Tag: Carter G. Woodson

It’s Black History Month, so I am continuing with the series of posts regarding Shaw resident and Father of Black History, Carter G. Woodson and his book The Mis-Education of the Negro, published in 1933.

A theme throughout the book is that “educated” AfAms are not furthering the race and uneducated entrepreneurs and business people can do more. So far every, single, chapter has a strong criticism of “educated” Black people. I have just finished Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, and he had some criticisms (not as harsh sounding to my ears) for DC’s education system for African Americans. Washington was more “vocational” and pointed out some problems with students not being industrial and having their education being too book based. So they had that in common.

We’re probably more familiar with the Booker T. Washington vs W.E.B. DuBois view of education. There doesn’t seem to be the same amount of ink comparing DuBois to Woodson. But Woodson does snipe at the “Talented Tenth” a term most associated with DuBois.

We have appealed to the talented tenth for a remedy, but they have nothing to offer. Their minds have never functioned in this all-important sphere. The “educated” Negro shows no evidence of vision. He should see a new picture. The Negroes are facing the alternative of rising in the sphere of production to supply their proportion of the manufacturers and merchants or of going down to the graves of paupers. The Negro must now do for himself or die out as the world undergoes readjustment. If the whites are to continue for some time in doing drudgery to the exclusion of Negroes, the latter must find another way out. Nothing forces this upon one more dramatically than when he learns that white women in Montgomery, Alabama, are coming to the back door of Negro homes asking for their washing. If the whites have reached this extremity, and they must be taken care of first, what will be left for the Negroes?

That is a fair criticism. The reason why after 150 years of secondary and post-secondary education especially for Blacks, and there is still complaint about the state of African Americans in America, is …. complicated.  Thousands of Black teachers (some who are my aunts), Black doctors, and Black clergy (in-law) have been produced by this education system. Woodson has harsh criticisms for the teachers and preachers. I suspect he doesn’t think they produce anything useful.  “If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do. ” Black doctors can at least bill you for their work. Black dentists can point to the crowns in their patients’ mouths.

…. No progress has been made in this respect because the more “education” the Negro gets the worse off he is. He has just had so much longer to learn to decry and despise himself. The race looking to this educated class for a solution of its problems does not find any remedy; and, on the contrary, sees itself further and further away from those things to which it has aspired. By forgetting the schoolroom for the time being and relying upon an awakening of the masses through adult education we can do much to give the Negro a new point of view with respect to economic enterprise and group cooperation. The average Negro has not been sufficiently mis-educated to become hopeless.

And then

As Frederick Douglass said in 1852, “It is vain that we talk of being men, if we do not the work of men. We must become valuable to society in other departments of industry than those servile ones from which we are rapidly being excluded. We must show that we can do as well as they. When we can build as well as live in houses; when we can make as well as wear shoes; when we can produce as well as consume wheat, corn and rye—then we shall become valuable to society.

“Society,” continued Douglass, “is a hard-hearted affair. With it the helpless may expect no higher dignity than that of paupers. The individual must lay society under obligation to him or society will honor him only as a stranger and sojourner.”

Woodson against Segregation

There are a few passages where Woodson appears to criticize segregation. Continue reading Carter G. Woodson: Chapter 10- The Loss of Vision pt 2

It’s Black History Month, so I am continuing with the series of posts regarding Shaw resident and Father of Black History, Carter G. Woodson and his book The Mis-Education of the Negro, published in 1933.

Oh let’s just dive right into his criticisms of “educated” and “highly educated” African Americans:

In our day, however, we find some “highly educated” Negroes approving such Jim-Crowism. For example, not many years ago an outstanding Baptist preacher, dabbling in politics in West Virginia, suggested to the whites that they enact a Jim Crow car law in that State, and we had difficulty in crushing that sentiment. A few years thereafter the author heard one of our bishops say that we should not object to such separation, for we want to be by ourselves. When this distinguished churchman died the traducers of the Negro lauded him to the skies; and thoughtless members of the race, thinking that he deserved it, joined in the loud acclaim.

In this way the large majority of “educated” Negroes in the United States have accepted segregation and have become its fearless champions. Their filled but undeveloped minds do not enable them to understand that, although an opiate furnishes temporary relief, it does not remove the cause of the pain. In this case we have yielded on principle to satisfy the mob, but have not yet found an ultimate solution of the problem at hand. In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them. We do not show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it as final and just.

and Continue reading Carter G. Woodson: Chapter 10- The Loss of Vision pt 1

It’s Black History Month, so I am continuing with the series of posts regarding Shaw resident and Father of Black History, Carter G. Woodson and his book The Mis-Education of the Negro, published in 1933.

As I mentioned in the previous post, this one will look for his complaints about “educated” African Americans. Let’s get to it.

The effect of such a one-sided system is decidedly bad. One does not realize it until he talks with men and women of these districts, who because of the denial of these privileges have lost interest in political matters. A book agent working in the plantation area of Mississippi tested the knowledge of Negroes of these matters by asking them questions about the local and State government. He discovered that they knew practically nothing in this sphere. It was difficult to find any who knew who was president of the United States. One meets teachers, physicians, and ministers who do not know the ordinary operations of courts, the functions of the counsel, jury or judge, unless such knowledge has come by the bitter experience of having been imposed upon by some tribunal of injustice. Some of the “educated” Negroes do not pay attention to such important matters as “the assessment of property and the collection of taxes, and they do not inform themselves as to how these things are worked out. An influential Negro in the South, then, is one who has nothing to do or say about politics and advises others to follow the same course.

and

Instead of doing something to get rid of this ilk, however, we find the “highly educated” Negroes trying to plunge also into the mire. One of the most discouraging aspects in Negro life recently observed was that of a presidential campaign. Prominent Negroes connected with three of our leading institutions of learning temporarily abandoned their work to round up Negro votes for one of the candidates. The objective, of course, was to control the few ordinary jobs which are allotted to Negro politicians for their campaign services. When the successful candidate had been inaugurated, however, he carefully ignored them in the make-up of the personnel of his administration and treated Negroes in general with contempt. When you think of the fact that the Negroes who are being thus used are supposedly the most reputable Negro leaders and our most highly educated men you have to wonder whether the Negro has made any progress since Emancipation. The only consolation one can get out of it is that they may not represent the whole race.

Woodson also points out problems with history and general education that also plays a part in African American citizens being ignorant of political matters. And it seems from the above paragraphs the educated AfAms in the North and South weren’t particularly helpful in educating their fellow citizens.

What those Blacks with some political sway did have was an interest in playing politics. Woodson saw them as corruptionists.

In the North the Negroes have a better chance to acquire knowledge of political matters of the simple kind, but the bosses do not think it is advisable to enlighten them thoroughly. Negroes in parts are employed in campaigns, but they are not supposed to discuss such issues of the day as free trade, tariff for protection, the World Court, and the League of Nations. These Negro workers are supposed to tell their people how one politician seeking office has appointed more Negro messengers or charwomen in the service than the other or how the grandfather of the candidate stood with Lincoln and Grant through their ordeal and thus brought the race into its own. Another important task of these Negroes thus employed is also to abuse the opposing party, showing how hostile it has been to the Negro while the highly favorable party was doing so much for the race.

I’d like to remind you, this is the 1930s. Prior to the Voting Rights Act there were African Americans voting and in Congress. Black history tends to get boiled down to slavery, the Civil War and Emancipation, Brown v. Board of Education and the 60s Civil Rights movement. If you’re lucky you might get the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Migration, and portraits of Blacks who aren’t Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a long winded way of saying that one doesn’t tend to think about what African Americans were doing between those big events. There were Blacks involved in politics, but to Woodson, they were just engaging in piddling matters.

It’s Black History Month, so I am continuing with the series of posts regarding Shaw resident and Father of Black History, Carter G. Woodson and his book The Mis-Education of the Negro, published in 1933.

I’m going to look at the title of this and get to a couple of paragraphs that show where African Americans were discouraged from investing in themselves, to hone their craft. Dr. Woodson does mention other “professions” in the professional class, but the points are with the artists.

In music, dramatics and correlated arts, too, the Negro has been unfortunately misled. Because the Negro is gifted as a singer and can render more successfully than others the music of his own people, he has been told that he does not need training. Scores of those who have undertaken to function in this sphere without adequate education, then, have developed only to a certain point beyond which they have not had ability to go. We cannot easily estimate how popular Negro musicians and their music might have become had they been taught to the contrary.

But I can think back to his example in Chapter 7 of a Virginia preacher who was talented, went to school and was the worse for it. In some cases, where the musician can’t read or transcribe music, I can see where more training would make him/her a better artist. However, I can also see how it can take a talented & popular jazz musician and turn him into an insufferable so-in-so who refuses to play anything the masses want to hear.

We have long had the belief that the Negro is a natural actor who does not require any stimulus for further development. In this assertion is the idea that because the Negro is good at dancing, joking, minstrelsy and the like he is “in his place” when “cutting a shine” and does not need to be trained to function in the higher sphere of dramatics. Thus misled, large numbers of Negroes ambitious for the stage have not bloomed forth into great possibilities. Too many of them have finally ended with rôles in questionable cafés, cabarets, and night clubs of America and Europe; and instead of increasing the prestige of the Negro they have brought the race into disgrace.

Is he throwing shade at Josephine Baker? Okay maybe not just her, personally, but that’s some level of shade. He also says, “The large majority of Negroes have settled down, then, to contentment as ordinary clowns and comedians. They have not had the courage or they have not learned how to break over the unnatural barriers and occupy higher ground.” Not everyone can be a pretentious artist who plays undanceable jazz or performs confusing choreography. Woodson is writing in the 1930s and this sort of criticism of Black comedians and artists (musicians, dancers, actors, etc) hasn’t gone out of style.

On a more serious (not that the entertainment industry isn’t serious) note, Woodson remarks on the discouragement in other professions that have more of an impact on the Black community.

Negroes, then, learned from their oppressors to say to their children that there were certain spheres into which they should not go because they would have no chance therein for development. In a number of places young men were discouraged and frightened away from certain professions by the poor showing made by those trying to function in them. Few had the courage to face this ordeal; and some professional schools in institutions for Negroes were closed about thirty or forty years ago, partly on this account.

This was especially true of the law schools, closed during the wave of legislation against the Negro, at the very time the largest possible number of Negroes needed to know the law for the protection of their civil and political rights….

When the doors are closed, that limits where the talented and capable can go. “The largest numbers of Negroes in professions other than the ministry or education are physicians, dentists, pharmacists, lawyers and actors.”

This chapter is not missing the usual swipe at ‘educated’ Blacks.

…there are many Negroes who still follow those early teachings, especially the “highly educated” who in school have been given the “scientific” reasons for it. It is a most remarkable process that while in one department of a university a Negro may be studying for a profession, in another department of the same university he is being shown how the Negro professional man cannot succeed. Some of the “highly educated,” then, give their practice to those who are often inferior to the Negroes whom they thus pass by. Although there has been an increase in these particular spheres, however, the professions among Negroes, with the exception of teaching and preaching, are still undermanned.

 

It’s Black History Month, so I am continuing with the series of posts regarding Shaw resident and Father of Black History, Carter G. “Grumpypants” Woodson and his book The Mis-Education of the Negro, published in 1933. I’ll get to the grumpy pants part later. Here’s a link to Woodson’s Wikipedia page, but I’d like to flesh out the history of Black History Month.

Prior to 1926, when Woodson created Negro History Week, he had already laid the foundation for African-American history scholarship with the founding of Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) in 1915. Negro History Week was to be the same week when Americans were celebrating the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln (2/12/1809) and Orator and Abolitionist Frederick Douglass (2/14?/1818). It is not just a matter of suggesting Negro History Week, he and the ASALH promoted it so that it became a regular observance. In the 60s it unofficially expanded into a whole month and in 1976 President Gerald Ford made the month official.

But back to Woodson and this book and this chapter. Once again, Woodson has bad things to say about Black college graduates and praise for Black business. I’m going to split this into two posts because there are two themes in this chapter. The first theme is AfAm college graduates are somewhat useless to the Black race. The second is related, AfAm college graduates are a drain if not a detriment to Black business. Yes, surprising from the father of Black history, if you knew nothing else about him. He makes a fairly good point in his argument and his goal is ultimately the betterment of the Black/Negro race. However, you’re not going to get to a better place with false praise and excuses. Let’s get into this. Continue reading Carter G. Woodson- Chapter 5: The Failure to Learn to Make a Living part 1