The Mis-Education of the Negro

by Carter G. Woodson

we must bear in mind that the Negro has never been educated. He has merely been informed about other things which he has not been permitted to do.

Following the religious teachings of their traducers, the Negroes do not show any more common sense than a people would in permitting criminals to enact the laws and establish the procedure of the courts by which they are to be tried.

We would not cease to pay tribute to Abraham Lincoln as the “Savior of the Country”; but we would ascribe praise also to the one hundred and seventy-eight thousand Negroes who had to be mustered into the service of the Union before it could be preserved,

If the Negroes of this country are to escape starvation and rise out of poverty unto comfort and ease, they must change their way of thinking and living. Never did the author see a more striking demonstration of such a necessity than recently when a young man came to him looking for a job. He was well bedecked with jewelry and fine clothes, and while he was in the office he smoked almost enough cigars to pay one’s board for that day. A man of this type in a poverty-stricken group must suffer and die.

men have grown rich, as a rule, not by doing what thousands of others are doing but by undertaking something new.

For the Negro, then, the door of opportunity is wide open. Let him prepare himself to enter this field where competition is no handicap. In such a sphere he may learn to lead the world,

Any people who will vote the same way for three generations without thereby obtaining results ought to be ignored and disfranchised.

the so-called radical Negroes who have read and misunderstood Karl Marx and his disciples and would solve the political as well as the economic problems of the race by an immediate application of these principles. History shows that although large numbers of people have actually tried to realize such pleasant dreams, they have in the final analysis come back to a social program based on competition.

misunderstood Karl Marx #competition

Even if the expected social upheaval comes, the Negro will be better prepared to take care of himself in the subsequent reconstruction if he develops the power to ascend to a position higher up after the radically democratic people will have recovered from their revelry in an impossible Utopia.

Why should the Negro wait for some one from without to urge him to self-assertion when he sees himself robbed by his employer, defrauded by his merchant, and hushed up by government agents of injustice? Why wait for a spur to action when he finds his manhood insulted, his women outraged, and his fellowmen lynched for amusement?

When the desired purpose of these so-called friendly groups will have been served, they will have no further use for the Negro and will drop him just as the Republican machine has done

The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with this interpretation of the crimes of the strong.

With the domestication of animals, the discovery of iron, the development of stringed instruments, an advancement in fine art, and the inauguration of trial by jury to his credit, the Negro stands just as high as others in contributing to the progress of the world.

Certain Europeans consider the “solution of the race problem in the United States” one of our great achievements.

much of Africa has been conquered and subjugated to save souls How expensive has been the Negro’s salvation! One of the strong arguments for slavery was that it brought the Negro into the light of salvation.

No advantage can be gained by merely inflaming the Negro’s mind against his traducers.

if he will struggle and make something of himself and contribute to modern culture, the world will learn to look upon him as an American