The Crisis
May 1938
Angry Saxons and Negro Education
By Anna J. Cooper
Confession of faith, clear and unequivocal, from a U. S. Senator contains these words: "No statutory law, no organic law, no military law supersedes the law of racial necessity and social identity. We have no intention of ever admitting the colored man as our social equal and we can keep him in his place, his inferior social station, by keeping away from him."
And that's that.
A colored leader of white American thought, at once statesman and politician, has enunciated a policy enthusiastically hailed as workable: "The two races can be as separate as fingers and as solidly strong as the hand."
That, also, is that.
Now when the champions of either side shake hands before crossing swords in the ring, the one mutters: "We agree, eyeing the other grimly, "equal as fingers" (crossed at the time) "but separate." And his prescient mind vitalizes the efficient thumb, firm and unyielding over mailed fists.
"We agree," the dark brother replies, "separate, but equal!" and he looks expectantly on the wriggling little fingers and set to pop over one by one, now with a knockout in the prize ring, now with a hundred meter dash in the Olympics. "An American Negro youth ventures on to the stage occupied prominently by a Nazi dictator and steals the spot light from him for a little while" says the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
A sweet singer, a wonder working chemist, a sacrificial hero emerging from the ghetto to charm and bless—"separate," but potentially identical the same elemental human, educable like the rest and capable of patriotic cooperation with any and all forces that make for righteousness in a democratic civilization. But here ensues a titanic struggle between the American conscience and expert efficiency, both represented by the dominant thumb among very unequal fingers and virtually conceding equality while demanding separation. A race must have its leaders provided with a liberal education. Hence a national Negro university is visioned in equipment and appurtenances equal to the best. Efficiency experts contrive attractive sinecures in officialdom, toothsome sops for Cerberus guaranteed to keep that beast off at the approved distance from all movements in the life stream. Due honor and high praise are loudly acclaimed for Negro spirituals, Negro literature, Negro history, Negro "attempts" at art. But don't try to crash the gates on a play of Shakespeare or to listen in on a Wagnerian opera, or to study the marbles of Phidias and Praxiteles. Education must be separate, that is sure. The law of the Medes and Persians changeth not. Jim Crow in hotels and common carriers amounts to nothing unless you can segregate cultures. "The mind is its own place" and Education is its Maker.
The finale in this trilogy of the American saga is the offering made by Lord Bryce, by common consent the greatest analyst and commentator on our Commonwealth and a mighty wise counselor on modern democracies, whose suggestion after all may be the guiding thread out of this labyrinth of purposes. He says: "It needs something more than the virtue of a philosopher, it needs the tenderness of a saint to preserve the same courtesy and respect towards members of a backward race as are extended naturally to equals . . . As regards political rights, race and blood should not be made the ground of discrimination. Where the bulk of the colored race are obviously unfit for political power a qualification based on property and education might be established which should permit the upper section to enjoy the suffrage. Such qualifications would doubtless exclude some of the poorest and most ignorant whites, but it is better to race this difficulty than to wound and alienate the whole of the colored race by placing them without the pale of civic functions and duties. As regards social relations, law can do but little save in the way of expressing the view the state takes of how its members should behave to one another. Good feeling and good manners cannot be imposed by statute. When the educated sections of the dominant race realize how essential it is to the future of their country that the backward be helped forward and rendered friendly, their influence will by degrees filter down through the masses and efface the scorn they feel for the weaker.
A philosopher may say "let who will make the laws if I make the manners for where manners are wholesome the laws will be just and justly administered. Manners depend on sentiment and sentiment changes slowly. Still it changes. It has changed as regards torture. It has changed as regards slavery. The sentiment of race pride, the keenness of race rivalry has been intensified, but the sense of a common humanity has grown stronger. When we think of the problems which are now being raised by the contact of races, clouds seem to hang heavy on the horizon of the future; but light streams in when we remember that the spirit in which civilized states are preparing to meet those problems is higher and purer than it was when centuries ago the great outward movement of the European peoples began."
And that, undoubtedly, is that.
God give us leaders and teachers on both sides who, forgetting the flesh pots of Egypt and the spaghetti of Rome will join open palms in honest cooperation to work and pray for a better, nobler, truer America.