As fast as they have been able, the Southern States have increased their taxes for school purposes and their facilities for the education of teachers until they have reached a point as high as that of New England—that is, they appropriate twenty per cent of the whole amount of taxes levied and collected for school purposes, just as Massachusetts docs. Beyond this they can not go any faster than their growth in taxable wealth will permit, and unless they have an even greater amount of help than has been given by the American Missionary Association, the Sears and the Peabody Funds, educational progress must be very slow—too slow to meet the demands of the people. It would take three times the amount now annually appropriated by the Southern States ($15,000,000) to satisfy the demands of the six million black and white children for education. With anything like an adequate sum, and compulsory laws to overcome the lethargy and indifference of the negroes, an inroad so broad might be made in a few years in the illiteracy that is now a positive menace and danger to these States as to encourage the friends of education in the belief of a possible millennium, when every human being would be able to stand an examination in at least the three R's. And this, however chimerical it may seem, contrasted with existing facts, is what must be kept steadily in view. The State owes it to every child to make it intellectually strong enough to understand the necessity for law, to submit to the restraints of law, and obey law. This can only be done by education.
Looking back through the years the educational work of which has thus been traced in the foregoing pages, we find that several good results have been accomplished: 1. The prejudices of the Southern people against the education of the negro have been utterly and entirely dispelled; 2. The people of the South have become willing, in most cases enthusiastic supporters and helpers in the education of the negro; 3. Thirty per cent of the illiteracy of the negro has been wiped out; and, 4. The negro has steadily, though gradually, been brought to realize that in education he is to find perfect freedom, the soul and heart freedom of which no man may rob him; that by education he is to be elevated, lifted up above the chaos and confusion of ignorance, and prepared for whatever of destiny lies before him in the United States. With these results before us, to raise any side or outside issues that would tend to re-excite the prejudices of the whites against the blacks, to raise the social question, even in the least degree, is to be at enmity with the peace and prosperity of the negro, to hurt and injure the cause of his education, to retard his growth mentally and morally, and postpone the time when he might claim equality in both senses.
In the face of such progress, to advocate the deportation of such a race, or any scheme of separate colonization, is nothing less than a crime. It has the effect to disturb and check the flow of this steady
