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 coloured 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 coloured schools that they have two sessions a day, one squad of children coming in the forenoon, another in the afternoon. The coloured teachers, therefore, do double work, for which they receive about two-thirds as much salary as the white teachers.

[Pg 53]Though many Southern cities have instituted industrial training in the public schools, Atlanta so far has done nothing. The president of the board of education in his last published report (1903) calls attention to this fact, and says also:

[Pg 53]

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 day.

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 on the solemn assurance that by the passage of the bonds the Negro children would receive more school accommodations.

The eagerness of the coloured 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 neighbourhood 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!

How Negroes Educate Themselves

Here is a curious and significant thing I found in Atlanta. Because there is not enough room for Negro children in public schools, the coloured people maintain many private schools. The largest of these, called Morris Brown College, has nearly 1,000 pupils. Some of them are boarders from the country, but the greater 

 Prev. P 48/279 next