THE NEGRO IN THE STATES.

Press, Volume XLII, Issue 6248, 28 September 1885, Page 3

THE NEGRO IN THE STATES.

The question of the future of the negro is demanding, serious attention in the United States. The census chows that in the Gulf States he is growing faster than the whites; and neither fraud nor foroe can long keep him from the government of the Southern States. Yet, in spite of his new educational advantages, his illiteracy is on the increase with his growth in numbers. A writer in one of the Boston journals, da.Mng from Washington, asks, "What shall we do with him after his numbers give him a majority that cannot be put down, and his education reveals to him the power that follows the majority in numbers P" In answer to this question the Eepublicans of the North, and some few persons in the South, declare that he must be fitted for the franchise and for his station in "society by the acquisition of property and by education; and the Democrats of the South are equally in favor of bis educafion, il he cm be kept after education in Mb preaent servile condition, without political power. But educated he will be; all classes now admit that. Every Southern State is doing something for its colored schools; and it is regarded as certain that Congress will add millions of dollars to the large amount now expended by the States. The real question, therefore, is what will become of the negro after he has been duly and- satisfactorily educated. At Washington, where one night school existed at the time of the Civil War, 10,000 black children are now enrolled in the public schools. In the Southern States, where scarcely a colored school then existed, nearly a million of black scholars are now receiving instruction. In the colleges and normal schools of tha Southern States are already 19,000 students. This means a considerable leaven of higher education, which every year begins to have its effector upon the black zawr The schools are beginning to have a wholesome bodily as well as a mental influence.' It has. taken - many centuries of residence in Africa to make the negro black but now it is believed that al° few centauries of freedom and education will make Mm white. "It is certainly thought not impossible to wash the negro white by progress. The writer already quoted thus further develops hie views on the future of the negro.—-"Educate him, thus developing, mind]' clothe him, making his body more fair; let Mm enjoy the improving elements of civilisation, and in some coming century the negro race in America will cease to exist. The schools of Washington are divided into two classes—ihe white and the black —and the distinction ,ia drawn as close ac jjoseiblei Yet there, is hardly a school in Washington that does not contain come American oitizen in embryo of African .descent. I am myself personally acquainted, with two suoh cases. A professor of Howard University was a student in Columbia College for some time before the profesaors or his fellow students discovered that he was of African descent. And then he, who was as white as the majority of his olaes, was dismissed because of this invisible taint in Mβ blood. The number of white persons among the Africans Iβ steadily increasing, and time and education and attention to personal details may be trusted to eventually eliminate every negro in the United States, and to make aIT his descendants into white' men."—" Times'" Correspondent.