Why Negro Children Are Not in School.
August 17, 1907
Summary
A reporter writes about how the rapidly growing cities grow too fast for schools to be built and the poorest class suffer as schools are too expensive to build.
Transcription
Why Negro Children Are Not in School.
My curiosity, aroused by the very large number of young prisoners, led me next to inquire why these children were not in school. I visited a number of schools and I talked with L. M. Landrum, the able assistant superintendent. Compulsory education is not practiced anywhere in the South, so that children may run the streets unless their parents insist upon sending them to school. I found more than this, however, that Atlanta did not begin to have enough school facilities for the children who wanted to go. Like many rapidly growing cities, both South and North, it has been difficult to keep up with the demand. Just as in the North the tenement classes are often neglected, so in the South the lowest class-which is the Negro-is neglected. Several new schools have been built for white children, but there has been no new school for colored children in fifteen or twenty years (though one Negro private school has been taken over within the last few years by the city). So crowded are the colored schools that they have two sessions a day, one squad of children coming in the forenoon, another in the afternoon. The colored teachers, therefore, no double work, for which they receive about two-thirds as much as the white teachers.
Though many Southern cities have instituted industrial training in the public school, Atlanta so far has done nothing. The president of the Board of Education in his report (1903) calls attention to this fact, and says also:
“While on the subject of Negro schools, permit me to call your attention to their overcrowded condition. In every Negro school many teachers teach two sets of pupils, each set for one-half of a school pay.
“The last bond election was carried by a majority of only thirty-three votes. To my personal knowledge more than thirty-three Negroes voted for the bonds the Negro children would receive more school accommodations.”
The eagerness of the colored people for a chance to send their children to school is something astonishing and pathetic. They will submit to all sorts of inconveniences in order that their children may get an education. One day I visited the mill neighborhood of Atlanta to see how the poorer classes of white people lived. I found one very comfortable home occupied by a family of mill employees. They hired a negro woman to cook for them, and while they sent their children to the mill to work, the cook sent her children to school!
My curiosity, aroused by the very large number of young prisoners, led me next to inquire why these children were not in school. I visited a number of schools and I talked with L. M. Landrum, the able assistant superintendent. Compulsory education is not practiced anywhere in the South, so that children may run the streets unless their parents insist upon sending them to school. I found more than this, however, that Atlanta did not begin to have enough school facilities for the children who wanted to go. Like many rapidly growing cities, both South and North, it has been difficult to keep up with the demand. Just as in the North the tenement classes are often neglected, so in the South the lowest class-which is the Negro-is neglected. Several new schools have been built for white children, but there has been no new school for colored children in fifteen or twenty years (though one Negro private school has been taken over within the last few years by the city). So crowded are the colored schools that they have two sessions a day, one squad of children coming in the forenoon, another in the afternoon. The colored teachers, therefore, no double work, for which they receive about two-thirds as much as the white teachers.
Though many Southern cities have instituted industrial training in the public school, Atlanta so far has done nothing. The president of the Board of Education in his report (1903) calls attention to this fact, and says also:
“While on the subject of Negro schools, permit me to call your attention to their overcrowded condition. In every Negro school many teachers teach two sets of pupils, each set for one-half of a school pay.
“The last bond election was carried by a majority of only thirty-three votes. To my personal knowledge more than thirty-three Negroes voted for the bonds the Negro children would receive more school accommodations.”
The eagerness of the colored people for a chance to send their children to school is something astonishing and pathetic. They will submit to all sorts of inconveniences in order that their children may get an education. One day I visited the mill neighborhood of Atlanta to see how the poorer classes of white people lived. I found one very comfortable home occupied by a family of mill employees. They hired a negro woman to cook for them, and while they sent their children to the mill to work, the cook sent her children to school!
About this article
Source
Location on Page
Lower Right Quadrant
Contributed By
Benton Camper
Citation
“Why Negro Children Are Not in School.,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed February 19, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/874.