Page:The Atlantic Monthly vol. 69.djvu/734

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The Education of the Negro.
[June,

close domestic relations with the white race will be accompanied with tendencies of relapse to the old fetich-worship and belief in magic; and this would be especially the case in the dark belt where the large plantations are found. Fetichism, as the elemental or first form of religion that arises among conscious beings,—animals cannot have even fetichism,—attributes arbitrary power to inanimate things, but does not arrive at the idea of one absolute Being. It remains in some of its forms even in the most advanced of religious peoples, as a limited belief in magic, faith in charms, amulets, lucky-bones, signs and omens, sacred places and times, etc. Even the high doctrine of Special Providence, so eminently Christian, easily passes over into fetichism (as the magical control of events through prayer), and is in fact blended with it in all minds devoid of scientific education.

Here is the chief problem of the negro of the South. It is to retain the elevation acquired through the long generations of domestic slavery, and to superimpose on it the sense of personal responsibility, moral dignity, and self-respect which belongs to the conscious ideal of the white race. Those acquainted with the free negro of the South, especially with the specimens at school and college, know that he is as capable of this higher form of civilization as in slavery he was capable of faithful attachment to the interests of his master.

The first step[1] towards this higher stage which will make the negro a valued citizen is intellectual education, and the second is industrial education.[2] By the expression "industrial education," I do not refer so much to training in habits of industry, for he has had this discipline for two hundred years,[3] but to school instruction in arts and trades as applications of scientific principles. Nor do I refer even to manual and scientific training, valuable as it is, so much as to that fundamental training in thrift[4] which is

  1. The first step really to be taken must be by the whites about him, in letting the negro feel that he possesses inalienable rights. What he now possesses is by sufferance only. He knows that he is neither a citizen nor a man, in the full sense.—L. H. B.
  2. I should prefer to define the course thus: first, religious; second, industrial; and third, intellectual. An ideal public school system for the Southern negroes for many generations to come would be a system under the operation of which each schoolhouse would be devoted to the religious instruction of the colored pupils, with a sufficient amount of industrial training to impart habits of industry, and a sufficient amount of intellectual training to facilitate the inculcation of the religious teachings. As far as possible, the public school system should be made supervisory of the moral life of the pupils; it should take the place of the parental authority, which is so much relaxed now that the watchful eye and firm support of the slaveholders have been withdrawn.—P. A. B.
  3. One of the discouraging features in the character of the young Southern negro is that apparently he has inherited but a small share of the steadiness and industry which were acquired under compulsion by his fathers. I am referring now to the young negro to be found in the agricultural communities. He is in a marked degree inferior to the former slave in agricultural knowledge and manipulating skill, for the very simple reason that his employer is unable to enforce the rigid attention to all the details of work which he would do if the young negro were his property.—P. A. B.
    Dr. Harris seems to me to overestimate the value of the slave's experience in developing the habits of punctuality and obedience in descendants who were never slaves. I fear that the result is far other; that in the descendants of the slave there is an inherited disposition to be disobedient to law as a proof of the newly acquired freedom.—Anon.
  4. There is need of the inculcation and of the adoption in home life, in daily conduct, of sounder principles of economy and of consumption. What to eat, what to wear, how to cook, how to provide and preserve home conveniences and comforts, how to lay by for a rainy day, must be indoctrinated, ingrained, and become a habit. In other days the African slave was cared for from cradle to coffin, and literally took no thought for the morrow. Comparatively few negroes now living were ever slaves, but the habits of servitude have been transmitted.—J. L. M. C.