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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 41. The Negro School - 7. Trends and Problems
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904 An American Dilemma
initiate some sort of graduate training in the state-supported Negro col-
leges. In the beginning this graduate training will perhaps be merely a
sham gesture, but a basis for further advance will have been created.
Segregation will probably be upheld on all levels while discrimination is
being fought and decreased. Segregation will less and less be a means of
economy j
gradually it will, instead, become a financial burden. It is not
unlikely that segregation will then start to break down on the highest level.
In the total view, the prospects are thus not entirely discouraging. In fact,
there have never been^ since Reconstruction^
fewer reasons for a defeatist
attitude in regard to Negro education in the South.
In spite of much and heated discussion regarding the type of Negro
education, its actual development has never followed any plan or theory.
The main problem has always been not what sort but how much educa-
tion the Negro should have and how much he gets. Even today the chief
problem is how to get increased appropriations and improved standards.
As we have hinted, the theory of ^‘industrial” training for Negroes has had
its main function in being a bait for the powers of the purse in Northern
philanthropy and in Southern public budgets. And the truth is that any
ty’pe of improved education for Negroes is salutary.
There is an immense need of new school buildings for Negroes, particu-
larly in rural districts but also in most Southern cities. There is also need
for new equipment of all sorts, for consolidated schools and for school buses.
After the close of the present war there is going to be, in all likelihood, a
great necessity for public works to mitigate unemployment, and much of
this activity is bound to be directed upon erecting buildings for public
schools.
The only sound and democratic principle for distributing the benefits of
the post-war public works policy in various districts and groups would be to
build for those districts and groups in the nation whose old buildings are
worst. Such a policy would, in the South, mean concentrating almost the
whole activity on building Negro schools and other buildings for Negroes.
The old Negro schools are generally so bad and inadequate that this kind
of public construction would suffice to occupy the unemployed for quite
a while. Such a policy will probably not be followed for political reasons.
It is, however, not only a Negro interest but a general democratic interest
that this policy be pressed, so that Negro schools get the maximum out of
any post-war unemployment emergency. As communities usually want to
have buildings erected independent of their purposes if they do not have to
pay for them—because they mean work and income for the community
—
and as Southerners are not likely to object too much if Negro school build-
ings are built with federal money, it should be taken up for deliberation
whether it would not be a wise policy to distribute federal aid to education
in the form of taking over the responsibility for erecting and furnishing
the buildings.
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