" He desired
what we now call the vocational school, "a series of workshops where
colored men could learn some of the handicrafts, learn to work in
iron, wood, and leather, while incidentally acquiring a plain English
education."[1]
[Footnote 1: Douglass, _The Life and Times of_, p. 248.]
Under Douglass's leadership the movement had a new goal. The learning
of trades was no longer to be subsidiary to conventional education.
Just the reverse was true. Moreover, it was not to be entrusted to
individuals operating on a small scale; it was to be a public effort
of larger scope. The aim was to make the education of Negroes so
articulate with their needs as to improve their economic condition.
Seeing that despite the successful endeavors of many freedmen to
acquire higher education that the race was still kept in penury,
Douglass believed that by reconstructing their educational policy the
friends of the race could teach the colored people to help themselves.
Pecuniary embarrassment, he thought, was the cause of all evil to
the blacks, "for poverty kept them ignorant and their lack of
enlightenment kept them degraded." The deliverance from these evils,
he contended, could be effected not by such a fancied or artificial
elevation as the mere diffusion of information by institutions beyond
the immediate needs of the poor.
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