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Of The Training Of Black Men

© Nichel Anderson

It is the laws of nature for a black woman to feel
Unbalance without a man to stand equally beside thee,
For the Nubian man brings intellect, strength, protection,
And a spiritual force that is centuries old.
- Nichel Anderson

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was one of America's greatest social activists and writers. Mixed of French, Dutch, and African parentage, he attended Fisk University in Tennessee and also was educated at Harvard University and in Europe. A professor of Wilberforce University and at Atlanta University for many years, Du Bois went on to found the Niagara Movement, a forerunner of the NAACP; became the editor of the NAACP periodical Crisis and produced numerous books on black history. He is well known for his knowledge in sociology and historiography and began documenting the oppression of black people and their strivings for equality in the 1890s. The Souls of Black Folk, one of the most influential books ever published in America, appeared in 1903, providing 14 extraordinary essays.

In the essay, Of The Training Of Black Men, it focuses on the importance of higher education for the then freed black man. Quality education is the portal to development of the mind in order to reach becoming a cultured individual. Du Bois eloquence of writing provides a pictorial view of the need for quality education. His essay emphasize at the close of the Civil War until 1876 was the period of different types of schools; army schools, mission schools, and schools of the Freedmen Bureau were not in the greatest shape. The duty of these schools was to educate the now transition from slavery to freedom. In this transformation there will be thoughts of not living up to the potential now bestow on black men. Du Bois addresses this issue in his essay by stating:

"The inferiority of black men, even if forces by fraud; A shriek in the night for the freedom of men who themselves are not yet sure of their right to demand it. This is the tangle of thought and afterthought wherein we are called to solve the problem of training men for life."

By the 1900 higher training schools did expand the broader development for cultured minds and had additional college grade level of studies. The standard geared to maintain teachers and leaders with the best training and to furnish the black world with adequate standards of human culture and loft ideals of life. In the essay Du Bois states: "Training for life teaches living." Du Bois wanted the freedmen to be broad-minded, cultured men and women in order not to be amongst people whose ignorance was not simply of letters but of life it self. Du Bois explains:

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