The Higher Education of The Negro
March 5, 1904
Summary
Thirkleid extenuates the idea that the Negro race is more than capable of just continuing the pattern of being "tillers of the soil.”
Transcription
Da. W. P Thirkield understands the southern situation thoroughly when he says in the Cincinnati, O., Christian Education in discussing the higher education of the Negro:
It is self evident that the masses of the Negro race are for generations, to be tillers of the soil; to be the toilers in our industries; to furnish hands for menial labor, And the South may thank Providence that she has this race here instead of the hordes of foreigners with which the North contends-a race that furnishes for a semi-tropical climate the best peasant labor in the world. The sober minded and progressive people of the South, who have its largest permanent interests at heart, are, more and more, coming to an appreciation of this fact. The industrial and commercial future of the South is bound up with the black man.
If six millions of the rank and file of black workers were to move out of the South, and in their stead there should come a like number of Italians, poles, Hungarians, and other un-Americanized immigrants, who are now the civic and social problem of the North within six months such a wail would come up from the South as has not been heard since Appomattox.
Could argument be more convincing than the following?
The education of the exceptional men of the race, who, by their superior skill and intelligence may be able to command the respect of the South, and, at the same time, the confidence of the masses of their people as their leaders and teachers, is in the interest of the permanent welfare and prosperity of both races. Let the friends of exclusively industrial training not forget that it is the brain back of the arm power into the cunning that makes, instead of the plowshare, the caligraph and sewing machine, and enables him to transform the pruning-hook into the mower and binder…….
It is self evident that the masses of the Negro race are for generations, to be tillers of the soil; to be the toilers in our industries; to furnish hands for menial labor, And the South may thank Providence that she has this race here instead of the hordes of foreigners with which the North contends-a race that furnishes for a semi-tropical climate the best peasant labor in the world. The sober minded and progressive people of the South, who have its largest permanent interests at heart, are, more and more, coming to an appreciation of this fact. The industrial and commercial future of the South is bound up with the black man.
If six millions of the rank and file of black workers were to move out of the South, and in their stead there should come a like number of Italians, poles, Hungarians, and other un-Americanized immigrants, who are now the civic and social problem of the North within six months such a wail would come up from the South as has not been heard since Appomattox.
Could argument be more convincing than the following?
The education of the exceptional men of the race, who, by their superior skill and intelligence may be able to command the respect of the South, and, at the same time, the confidence of the masses of their people as their leaders and teachers, is in the interest of the permanent welfare and prosperity of both races. Let the friends of exclusively industrial training not forget that it is the brain back of the arm power into the cunning that makes, instead of the plowshare, the caligraph and sewing machine, and enables him to transform the pruning-hook into the mower and binder…….
About this article
Source
Location on Page
Upper Left Quadrant
Contributed By
Megan Brooks
Citation
“The Higher Education of The Negro,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed January 20, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/284.