Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/391

NEGRO EDUCATION. would be complete which did not include an account of the work of General S. C Armstrong at Hampton Institute. Believing in the moral value of self-help, General Armstrong built up a school in which greater prominence was given to doing than to mere learning, where there was not only the schoolroom, but also the workshop; not only the church, but also the farm; not only the training of the mind, but also that of the heart and hand. An effort was made in this school to fit men and women for definite conditions, to develop a love for intelligent work, and to inspire in its pupils a strong desire to go out and help to uplift their people. The school at Tuskegee, founded by Booker T. Washington, Hampton's most distinguished graduate, was established with similar views. While receiving help from the North, both of these schools have put themselves in the closest touch with the South and its public school system. Their influence on this system has been marked. As a result of the kind of training given at Hampton and Tuskegee, hundreds of young people have been sent out who, by the establishment of homes, the cultivation of land, and the carrying on of business enterprises, have reconstructed whole communities. There is reason to believe that this type of school is meeting the pressing need, on the part of the negro people, of knowledge of the common duties of life, while, at the same time, it is providing a kind of training which results in the stability of character so lacking in the masses of this people.

In the establishment and conduct of negro schools, two wisely administered funds have had a large share. (See ; .) Mention should also be made of the Southern and General Education Boards, which are composed of prominent Northern and Southern men. Both these agencies represent a union of wealth, business sagacity, and educational statesmanship that augurs well for the cause of universal education. The Southern Education Board conducts a campaign of education for the purpose of stimulating public sentiment in favor of more liberal provision for the common schools for both races. Its work is supplemented by that of the General Education Board, which, in addition to collecting information in regard to existing educational conditions among both races, is empowered to disburse certain funds where they are most needed for the strengthening of the agencies tending to promote the education of all the people.

. Mayo, Third Estate of the South (Boston, 1890); Botume, First Days Among the Contrabands (Boston, 1893); Curry, A Brief Sketch of George Peabody and a History of the Peabody Education Fund through Thirty Years (Cambridge, 1898); Washington, The Future of the American Negro (Boston, 1899); id., “Education of the Negro,” in Monographs on Education in the United States (Albany, 1900); Thomas, The American Negro (New York, 1901); “The Negro Common School,” in Atlanta University Publications, No. 6 (Atlanta, 1901); Sadler, “The Education of the Colored Race,” in Special Reports of Great Britain Education Board, vol. xi. (London, 1902); John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen Occasional Papers (Baltimore, 1894 et seq.); Reports of the Commissioner of Education for 1896-97 (Washington, 1898); Dubois, “A Select Bibliography of the American Negro

for General Readers,” in Atlanta University Publications (Atlanta, 1901); id., “The Negro Artisan,” Atlanta University Publications, No. 7 (Atlanta, 1902).  NEGRO EXODUS. The name applied to a movement of freedmen from the Southern to the Western and Northern States in 1879 and 1880. The movement began in the early spring of 1879, and before the close of 1880 fully 40,000 negroes had removed to Kansas alone, while a large number had settled in Missouri and Indiana also. Many arrived at their destination poorly clad, generally destitute, and without promise of employment, and for a time there was much want and suffering among them. Large sums of money, however, were contributed for their relief throughout the North, especially in Kansas, where, soon after the arrival of the first band of immigrants, an efficient Freedmen's Relief Association was organized. The only Southern States from which the blacks emigrated in any considerable numbers seem to have been Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The chief reasons given by the negroes for the abandonment of their homes were that they were forced to pay excessive rents, that the system of land tenure in the South was unjust, that exorbitant prices were charged by ‘credit’ merchants, and that the freedmen were wholly denied political recognition and were kept down in every way by ‘bulldozing’ methods. Opponents of the movement asserted that the negroes had been misled by the representations of land speculators, by misguided philanthropists, and by politicians who, in view of the approaching Presidential election, wished to import numbers of Republican voters into various parts of the North, where the Republican majority was doubtful. The movement seems to have been considerably furthered by the ‘Nashville Colored Convention,’ which met in Nashville, Tenn., May 7, 1879, adopted a report setting forth the grievances of the blacks and the many disadvantages, social, economic, and political, under which they labored in the South, and recommending that the negroes should emigrate to those States where their rights were not denied them. For an account of the causes of the movement, consult an article by Runnion, “The Negro Exodus,” in the Atlantic Monthly, vol. xliv. (Boston, 1879); and for arguments justifying and condemning the movement, consult articles by R. T. Greener and Frederick Douglass, respectively, in the Journal of Social Science, vol. xi. (Boston, 1888).  NEGRO IN AMERICA. The first appearance of the negro in the English colonies in America was in 1619, when a cargo of negro slaves was landed at Jamestown. The scarcity of labor, especially in the Southern colonies, created an increasing demand for negro slaves; and by 1714 the number had increased to 58,850 (estimated). The greater part of these were brought direct from Africa, although considerable importations from the West Indies took place, and natural increase contributed an appreciable number. Importation was carried on more extensively in the following half century, the aggregate of negroes in the colonies reaching about 300,000 in 1754. In 1790 the first census found 757,208 in the United States. In the next hundred years this number was multiplied ten-fold. This extraordinary growth in numbers has been due chiefly to natural increase; although