Twentieth Century Negro Literature Part 21

The only education of our subject was obtained in the excellent public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio. From the Walnut Hills District School Charles pa.s.sed to the Gaines High School, from which he graduated valedictorian of his cla.s.s. From High School he pa.s.sed to the University of Cincinnati, from which he graduated in 1891 with the B. S.

degree, and in 1892 with the M. S. degree.

When a youth in college, Charles hoped some day to be the head of a technological or agricultural school for Negroes, and much time and money was expended mastering those essentials that the head of a school should know. That youthful day dream has never been realized, but Charles has been an active teacher for years. Even before graduation he taught one year in the Governor Street School at Evansville, Indiana, and occasionally taught, as a subst.i.tute, in the public schools of Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1891 to 1893 he was a.s.sistant in Biology at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Since then he has been Professor of Biology at Clark University, South Atlanta, Ga. In 1901 he was dean of the Georgia Summer School.

By training Prof. Turner is a biologist who has contributed his mite towards the advancement of his favorite science. In the following list of some of the princ.i.p.al publications of Prof. Turner, those marked with an asterisk are contributions to biology.

*Morphology of the Avian Brain; "Jour. of Comp. Neur."

(1891), 100 pp. 8 pls.

*A Few Characteristics of the Avian Brain. "Science"

(1891).

*Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider. "Jour. of Comp. Neur." (1892).

*Notes on the Clodocera, Ostracoda and Rotifera of Cincinnati. "Bull. Sci. Lab. of Den. Univ." (1892), 17 pp., 2 pls.

*Additional Notes on the Clodocera and Ostracoda of Cincinnati, 18 pp., (1893), 2 pls. _Ibid._

*Notes on the American Ostracoda. _Ibid_, 11 pp., 2 pls.

*Preliminary Note on the Nervous System of the Genus Cypris. "Jour. Comp. Neur." (1893), 5 pp., 3 pls.

*Morphology of the Nervous System of Cypris. _Ibid_, (1896), 24 pp., 6 pls.

*Synopsis of the Entomostraca of Minnesota, etc., C. L.

Herrick and C. H. Turner (1895), 525 pp., 81 pls. [C. H.

Turner is only part author of this.]

Numerous abstracts and translations from German and French published in the Jour. of Comp. Neur.

Reason for Teaching Biology in Negro Schools.

"Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1897).

Object of Negro Memorial Day (1899).

New Year Thoughts About the Negro. "Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1899).

*Notes on the Mushroom Bodies of the Invertebrates.

"Zoological Bulletin" (1899), 6 pp., 6 figs.

*A Male Erpetocypris Barbatus, Forbes. "Zool. Bulletin"

(1899).

*Synopsis of North American Invertebrates. V. Fresh-Water Ostracoda. "Amer. Naturalist" (1899), 11 pp.

Living Dust. "Southwestern Christian Advocate" (1901), xiii chapter.

*The Mushroom Bodies of the Crayfish and their Histological Environment. "Jour of Comp. Neur." (1901), 50 pp., 4 pls.

The War of the rebellion is over, Negro slavery in America is no more, and the days of reconstruction have pa.s.sed into history.

Dr. DuBois in speaking of that period wrote: "Amid it all two figures ever stand to typify that day to coming men: the one a gray-haired gentleman, whose fathers had quit themselves like men, whose sons lay in nameless graves; who bowed to the evil of slavery because its abolition boded untold ill to all; who stood at last, in the evening of life, a blighted, ruined form, with hate in his eyes. And the other a form black with the mist of centuries, and aforetime bent in love over the white master's cradle, rocked his sons and daughters to sleep, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife to the world; aye, too, had laid herself low to his l.u.s.ts, and borne a tawny man child to the world, only to see her dark boy's limbs scattered to the winds by midnight marauders riding after n.i.g.g.e.rs. These were the saddest sights of that woeful day; and no man clasped the hands of these two pa.s.sing figures of the present-past, but hating they went to their long home, and hating their children's children live to-day."

Would some power had clasped the hands of these "two fleeting figures of the present-past!" Then those "marauders chasing n.i.g.g.e.rs" would have been subdued and there would not be so many b.l.o.o.d.y threads in the weft of the history the New South has been weaving.

The "gray-haired gentleman" has left a grandson who has all the culture and education money and thrift can buy. He is thrifty and enterprising, law-abiding and conscientious. He has inherited prejudices, yet he is sincere. He loves the South no less than did his grandfather; but he loves the Union more. He would die to save the Union; he lives to glorify the South. He is known as the new Southerner and he is evolving a New South.

The "marauder chasing n.i.g.g.e.rs" has left a grandson who is illiterate, uncultured and thriftless. He despises manual labor, but is too poor and too ignorant to live without doing it. Unfit to be the a.s.sociate of the new Southerner, and feeling himself too superior to mingle with Negroes, he broods over his hards.h.i.+ps and bemoans his fate. He is a Negro hater and thirsts for the excitement of a lynching bee. This condoned clog to the progress of Southern civilization is known as white trash.

The "form black with the mist of centuries" has left two grandsons.

One is a thrifty, law-abiding gentleman; too thrifty to be a beggar and too busy acquiring an education or acc.u.mulating wealth or educating his race to be a loafer or criminal. In his home are all the comforts of modern life that his purse can afford. He loves his country and his Southland, and is educating his children to do likewise. He even contributes his mite to the literature, science and art of to-day. He is modest and retiring and is known as the new Negro.

The other grandchild is a thriftless loafer. He is not willing to pay the price of an education; but he likes to appear intellectually bright and entertaining. He often works, but merely to obtain the means for gratifying his abnormally developed appet.i.tes. He laughs, he dances, he frolics. He knows naught of the value of time nor of the deeper meanings of life. In the main he is peaceable and law-abiding; but, under the excitement of the moment, is capable of even the worst of crimes. This thriftless slave of pa.s.sion, this child-man, this much condemned clog to the progress of Southern civilization is called the vagrant Negro.

Prejudice is older than this age. A comparative study of animal psychology teaches that all animals are prejudiced against animals unlike themselves, and the more unlike they are the greater the prejudice. A comparative study of history teaches that races are prejudiced against races unlike themselves, and the greater the difference the more the prejudice. Among men, however, dissimilarity of minds is a more potent factor in causing prejudice than unlikeness of physiognomy. Races whose religious beliefs are unlike the accepted beliefs of our race we call heathens; those whose habits of living fall below the ideals of our own race we call uncivilized. In both cases we are prejudiced. When a highly civilized race is brought in contact with another people unlike it in physiognomy but in the same stage of intellectual advancement, at first each is prejudiced against the other; but when they become thoroughly acquainted prejudice gives way to mutual respect. For an example of this recall the relations of the nations of Europe to the j.a.panese.

The new Southerner is prejudiced against the new Negro because he feels that the Negro is very unlike him. He does not know that a similar education and a like environment have made the new Negro and himself alike in everything except color and features. Did he but know this he and the new Negro would join hands and work for the best interest of the South and there would be no Negro problem. At present he does not and cannot know this, for the white trash and vagrant Negro form a wedge separating the new Southerner from the new Negro so completely that they cannot know each other. Every unmentionable crime committed by the vagrant Negro, every lynching bee conducted by white trash, every Negro disfranchis.e.m.e.nt law pa.s.sed by misguided legislators, every unjust discrimination against the Negro by the people drives this wedge deeper and deeper.

Render this wedge so thin that it will no longer be a barrier and the Negro problem is solved. This cannot be done by banis.h.i.+ng white trash and the vagrant Negro; for that is neither possible nor practicable.

The only way to accomplish the thinning of this wedge is to transform a large number into the new Southerners and the new Negroes. Will education do this?

In order to transform the majority of white trash and vagrant Negroes into new Southerners and new Negroes it will be necessary to instill into them the following regenerating virtues:

1. The manners of a gentleman. Not the swagger of the dude nor the cringing of a scapegoat, but the manners of a being permeated with the Golden Rule.

2. Cultured homes. Not necessarily extravagant mansions, but comfortable dwellings, wherein impoliteness, intemperance, slander and indecent tales have given place to politeness, temperance, intelligent conversation and refined pleasantries.

3. Business honesty. Not only punctual in the payment of debts, but also truthful in making sales.

4. Thrift. Not the ability to h.o.a.rd as a miser does, but the ability to spend one's earnings economically, to purchase property and to lay by a little for a rainy day.

5. Christian morality. Not the ability to shout well, and pray well and testify well, but the ability to live the Christ life.

6. The ability to do something well that the world desires bad enough to be willing to pay a good price for it. This includes not only mechanical but also commercial and scholastic achievements.

7. Ability to lead in the light of modern civilization.

8. Love for justice and contempt for lawlessness.

Experience and thought convince me that the "highest education" is the only agency that will instill all of these virtues into a people without detriment to the mult.i.tudes that are forced to stop school before graduation. Highest education is a new phrase; but can we not truthfully say that there are three system of education in the world to-day: the lower or industrial education, the higher education and the highest education?

In each of these three systems the student begins his education by an attempt to master the English branches, and in each attention is given to developing the moral side of the pupil.

In the lower or industrial education, parallel with the elementally English training, or after its completion, the student learns how to work at one or more trades, but he gets no training in the higher English branches nor in languages nor science. This system may instill into students the majority of the regenerating virtues mentioned above, but it is impossible for this system to impart the ability to lead in the light of modern civilization. Without this virtue one is not fit to lead in this strenuous age. A race without competent leaders is doomed, and any system of education which does not furnish such leaders is defective and doomed. It has been well said that the advocates of the lower or industrial education are welding a chain that will bind the race in industrial servitude for ages.

In the higher education, after completing an elementary English training, the individual takes a collegiate course in science, literature, history and language; but no attention is given to industrial training. Such a course does instill into those who complete it all of the regenerating virtues mentioned above; but how about the mult.i.tudes that necessity forces to drop out before the course is completed? It is a sad, sad fact that the taste they have had of something different renders them not content to be servants, yet their training is not sufficient to enable them to be anything else.