Part 7

I wondered as I passed along to get a bit of information here and there, if our colored people were learning to do by doing. I wondered if they were getting the inspiration. Sixteen thousand acres of land ought to be the nucleus of an industry. A hundred acres ought to make a good peach farm. What an opportunity for the colored man who has brain and industry and some little money and a great ambition. We have not the faintest idea of the wonderful opportunities in the millions of acres of the waste lands of our southern country. These lands are just begging the capitalist to come and invest in the undeveloped resources of its bosom. It is there, but it just needs the brain and some little money. The brawn is there, too; it just needs the intelligent direction. Compatible conditions will keep it there.

The land in Moore County will never again sell for one dollar an acre while peaches are selling for three dollars a bushel at the tree. Most of the trees bear from two to five bushels of peaches. They are planted about fifteen feet apart. It takes about 150 trees to the acre. Any one can figure the income at that rate. These peaches ought to begin bearing in three years. There is nothing so fabulous as the income per acre from such an investment. There is nothing so sure. Some of the rows as we viewed them seemed endless. Greensboro, sixty miles away, was sending trucks to the peach area daily for loads of peaches for the local market, in Greensboro. A little while back one of these peach orchards sold for $85,000.

The business of supervision has become so important that many of the growers combine and employ an expert from the State Department of Agriculture. They can pay more than the state can pay for such expert supervision. The work is as yet in its infancy. We are advising our Negro boys to go to our best agricultural schools and specialize in this department of fruit cultivation so that they can manage such enterprises as these large fruit farms. They do not seem to get the vision. As long as our folks are buying farms, and they are increasing their holdings every year, there are vast opportunities for their services as horticulturists. Ten Negro farmers in Moore County, North Carolina, ought to be able to get together and make peach-growing worth while to the group. Their traditions and the local environment have taken away their inspiration. They also lack knowledge. They have not been schooled in initiative of this sort. Coöperation with most of us has been a doubtful experiment. We must learn and grow more before we can take hold of the larger industries that require large coöperation. Experience and knowledge are vital to the success of any enterprise. The great enterprises of the North have been growing coöperatively since the country was discovered. The South has been giving its time to matters of social adjustments. The adjustment of its racial groups has been its nightmare by day as well as by night. Hatreds, jealousies, prejudices, have entered too much into our daily contact and relations to allow us to grow nationally. The conditions of all progress are in education, industry, compatibility.

I read somewhere that the conscious mind may not get a true perspective and may error. Still it is conscious. When I read in the papers every day and note all the deviltries perpetrated here and there all over the South, I wonder that we have all gotten along as well as we have, and especially do I wonder how the Negro has made such progress. Then I hear that the subconscious mind never errors. The conscious mind would have me riled and leaving the country, boot and baggage, when I read what is happening somewhere else outside of North Carolina. The subconscious mind comes in and says to me, when I am quiet and alone and perhaps when I am half asleep, “No, do not get discouraged.” The South is the garden spot of the world. It has the prettiest moons, the brightest days, its florescence on a thousand hills and in as many vales scatters its fragrance and beauty three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. Its cataracts, rills, and springs sparkle with diamonds of beauty and health. The woods and swamps are filled with every sort of game, her rivers and lakes abound with every known fish for the sportsmen, her climate is the most equitable in the world, the rainfall the most evenly distributed, the storms not so awfully destructive, the exotic population the least of that of any other similar area, with an adapted vegetation from the highest altitudes to the equator. The contour of the surface is high or low as one likes it. Smooth or rough. The Blue Ridge Mountains afford a retreat from the Northern winters as well as a retreat from the Southern sun. Her altitude, pine forest and splendid waters are an asset that no other country in the world can equal. In the next few years more than fifty millions of dollars will be spent in North Carolina alone for public roads. Steam roads and electric cars will soon intersect every nook and corner of the state. The most inaccessible parts of the state and the South will become the public highways. Automobiles and trucks will bring the most remote farms to the city markets daily. The telephone and radio are already available in our country homes.

In the next two years North Carolina will spend four millions of dollars for Negro health and education. This has already been passed by state Legislature. This amount of money put into health and education in any community will make a change. It shows an enlightenment of public sentiment and a change of attitude on the part of the citizens of the state. Progress cannot and will not be thwarted. Education, enlightenment, Christianity—this trio is the saving grace of any community. I do not know of any place better than North Carolina. _This is my subconscious mind._ It never errors.

We leave Moore County and cross into Montgomery County. This is what we call a hickory country. The land is rocky and red with hills almost precipitous. We could not visit many of the colored people because of the inaccessibility of most of the rural homes. The colored population is about 4,000, and they pay taxes on about 8,000 acres of land. They are engaged in general agriculture, corn, tobacco and cotton being their prevailing crops. They have a few cotton factories in the town of Troy and more in the county, and many lumber mills. The Pedee River and its tributaries furnish a large part of the power for the factory work. The county has a real gold mine which was profitably worked a few years ago. It was my pleasure to visit it some years ago when it was in operation. It has been abandoned, and the machinery and buildings show signs of a past prosperity.

The town of Troy has one of the two wooden courthouses left in the state. It was being replaced by a modern stone structure. It will cost when finished about $200,000. I am told that the stone in the construction of this building was taken from the site on which the building stands. It rather reminds one of our Northern centers in that it stands at the juncture of a number of the public roads leading into the town.

The Peabody School, under the auspices of the American Missionary Association of New York, is the only institution in all of that part of the country giving anything like a high school education to the colored people in all of that section of the country. The school is beautiful for its location just out of the city. It fronts a public road and is on high ground with splendid drainage. Several of their buildings are new and up-to-date for school purposes.

A hard-surfaced road is in construction from Charlotte to Raleigh. The distance is nearly two hundred miles. It will probably pass through nine counties. It will open up a country of immense possibilities. A cement bridge connecting up this road is already in construction across the Yadkin River. This bridge will be nearly or quite 2,000 feet long. It would ornament the approach to any Northern city.

From Troy we went to Biscoe, Star and Ashboro in Randolph County. This is also an oak and hickory county. The roads took us through a very fine section of the country. The country looks very undeveloped. The roads were very fine. The rural homes appeared rather small. Many of the women along the roads were seen bottoming chairs. Chair-making seemed to be one of the main industries in that section. The frames of the chairs were made at the factories and sent out to the country women to have the bottoms put in them. These bottoms were made of white oak splits. The absence of colored people engaged in this business seemed very noticeable.

The town of Ashboro had all the appearances of being a hustling town. More than a half dozen buildings were going up. We saw no colored carpenters or bricklayers on the job anywhere. We were advised that no colored men were allowed to work at their trade in the town. We saw several colored mechanics with their kit of tools packed, leaving the town. Some of them we knew to be the equal of any mechanics in any other group of workers. Still their mechanical efficiency counted nothing. It was their unfortunate tradition, and their black faces which counted them out. Here my conscious mind came up again. We did not have the feeling that we had when we left Lee County. A man ought to be passed on his merits and not on his color. They wanted mechanics, but not black mechanics. These men would do well to migrate. Wherever they went I know they were in the frame of mind to swear vengeance against any community that would tolerate that sort of condition. That is what makes socialists, bolsheviks, and Catholics out of us.

We soon find ourselves in Guilford County. We arrive in High Point and remain long enough to see friends and inquire about the conditions of our farmers.

I think it true that there are more manufacturers of furniture in this county than in any other county in the state. The Brick School has bought furniture in New York only to await shipment from High Point. Later we have gone to High Point and seen this furniture in the making. These two cities are in the oak and hickory section of the state. I have seen its street cars in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Washington, Asheville, Atlanta, Ga., Birmingham, Ala. Of course a business of this size will give work of one sort or another to a great many of our colored laborers. There are 15,000 of our people in Guilford County. They own 3,000 homes and farms. They are paying taxes on 17,000 acres of land. The Negroes in Guilford County have the inspiration of one of the best state colleges for Negroes to be found in the South. The college ought to be the center of all the best influence for farming in a hundred miles about it. If they are found to be using poor farming methods they ought to be fined. Alamance, Orange and Durham counties are rather small counties, but they have some of the best farms and form some of the best farming and industrial communities to be found in the state. Durham is really the emporium for Negro enterprise and thrift. Tobacco, cotton and corn, and some wheat are the leading farm products in this section of the state. Gibsonville, Burlington, Graham and Hillsboro are thriving towns. They are centers of cotton and furniture manufacturing interests.

This study took us through about fifteen counties. We were not investigating the town and city conditions, but the farming interests. In counties where they had rural supervisors there was a marked difference in the attitude and progress of the farmers. Their outward appearance was different from what we saw several years ago. The farmers were better clad; their work animals were in better condition; their teams were not all dilapidated; many of them are using improved machinery; their barns and houses were more orderly built and better maintained; the houses in which they live are a decided improvement over the old houses we usually see along the railroad. They are giving more care to their wells and pumps. They are learning to screen their windows. The ancestral waste barrel in many cases are being removed from their kitchen windows. They are using more paint not only to save their houses, but because it adds beauty to their premises. They are planting flowers. They are putting out fruit trees and investing in thoroughbred chickens, hogs and cows. These are all good signs. They are really coming. Some have had to come from so far down the road that it may appear that they have not made any progress. They are coming nevertheless. At no place where we stopped did we have to confine our diet to sweet potatoes and boiled eggs in order to preserve our health by the osmosis process.

We saw in many places attempts made to improve the soil. We found alfalfa, red clover and crimson clover in the red clay sections. Peas were grown generally. The farm demonstration agents and the farmers’ conferences have been an inspiration to the farmers to grow legumes to help the land to bring forth its fruit. They are learning that they cannot use up the fertility of the soil and still have it. They are learning that an investment in legumes is one of the best they can make for crop productions.

The papers have been saying that one man in four in the American army is uneducated. If that is true it is a sad comment on the conditions of this country. There is no power in the world to equal that of education. We cannot exaggerate its power and its importance. A trained mind, a trained hand and a trained heart are indomitable. An unlettered man lives in isolation. He cannot appreciate the creation of nature. There is no progress in isolation and a static mind atrophies. Whatever be the proportion of illiteracy, those of us who move about among the masses know that notwithstanding our private schools and public schools, ignorance and superstition are simply appalling. It is not only appalling, but it is dangerous to any environment. It is a menace to the state and government.

BRICK SCHOOL IN PERSPECTIVE

Work began at the Brick School in 1895 under the auspices of the American Missionary Association. The “Estes Farm,” named after the owner, General Estes of the Civil War, came into the possession of Mrs. Julia E. Brewster Brick, of Brooklyn, New York, who found it a burden on her hands. Mrs. Brick had visited the community, and her heart had been made sad by the sights which greeted her on every side. The sad faces and depressed spirits in a large environment of Negro congestion appealed to her heart. She was responsive to this appeal. It was the voice of God which she did not mistake.

Her life and thoughts and heart had been attuned to this appeal, and so she sought how best she might help the situation. The advice of General Oliver O. Howard was sought. He introduced Secretary A. F. Beard and Mr. H. W. Hubbard, at the time Treasurer of the American Missionary Association. The result of this counsel was that a large farm of 1,129½ acres of land in North Carolina three miles from the town of Enfield was given to the American Missionary Association for Negro education. With the gift came also from the same source $5,000 for the first building.

There followed other gifts from Mrs. Brick and from the American Missionary Association, so that the farm was soon stocked with hogs, horses, mules, cows and farm implements. Houses of various sorts, including school buildings, dormitories, teachers’ cottages, tenant houses and barns have been put up, valued at several hundred thousand dollars. This beautiful munificence has been our saving grace during the last twenty-seven years of stress and strain in the financial world.

We began work with the modest number of five teachers. We now have about twenty teachers and a few less than 400 students. The students come from a dozen states and from nearly all the counties in North Carolina. The larger number of them comes from a radius of fifty miles.

The purpose of the institution is to teach the students to do the things the best way in the community where they may live. Being rurally situated, the first and greatest appeal must be made along the line of an agricultural education. The knowledge of how to extract from the soil the largest and best products which the community may need for its consumption is an asset in which any group of people may well take pride. Most town and city boys coming to us have an aversion to this form of education, and especially to the strenuousness necessary to an efficient application of the most vital principles of agriculture.

Horses have to be shod, and farmers have to have houses in which to live and under which to shelter their stock. So we have to teach the boys to work in iron and wood. Along with this goes some drawing and planning. Tools and wagons must be kept in repair. Boys going back to their communities ought to be later the real leaders in the community. In many instances they are the leaders.

While the boys are investing their time in the farm crafts and the shop crafts the girls are learning to do needlework and house cleaning, washing and sewing. They learn the home life by getting some of the conventionalities of it here in the classroom under teachers who get from Pratt and Columbia and other good schools the best they have to offer. These teachers are themselves largely the products of our American Missionary Association Schools. They have not been satisfied to “graduate and quit,” but they have continued to study. In addition to giving the boys work on the farm and in the shop, and the girls work in the kitchen, laundry, dining-room and sewing-room, and general house cleaning, all are offered a first-class high school course covering six years, preceded by six years of elementary education.

The writer of these notes is himself a product of Oberlin and Fisk University. He knows how to do a great many things, including typesetting, printing, farming, plumbing, some work in wood, poultry-raising and agriculture, stock husbandry. He lectures, preaches sometimes, and writes for newspapers. He counts himself a fair judge of artistic values wherever they are on exhibition. He knows how utterly impossible it is to try to do any one of the above things with any degree of efficiency or even ordinary skill without mental training. The mind is the master, and unless that has training and poise the hand fails. The academic course is to meet this condition. Many of the boys and girls stay to finish it, but the bulk never finish. Many of them do not stay for the full course—not that they do not have the money in many cases—but because education among the masses it not popular. They have had a propaganda for many years that a little learning is a dangerous thing. They have been advised that they belong to a subject group, and that they need only the rudimentary necessaries of life. A fine horse and buggy or a car and nice clothes make an appeal above any sacrifice for study. It is the appeal for the glitter and the glare. This false notion comes to the half grown youth because they got a bad start. They were neglected in the public schools—parents ignorant of the necessity of education on the one hand, and poorly prepared teachers on the other hand, and poorly furnished and constructed schoolhouses. The whole school environment has not been psychological. It has rather been repulsive.

Some who return to their homes are making good farmers, as evidenced by their better crops, better fertility of their soil, better kept work animals, better kept machinery, better homes, yards, and community life.

Many of those who finish the high school course attend other schools and later enter the ministry, dentistry, or become physicians, teachers, Y. M. C. A. or Y. W. C. A. workers, or instructors in agriculture either in our schools or as county farm demonstration agents. The best examples are Isaac Bunn, farmer, and owns his own farm of 250 acres bought and paid for in Halifax County; Benjamin Bullock, under the Smith-Lever Fund, in charge of agriculture in the colored state college in Texas; Rev. A. S. Croom, Baptist minister, Salisbury, N. C.; Dr. Joseph Harrison, physician, Kinston, N. C.; Dr. Willie Sessoms, dentist, Rocky Mount, N. C.; Dr. R. R. Robinson, physician, Los Angeles, Cal.; Miss Hattie Green, Miss Lucy Richmond McCoy, Miss Susie Adams, Young Women’s Christian Association work, New York; Miss Annie Rhodes, teacher in the city schools of Chicago; Miss Lula Bullock, teacher in city schools, Louisville, Ky.; George Bullock, manual training in city schools of Louisville, Ky.; Joseph Bullock, a captain in the army, and now a student of dentistry. More than a hundred have gone out as graduates, and all are a leavening in the community in which they live. The influence of the Brick School has counted in the community life of the masses more than any other agency in operation. We mean by “Community” the area of a circle of which the school is the center and whose radius is twenty-five miles. We have three counties virtually inside of this circle whose Negro population is more than 60,000. The circle cuts into six other counties whose combined population is more than 148,000 Negroes. The nearest institution under private auspices doing anything like high school work is exactly sixty-three miles away. We have a field all our own. The area in this circle is “our community.”

We have sought all these years to better the community life by reaching the farmers directly. To this end we have annually and semi-annually farmers’ meetings. They come and spend one or two days at our expense for entertainment, where they have contact with our teachers and with men and women sent by the State Department of Agriculture at Raleigh, who lecture on the best methods of farm and home life.

We must do more than talk. We must help them. We have here a local Federal Farm Loan Organization, and this organization in the last three years has put into Negro farms more than $130,000. This money is let by the United States government and on conditions that can be met without hardship to the borrower. Titles are investigated, deeds are properly made, and a new spirit is put into the farmers of the community. We are encouraging our colored men to buy small farms of twenty-five and fifty acres and build for themselves modest homes near their public schools as far as they can, and not too far from their local churches. We advise them to patronize these institutions freely and to build up their community life.

The vision has been a long ways off, like the rainbow, but they have begun to catch it. In these three counties they are paying taxes on more than 100,000 acres of land. Their homes are very much improved. Their churches are excellent for rural communities. They are contributing largely for the Rosenwald schools. In Halifax County they have twelve, and more are now in construction, the colored people paying one-third of the cost.

They have helped us generously to erect several teachers’ cottages here at Bricks, and $5,000 is now pledged for further improvements, which will be paid as soon as farming conditions and prices enable them to do so.

Righteous public sentiment is of slow growth, and one cannot expect to change traditions quickly whose roots have penetrated every strata of society. It takes sympathy, patience, years, work, and some money.

T. S. INBORDEN.

May 17, 18, 1922.

_The_ JOSEPH K. BRICK SCHOOL

BRICKS, N. C.

was organized twenty-seven years ago under the general supervision of the American Missionary Association. It offers a first-class High School Course, including Domestic Science, Domestic Art, Agriculture, Work in Iron and Steel, Mechanical Drawing, Instrumental and Vocal Music.