Latin (1920)

The principal of a State school for Negroes writes us:

For seven years I contended for the right to make this school available for such students as desired to prepare for college or professional schools as well as for those who would go at once to work as teachers or in some other way to earn a livelihood.
 
In consequence I have been called stupid and stubborn. Stupid because I could not see the wonderful advantages of dedicating all efforts to the study and teaching of the farm, and stubborn because unwilling to yield unreservedly to the advice of those who did see.
 
Under threat of loss of the Federal appropriation our board of trustees at last ordered me to cease the teaching of Latin. Something of a compromise was made when it was agreed that except for the Latin we should have a course equivalent to that in the accredited high schools of the state.

Why does this man insist on “Latin?” some will ask. Do colored people especially crave for Latin and Greek? No. But as long as the leading Northern colleges require Latin in their entrance examinations our schools must meet that requirement or our children will be refused admission. When the great colleges recognize the educational value of other studies beside the classics, we will be ready to adopt other studies but for Negro fitting schools voluntarily and alone to cut themselves off from the educational system of the land as established by the white universities, is suicide.

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Citation: Du Bois, W.E.B. 1920. “Latin.” The Crisis. 20(3):120.