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[[label]] New York Herald Tribune SECTION 7 FEBRUARY 10 1952 [[/label]] [[page from This Week MAGAZINE]] THE NEGRO'S CHANCE FOR EDUCATION It is better today than ever before. But, says this noted editor, don't be complacent. What has been done is only a beginning by Edward Weeks A SERIES of dramatic "firsts" about Negroes ir college have made headlines news in the past three years. Levi Jackson, star and captain of the 1950 Yale football team was tapped for a senior society. Chester M. Pierce, a member of the football and lacrosse teams at Harvard, was elected second marshal of his class. Clarice Clotilde Davis was chosen homecoming queen at the University of Illinois. Nell Cochrane was made president of the student council at Smith College for 1950-1952, the first Negro so elected. Local chapters of national fraternities at Amherst and Bowdoin accepted expulsion from the national body rather than cancel their pledges to Negro neophytes. These are illustrations of a changing attitude and a new acceptance, unthought of when I was an undergraduate. To the casual observer, it would appear that equality of educational opportunity for Negroes is approaching at last. Unfortunately, these incidents, encouraging as they may be, are the exceptions; they do not speak for the average. It would be too bad if these were to induce a sense of complacency, the feeling that Negro students are in such good case that we do not have to worry about them further. 81 Per Cent Separated IF WE stop to check the record of advances made toward the democratic idea of equality of educational opportunity irrespective of race, creed, color or national origin, it becomes embarrassingly evident that we still fall shortchanged of that goal. Today we have an estimated 80,000 Negroes in college, and all but 15,000 of them are concentrated in the Negro colleges of the South. For the academic year 1950-51 there were but seven Negro students at the University of Arkansas. There were seven at Louisiana State and six at the University of North Carolina. At the University of Texas, 20 were enrolled, and two were attending the University of Virginia. The medical college of Virginia had three Negro students, and the the Richmond Professional Institute had four. But these were all graduate students, admitted only after help from the courts, including the Supreme Court. The stubborn facts show that there are still 17 states in which some segregation of Negroes and whites is required by law. Seventy-three per cent of the Negro population of college age lives in those 17 states. If they are to obtain any type of education whatsoever - elementary, secondary, or collegiate - they have to attend some type of separate institution, such as a private or state college for Negroes. Opportunity of Knowing I THINK it is true that for most northerners "the Negro problem" as such does not become a live and sensitive concern until they have had the opportunity of knowing and working with talented Negroes. When in the 1920's I met Dr. Rudolph Fisher, the X-ray specialist of Providence, whose remarkable short stores about the Negro we were then publishing in "The Atlantic Monthly"; when in the 1930's I met Roland Hayes, the famous singer, and began my six-year quest of his stirring biography, "Angel Mo' and Her Son Roland Hayes"; when in 1943 I met the late Dr. James E. Shepard, then president of North Carolina College for Negroes, I felt that I was being admitted to an affiliation in which I had once had no sense of personal participation. Dr. Shepard invited me to speak at the vesper service held in the college chapel each Sunday afternoon. The chapel, packed with undergraduates, resounded with singing of the magnificent choir. The buildings had the look of permanence. I could not tell how young they were. It took me a while to realize that this remarkable institution at Durham, North Carolina, was the result of one man's life work. When Dr. Shepard became its first president back in 1910, the school had an enrollment of 130 and a state appropriation of $2,500. It was dedicated then to the education of Negro ministers, and it lived mostly on philanthropy. President Shepard built up the college with his brains, his hands, and his unflagging spirit. He spent thousands of lonely hours on railway trains, in empty stations and in dreary little hotels in his one-man drive for funds, teachers, and pupils. He lived with a mortgage on one shoulder and college debts on the other. The Ancient Pattern HIS college, which now has 1,344 students, 30 buildings, a four-year course, and graduate degrees in art, law, public health and nursing, was the first state-supported Negro college of liberal arts. But North Carolina set it up specifically for Negroes. In short, it follows the ancient pattern of segregation. [[photo on page]][[image - Statue of Booker T. Washington and a barefoot man holding books]] [label on photo] PIONEER: Booker T. Washington (standing figure) founded Tuskegee Institute in 1881. The South now has 36 such privately supported Negro colleges[[/label]] [inset at bottom of page with photo of author] [[image - Edward Weeks]] EDWARD WEEKS has been editor of "The Atlantic Monthly" for 15 years. As a discoverer of new writers, he has worked with many leading American Negroes. He has served as an overseer of his alma mater, Harvard, and a trustee of Wellesley and Northeastern University.
