-velopment

egroes cannot run Negro en-terprises, and cannot educate them-selves, and that the very establish-ment of a Negro school means startingan inferior schoo

The N.A.A.C.P. and other Negroorganizations have spent thousandsof dollars to prevent the establish-ment of segregated Negro schools,but scarcely a single cent to see thatthe division of funds between whiteand Negro schools, North and South,is carried out with some faint approxi-mation of justice.

leads to singular results: Negroes will

refinement

bygiving Negro teachers decent wages,decent schoolhouses and equipment,and reasonable chances for advance-men

just

principle at the cost of

porary, much less as a relatively per-manent institution, in the UnitedStates, is a fatal surrender of prin-ciple, which in the end will reboundand bring more evils on the Negrothan he suffers today. (2) The otherreason is at bottom an utter lack offaith on the part of Negroes that theirrace can do anything really well.

Recognizing

It is well-known that in certain faculties of theUniversity of Chicago, no Negro hasyet received the doctorate and seldomcan achieve the mastership in arts; a tHarvard, Yale and Columbia, Ne-groes are admitted but not welcomed;while in other institutions, like Prince-ton, they cannot even enrol

And in the same way, there aremany public school systems in theNorth where Negroes are admittedand tolerated, but they are not edu-cated; they are crucified

I shall welcome such atime. Just as long as Negroes aretaught in Negro schools and whitesin white schools; the poor in theslums, and the rich in private schools;just as long as it is impracticable towelcome Negro students to Harvard,Yale and Princeton; just as long ascolleges like Williams, Amherst andWellesley tend to become the pro-perty of certain wealthy families,where Jews are not solicited; just solong we shall lack in America thatsort of public education which willcreate the intelligent basis of a realdemocracy

It is of coursefashionable and popular to deny this;to try to deceive ourselves into think-ing that race prejudice in the UnitedStates across the Color Line is gradu-ally softening and that slowly butsurely we are coming to the timewhen racial animosities and classlines will be so obliterated that sepa-rate schools will be anachronisms.

The proper educationof any people includes sympathetictouch between teacher and pupil;knowledge on the part of the teacher,not simply of the individual taught,but of his surroundings and back-ground, and the history of his classand group

There are in the United Statessome four million Negroes of schoolage,of whom two million are in school,and of these, four-fifths are taught byforty-eight thousand