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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 15. The Negro in the Public Economy - 3. Education
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Chapter 15. The Negro in the Public Economy 339
there are regions in‘this country where, relatively, still heavier financial
loads for education have been accepted. The other qualification concerns the
unequal treatment of Negro and white schools, which makes the claims
regarding Southern financial sacrifices for education sound less genuine
than they may appear at first sight.
Racial discrimination in the apportionment of school facilities in the
South is as spectacular as it is well known.*^ The current expense per pupil
in daily attendance per year in elementary and secondary schools in 10
Southern states in 1935-1936 was $17.04 for Negroes and almost three
times as much, or $49.30, for white children. In Mississippi and Georgia,
only about $9 was spent on every Negro school child, but five times more
on the average white pupil. There were two Border states, however (Dela-
ware and Missouri), and one state farther South (Oklahoma) which did
not, in this way, discriminate against Negroes.^^ The District of Columbia
Negro schools received only slightly smaller appropriations per pupil than
did the white schools. They received more than the white schools in any
of the Southern states.^^
The great difference in expenditures per pupil in Negro and white
schools in most of the Southern states was due to several factors. The most
important one was the great differential in regard to teachers’ salaries.^
Second, there was a difference in number of pupils per teacher.^*"* Third,
less transportation was provided for Negro children: in 10 Southern states,
where Negro children constituted 28 per cent of the total enrollment, only
3 per cent of the public expenditures for school transportation in 1935-1936
was for their benefit. Certain savings on most expenditure items were made
* It is not well known to the general public, though. In spite of the fact that few
aspects of racial discrimination have been discussed as intensively as this one, the visitor
to the South frequently meets white persons even in the educated class who seriously believe
that educational facilities for Negroes and whites are quite equal. The very fact that there
are Negro schools on different levels is to them enough evidence that Negroes are as well
served as are whites. Several times it has happened, for instance, that whites have referred
to a nearby Negro college, which they have heard about and passed on the road, to tell
me that there Negroes get graduate training to the top. “They graduate lawyers, doctors
and all sorts of bigs shots,” a white collar girl in Mississippi told me about a poor denomina-
tional Negro college in the same city. Such experiences are interesting in several respects:
first, they exemplify the growing isolation between the two groups and the ignorance among
whites about their Negro neighbors} second, they indicate that the legal fiction which is
necessary for constitutional reasons (“separate but equal”) actually comes to be believed
as true} third, they make it probable that even in this respect ordinary white people in
the South would be prepared to give Negroes more justice if they knew the facts.
Another observation is that among ordinary white people in the South it is not well known
that Northern philanthropic organizations have much of the credit for the fact that Negro
education is not lower than it is, and still less that Negro communities often contribute
to building their schools. This distortion in the popular beliefs is, of course, opportunistic.
‘See Chapter 14, Section 4.
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