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26
The Progress ok the Races
Prof. J. R. S. Hollowell, Alice Thomas, Josephine Richards, Henrietta Benedict. Hester Berhell, Prof. Esau Joseph, Prof. James A. Burns, and others. Others came from various parts of the State of Mississippi, viz.. the Rev. Wallace P. Locker, William Wilchir, Willie Howard, Professors G. W. Brown, II. C. West, Henry C. Andrews, his wife, Alva C. Andrews, and others. Some of the products of Pearl River were the Rev. Taylor Fryerson, his wife, Mary J. Fryerson, who both taught at Gainesville and Pearling-ton; Samuel D. Snell and Virginia Peterson taught at Pearlington, Eliza Hicks, at Logtown, Etienne W. Maxson at Pearlington, Logtown, Gainesville and Kiln; Hattie White, Mary Slacomb, Geo. Wingate, Hulda L. Peterson, Alice Petres, Rosetta Hall, Ruth Bowen, and Thelma Peters, all taught at Pearlington. Edward W. Rouse taught at Logtown, Mary Fryerson at Gainesville. Clorinda Isadore at Gainesville and the Proctor Settlement, Mabel Carmichael and Alma Given at the Point. The rural public schools of Hancock County will compare favorably with any of the rural schools in the state. The superintendents visit the schools, and the parents and teachers must see to it that the pupils attend school regularly or give lawful excuses for not attending.
No race can develop without education, and 110 nation can permanently succeed without the education of the masses. Daniel Webster said, “Educate your children and the country is safe” and President McKinley said, “Out of the school house come good citizens, and it is upon good citizenship that we must rely both for the future good and glory of the republic.” If what these great men have said about education is true, then the United States Government should not hesitate to make education compulsory, and to appropriate enough money to wipe out illiteracy in this country.
It is true that the United States of America has made greater progress since the emancipation of the slaves than they did from colonial times up to that great event, but if this country had spent more money to educate the colored people and the illiterate white people also, it would not have to deal with such a lawless class of people as we have today. The Greeks and the Romans thought to educate the rich and keep the poor illiterate was the best way to rule them, but they utterly failed. We can only trace these powerful nations of antiquity now on the pages of history and by their ruins and excavated cities.
Had the Blair Educational Bill become a law, which involved §70,000,000 for education, that passed the United States Senate in the early nineties, but was killed in the House, it would have in a great measure eliminated the illiteracy of the South and brought about a better feeling between the races. However, the United States has learned a lesson from Germany and the World War, and even the South is doing more now to educate the Negro. When we began to think that the illiteracy of Germany is less than one to the thousand, we can better understand why that country, which had an area in square miles even before the World War much less than the State of Texas, and a population including her colonies about two-thirds of the United States, could carry 011 her great war practically against the world for four long years before she called for an armistice which ended the worst war the world has ever known. Germany has demonstrated to the world the fact that an educated citizenship is much easier to rule than an illiterate one; that a well trained army will keep up a better morale than one
The Progress of the Races
27
that is not so well trained in discipline and tactics; that the educated man has the advantage of knowing the law, and the sense of intellectual pride will induce him to respect it.
The average daily attendance in the United States public schools was determined by the Census of 1919 at 2,940,540, with a total current expense of $222,157,892, or an average annual cost per pupil of $75.55. The Census also showed that of 15,306,793 children between the ages of seven and thirteen, 13,869,010 attended school; 3,907,710 between fourteen and fifteen, 3,134,129 attended; of 3,828,131 between sixteen and seventeen, 1,644,061 attended and of 5,522,082 between eighteen and twenty, 214,651 attended school. As to the illiteracy in the forty-eight states and the District of Columbia, containing 82,739,815 persons of ten years of age and over, only 4,931,905 were illiterate, including 1,242,572 native whites, 1,763,740 foreign born whites, and 1,842,101 Negroes.
The number of institutions for the higher education of the Negro more than doubled, and enrollments increased sixfold in the decade from 1917 to 1927. Of these 77 offered college work in 1927 to 13,680 students. Their annual income was $8,560,000, and the value of the plant was $38,680,000, and the productive endowment totalled $20,713,000. There are approximately 46,950 Negro teachers in the elementary and high schools, and 1,050 in institutions of higher learning. There are 22 publicly supported institutions, under State government and control, made up of land-grant college under independent control, privately supported; 31 universities and colleges, privately supported, owned and controlled by Northern white church boards; and 17 privately supported, owned and controlled by Negro church organizations. There were 3,114,750 colored children from 5 to 17 years of age, inclusive in the sixteen States south of the Mason and Dixon line in 1926, of which 2,141,206 were enrolled in the elementary and secondary schools, and 45,666 colored teachers there. Of the population of 10 years of age and over, the percentage of illiteracy shown by the Census of 1920 was 5.9r/p (7.7% in 1910) of this native whites, 2 per cent were illiterate; of the foreign born, 13.1 per cent; of the Negro, 22.9 per cent. Attending school were 90.6 per cent of those between 7 and 13 years of age, 79.9 per cent of those of 14 and 15, 42.9 per cent of those 16 and 17, and 14.8 per cent of those 18 to 20. The percentage of decrease in illiteracy in the United States from 1900 to 1910 was 27.74 per cent, and from 1910 to 1920 it was 32.04 per cent.
At the present rate that illiteracy is being decreased in the United States, within a few decades it will be entirely obliterated. May God hasten the time when this impediment to human progress shall cease to exist. The foregoing statistics give the educational progress of the colored people throughout the United States, which includes the towns in question on Pearl River.
“Learning is wealth to the poor, an honor to the rich, an aid to the young, and a support and comfort to the aged.” “He is a learned man that understands one subject, a very learned man that understands two.” “A man cannot leave a better legacy to the world than a well-educated family.”
Graduates at Pearlington
Mary Fryerson, Harriet Elizabeth Maxson. Oetavia Adams, Lelaiv! Uni-