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280 The Crisis

that the Constitution itself does not know whether or not it really exists in fact? If the Constitution is our friend, it would cooperate with the agencies struggling for our uplift. Who has heard the Constitution speak of the character and usefulness of the teachers of our colleges, or commend their work? If it wants us educated, why not get behind Morris-Brown College, Atlanta Baptist College, Atlanta University, Clark University, and Spelman Seminary? All the Negroes cannot be washerwomen, cooks, butlers, bootblacks and hat-in-hands any more than all white men can be preachers, lawyers and doctors."
The Columbia State, a Southern white paper, points out that industrial and agricultural education maybe just as "dangerous" to "white supremacy" as compulsory common school training:
"The State submits to the Hon. B. R. Tillman, who was one of the first men of prominence to exploit this reason for opposing compulsory education, that the 'danger' he saw to 'white supremacy' in a compulsory attendance law is far more menacing in this voluntary improved farming. How do he and others of his school of statesmanship propose to meet it? If it be wrong or dangerous to force all whites to learn to read and write because a few Negroes not already attending school may be inadvertently squeezed into Negro schools at the same time, how much worse, how much more dangerous, to encourage the Negro who has already learned to read to learn to grow a bale of cotton on the land that the unlettered white man cannot make produce more than a quarter of a bale?  And if the way to help the white boy who does not wish to go to school is to let him stay out along with the Negro who wishes to stay out, the way to help the white farmer who is illiterate and in ignorance of farming must be, according to that logic, to keep the Negro farmer in the same state of ignorance and unprogressiveness!
"There is no escape from the logic of that situation for those unwilling to cut from the neck of our white people the millstone of illiteracy because they might simultaneously free some Negro who does not feel his bondage a tenth as much as the white man.
"Shall we help the white farmer of another generation by furnishing him the foundation for an intelligence with which he can make land product fifty bushels of corn to the acre; or shall we help him by laving him in that mental state where he cannot make fifteen bushels and providing that his Negro neighbor shall do no better?
"That is the question."
The white teachers of New Orleans, too, are discovering that Negro education may not be the worst thing in the world. One of them recently read a paper before her fellows in which she said:
"The prejudice of the Southern people against Negro colleges is so universal that it needs no quotation. It is a feeling that has come down to us from reconstruction days, and one which we have generally accepted without question. But the new South is beginning to appreciate the gravity of its race problem and to realize its responsibility for the moral and social development of the race whose services it cannot spare.
"The tremendous importance of education as a factor in improving social conditions is everywhere acknowledged, and hence the first question that the new South, with its quickened social consciousness, is beginning to ask is: 'What are we doing to educate our Negroes?' It was from a desire to satisfy this questioning that the Southern Association of College Women appointed a committee to report on the work of the Negro schools and colleges of New Orleans.
"In spite of the prosperous and encouraging condition of Negro education here we are constantly meeting people who are bitterly opposed to the education of the colored population. Investigation shows that their chief reason for this opposition is the feat that it will lead to race amalgamation when the social condition of the Negro is raised. Surely no blow could be more fatal to the South than race amalgamation, and the fear is one that deserves consideration. I personally do not believe that education will have any such results. I think that as the Negroes are educated they will gain more self-respect and look less enviously upon their white neighbors. They will have leaders and advisers among themselves, and while amalgamation  of the insidious character that now exists will no doubt continue to some extent, I believe that education of both the white and the blacks will be the greatest factor in preventing it.
"It is remarkable how many intelligent Negro men are coming to the front, and how

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rapidly the rest of their race are turning to them instead of to white people. New Orleans now has six colored lawyers, twenty-one physicians, seven dentists, six editors, ninety ministers and 150 teaches, all graduates of good schools. The Southwestern Christian Advocate is edited and published entirely by Negroes, and it is a rather good paper too. I have talked to the editor and his wife, and found them both intelligent and well-informed people."
*
THE LAND  Mr. Henry W. Wilbur, a Philadelphia Quaker, has made a recent trip to the South and says:
"The causes which lead the Southern Negro to leave the soil and which must be removed, may be summarized as follows: The exaction of usurious rates of interest on money, whether the money is borrowed to help produce a cotton crop or to buy land. A virulent local prejudice which annoys, threatens and visits brutal treatment upon the Negro, especially the Negro who succeeds. On the affirmative side the improvement of the rural colored public schools is imperative. These are all matters only remotely to be reached by Norther philanthropy. They largely involve lines of conduct which must be applied by the Southern whites.
"The Southern Negro is really indigenous to the soil. That he ought to stay on the soil is nearly an axiomatic statement. His presence in considerable numbers in cities anywhere is bad for both races. An organized effort to secure for him, and to eventually be paid for by him, large blocks of cheap agricultural lands of the South is a line of effort which may well interest philanthropists and capitalist North and South, who are large enough to see that the best business and the ideal philanthropy must be employed in helping people to help themselves.
"The building up of a feeling of comity between the two races in the South involves such conditions on the soil as will make the Negro economically successful as a farmer and self-respecting as a citizen. This means an increased disposition on the part of Southern white men to treat the Negro as a man, if not as a brother. This problem will not be solved, however, by performing miracles, but by creating an atmosphere of common justice an sympathy in which it can be sanely considered. In any event, the Negro will not remain on the soil in Dixie because white men want him to, but in the last analysis because it is made worth 'his while."
*
A BLACK TOWN.  A reporter from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat has been having some interesting adventures in Boley, Okla. He writes:
"Boley is what is known in Oklahoma a 'Nigger town.' It has not a single white resident in it. It is interesting. When I got off the train I looked around to see if any other white man came to Boley with me. I was alone. Then I looked around me. The platform was crowded with people. There was a white man, and I approached him and timidly asked him if he lived here. He looked pityingly at me and replied in the negative, stating that white people were not permitted here. 
"'How about the station agent?' I asked.
"'He's black,' replied the man.
"'And the postmaster?'
"'He's black, too.'
"My bump of curiosity asserted itself and overmastered my loneliness. The more questions I asked the more interest I became. Here at last I was to find the Negro question solved. In a few minutes I found myself engaged in delving into the workings of one of the most important colonization problems ever undertaken in this country, and I am glad to say I was please with my investigation.
"Here is a town made up entirely of colored people --and the experiment is a splendid-success. These black men and their families are happy, prosperous and contented, and they have a well-ordered and well-governed little city.
"About eight years ago the Fort Smith and Western Railroad was built across the State passing here. Contractor Boley was a friend of the Negro; he believed he had better impulses in him than the white man brings out; that if put upon his own responsibility he would rise to higher levels and better things. Boley came to the conclusion that if the colored people separated from the whites and had their own towns they would make greater progress and be happier.
"Finally Boley laid the matter before the officials of his road and prevailed upon them to lay out a colored man's town. Then he