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educator essayist mathematician sociologist
Kelly Miller was born on July 18, 1863, in Winnsboro, South Carolina. He was the sixth of ten children of Kelly Miller, a free Negro, and Elizabeth (Roberts) Miller, a slave. The boy's father, who served in the Confederate Army, was a tenant farmer; a paternal uncle was later a member of the South Carolina legislature.
Young Miller attended the first local school under the post-Civil War "carpetbag" government. Attracting the attention of the Rev. Willard Richardson, a missionary, by his ability in mathematics, he was admitted in 1878 to Fairfield Institute, founded by the Northern Presbyterian Church in Winnsboro, and in 1880 he was selected for a scholarship at Howard University. At Howard, he spent two years in the academy before entering the college, from which he graduated in 1886. While in college he worked in the United States Pension Office and was able to buy a farm out of his savings, which he presented to his parents as a graduation gift. At Howard University, he subsequently received the degrees of A. M. (1901) and LL. D. (1903)
After graduation, Miller resumed his work in the Pension Office, at the same time studying mathematics, physics, and astronomy under Simon Newcomb of the Naval Observatory, and then spent two years (1887 - 89) at Johns Hopkins University, supporting himself by working at the Pension Office during vacations. Returning to Washington, he taught high school briefly (1889) and in 1890, he became a professor of mathematics at Howard University. In his own teaching, he followed at first his interest in mathematics. Increasingly drawn, however, into the problems of his race, he turned in 1918 from mathematics to sociology, a subject which he had already introduced at Howard and to which he devoted the rest of his life. Meanwhile, he wrote and lectured widely on the Negro problem, bringing to bear a characteristically analytical and rational approach. It was almost inevitable that Miller should have been drawn into the controversy at the opening of the twentieth century over the relative merits of "higher education" and "industrial education" for the Negro, a controversy in which W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington were the principal antagonists. Miller died at his home in Washington, on December 29, 1939, after a week's illness following a heart attack and was buried in Lincoln Memorial Cemetery there.
At Howard, where Miller remained until his retirement in 1934, Miller made a notable contribution. As dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1907 to 1918, he did much to build up the college and broadened the curriculum to include the physical and biological sciences. He made a significant contribution to the higher education of Negroes, and his writings provide a comprehensive analysis of the issues involved in the Negro problem during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth. A 160-unit housing development in LeDroit Park, constructed in 1941, was named in his honor, as was Kelly Miller Middle School in Washington, DC.
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While showing the narrowness of the views of the advocates of industrial education, Miller could not associate himself exclusively with either side of the controversy. He believed firmly in the advantages of a higher education for the Negro because he thought that only through a liberal education could the nature of men be "uplifted. " At the same time, he believed that education should be brought to bear on practical tasks. As for the future, he was never disturbed in his belief that through the moral progress of mankind the Negro would finally gain full participation in American civilization. The Negro problem as he saw it was essentially a phase of the general problem of men's living together in peace and prosperity. Race prejudice, in his sociological approach, was "as much a fact as the law of gravitation. "
Quotations:
"The Negro pays for what he wants and begs for what he needs. "
"Genius has no age, no country, no race; it belongs to mankind. "
"I see that the path of progress has never taken a straight line, but has always been a zigzag course amid the conflicting forces of right and wrong, truth and error, justice and injustice, cruelty and mercy. "
"Exaggerated self-importance is deemed an individual fault, but a racial virtue. "
"All great people glorify their history and look back upon their early attainments with a spiritualized vision. "
"Those who become incoculated with the virus of race hatred are more unfortunate than the victim of it. Race hatred is the most malignant poison that can afflict the mind. It freezes up the fount of inspiration and chills the higher faculties of the soul. "
"If initiative is the ability to do the right thing, then efficiency is the ability to do the thing right. "
"The Best of the artist's art, which will one day be in a Museum wall, the Painting that sets the artist apart of all other artist artists. "
"Civilization is not a spontaneous generation with any race or nation known to history, but the torch is handed down from race to race and from age to age, and gains in brilliancy as it goes. "
"Racial and denominational schools impart to the membership of their communities something which the general educational institution is wholly unable to inculcate. "
"No American can read the story of the part America took in the war without experiencing a glow of patriotic feeling. Every Allied nation can say the same thing. "
"Having achieved such signal successes in the east, Russia and Roumania being both disposed of, the German leaders planned a campaign designed to crush Italy. "
"The year 1915 was one of meager results, the advantages remaining on the side of the Central Powers, with this understanding, however: The Allies were growing stronger because Great Britain was making rapid progress in marshaling her resources for war. "
"Germany expected that at the most a day or so would see Belgian resistance broken and the dash on Paris begun. It was not safe to start such a forward rush with Belgium unconquered. "
"Moreover, broad plans commensurate with our national purpose and resources would bring conviction of our power to every soldier in the front line, to the nations associated with us in the war, and to the enemy. "
"In the early days of his reign, Bismarck confided to a friend that it would some day be necessary for Germany to confine William II in an insane asylum. "
"For a century after the reign of Frederick, Prussia remained the most prominent Germanic state in Europe. "
"With Germany herself falling, it is not strange that the nations leagued with her also went down to defeat. "
"The eventual place the American army should take on the western front was to a large extent influenced by the vital question of communication and supply. "
"To meet the shortage of supplies from America, due to lack of shipping, the representatives of the different supply departments were constantly in search of available material and supplies in Europe. "
"The success of the Allies in the west was in a measure offset by Teutonic victories in the east. When the invasion of Belgium began, Russia made immediate efforts to counteract by invasion of East Prussia. "
Miller's writings and speeches on the Negro problem might be characterized as an appeal to reason and an appeal to conscience, the first being the title of one of his most important essays and the second the title of one of his books. Although most of his essays are of a polemical nature and suffer from the limitations of this type of literature, his clear, logical presentation of ideas and the often poetical character of his language gave them a certain distinction and permanent quality.
On July 17, 1894, Miller married Annie May Butler, a teacher in Baltimore Normal School, by whom he had five children: Newton, Paul, Irene, May, and Kelly.
