160
A SCHOOL HISTORY OF THE
schools for colored people in the South assign cer¬
tain hours each day in which the students are to
labor. Some institutions do not spend one cent for
domestic labor during the. whole of the school terms.
Yet they, in some instances, raise quite enough farm
and garden products for their tables, and sometimes
make brick enough to put up extra buildings. The
time usually used by the white student in foot-ball
and other games is utilized by the colored student
in faithful toil. The fact that in none of the colored
schools the expense for tuition, board, lodging, laun¬
dry-work and incidentals is over $12 per month
(and in some cases it is as low as $6), is a strong
argument in favor of the help the Negro youth fur¬
nishes towards his own education. People with
such a love for knowledge that they are willing to
thus toil for it, may be relied upon to use that
knowledge properly.
When the War Closed there were about four
million colored people in the United States. Scarcely
a million of them could read. Now they number
about eight millions, and nearly half of them can
read. There are 1,158,008 colored children in the
schools, annually taught by 20,000 Negro teachers.
The colored people of the South have made more
progress in education since the war than in anything
else ; and they are still thirsty for knowledge. The
schools everywhere are crowded. The love of
knowledge seems to be instinctive, and thousands of
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