Part 2

What has produced these results? Mainly two things: The inherent desire of the colored man to better his condition, thus differing from his poor white neighbor; and the work of the American Missionary Association. Taking up the work for which your honored dead died, the Association planted schools and churches in the South, and supplied these schools and churches with men and women, who had pluck enough and backbone enough to defy Southern prejudice and ostracism; and wherever one of these schools has been planted, the change is marked. Lawlessness disappears, property increases in value, and the colored people purchase homes. An ex-mayor of the city of Atlanta, at the dedication of the Congregational Church, said that the thrift, orderly habits and acquisition of property in a certain portion of that city were mainly due to the school and church of the American Missionary Association. Does the colored man sit with folded arms, while the North, Great Britain and Africa—let me repeat _Africa_—contribute for his civilization? I say Africa, because, sitting in the old Midway Church, in Liberty County, Ga., sometime ago, I heard read, in the list of donations, “One dollar contributed by a church in South Africa for the civilization of the heathen in America;” and there was nothing said in that donation, either, about the _color_ of the heathen! But are the colored people idle? In one of the classes which graduated from the Atlanta University not long ago, were two married women who did their own house-work, walked more than three miles through the red mud of Georgia to school, were punctual in attendance and graduated with honor. In the same class was a married man who earned money to support his family, kept up with his class in school, preached for three country churches, helped edit a readable newspaper, and graduated with honor. In one of the schools across the city, an American Missionary Association school, there is a woman who entered the night school, finished that, entered the day school, has plodded on from class to class, to-day in the graduating class holding a place of honor, and she has earned her living and has purchased a home by sewing at the same time. This school has done a great work; yet the loyal people of that city, of whom you heard not long ago such a beautiful report on this platform, for some reason took a great antipathy to that school, and, in order to break it down, established another school on the next corner, a public school. Did the A. M. A. school suspend operations? The 400 students, paying one dollar a month, increased to 600; two new teachers were called from the Oswego training school and a kindergarten school is soon to be annexed. But, in order that this school on the next corner might not suspend operations, a woman who does her own washing and ironing, cooks the meals of her husband, and sends him off to his work early in the morning, goes to the A. M. A. school till 2 o’clock in the afternoon, and sends two of her children to the public school. Hundreds of such examples might be given, even in the district schools taught by the students—examples of work and of sacrifice upon the part of both parents and scholars. What would you think of a man fifty years old going to school that he might learn to read the Bible, earning his living by bottoming chairs at night by the light of a pine-knot fire? No, my friends, the colored man is not idle; if he were, filibustering would not to-day be an item of business in the United States Congress.

We know the American Missionary Association in the South; we feel toward her as a man should toward his mother. I remember that the Association picked up from the streets of Atlanta an intimate friend of mine, followed him through the grammar school, the training school and college; taught him the lesson of Yankee push and independence; started him out with a prayer for his safety; and to-day stands with out-stretched hands bidding him God-speed in his way onward and upward. The work has not all been done. Our schools need to be increased ten-fold. Each school needs a training department as an annex, for mechanical ability is to play no small part in the progress of the colored man. Some people in the South say, “Keep the colored man where his vote will be useful.” The American Missionary Association has recognized him as a brother, and says, “Give him a man’s chance.” We thank the American Missionary Association for that; and under the inspiration of just such treatment we mean to stay in the South and fight it out. We are there “to the manner born.”

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BENEFACTIONS.

Mr. Enoch Pratt, of Baltimore, has given $1,000,000 for a public library in that city.

Col. C. G. Hammond has given $20,000 towards the Professorship Fund of Chicago Seminary.

A fund of $100,000 has been received by the Perkins Institute for the Blind—the same to be used in printing books for the blind.

Mr. J. H. Deane, of New York, offers to give $10,000 towards $50,000 for the library of Richmond College (Baptist), provided that $25,000 of the whole sum be raised south of Mason and Dixon’s line, and that $25,000 be invested, and its income be used for the replenishing of the library.

Hon. J. B. Grinnell has received a gift of $15,000 for Iowa College from John L. Blair, of Blairsville, N.J., a prominent railroad man.

The will of the late C. D. Talcott, of Talcottville, Conn., bequeaths $5,000 to be expended in building a free public library in that village.

Mr. James W. Scoville, of Chicago, in addition to his previous generous gifts to the Chicago Theological Seminary, has just paid over $10,000 for the endowment of the “Scoville Professorship of Elocution.”

_President De Forest has secured $21,000 towards the endowment of Talladega College, Alabama. This is a good beginning. All of our State chartered institutions need such foundations._

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GENERAL NOTES.

AFRICA.

—Rev. C. T. Wilson and Mr. C. W. Pearson, of the Nyanza Mission, on account of impaired health are obliged to retire. Rev. G. Litchfield is also invalided but hopes to engage again in missionary work. Mr. Wilson’s resignation leaves Mr. Mackay the only one now in the field of the original party of eight who went out in 1876. Four are dead and three have retired.

—All the missionaries of the United Presbyterian Church in Egypt got away safely, except Mr. Ewing and Dr. Watson, who remain at their posts. Most of them are at present in England and Scotland, a few being on the Continent. As the hot season had begun to come on, the missionaries in Upper Egypt had generally come down and were at Ramleh on the way for their usual vacation and rest. All those in Cairo, Mansoura and Alexandria were at their posts and their usual work until after the outbreak at Alexandria, on the 11th of June, when word was shortly afterward received from one of the United States judges in the International Court of Egypt warning them to leave at once.

—The Belgian Government reports that Mr. Henry M. Stanley is continuing, without relaxation, to develop his great enterprise of establishing a line of stations from the embouchure of the Congo River, in Africa, and carrying them as far forward as his resources will permit. He has completed the four stations of Vivi, Isangila, Manyenga and Stanley Pool, the first-named being below, and the last above the rapids. These have already their dwellings, gardens and flags. Each is under a white Governor, with three white assistants, but the rest of the population consists of Zanzibar negroes.

THE INDIANS.

—At the Indian Training and Industrial School at Carlisle have been gathered together, during the last year, 295 Indian boys and girls from 24 different tribes, speaking as many different languages. In age these children range from eight years to maturity, the average being about 15 years. From 60 to 70 of the older children give evidence of sincere conversion to the Christian religion, and most of those who have professed conversion give evidence, in improved life and manners, of a change of heart. About 30 have joined the different churches in Carlisle.

—The Pawnees say larks on the prairies sing Pawnee; that they hear the brooding lark sing out from her nest, as the shades of night deepen around her, “Ku-chae, kan-kee, koo-de-do—kan-kee, koo-de-doo; Ka-chee, kan-kee, koo-de-do,” which interpreted is, “I am not afraid; truly, I am not afraid.”

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ITEMS FROM THE FIELD.

LULING, Texas.—Rev. T. E. Hillson’s people have hung upon their new church a sixty-dollar bell that is a delight to them.

BEREA, Ky.—The Berea College people have secured from the legislature of Kentucky a law forbidding the sale of intoxicating liquors within a radius of three miles from the College. The law has been printed on a handbill and is now enforced. A druggist in order to sell liquor must have a prescription of a regular physician. It was well this law was thus early secured, for, as Berea is to become a railway town, the need of it will be yet more pressing.

EUREKA, Kansas.—The Second Congregational Church of this place within the first year of its existence has built a plain house of worship at a cost of $850, and it will be ready for use at the first of October. Rev. W. W. Weir is the pastor. The Council which organized this church thus find that their faith in it is justified.

CEDAR CLIFF, N.C.—In May last, Rev. A. Connet assisted Rev. J. N. Ray in organizing a church of 12 members at this place. Recently the church received 21 new members.

MCLEANDSVILLE, N.C.—We hear of a revival now in progress in Rev. A. Connet’s church, nine having found the Saviour, and thirteen more being among the inquirers.

DUDLEY, N.C.—Rev. J. E. B. Jewett, of Pepperell, Mass., has accepted an appointment to the missionary pastorate at this place. His wife will assist him in the care of the school. Their former experience in an academy will make them greatly useful in our work. We have one daughter of Mr. Jewett as a teacher in Wilmington, and one in New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS, La.—Rev. S. N. Brown, a student of Fisk University, who supplied the Central Church of this city very acceptably during the vacation of Dr. Alexander, proved himself also a good night watchman for our university premises. Hearing a burglar at work in the main college building, he sallied out without collar or shoe-tying and pursued the house-breaker, who soon put down the two clocks he had taken. But the pursuer wanted more and kept up the chase until he caught the thief. On his way to the police station he met a policeman, who took the prisoner in charge and put him in jail. The criminal proved to be a white man, and it is hoped that the court will give him his dues.

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THE FREEDMEN.

REV. JOSEPH E. ROY, D.D., FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.

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STUDIES IN THE SOUTH.

FROM THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A BLACK PLANTER.

There is a class of colored men in the South who are laying the foundations of a better state of things than now prevails, by sheer industry and devotion to money-making. I found a conspicuous illustration of this type in the person and work of a negro in one of the old Southern States. He could not read, but had learned within a few years, by instruction from his young wife, to write well enough to enable him to “keep the time” of his hands by recording it in his book of farm accounts. He had “begun without nothin’,” he said. At the end of the war he gathered up some “lame and sick gov’ment mules that had been turned out fuh de crows, an’ doctor’d ’em up.” Then he worked on the plantations near him, at first by the day, but soon began to rent land and “hire hands.” He said he “lived on nothin’, or what other folks frowed away; but I reckon I fed my mules mighty well.” He had bought land, a little at a time, and when I visited him owned many hundred acres of the best land in that region. He still worked hard himself, and exacted, most rigidly, the amount of labor which he thought his hands ought to perform. “I don’t lay out fuh ’em to do as much as I does, boss; but dey mus’n’t shirk.” His residence was but a few miles from a considerable town. The year before I was there a neighboring planter had wanted a twenty-acre wood-lot cleared off. It was heavily timbered, and this black man offered to clear the ground for the wood which was to be removed. This was accepted, and he “had de choppin’ done in de wintah, when dey wusn’t no wuk, an’ han’s wus cheap.” The wood was drawn out and piled up on a vacant lot near the road. “Nex’ summah eberybody’s out o’ wood in town; dey allays is; dey nebber luks ahead mo’ ’an twel’ dinnah time. Nobody hain’t no time to haul wood _den_. Eberybody’s in de cotton. But ebery night, ahtah we done done de day’s wuk in de fiel’, den my wagons every one takes loads o’ wood to town. De bigbugs pays good price _den_, ’cause dey ain’t no wood fuh to be hed. So _dah_, den [becoming animated], _hi_, boss, I sells de wood, _see_! An’ I pays all de spences fuh cuttin’ it, an’ in de nex’ place I buys de lan’ what de wood come off, an’ I hab suffin lef’ in de bank.” The guttural chuckle with which he ended I am powerless to represent. The principal citizens of the town said this story was true.

This man reared cattle, sheep, and hogs, and had better blooded animals than any other planter near him, white or black. He was saving all the manure that his farms yielded, and drawing more from the town—“de profit’s on de back load.” His fences were good, and, what is rare in the South, the fence-rows were kept clean, and free from weeds, briars and bushes.

THE FORTUNES OF THE NEGROES.

Many of the negroes are acquiring land, and are farming successfully and profitably, in nearly all parts of the South, while multitudes of others still work as “hired hands,” and save nothing, consuming a large portion of their wages for intoxicating drinks. The general inclination of the negroes to leave the plantations and congregate in the towns is injuring the race seriously, in many ways. There is not sufficient employment in the towns for those who are already there, and great numbers become idle, dissipated and vicious. Most of the colored people are better adapted to farm-work than to other occupations, though many are doing well as mechanics, blacksmiths, carpenters, bricklayers, and plasterers. In the towns and cities nearly all the cartmen and porters are negroes. Whatever may be the extent to which idleness prevails among them, it is certain that the negroes perform a vast amount of labor which is not only necessary or convenient for their employers, but highly profitable as well. The labor of the colored people is at present an important and, indeed, indispensable factor in the chief wealth-producing industries of the South. If the negroes could be brought to understand existing conditions and tendencies in the regions which they inhabit, they might soon greatly improve their fortunes, and secure for themselves and their children most important advantages from opportunities which are likely soon to pass away, never to be presented again, or at any rate, not during the reign of the influences which are now becoming dominant in the South.

BLACK MINISTERS.

Some of the colored preachers in most parts of the South are ignorant, fat, lazy and licentious. Many of them use intoxicating liquors freely. The influence of such men is of course a curse to the colored people, and is the cause of much immorality among the married women who are members of the “colored churches.” But it would be most unjust to allow my readers to infer that colored ministers generally belong to this class. Here, as in the description of all classes of people in the South, discrimination is necessary. The new order of things is manifesting itself in a conflict between opposing tendencies in the negro churches, and among their ministers. Except in the larger towns, most of the older ministers depend on mere noise and excitement to influence their hearers. They work themselves into incoherent fury, stamp and yell, and appeal only to the “feelings” of their uninstructed followers. These old men denounce “de high-flyin’ preachin’ we has dese days.” They say “it’s all book-l’arnin’; dey ain’t no Holy Ghos’ in it, at all. Dis new religion mighty smaht, an’ mighty proud, but it hain’t got no _feelin’_ to it.” There is a great deal of truth in this. The more intellectual preaching of the younger educated men is ill suited to the tropical and impulsive nature of the colored people. Their life is far more a matter of instinct than of thought, and to attempt to teach religion to them by means of appealing to their reason is to disarm religion at once of all its potency. The preachers and missionaries who are best adapted to the peculiar conditions and needs of the colored people are the young men who have received an industrial education, who have been trained to manual labor, and have learned either farming or some mechanical art at such schools as the Normal and Agricultural Institute at Hampton, Virginia, or the other admirable institutions of learning fostered by the American Missionary Association and the churches of the South. Of course, this class is still very small, but it comprises some excellent men, whose influence is already widely felt in the South, and is a potent factor in the soundest and most hopeful religious work now going on there.

EDUCATING THE NEGROES.

The foremost men in the Southern States—I mean those who are foremost in business, and in the social and moral life and activities of the local communities—are everywhere taking up the subject of education for the negroes in a serious and business-like spirit. I did not find anywhere, except in Southwestern Texas, any manifestation of prejudice against negro education, or feeling of jealousy regarding the advancement of the colored people in intelligence or capability of self-elevation.

Many of the Southern people appear to me to be rather sanguine and extravagant in their expectations regarding the results of popular intellectual enlightenment. They talk very much as Horace Mann and his fellow-laborers talked, when they were beginning the intellectual revival which led to the establishment of the New England public-school system. They will of course find, as has been shown in the Northern States, that even after the public schools have educated the mass of the people, other problems of a serious nature remain.

A CLASS WITH NO FRIENDS.

The negroes are being educated more rapidly, in large portions of the South, than are the people known as “poor whites,” More interest is felt and greater efforts are made in behalf of the negroes than for this class of white people. The negro has the advantage of being in the world’s eye and mind. He is somewhat picturesque, and occupies a position of historic interest. He has powerful friends. The poor whites have no friends: there is no picturesqueness, no historic interest, connected with their situation. The leading white men of the Southern States, democrats, seem to me to feel a more kindly interest in the negroes than in this class of poor people of their own race. They know much more about them. Greater effort is likely to be made, for a long time to come, for the education and improvement of the negroes than for the advancement of the poor whites; and yet the class is not at all so degraded or so worthless as is popularly believed. These people are _primitive_ in character, and in the conditions and methods of their life, but they are not degraded. There is, however, great danger that many of them will be debased under the changed conditions of the new order of things in the South. No other class in that portion of our country is so little understood, or would better repay careful study. It is highly important that the attention of thoughtful, philanthropic and patriotic men, both North and South, should be directed to their position and probable tendencies in relation to the new life of the country in which they live. In blood and inherited qualities they are not, generally, vicious or low. But they have no friends, no sympathy, either North or South.

MIXED SCHOOLS FOR THE TWO RACES.

There is one important feature or division of the subject of education in the Southern States which I have not yet brought forward in these studies; that is, the question of separate or mixed schools for the two races. The sentiment, feeling and judgment of the Southern people are at present strongly and almost universally opposed to the idea of educating white and black children, or young people, in the same schools. But a change in this matter is already in progress. After attentively studying the subject everywhere, I am convinced that there will soon be mixed schools, for white and colored children, in many parts of the South. There are already a few such schools, and the effect of considerations of convenience, cheapness and practical efficiency are likely, I think, to cause a rapid increase in their number. I look for a decided revolution in Southern thought and feeling within twenty years in regard to this subject. A few of the most intelligent and far-seeing among Southern leaders—some of the foremost “Bourbons”—say that mixed schools are “sure to come,” and they are not disturbed by the prospect.

EDUCATIONAL WORK OF THE A. M. A.

The educational work already accomplished in the South by the American Missionary Association is of a high character, and it deserves all possible recognition and assistance. The best Southern people everywhere spoke of it gratefully and enthusiastically. At the Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Virginia; Talladega College, in Alabama; Tougaloo University, Mississippi; Tillotson Normal School, Austin, Texas; and at several other colleges and normal schools which I saw, though the money endowments are scanty compared with the amounts which are needed, the endowments in personal qualities and character, as represented by the teachers, are of a remarkably high order. This is necessary, for the work of educating the colored people of the South requires the best teachers that can be obtained.

In many of these institutions the boys learn something of various trades or mechanical operations, and of farming, and the girls are taught sewing, cooking, and the care of a house. I examined a great number of the negro common and high schools, which are taught by graduates and students of the colleges and normal schools which I have named, and I think it wonderful that so many of these negro teachers are successful. They have to struggle against many disadvantages, but nearly all whom I saw had the confidence and respect of the leading white citizens where they were at work. There were a few fools among them, of course, but a great majority appeared to be serious and sensible young men and women.

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AFRICA.

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DR. LADD’S JOURNAL.

The space in the MISSIONARY will only admit of a few extracts from the remainder of this long journal. Much that is interesting we are obliged to omit. The time from Jan. 7th till Jan. 24th was busily spent in Khartoum. A small steamer was finally obtained, and our missionary explorers in the face of many discomforts and much danger pushed on up the Nile through the territory occupied by El Mehdi till they reached their objective point in Central Africa.—ED.