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On page 183, Dubois says Negroes are manifestly of low average culture. What does he mean by that?

(Supporting Question): On the same page, what does he mean when he compares the class structure of blacks to a steeple and that of whites to a tower with a bulge near the center?

(Supporting Question): What does he mean when he says "many blacks are subject to spiritual segregation...."

On page 186-187, what, according to Dubois, are the ways that young educated blacks deal with other blacks and with whites? What are the pluses and minuses of these approaches?

Is Dubois, as certain authors have claimed, advocating black nationalism in this particular chapter?

(Supporting question) What does he see as the pluses and minuses of making agitation for equality as the main focus of black energy?

(Supporting question) What does he mean when he says "we have lived to see the death of capitalism". (p 198)

(Supporting Question) What does he mean when he suggests that self-segregation of blacks should be carefully planned?

92 + DUSK OF DAWN The Colored World Within + 93 knowledge of the meaning of the modern world. In the South not one-half the City services of water, sewerage, garbage-removal, street-cleaning, lighting, noise colored children from five to sixteen are regularly in school and the majority of and traffic regulation, schools and hospitalization are usually neglected or with- these schools are not good schools. Any poor, ignorant people herded by them- held. Saloons, brothels, and gambling seek these areas with open or tacit consent. selves, filled with more or less articulate resentment, are bound to be bad- No matter in what degree or in what way the action of the white population may mannered, for manners are a matter of social environment; and the mass of increase or decrease these social problems, they remain the present problems American Negroes have retrograded in this respect. which must be faced by colored people themselves and by colored people of There has been striking improvement in the Negro death rate. It was better widely different status. than that of most South American countries, of Italy, Japan and Spain even before It goes without saying that while Negroes are thus manifestly of low average the war. Nevertheless it is still bad and costly, and the toll in tuberculosis, pneu- culture, in no place nor at any time do they form a homogeneous group. Even in monia, heart disease, syphilis, and homicide is far too high. It is hard to know the country districts of the lower South, Allison Davis likens the group to a steeple just what the criminal tendencies of the American Negroes are, for our crime with wide base tapering to a high pinnacle. This means that while the poor, igno- statistics are woefully inadequate. We do know that in proportion to population rant, sick and anti-social form a vast foundation, that upward from that base three times as many Negroes are arrested as whites, but to what extent this mea- stretch classes whose highest members, although few in number, reach above the sures prejudice and to what extent anti-social ills, who shall say? Many of these average not only of the Negroes but of the whites, and may justly be compared to ought never to have been arrested; most of them are innocent of grave crimes; the better-class white culture. The class structure of the whites, on the other hand, but the transgression of the poor and sick is always manifest among Negroes: resembles a tower bulging near the center with the lowest classes small in number disorder of all sorts, theft and burglary, fighting, breaking the gambling and as compared with the middle and lower middle classes; and the highest classes far liquor laws and especially fighting with and killing each other. more numerous in proportion than those among blacks. This, of course, is what Above all the Negro is poor: poor by heritage from two hundred forty-four one would naturally expect, but it is easily forgotten. The Negro group is spoken years of chattel slavery, by emancipation without land or capital and by seventy- of continually as one undifferentiated low-class mass. The culture of the higher five years of additional wage exploitation and crime peonage. Sudden industrial whites is often considered as typical of all the whites. changes like the Civil War, the World War and the spree in speculation during the American Negroes again are of differing descent, from parents with varied twenties have upset him. The Negro worker has been especially hard hit by the education, born in many parts of the land and under all sorts of conditions. In current depression. Of the nearly three million Negro families in the United States differing degrees these folk have come through periods of great and vital social today, probably the breadwinners of a million are unemployed and another mil- change; emancipation from slavery, migration from South to North, from coun- lion on the lower margin of decent subsistence. Assuming a gradual restoration of try to city; changes in income and intelligence. Above this they have experi- fairly normal conditions it is probable that not more than two per cent of the enced widely different contacts with their own group and with the whites. For Negro families in the United States would have an income of $2,500 a year and instance, during slavery the dark house servant came into close and intimate over; while fifty-eight per cent would have incomes between $500 and $2,500. contact with the master class. This class itself differed in all degrees from cultured This social degradation is intensified and emphasized by discrimination; inabil- aristocrats to brutal tyrants. Many of the Negroes thus received ideals of gra- ity to get work, discrimination in pay, improbability of promotion, and more fun- cious manners, of swaggering self-assertion, of conspicuous consumption. Later damentally, spiritual segregation from contact with manners, customs, incentives cultural contact came to the best of the Negroes through the mission schools in to effort despite handicaps. By outer pressure in most cases, Negroes must live the South succeeding the war: the more simple and austere intellectual life of among themselves; neighbors to their own people in segregated parts of the New England with its plain living and high thinking; its cleanliness and con- city, in segregated country districts. The segregation is not complete and most of science; this was brought into direct contact with educated Negro life. Its influ- it is customary rather than legal. Nevertheless, most Negroes live with Negroes, ence is still felt among the descendants of those trained at Fisk and Atlanta, in what are on the whole the least pleasant dwelling places, although not nec- Hampton and Talladega and a score of other schools. essarily always bad places in themselves. These contacts between the white and colored groups in the United States This means that Negroes live in districts of low cultural level; that their con- have gradually changed. On the whole the better cultural contacts have lessened tacts with their fellow men involve contacts with people largely untrained and in breadth and time, and greater cultural segregation by race has ensued. The ignorant, frequently diseased, dirty, and noisy, and sometimes anti-social. These old bonds between servants and masters in the South disappeared. The white districts are not usually protected by the police-rather victimized and tyran- New England teachers gradually withdrew from the Southern schools partly by nized over by them. No one who does not know can realize what tyranny a white Southern caste pressure, partly to make place for Negroes whom the low-grade white policeman can exercise in a colored neighborhood. In court his Northern teachers had trained. The bonds that replaced these older contacts unsupported word cannot be disputed and the only defense against him is were less direct, more temporary and casual; and yet, these still involve consid often mayhem and assassination by black criminals, with resultant hue and cry. erable numbers of persons. In Northern public schools and colleges, numbers of94 + ousx or DAWN white and colored youth come into direct contact, knowledge and sympathy. Various organizations, movements, and meetings bring white and colored people together; invarious occupations they work side by side and in large numbers of cases they meet as employers and employed. Deliberate interracial movements have brought some social contacts in the South. Thus considerable intercourse between white and black folk in America is current today; and yet on the whole, the more or less clearly dened upper lay- ers of educated and ambitious Negroes nd themselves for the most part largely segregated and alone. They are unable, or at least unwillingon the terms offered, to share the social institutions of the cultured whites of the nation, and are faced with irmer problems of contact with their own lower classes with which they have few or no social institutions capable of dealing. The Negro of education and income is jammed beside the careless, ignorant and criminal. He recoils from appeal to the white city even for physical protection against his anti-social elements, for this, he feels, is a form of self-accusation, of attack on the Negro race. It invites the smug rejoinder: " Well, if you can't live with niggers, how do you expect us to?" For escape of the Negro cultured to areas of white culture, with the consequent acceleration of acculturation, there is small opportunity. There is little or no chance for a Negro family to remove to a quiet neighborhood, to a protected suburb or a college town. I tried once to buy a home in the Sage Foundation development at Forest Hills, Long Island, The project was designed for the class of white-collar workers to which I belonged Robert De Forest and his directors hesitated, but nally and denitely refused, simply and solely because of my dark skin. What now is the practical path for the solution of the problem? Usually it has been assumed in such cases that the culture recruits rising from a submerged group will be received more or less willingly by corresponding classes of neigh- boring or enveloping groups. Of course it is clear in the case of inunigrant groups and other disadvantaged clusters of folk that this process is by no means easy or natural. Much bitter frustration and social upheaval continually arise from the refusal of the upper social layers to receive recruits from below. Nevertheless, in the United States it has been impossible long or entirely to exclude the better classes of thelrish, the Italians, theSouthern poor whites. In the case of the Negro, the unwillingness is greater and public opinion supports it to such a degree, that admission of black folk tomlwrecl circles is slow and diicult. It still remains pos sible in the United States for a white American to be a gentleman and a scholar, a Christian and a manof integrity, and yet atly and openly refuse to treat as a fel- low human being any person who has Negro ancestry. The inner contradiction and frustration which this involves is curious. The younger educated Negroes show here vastly different interpretations. One avoids every appearance of segregation He will not sit in a street car beside a Negro; he will not frequent a Negro church; he will join few, if any, Negro organi- zations. On the other hand, he will take every opportlmity to join in the politi- cal and cultural life of the whites. But he pays for this and pays dearly. He so often meets actual insult or more or less veiled rebuffs from the whites that he becomes nervous and trumlent through expectation of dislike, even when its The Colored World Within 4- 95 manifestation does not always appear. And on the other hand, Negroes more or less withdraw from associating with him. They suspect that he is \"ashamed of his race.\" Another sort of young educated Negro forms and joins Negro organizations; prides himself on living with "his people\"; withdraws from contact with whites, unless there is no obvious alternative. He too pays. His cultural contacts sink of necessity to a lower level. He becomes provincial in his outlook. He attributes to whites a dislike and hatred and racial prejudice of which many of them are quite unconscious and guiltless. Between these two extremes range all sorts of interracial patterns, and all of them theoretically follow the idea that Negroes must only submit to segregation \"when forced." In practically all cases the net result is a more or less clear and definite crystallization of the culture elements among colored people into their own groups for social and cultural contact. The mull-ant path which commends itself to many whites is deliberate and planned cultural segregation of the upper classes of Negroes not only from the whites of all classes, but from their own masses. It has been said time and time again: if certain classes of Negroes do not like the squalor, lth and crime of Negro slums, instead of trying to escape to better class white neighborhoods, why do they not establish their own exclusive neighborhoods? In other words, why does not the Negro race build up a class structure of its own, parallel to that of the whites, but separate; and including its own social, economic and reli- gious institutions? The arresting thing about this advice and program is that even when not planned, this is exactly what Negroes are doing and must do even in the case of thosewho theoretically resent it. The group with whose conversation this chapter started is a case in point. They form a self-segregated culture group. They have come to know each other partly by chance, partly by design, but form a small integrated clique because of similar likes and ideas,because of corresponding cul- ture This is happening all over the land among these twelve million Negroes. It is not a matter yet of a few broad super-imposed social classes, but rather of smaller cliques and groups gradually integrating and extending out of their neighborhoods into neighboring districts and cities. In this way a distinct social grouping has long been growing among American Negroes and recent studies have emphasized what we all knew, and that is that the education and accultura- tion of the Negro child is more largely the result of the training through contact with these cultural groups than it is of the caste~conditioned contacts with whites. The question now comes as to how far this method of acculturation should and could go, and by what conscious planning the uplift of the Negro race can be accomplished through this means. Is cultural separation in the same territory feasible? To force a group of various levels of culture to segregate itself, will cer tainly retard its advance, since it must put energy not simply into social advance, but in the vast and intricate effort to duplicate, evolve, and contrive new social institutions to maintain their advance and guard against retrogression. There can be two theories here: one that the rise of a talented tenth within the Negro race, whether or not it succeeds in escaping to the higher cultural classes 96 o DUSK or DAWN of the white race, is a threat to the development of the whole Negro group and hurts their chances for salvation. Or it may be said that the rise of classes within the Negro group is precisely a method by which the level of culture in the whole group is going to be raised. But this depends upon the relations that develop between these masses and the cultural aims of the higher classes. Many assume that an upper social class maintains its status mainly by reason of its superior culture. It may, however, maintain its status because of its wealth and political power and in that case its ranks can be successfully invaded only by the wealthy. In white America, it is in this direction that we have undoubt- edly changed the older pattern of social hierarchy. Birth and culture still count, but the main avenue to social power and class domination is wealth: income and oligarchic economic power, the consequent political power and the prestige of those who own and control capital and distribute credit. This makes a less logical social hierarchy and one that can only be penetrated by the will and permission of the ruling oligarchy or the chances of gambling. Education, thrift, hard work and Character undoubtedly are inuential, but they are implemented with power only as they gain wealth; and as land, natural resources, credit and capital are increasingly monopolized, they gain wealth by permission of the dominating wealthy class. It now American Negroes plan a vertical parallel of such a structure and such processes, they will nd it practically impossible. First of all, they have not the wealth; secondly, they have not the political power which wealth manipulates, and in the realm of their democratic power they are not only already partly dis- franchised by law and custom, but they suffer the same general limitation of dem- ocratic power inincome and industry, in which the white masses are imprisoned. There would be greater possibility of the Negro imitating the class structure of the white race if those whites who advise and encourage it were ready to help in its accomplishment, ready to furnish the Negro the broadest opportunity for cultural development and in addition to this to open the way for them to accu mulate such wealth and receive such income as would make the corresponding structure secure. But, of course, those who most vehemently tell the Negro to develop his own classes and social institutions, have no plan or desire for such help. First of all, and often deliberately, they curtail the education and cultural advantage of black folk and they do this because they are not convinced of the cultural ability or gift of Negroes and have no hope nor wish that the mass of Negroes canbe raised even as far as the mass ofwhites have been. It is this insin- oere attitude which especially arouses the ire and resentment of the culture groups among American Negroes. When the Negro despairs of duplicating white development, his despair is not always because the paths to this development are shut in his face, but back of this lurks too often a lack of faith in essential Negro possibilities, parallel to similar attitudes on the part of the whites. Instead of this proving anything concerning the truth, it is simply a natural phenomenon. Negroes, particularly the better class Negroes, are brought up like other Americans despite the various separations and segregations. They share, therefore, average American culture and current American prejudices. it is almost impossible for a Negro boy trained in a white The Colored World Within + 97 Northern high school and a white college to come out with any high idea of his own people or any abiding faith in what they can do; or for a Negro trained inthe segregath schools of the South wholly to escape the deadening environment of insult and caste, even if he happens to have the good teachers and teaching facil- ities, which poverty almost invariably denies him. He may rationalize his own individual status as exceptional. He can well believe that there are many other exceptions, but he cannot ordinarily believe that the mass of Negro people have possibilities equal to the whites. it is this sort of thing that leads to the sort of self-criticism that introduces this chapter. My grandfather, Alexander Du Bois, was pushed into the Negro group. He resented it. He wasn't a "Negro," he was a man. He would not attend Negro picnitx or ioin a Negro church, and yet he had to. Now, his situation in 1810 was much diEferent from mine in 1940, because the Negro group today is much more differentiated and has distinct cultural elements. He could go to a Negro picnic today and associate with interesting people of his own level. So much so, indeed, that some Negro thinkers arebeginning tobe afraid that we willbecomesoenam Died of our own intemal social contacts, that we will cease to hammer at the doors of the larger group, with all the consequent loss of breadth though lack of the widest cultural contact; and all the danger of ultimate extinction through exacer- bated racial Iepulsions and violence. For any buildulg of a segregated Negro cul- tineinAmericaintl-ioseamswhere itisbylaw or custom the rule and where neglect to take positive action would mean a slowing down or stoppage or even retrogrossion of Negro advance, unusual and diEficult and to acute extent unprece- dented action is called for. To recapitulate: we cannot follow the class structure of America; we do not have the economic or political power, the ownership of machines and materials, the power to direct the processm of industry, the monopoly of capital and credit. On the other hand, even if we carmot follow this method of structure, neverthe- less we must do something. We cannot stand still; we cannot permit ourselves simply to be the victims of exploitation and social exclusion It is born this para- dox that arises the present frustration among American Negroes. Historically, beginning with their thought in the eighteenth century and com- ing down to the twentieth, Negroes have tended to choose between these diffi- culties and emphasize two lines of action; the rst is exemplied in Walker's Appeal, that tremendous indictment of slavery by a colored man published in 1829, and resulting very possibly in the murder of the author; and coming down through the work of the Niagara Movement and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in our day. This program of organized opposi- tion to the action and attitude of the dominant white group, includes ceaseless agitation and insistent demand for equality: the equal right to work, civic and political equality, and social equality. It involves the use of force of every sort\". moral suasion, propaganda and where possible even physical resistance. There are, however, manifest djiailtia; about such a program. First of all it is not a program that envisages any direct action of Negroes themselves for the uplift of their socially depressed masses; in the very conception of the program, such work is to be attended to by the nation and Negroes are to be the subjects 93 + DUSK OF DAWN of uplift forces and agencies to the extent of their numbers and need. Another difficulty is that the effective organization of this plan of protest and agitation involves a large degree of inner union and agreement among Negroes. Now for obvious reasons of ignorance and poverty, and the natural envy and bickering of any disadvantaged group, this unity is difficult to achieve. In fact the efforts to achieve it through the Negro conventions of 1333 and thereafter during the fties: during Reconstruction, and in the formation of the early Equal Rights League and Afro-American Council, were only partly successful. The largest measure of united effort in the demand for Negro rights was attempted by the NAACP in the decade between 1914 and 1924. The difficulty even in that case was the matter of available funds. The colored people are not today able to furnish enough funds for the kind of campaign against Negro prej- udice which is demanded; or at least the necessity of large enough contributions is not clear to a sufcient number of Negroes. Moreover, even if there were the necessary unity and resources available, there are two assumptions usually made in such a campaign, which are not quite true; and that is the assumption on one hand that most race prejudice is a matter of ignoranceto be cured by mformatioru and on the other hand that much discrimination is a matter of deliberate deviltry and unwillingness to be just. Admitting widespread ignorance concerning the guilt of American whites for the plight of the Negroes; and the undoubted exis- tence of sheer malevolence, the present attitude of the whites is much more the result of inherited customs and of those irrational and partly subconscious actions of men which control so large a proportion of their deeds. Attitudes and habits thus built up cannot be changed by sudden assault. They call for a long, patient, well-planned and persistent campaign of propaganda. Moreover, until such a campaign has had a chance to do its work, the minority which is seeking emancipation must remember that they are facing a powerful majority. There is no way in which the American Negro can force this nation to treat him as equal until the unconscious cerebraon and folkways of the nation, as well as its rational deliberate thought among the majority of whites, are willing to grant equality. In the meantime of course the agitating group may resort to a campaign of countermovm. They may organize and collect resources and by every available means teach the white majority and appeal to their sense of justice; but at the very best this means a campaign of waiting and the colored group must be nancially able to afford to wait and patient to endure without spiritual retrogression while they wait. "Hie second group effort to which Negroes have turned is more extreme and decisive. One can see it late in the eighteenth century when the Negro union of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1788 proposed to the Free African Society of Philadel- phia a general exodus to Africa on the part at least of free Negroes. This \"back to Africa\" movement has recurred time and time again in the philosophy of American Negroes and has commended itselt'not simply to the inexperienced and to demagogues, but to the prouder and more independent type of Negro; to the black manwho is tired of begging for justice and recognition from folk who seem to him to have no intention of beingjust and do not propose to recognize Negroes The Colored World Within + 99 as men. This thought was strong during the active existence of the Colonization Society and succeeded in convincing leading Negroes like John Russwonn, the first Negro college graduate, and Lott Carey, the powerhil Virginia preacher. Then it fell into severe disrepute when the objects of the Colonization Society were shown by the Abolitionists to be the perpemation rather than the amelioration of American slavery. Later, just before the Civil War, the scheme of migration to Africa or elsewhere was revived and agents sent out to South America, Haiti and Africa. After the Civil War and the disappointments of Reconstruction came Bishop Turner's pro- posal and recently the crazy scheme of Marcus Garvey The hard factswhich killed all these proposals were rst lack of training, education and habits on the part of ex~slaves which untted them to be pioneers; and mainly that tremendous indus- trial expansion of Europe which made colonies inAfrica or elsewhere about the last place where colored folk could successfully seek freedom and equality. These extreme plans tended always to fade to more moderate counsel. First came the planned inner migration of the Negro group: to Canada, to the North, to the West, to cities everywhere. This has been a vast and continuing movement, affecting millions and changing and modifying the Negro problems. One result has been a new system of racial integrations. Groups of Negroes in their own clubs and organizations, in their own neighborhoods and schools, were formed, and were not so much the result of deliberate planning as the rationalization of the segregation into which they were forced by racial prejudice. These groups became physical and spiritual cities of refuge, where sometimes the participants were inspired to efforts for social uplift, learning and ambition; and sometimes reduced to sullen wordless resentment. It is toward this sort of group effort that the thoughts and plans of Booker T. Washington led. He did not advocate a delib- erate and planned segregation, but advised submission to segregation in settle- ment and in work, in order that this bending to the will of a powerful majority might bring from that majority gradually such sympathy and sense of justice that in the long run the best interests of the Negro group would be served; par- ticularly as those interests were, he thought, inseparable from the best interests of the dominant group. The difficulty here was that unless the dominant group saw its best interests bound up with those of the black minority, the situation was hopeless; and in any case the danger was that if the minority ceased to agi~ tate and resist oppression it would grow to accept it as normal and inevitable. A third path of the advance which lately I have been formulating and advocating can easily be mistaken for a program of complete racial segregation and even nationalism among Negroes. Indeed ithas been criticized as such. This is a misap- prehension First, ignoring other racial separations, I have stressed the economic discrimination as fundamental and advised concentration of planning here. We need sufficient income for health and home; to supplement our education and recreation; to ght our own crime problem,- and above all to finance a continued, planted and intelligent agitation for political, civil and soda] equality. How can we Negroes in the United States gain such average income as to be able to attend to these pressing matters? The cost of this program must fall rst and primarily on us, ourselves. It is silly to expect any large number of whites to nance a program 100 + DUSK OF DAWN The Colored World Within + 101 which the overwhelming majority of whites today fear and reject. Setting up as a and unthreatened, and in case the race prejudice in America persisted to such an bogey-man an assumed proposal for an absolute separate Negro economy in extent that it would not permit the full development of the capacities and aspi- America, it has been easy for colored philosophers and white experts to dismiss the rations of the Negro race. With its eyes open to the necessity of agitation and to matter with a shrug and a laugh. But this is not so easily dismissed. In the first place possible migration, this plan would start with the racial grouping that today is we have already got a partially segregated Negro economy in the United States. inevitable and proceed to use it as a method of progress along which we have There can be no question about this. We not only build and finance Negro churches, worked and are now working. Instead of letting this segregation remain largely a but we furnish a considerable part of the funds for our segregated schools. We fur- matter of chance and unplanned development, and allowing its objects and results nish most of our own professional services in medicine, pharmacy, dentistry and to rest in the hands of the white majority or in the accidents of the situation, it law. We furnish some part of our food and clothes, our home building and repair- would make the segregation a matter of careful thought and intelligent planning ing and many retail services. We furnish books and newspapers; we furnish endless on the part of Negroes. personal services like those of barbers, beauty shop keepers, hotels, restaurants. It The object of that plan would be two-fold: first to make it possible for the Negro may be said that this inner economy of the Negro serves but a small proportion of group to await its ultimate emancipation with reasoned patience, with equitable its total needs; but it is growing and expanding in various ways; and what I pro- temper and with every possible effort to raise the social status and increase the pose is to so plan and guide it as to take advantage of certain obvious facts. efficiency of the group. And secondly and just as important, the ultimate object It is of course impossible that a segregated economy for Negroes in the United of the plan is to obtain admission of the colored group to cooperation and incor- States should be complete. It is quite possible that it could never cover more than poration into the white group on the best possible terms. the smaller part of the economic activities of Negroes. Nevertheless, it is also pos- This planned and deliberate recognition of self-segregation on the part of col- sible that this smaller part could be so important and wield so much power that ored people involves many difficulties which have got to be faced. First of all, in its influence upon the total economy of Negroes and the total industrial organi- what lines and objects of effort should segregation come? This choice is not wide, zation of the United States would be decisive for the great ends toward which the because so much segregation is compulsory: most colored children, most colored Negro moves. youth, are educated in Negro schools and by Negro teachers. There is more edu- We are of course obsessed with the vastness of the industrial machine in cation by race today than there was in the latter part of the nineteenth century; America, and with the way in which organized wealth dominates our whole partly because of increased racial consciousness, and partly because more Negroes government, our education, our intellectual life and our art. But despite this, the are applying for education and this would call for larger social contact than ever American economic class structure-that system of domination of industry and before, if whites and Negroes went to the same schools the state through income and monopoly-is breaking down; not simply in America On the other hand this educational segregation involves, as Negroes know all but in the world. We have reached the end of an economic era, which seemed but too well, poorer equipment in the schools and poorer teaching than colored chil- a few years ago omnipotent and eternal. We have lived to see the collapse of cap- dren would have if they were admitted to white schools and treated with absolute italism. It makes no difference what we may say, and how we may boast in the fairness. It means that their contact with the better-trained part of the nation, a con- United States of the failures and changed objectives of the New Deal, and the act which spells quicker acculturation, is lessened and shortened; and that above prospective rehabilitation of the rule of finance capital; that is but wishful think- all, less money is spent upon their schools. They must submit to double taxation in ing. In Europe and in the United States as well as in Russia the whole organiza- order to have a minimum of decent equipment. The Rosenwald school houses tion and direction of industry is changing. We are not called upon to be dogmatic involved such double taxation on the Negro. The Booker T. Washington High as to just what the end of this change will be and what form the new organization School in Atlanta raises thousands of dollars each year by taxation upon colored will take. What we are sure of is the present fundamental change students and parents, while city funds furnish only salaries, buildings, books and There faces the American Negro therefore an intricate and subtle problem of a minimum of equipment. This is the pattern throughout the South. On the other combining into one object two difficult sets of facts: his present racial segrega hand with the present attitude of teachers and the public, even if colored students ion which despite anything he can do will persist for many decades; and his were admitted to white schools, they would not in most cases receive decent treat- attempt by carefully planned and intelligent action to fit himself into the new ment nor real education. economic organization which the world faces. It is not then the theory but a fact that faces the Negro in education. He has This plan of action would have for its ultimate object, full Negro rights and group education in large proportion and he must organize and plan these seg- Negro equality in America; and it would most certainly approve, as one method regated schools so that they become efficient, well-housed, well-equipped, with of attaining this, continued agitation, protest and propaganda to that end. On the the best of teachers and with the best results on the children; so that the illiteracy other hand my plan would not decline frankly to face the possibility of eventual and bad manners and criminal tendencies of young Negroes can be quickly and emigration from America of some considerable part of the Negro population, in effectively reduced. Most Negroes would prefer a good school with properly case they could find a chance for free and favorable development unmolested paid colored teachers for educating their children, to forcing their children into