There has been some urgent insistence for the submission by this legislature of an amendment to the Constitution to provide for the distribution of the free school funds between the white and negro schools of the state, so as to give the benefits thereof to each race in proportion to the school tax which it pays. Though it may seem a little outside of the governor's expected prerogative to speak of the matter here (in advance of legislative action on the subject), I shall, nevertheless, at the risk of being considered meddlesome, venture to express the hope that no such amendment will find approval at the hands of the legislature. Without stopping here to discuss the constitutional conflicts which would be brought about between the State and Federal Constitutions, or if it be admitted that there would be no constitutional vice in such amendment because of its class or race distinction, its effect, which would be to take school benefits largely from the negro children, would be contrary to that broad and deep philanthropic spirit that has always moved the great common heart of Christian man and womanhood in Mississippi to a love of justice and fair play toward the weak and needy, whoever and wherever they are. It must be borne in mind that the negro is our neighbor and is here to stay; that he is the dependence largely of the white people for labor; that it is also in a great measure due to that labor that in the past the South's cotton, sugar and rice industries have brought the section's greatest wealth, and given it a commercial importance in every land and country where the nation's flag protects the American shipping. Besides, he is of our citizenship, and being of a weaker race, becomes a ward of the white people of the State, and they should not violate the trust by taking from him the benign influences of education, which help to make him a better man, a better citizen and a better Christian.
The Southern people have shown their faith in the negro by spending one hundred million dollars for his education during the past thirty years. There are now 1,750,000 negro children enrolled in the public schools of the South. The nine cotton states, where the great mass of the negroes live, that is, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, had in 1860 an assessed valuation of property for taxation of $3,244,231,406. In 1870, the valuation had decreased to $1,830,863,180 or 43 per cent. The ability to raise money by taxation had decreased one-half. The burden of negro education had been placed upon the people of the South in their poverty. There has been murmuring at the burden in Mississippi, and efforts have been made to confine appropriations of money for negro education to the amount of money raised from negro taxation for the benefit of schools, that plan, however, has never met with popular approval. There are a few men in the South who contend that the negro should be kept in an eternal state of ignorance, but their following is small.