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Miller, Kelly. Education of the Negro. “Advance Sheets” of Chapter XVI (complete in itself) from the annual Report of the US Bureau of Education, 1900-1901 (Washington, D.C., 1902) 128pp (numbered 731-859) in original wrappers. Rare in this advance separate printing, copies held only by the Library of Congress and the New York Schomburg Collection. An important essay by the “Bard of the Potomac”, who ranked with W.E.B.DuBois as the most eminent Black scholar of the 20^th century – and a voice of the younger African-American intellectuals who would soon help found the NAACP.

In 1902, Dr. Kelly Miller was Professor of Mathematics and Sociology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. where he would later be named Dean. This essay is one of his first publications, based on a speech to the American Social Science Association, echoing the conventional view that, through education, the Negro must be “rescued from ignorance, superstition and vice”, but, with hints of future militancy, decrying the racist claim that Blacks were mentally inferior to whites and subtly pointing out that so long as Black education was bankrolled by white philanthropists, “they will continue to wield the dominant influence.” The appearance of this essay in a government publication was a credit to Kelly’s academic standing and made his views known to a wide audience of professional educators.