NEGRO EDUCATORS WOULD
TEACH AGRICULTURE.
Want Money For Such a Department
at the Lincoln State Nor-
mal School.
The twenty-fourth annual session of the negro branch, Missouri State Teachers' Association, opened at the Lincoln high school, Nineteenth street and Tracy avenue, Tuesday morning. Several important papers were read and discussed that day.
Supplementary to the regular programme of yesterday was a lecture on the prevention of tuberculosis by Dr. W. J. Thompkins of this city. There were three meetings of the association yesterday and there will be only two today, morning and afternoon. This evening there will be a reception tendered the visiting teacakes by the local committee. That will close the session.
The most important work was done at the meeting yesterday afternoon. The matter under discussion was the establishment of an agricultural department in the Lincoln state normal school at Jefferson City. A committee was appointed to draft a petition to the incoming legislature, asking for an appropriation to that end.
"There are about 600 pupils in attendance at the state normal," said R. L. Logan of Columbia, Mo. "About forty to fifty of them are graduated each year, most all of them as teacakes. The field for negro teachers is small, and many of them regard it as a sacrifice, after spending four years at school, to go out into the rural districts and take schools which only pay from $25 to $45 per month.
"You would be surprised to know the number of men in this city, St. Louis and St. Joseph, all graduates of the state normal, who have gone to waiting tables in the best hotels. Why? Because they can earn more money at that. We feel that with an agricultural department at our state normal many a negro boy who comes there from the farm will be willing to go back there better equipped, as he will have learned practical farming. As it is, if they can't get schools, they drift to the cities and have to take what is offered to them. There are so few chances offered to the negro that we feel that the state ought to do this much to aid those who can and will profit by it. We know that the branch of the work, agriculture, will be taken up by many as soon as it is opened to them."
