The Public Education of Negroes and the Current Depression

SOURCES OF INFORMATION In an effort to secure reliable data on this topic, in November, 1932, a simple -questionnaire was sent to representatives of State Departments of Education in eighteen states, including the District of Columbia, and to superintendents of public schools in fifty-four cities. Below is given a copy'of the questionnaire: 1. What specific effect has the depression had upon the program of Negro Education in your state (or city) ? 2. What specific innovations have been instituted to meet the demands of a decreased budget? 3. Have Negro schools suffered from the depression more, less, or about equal to the white schools? 4. What effect has the depression had upon school enrollment, etc.? 5. What has been, or is, the morale of your teachers in this period? That is, have they shown a complaining and an unhappy spirit, or have they sensed and understood the significance of the times, and gone ahead with their work faithfully and almost joyfully, realizing both the need and the opportunity for sacrifice and service? 6. Does your observation lead you to believe that the reduction in school funds, if there has been such, has correspondingly reduced the value of actual instruction, or, have teachers and school administrators, realizing the possible loss to children, actually . redoubled their efforts and more than made up in good teaching and in spiritual quality for any financial hardships? 7. What is the outlook for the immediate future? Replies were received from fifteen of the eighteen states and from fortyseven of the fifty-four cities. An effort has been made to tabulate or summarize the returns from states and cities in brief form where the heart of the replies to each of the seven questions used in the questionnaire may be seen and read almost at a glance. Summary I includes the returns from fifteen states, and Summary II, those received from the forty-seven cities. It will be observed that the fifteen states are all in the South, and therefore include the densest Negro populations; that the forty-seven cities are representative of the South, the East, the Middle West and the West. It is probably fair to assume that both states and cities in this study include practically all areas of the entire country where there are separate public schools for white and colored children. It ought, therefore, to show reasonably well how the depression has and is affecting public schools for ten millions of the Negro population in the United States. In order to conserve space the questions are repeated only in part at the head of the Summaries, but the reader is guided in the study of the returns

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