THE EXCEPTIONAL NEGRO AND THE MASSES.

In a recent address President Tucker, of Dartmouth College, used these words: "I believe, with a growing conviction, that the salvation of the negro of this country lies with the exceptional men of that race." These words of President Tucker concisely express the truth which explains the practical value of the higher education to the negro as a social group or mass of which the individual forms a part. In showing how college training is of practical advantage to the individual negro, in enabling him to discover and train his highest powers, and in furnishing the most potent incentives for their use, we have by no means stated the strongest reason for such education. A much stronger reason is to be found in the relation which the college-bred negro holds to the masses among whom he dwells and works. The masses may not be able to go to college, but they may send their representative to college, and when he comes home they may be wise by proxy. This does not mean that they are all going to learn Latin and Greek from their representative or make him a little demigod of culture for their worship. But it does mean this: That in every community of negroes it ought to be possible for the common people, occasionally at least, to look into the face of a college-bred man or woman of their own race and catch something of inspiration from his high attainment. Currents of culture and progress are ever being set in motion among the masses of mankind by this sort of educational induction, even where no direct efforts are put forth to that end.

But the opportunity for the direct and positive activity of the college-bred negro in promoting the elevation of his own people is of the most varied and striking character.

NEGRO PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Consider the matter of popular education in the public schools. The South has separate schools for the two races, and custom requires that the teachers of these schools shall be of the same race as the pupils attending them. The 30,000 negro public schools, on which the Southern States are spending six and a half million dollars annually and have spent over a hundred millions since 1870, are greatly weakened and the vast sum of money spent on them wasted because of the inefficiency of the negro teachers. To stem this great tide of waste and to provide teachers of the desired efficiency there is no influence more potent than that of the negro colleges in the South. The graduates of these colleges not only teach in these schools, usually filling the most prominent positions in them as principals or otherwise, but they are also teachers of teachers, a single individual often numbering the teachers whom he has trained for other public schools by the scores and hundreds, and the pupils thus reached at second hand by the thousands. One graduate of Atlanta University has trained 200 teachers, who in turn are instructing 10,000 children.

These college graduates are also prominent in organizing and maintaining State associations of negro teachers, and in conducting, under the direction of State superintendents of education, the summer teachers' institutes which are fostered by appropriations from the Peabody fund. In one case a negro graduate has served for eleven years as a member of the city board of education by appointment of the mayor and aldermen in a large Southern city.

RELIGIOUS WORK.

The religious work of the race presents another most important field of activity for the college-bred negro. While slavery lasted the negroes in many localities shared the religious privileges of their masters, and listened to the sermons of educated preachers. With the advent of freedom, and the inevitable separation

of the races in so many of the relations of life, the negroes very naturally organized churches of their own, to the pulpits of which they called men of their own race, in most cases with little or no preparation for their work. Though some advantage was gained in the assumption by the negroes of the responsible management of their own church organizations, there was an undoubted loss for the time being in the character of their religious and moral training, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that to this, among other causes, may be attributed the criminal tendencies of the race in their new life of freedom. While the character of the negro ministry is gradually improving through the accession of better educated men to their ranks, the supply of such men is far inadequate to the need.

OTHER PROFESSIONS.

As physicians, too, college-bred negroes find an important field of usefulness. Aside from the ordinary round of their medical practice, they are needed to foster the work of hospitals and training schools for nurses among their people. They can also do much in instructing their people in matters of hygiene, in improving the sanitary condition of their homes, and in the proper care of young children; thus helping to reduce the excessive death rate of the negroes. In much of this work they can accomplish far more than white physicians working among their race could do.

The opportunity for the college-bred negro in the legal profession is not so large, nor the call so urgent as in the occupations already considered. But in proportion to their numbers the few college-bred negroes who have become lawyers are having as successful and useful careers as the members of other professions.

Some editors, too, must be supplied by the negro colleges, and these, in cooperation with the lawyers and ministers, will be more and more needed as the race progresses to foster a wholesome public opinion among the negroes, to elevate the character of their citizenship and harmonize their relations with the white race.

SELF-REGENERATION OF THE RACE.

Another field of activity which loudly calls for the attention of all college-bred negroes, whatever their specific occupation may be, is the matter of organized efforts for their own social uplift. In every considerable community the negro teachers, ministers, doctors, lawyers, editors, and others occupying prominent positions have it in their power, by united action, to promote efforts for reform in such matters as temperance, purity, the improvement of home life, the training of children, the provision of wholesome amusements, the organizing of reading clubs, debating societies, and lecture courses, and in general so ministering to the higher life of their people as to help them to stem the tide of animalism and materialism that is ever threatening to sweep them away. Considerable of this work has already been undertaken with fair success, generally under the auspices of the negro churches, secret societies, and other beneficial orders. But the organizing power of the negroes is still in a somewhat crude stage, and greatly needs the enlightening and directing influence which the college-bred negroes can furnish, and are already furnishing to an encouraging extent. And herein appears another very practical advantage of the higher education of the negro, in that it is helping him to do for himself that which many have supposed only the white man could do for him. We have too long failed to recognize the tremendous power for the self-regeneration of the race to be found in the race's highest class, and in the aspiring members of its middle class. The discovery and equipment of this power is one of the very practical services rendered by the colleges for negroes.

AN APPEAL TO FACTS.

A striking confirmation of the positions taken in this paper is to be found in the results of a careful investigation into the careers of college-bred negroes under the direction of Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, as brought out at the Fifth Annual Conference on Negro Problems, recently held at Atlanta University."

Since 1826, 2,414 negroes have been graduated from college; most of them since 1870, and for the last six years to an average number of about 130 a year.

With few exceptions these negro college graduates have found work as teachers and professional men and also in newspaper work, business, farming, and the trades. Returns from some 600 show an individual holding of real estate of an average assessed value of nearly $2,500.

Returns from more than half of all these graduates show that 55 per cent were teachers; 19 per cent ministers; 6 per cent doctors, and 3 per cent lawyers, or 83 per cent engaged in teaching and the professions.

Ninety per cent of those graduated in Southern colleges remain and work in the South, while fully 50 per cent of those graduated in the North go South and labor where the masses of their people live.

To the question: "Do you vote?" 508 answered "Yes," and 213 "No." To the question: Is your vote counted?" 7 said No," 61 were in doubt, and 455 answered "Yes." To the question: "Are you hopeful for the future of the negro in this country?" 40 were in doubt, 52 said "No," and 641 answered that they were hopeful.

May we not safely conclude that the negro college graduate as an individual is a good breadwinner, thrifty property holder, and conservative citizen, and that as the exceptional man of his race who has enjoyed exceptional opportunity, he is devoting himself in a very remarkable degree to the forms of service most adapted to the uplift of the masses in intelligence, morality, and good citizenship? What can be more practical than an education that secures such results as these?

I plead for a larger faith in the exceptional negro-a larger faith in his capacity as an individual, and a larger faith in his power as a regenerator of the masses of his race, on whom we should seek more and more to shift the "white man's burden."

a See the preceding pages (191-224).

CHAPTER IV.

FRANCIS WAYLAND PARKER AND HIS WORK FOR

EDUCATION.

INCLUDING AN ADDRESS BY HIM ON THE QUINCY METHOD, AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE COOK COUNTY NORMAL SCHOOL.

CONTENTS.-Francis Wayland Parker, by Wilbur S. Jackman.-Address on the Quincy Method, by Colonel Parker.-The Quincy Movement, by Nicholas Murray Butler.-Colonel Parker and the Quincy School, by William T. Harris.-An Account of the Work of the Cook County Normal School, by Colonel Parker.-Memorial addresses, letters, etc., by William R. Harper, Albert G. Lane, John Dewey, Emil G. Hirsch, W. T. Harris, A. S. Draper, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Alexander Graham Bell, John W. Cook, Nicholas Murray Butler, G. Stanley Hall, Orville T. Bright, and Bishop John Lancaster Spalding.-An estimate of Colonel Parker, by William R. Harper.-Francis Wayland Parker, by Frank A. Fitzpatrick.

FRANCIS WAYLAND PARKER.a

[Late director of the School of Education, University of Chicago.]
By WILBUR S. JACKMAN,

Dean of the School of Education.

[BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.-Francis Wayland Parker, who died on March 2, 1902, was born in the village of Piscataquog, N. H. (now incorporated with the city of Manchester), on October 9, 1837. His ancestry was of the strong New England stock, and in every strain of it there were ministers and teachers. His early education, which he received in the village school and at a country academy, was of the scantiest. In 1872-1875 he attended King William's University at Berlin, but he was in a true sense a self-educated man. From his sixteenth to his twenty-first year he taught with marked success in various places in his native State. In 1858 he took the princi palship of the public school at Carrollton, Ill. When the civil war broke out he returned to New Hampshire and joined the Fourth New Hampshire Volunteers, not having been able to enlist in Illinois. Entering the Army as first lieutenant, he left it at the close of the war as colonel. Many avenues of success, political and financial, were open to him at the close of his military service, but he remained faithful to teaching, his chosen profession. "I do not remember the day," he afterwards said, "when I did not believe that I should be a teacher." He first attracted wide attention by his reform work as superintendent at Quincy, Mass., from 1878 to 1880. In 1880 he was made one of the supervisors of schools of Boston. From 1883 to 1899 he was principal of the Cook County (afterward the Chicago) Normal School. This position he resigned to assume the presidency of the Chicago Institute, the pedagogic school founded by Mrs. Emmons Blaine. When, a year ago, the institute became a part of the University of Chicago, as the School of Education, Colonel Parker remained at the head of it as director. Colonel Parker was twice married-in 1864 to Miss Phene E. Hall, of Bennington, N. H., and in 1882 to Mrs. M. Frank Stuart, of Boston.]

Colonel Parker's entire philosophy and practice of education rested solely upon the theory that democracy furnishes the highest and best type of government for an enlightened and self-respecting people. From this pregnant germ grew everything that he thought and did in the class room. His conception at once connected his ideals as a citizen with his motives as a teacher, and it linked the destiny of the country with the fate of the schools.

a Reprinted from the American Monthly Review of Reviews, April, 1902.