The National Survey of Negro Higher Education and Post-War Reconstruction: The Place of the Negro College in Negro Life

Conditions throughout the country and within the Negro colleges are changing so rapidly that at first thought it might appear that an educational survey completed before "Pearl Harbor" would be meaningless in a post-war world. In reality, the National Survey of Higher Education of Negroes may well serve as the basis for a new approach to the problems of the colleges for Negroes. The Survey is unique in that the entire first volume is given to a socio-economic analysis of the 17 States and the District of Columbia in which separate schools for Negroes are legally mandatory. The other two volumes constitute the most comprehensive study yet made of the Negro colleges in America. This body of material gives the descriptive and factual data necessary to a reconsideration of the function of the colleges for Negroes. This paper is concerned primarily with those findings of the Survey which relate to the place of the college in the total life of Negroes in America.