Investigation brought to
light that the two boys were rough and crude, that they had never been
to school, hence that they were densely ignorant. While no one had
taught these boys the use of books, some one had taught them, as mere
children, the use of cocaine and whiskey. In a mad fit, when their
minds and bodies were filled with cheap whiskey and cocaine, these two
ignorant boys created a 'reign of murder,' in the course of which
three white men, four colored men, and one colored woman met death. As
soon as the shooting was over a crazed mob shot the two boys full of
bullet-holes and then burned their bodies in the public streets.

"Now this is the kind of thing, more or less varied in form, that
takes place too often in our country. Why? The answer is simple: it is
dense ignorance on the part of the Negro and indifference arising out
of a lack of knowledge of conditions on the part of the white people."

He then pointed out that the last enumeration in Mississippi, where
this crime was committed, indicated that 64 per cent. of the colored
children had had no schooling during the past year. That in Charleston
County, South Carolina, another backward State in Negro education,
there was expended on the public education of each white child $20.2;
for the colored child $3.12; in Abbeville County $11.17 for the white,
69 cents for the colored child. This 69 cents per capita expense was
incurred by maintaining a one-room school for two and one-half
months, with a teacher paid at the rate of $15 a month. In another
county the Negro school was in session but one month out of the
twelve. Throughout the State, outside the cities and large towns, the
school term for the colored children is from two to four months. Thus
200,000 colored children in South Carolina are given only three or
four months of schooling a year. "Under these conditions it would
require twenty-eight years for a child to complete the eight grades of
the public school.... But South Carolina is by no means the only State
that has these breeding spots for ignorance, crime, and filth which
the nation will sooner or later have to reckon with."

In the article in the _Century Magazine_ from which quotations have
already been made Mr. Washington cites this statement made by W.N.
Sheats, former Superintendent of Education for the State of Florida,
in explanation of an analysis of the sources of the school fund of the
State: "A glance at the foregoing statistics in