who have
themselves attained to that dignity to which the education of the
schools tend.

It has been my good or ill fortune to number among my acquaintances a
number of young boys and girls who could rattle off with fluency the
names of Greek philosophers of ancient days; who could at a moment's
notice tell you the leading writers of the Elizabethan period, or the
minor Italian poets of the fifteenth century, but who were hopelessly
ignorant of what members of their own race had done. They had,
perhaps, a vague idea of an occasional name here and there, but what
the owner of that name had done was a mystery. Happily these instances
are decreasing in proportion as our schools are filled with teachers
of our own race who can teach a proper appreciation of, and pride in
the deeds of that race.

It is unreasonable to suppose that any teacher of another race, no
matter how conscientious and scrupulous, is going to take the same
interest in putting before his pupils the achievements of that people
in contradistinction to the accepted course of study as laid down by
the text books. How many young students of history in the white-taught
schools remember being drilled to revere the glorious memory of
Lincoln, and Sumner and Garrison and Wendell Phillips, and how few
remember being drilled to remember Crispus Attucks and the
fifty-fourth and fifty-fifth Massachusetts? How many students of
literature are taught of the first woman writer in America to earn
distinction, Margaret Hutchinson, but how few are reminded of her
contemporary, Phyllis Wheatley? How many students remember the
lachrymose career of Byron and how few know of his contemporary,
Poushkin? The student of natural science is taught about Franklin, but
not of Benjamin Banneker; the elocution classes remember Booth and
Macready, and even how excellent an actor was Shakespeare, but they
seldom hear of Ira Aldridge. How many of the mathematical students
remember that Euclid was a black man? And the elementary classes in
art, how glibly they can discuss Turner and Ruskin and the
pre-Raphaelites and the style of Gibson, but they are likely not to
know the name of the picture that the Paris Salon hung for Henry
Tanner.

It is unreasonable, of course, to expect any Caucasian to remember
these things, or if remembering them, to be able to point them out
with the same amount of pride and persistence that a Negro in the same
position would. And therein lies the secret of