Educated blacks were tasked with restraining the masses from rebellion

Evidence

By sheer force of numbers, they can make or mar the peace and welfare of the nation. For their sake, as well as for our sakes, there ought to be among them a class of men and women who have the best opportunities for securing breadth of culture, along economic, historical, political, education, and social lines in order that they may be helpful in creating among the Negroes a wholesome public sentiment, and that they may be a restraining force to hold them in check in any time of racial disturbance or public excitement. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 152

Categorization

• XREF: This is the racial counterpart logic to the politics of respectability: white expectations of black self-policing; connects to Higginbotham’s own later coinage. — connects to: Black teaching was inherently political and antiracist, making segregated schools sites of revolution — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 10; Educated black elites were trained as a mediating restraint against mass violence — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 154; The educated tenth was explicitly justified as a brake on black rebellion (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Educated black elites were trained as a mediating restraint against mass violence #corroborates (0.97) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 154
• The educated tenth was explicitly justified as a brake on black rebellion #corroborates (0.96)
• Black elites pursued the same education for racial empowerment whites sought for social control #qualifies (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 236