82. W. S. Scarborough, “The Negro and Higher Learning,” Forum (May 1902): 349-55.


Essay advocating the provision of higher education to African American students capable of benefiting from it. The author draws a parallel between the black experience in American at the turn of the century and the white experience a century earlier. “The negro may be compelled to belong for years largely to the laboring or industrial classes. But whatever is good for the development of our race is good for the development of another. The negro people, as is predicted, may not all rise above the middle classes. But we point to history and say that the middle and laboring classes have given us much of the best material in this, our Anglo-American, civilization. What would have been the result if similar lines had been drawn in former times? The one great boast of this proud Republic to-day is the universal opportunity for education for the poorest and humblest; and the boys and girls of the masses are invited, nay urged, to take the highest and best training.”