"OUR RICH BLACK HERITAGE" : HORACE MANN BOND

Benjamin Franklin was quoted as saying,"The only two certainties in life are death and taxes." Well, I recently received a letter in the mail, and by looking at the front of the letter, I could tell that it was my annual "Property Tax Notice." So when I went to pay it, to my surprise, there was a line of 20 -25 people ahead of me.The line was all down the hallway of the Ouachita Parish Courthouse! Although I knew that I was in for a pretty long wait, I decided to get in line and wait my turn. After about 25 to 30 minutes, I finally reached the cashier window to get it over with. You see, in Louisiana, and pretty much every other state in America. If you fail to pay your property taxes by a certain date, they tack on late fees and add your name to the "delinquent tax list!" Furthermore, if you fail to pay it within a certain length of time, your property can go to the Sheriff's sale. Countless numbers of people have lost their family property over the failure to pay the property taxes owed. Therefore, if you don't want to have these things happen to you, please make sure you get your property taxes paid ASAP! Now to this week's Black Pioneer. Horace Mann Bond was born on November 8, 1904, in Nashville, Tennessee. One of the interesting things about his parents is that they both were College Graduates, something that was very rare for that time period. With his parents tutoring and mentoring him, young Horace was able to enter High School at the age of 9, and enroll in College at the age of 14! In 1923, at the age of 19, he graduated with honors from Lincoln University, a historically Black College in Pennsylvania. Furthering his Education, Horace graduated from the University of Chicago, earning his M.A. & PhD degree. For his dissertation, he chose to write about the Education of Black People in Alabama, which won him the Rosenberger Prize in 1936! In 1924, in response to the negative IQ Test scores of Black military soldiers in the Brigham's Intelligence Analysis Report, Horace critiqued the logic behind Brigham's s conclusions that the lower test scores of Negro Soldiers indicated an inherent intellectual inferiority of the Negro race, noting that a high number of White soldiers also had low IQ Test scores. Additionally, in 1956, when a group of White Southern Senators signed the "Southern Manifesto" in opposition to racial integration and the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, arguing that Negroes were not sufficiently intelligent to participate in the same schools as Whites ; Horace shot back with his rebuttal in the form of "A PARODY!" , Horace entitled the essay," Intelligence of Congressmen Who Signed the Southern Manifesto' as Measured by IQ Tests." Here he concluded that based on the Army intelligence tests the average of the "Signing Senators" was in the lowest 20% of American Whites, on average signatories attended a college of the lowest ten percent of median National scores, and had a constituency whose majority was in the intelligence category of "morons!" Some of the other interesting facts about Horace Mann Bond are : He became the first Black President of his Alma Mater, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania; he was appointed the first president of Fort Valley State University in Georgia; he was a Dean at Dillard University; he was Chairman of the Education Department at Fisk University; and he was the Dean of the School of Education at Atlanta University. Furthermore, most importantly, his work and efforts were recognized by the Rosenwald Fund, which granted him fellowships in 1931 and 1932 and went on to support most of the rest of his career! On December 21, 1972, after dedicating over 50 years of his life to Educating Black People in America, Horace Mann Bond died and was laid to rest.