oo, a great lack of money with which to carry on the
educational work in the South. I was in a county in a Southern State
not long ago where there are some thirty thousand coloured people and
about seven thousand whites. In this county not a single public school
for Negroes had been open that year longer than three months, not a
single coloured teacher had been paid more than $15 per month for his
teaching. Not one of these schools was taught in a building that was
worthy of the name of school-house. In this county the State or public
authorities do not own a single dollar's worth of school
property,--not a school-house, a blackboard, or a piece of crayon.
Each coloured child had had spent on him that year for his education
about fifty cents, while each child in New York or Massachusetts had
had spent on him that year for education not far from $20. And yet
each citizen of this county is expected to share the burdens and
privileges of our democratic form of government just as intelligently
and conscientiously as the citizens of New York or Boston. A vote in
this county means as much to the nation as a vote in the city of
Boston. Crime in this county is as truly an arrow aimed at the heart
of the government as a crime committed in the streets of Boston.
A single school-house built this year in a town near Boston to shelter
about three hundred pupils cost more for building alone than is spent
yearly for the education, including buildings, apparatus, teachers,
for the whole coloured school population of Alabama. The Commissioner
of Education for the State of Georgia not long ago reported to the
State legislature that in that State there were two hundred thousand
children that had entered no school the year past and one hundred
thousand more who were at school but a few days, making practically
three hundred thousand children between six and eighteen years of age
that are growing up in ignorance in one Southern State alone. The same
report stated that outside of the cities and towns, while the average
number of school-houses in a county was sixty, all of these sixty
school-houses were worth in lump less than $2,000, and the report
further added that many of the school-houses in Georgia were not fit
for horse stables. I am glad to say, however, that vast improvement
over this condition is being made in Georgia under the inspired
leadership of State Commissioner Glenn, and in Alabama under the no
less zealous leadership of C
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