Part 6

There is perhaps some propriety in my saying an earnest word for the educational work of this Association, representing as I do a college that from its birth abolished the color line in education. More than a century ago Dartmouth College was training the red man and more than half a century ago the black man. Our first six graduates included three missionaries to the Indians, and the last class that entered contains a full-blooded Dakota and a Cherokee. Fifty-nine years ago, twenty-two years before the first anniversary of this Association, we were educating the negro. In 1824 a young man from Martinique, of irreproachable character and conduct, but with some African color and African blood in his veins, applied for admission. Objections were raised in some quarters from the fear that his presence would prove unwelcome. The students heard of it, held meetings and sent a committee to urge his reception, and under the direction of a most conservative Board of Trustees, with Dr. Bennet Tyler at its head, he was admitted, and into one of the most distinguished classes in the history of the institution. There, in company with forty classmates, who from that small number have furnished six college professors, two theological professors, two college presidents, two Indian missionaries, a senator of the United States and a judge of a Supreme Court, Edward Mitchell went on in comfort, graduated with honor and did a good work in the Baptist ministry. Since then many colored men have entered without hindrance, inconvenience, disability or disrespect. They have been the equal companions and in some instances the room-mates of their fellow students. In June last two such young men graduated, one of them an appointment man and a commencement speaker.

We know the colored man as a student, a Christian and a gentleman. And without making contrasts or comparisons, I will say that were all our students as irreproachable as these last two colored men, there would be no more discipline in the institution. We might burn our college laws.

I have seen the colored student elsewhere in Northern schools. Some of you remember that choice young man, Barnabas Root, a Christian scholar in America, though the son of a heathen chief in Africa. I well remember his graduating oration at Knox College, second to no other on that occasion. I remember him as three years a student in Chicago Theological Seminary, in all respects the peer of his classmates. When that young man passed away just on the threshold of his missionary career, it was a grievous loss to his race and to the church.

It is not necessary to say that all are like these. But these show what can be and sometimes will be. Educationally, they are a most hopeful race, because, in the main eager for improvement. And with whatever deductions, it may be doubted whether the summons to awake and arise intellectually, socially and morally ever fell on the ears of six or seven millions of people with such a simultaneous thrill of response. When I look out on our educational work at the South, I am greatly impressed with what has been already done, even more than I am oppressed with what remains to be done.

What have you done? No doubt it was a notable plan of the French authorities in this country near two hundred years ago to encircle this young nation with a chain of military stations from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. But this Association has done better than that. You have gone not to the outskirts, but to the centre. You have planted your cordon of educational fortresses from the Potomac and the Ohio almost to the Rio Grande, through the heart of the South in all the great slave-holding States. They are there to stay and to re-construct. They are already working powerfully, not alone on the education of individual young men and young women, but on the education of the community and of public sentiment. What a change has the President of the Board of Trustees of Berea College lived to behold—the man who was robbed and driven out, but who now sees white men and black in nearly equal numbers graduating together, and audiences of three or four thousand gathered to hear them. And these sixteen other anniversaries lately chronicled in the AMERICAN MISSIONARY, with their interested audiences and crowded halls, sometimes in stately buildings, are the signal tokens of a great transformation.

No more significant testimony could be given to this change than a sort of wail in the _Atlantic Monthly_ over the “New Departure in Negro Life,” a lament over the decadence of “the jocund customs of the past,” with its thoughtless levity and hilarity, and over the “half-hearted manner in which the characteristic festivities that remain are gone through with.” What does it mean? It means, says the writer, that “an unmistakable change in the negro character is at hand, and in an advanced state of progress. He is putting away childish things and striving in his own crude way to grasp matters of higher import. The bulk of the race have learned to read after a fashion. His primer, his _vade mecum_, is the Bible. Never before, perhaps, in the history of the world, have two decades brought about such a manifest change in a race. Religion, religionism, forms the staple of his speech by day, and the stuff that his dreams are made of by night.”

Would that the picture was more completely true. But, thank God, it is at least founded on fact. The race is aroused, and in earnest. It is bent on accumulation, education, elevation. The world may pay as little heed to the movement as did the Roman world in the time of Tacitus to the Christian Church in the Eternal City; but the time is not distant when the world will see that this quiet work is one of the great movements of modern history.

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CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AT THE SOUTH.

BY REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D.

The problem that confronts us this morning is that which is presented by the illiteracy of this country, and especially of the Southern States. This is not the only problem before this Association; the problem of the irreligion and heathenism which infest many regions also claims our energies. There is moral evil as well as ignorance to be met and fought and overcome. The Association has an evangelical work as well as an educational work in its hands; and though, as we shall see, these two are properly one, yet it is now convenient to consider them separately. It is the educational work that is now before us.

We educate, because education is the servant of a pure religion. We educate, because we are the missionaries of a faith which always adds to itself virtue, and to its virtue knowledge. We educate, because a genuine Christianity always educates; because the work of the pulpit, the work of the Church everywhere must always be, in considerable part, the work of education; but, more especially, we of this Association educate, because the peoples with whom we work are in peculiar need of education; and because nothing but intelligence will ever break the fetters of degrading superstition by which they are held, and lead them forth into the liberty of the sons of God.

We educate, also, because we love our country, and because we believe that there is no other remedy for evils that now threaten her very existence, but the remedy of Christian education. Thus we are brought face to face with the problem of illiteracy. Illiteracy in a republic; what does it signify? It is the creeping paralysis that unnerves its arm; it is the malaria that poisons its blood; it is the cataract that dims and finally destroys its vision; it is the slow decay that consumes its life. Illiteracy, ignorance, in a republic is, and must always be, assailing and undermining its very foundations. It is the natural and deadly foe of free government. No republic can live, no republic ought to live, in which the voters are ignorant. Voting in a republic is governing; and no man has any right to govern me who does not know enough to govern himself. No man has any right to take part in the government of the nation, who has not some notion of what right government is. I protest against such government. I have never consented to the justice of it, and I never will. I do not believe that the State has any right to intrust this responsible business of governing—and voting is governing—to the hands of men who cannot read the ballots that they cast and who have no conception of the duties of a citizen.

But the State has done it; and what has been done cannot be undone by any political methods. It is with the consequences that we have to do. And the consequences are tremendous, appalling to those who stop to consider them. The total number of men of voting age in the Southern States at the last census was 4,154,125. Of these 1,354,974 could neither read nor write. A little more than thirty-two per cent. of the voters of those States were at that time wholly illiterate. Think of that! Almost one-third of all the voters in sixteen States of the Union so ignorant that they cannot write their own names or read the simplest English sentence! And these are our rulers.

I know very well that you will find among these thirteen hundred thousand illiterate voters not a few men of great natural shrewdness and considerable general information, who may be fairly qualified to discharge the duties of citizenship. There are men to whom all print is shut, who can see quite as far into public questions as many of those to whom print is as wide open as it was to Silas Wegg. The alphabet test is by no means an infallible test. Some who could not pass this test are well qualified for citizenship. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of those who are reported among the literates, who are put down as being able to read and write, and who are yet utterly ignorant. They can manage to scrawl their names, perchance, or to skip and tumble about a little among simple words in a primer: but the reading and writing of which they boast is of no sort of use to them as fitting them to vote intelligently. You would need to add a great many figures to that array in the census if you should state fully the facts in regard to the illiteracy of the Southern States.

I think we shall all agree with Dr. Haygood when he says, as he did at the meeting of the National Educational Association in Washington last winter, “This is bad enough.” And perhaps we should also be able to agree with him in the further statement that it “is far from being the worst of this sad case. The worst,” he says, “is this: the illiterate vote in these States is increasing. From 1870 to 1880 the increase of this army of ignorant voters in the South amounted to 187,671.” Of course this is worse, in one sense; for the more we learn of this illiteracy the worse we are off, no doubt. But there is a brighter side to this picture, thank God! It is dark enough, at best; and I want you to see it in all its blackness; but I do not want to paint it any blacker than it is. After you have seen the facts just as they are, you will still find on your hands a stupendous task; but you will have, I trust, some reasons for believing that it is not a hopeless task.

It is true, then, as Dr. Haygood says, that there was a positive increase of illiterate voters in the South between 1870 and 1880. He makes this increase in round numbers 197,000; the figures I have found increase it a little to 208,000. But that is not a _relative_ increase. The increase in the illiterate vote does not keep pace with the increase of the population. The population increased 30 per cent. in the ten years; the illiterate vote increased less than 20 per cent. In 1870, more than 40 per cent. of the voters of the South were illiterate; in 1880, only 32 per cent. were illiterate.

This is what I call very substantial gain. Under the circumstances I am inclined to call it a splendid gain, one that is quite worth singing the doxology over, one that should cause us all to thank God and take courage.

But there are other features of the case to my own mind still more significant. Dr. Haygood says in the same address to which I have referred: “In this downward progress the two races keep well together.” We have seen that it is not a downward, but an upward progress. And I think we shall see that instead of the two races keeping well together, one of them is falling a good ways behind. Which is it? “The increase of the illiterate _white_ vote,” says Dr. Haygood, “was 93,279; of the illiterate negro vote, 94,392. The whites being in the majority, take the South as a whole, the increase of the illiterate vote is relatively greater among the Negroes.”

This is a great misconception. Dr. Haygood has no purpose whatever of misrepresenting the facts; we all know that. No man in the country is doing better work for the colored people than he is doing; no man deserves more honor; but he has misapprehended the facts in this statement; and I know that he will be glad to be corrected. It is true, then, that the actual increase of the illiterate white vote in the Southern States during the last decade was about the same as that of the illiterate Negro vote; 93,000 of the one, 94,000 of the other. But how was it in 1870? In that year there were in the Southern States 317,281 adult whites who were illiterate, and 820,022 adult Negroes. There were at that time considerably more than two and a half times as many Negro illiterates as white illiterates. Now, if the Negroes have added to their eight hundred thousand illiterates only about 94,000, while the whites have added to their three hundred thousand about 93,000, it seems to me that the relative increase is immensely greater among the whites than among the Negroes. In fact, the increase of the illiterate white vote, in the ten years, was more than twenty-eight per cent., while the increase of the illiterate Negro vote was only eleven and a half per cent.

Dr. Haygood gives the figures with respect to several of the States. “In Georgia,” he says, “the illiterate white voters in 1870 were 21,899; in 1880, 28,571; the illiterate Negro voters in Georgia, in 1870, were 100,551; in 1880, 116,516.” Let us see what these figures mean. In Georgia, in 1870, the whole number of males of voting age was 237,640; in 1880, it was 321,438. The increase of adult males was, therefore, about 31 per cent. But the increase in the whole number of illiterate voters was only about 18-1/2 per cent. according to Dr. Haygood’s figures. The white illiterates, however, increased 30-1/2 per cent. while the colored illiterates increased not quite 16 per cent.

Two other States in which we are deeply interested, are reported to us in Dr. Haygood’s figures, and, neglecting the numbers which he gives, I will give you the percentages, which he neglects. In Kentucky the number of male adults has increased 23 per cent. and the whole number of illiterate voters about 21-1/2 per cent. But the per cent. of increase among the illiterate white voters is very nearly 23, almost keeping up with the increase of population, where the per cent. of increase among illiterate Negro voters is not quite fourteen.

In Tennessee the facts are still more striking. The increase in the whole number of males of voting age was, in the ten years, about 26 per cent., while the increase in the number of illiterate voters was only 13 per cent. The illiterate voters increased only half as fast as the voting population. Here, evidently, a very successful attack has been made upon the strongholds of illiteracy. But where have these victories been gained—among the whites or the Negroes? Almost wholly among the latter. The number of illiterate white voters increased during the ten years 24 percent., almost as fast as the population, while the illiterate Negro voters increased during the same period _less than five per cent._

Taking these three States together, we find that the percentage of increase of males of voting age was 27; of illiterate voters, 18; of illiterate white voters, 25; of illiterate Negro voters, 12.

Now these figures completely overthrow the statement that the increase of illiteracy is relatively greater among the Negroes than among the whites. They show that the proportions are all the other way, tremendously the other way; the difference between the two races is startling. The whites are gaining a little in this battle with the powers of darkness; but it is very little; they are scarcely doing more than hold their own; but the Negroes are gaining splendidly; it is to them that the large increase in the percentage of intelligent voters is mainly due.

Now what does this mean? Of course it is due to several causes. The Negroes had had but about five years of opportunity when the census of 1870 was taken; in 1880 they had had fifteen years of opportunity. That a better chance has been offered them, and that they are taking the chance that has been offered them, these figures assure us. But they tell us something more, that, to us, is very significant. The gains of intelligence among the Negroes in all parts of the South have been much more rapid than those of the whites; but they have been more rapid in these three States than in most other parts of the South; and why? Why? Did you ever hear of Fisk, and Berea and Atlanta? The census tables have heard of them, if you have not.

It is to the hundreds of young people that go out every year from these colleges, and such as these, teaching in public and in private schools pupils of their own color, that this gain in the battle with illiteracy at the South is due. They are the children of the light, who are waging this victorious battle with the powers of darkness. There has been great improvement, of course, in the public schools of the South during this decade; but in this improvement the whites have shared as well as the blacks; the great reasons for the more rapid advancement of the blacks are, first, that they are more eager for instruction than the ignorant whites, and, secondly, that they are better supplied with teachers—missionaries of education, who not only do much to supply the demand for knowledge already existing, but who do still more to increase this demand.

We come back, now, from our brief excursion into this fruitful and fascinating realm of percentages, to confront again that large mass of illiteracy that lies athwart the path of this nation. Huge it is, but, thank God, it looks not so vast and unmanageable as once it seemed. It is growing; but the nation is growing faster; relatively it is decreasing. It is far too formidable yet to be let alone; so long as ignorance rules almost one-third of our rulers in all of these sixteen States, no man has any right to relax his vigilance or abate his energies. What these figures show is simply this, that work tells; that our money is not wasted; that our labor is not in vain in the Lord; that if we will only keep it up with our giving and our working, if we will only see to it that these same agencies that have done this grand work in the past ten years are fully equipped to carry it on with increasing vigor, we may hope to gain in the next ten years still more rapid and decisive victories. The word that comes to every friend of the American Missionary Association, to every benefactor in deed or in purpose of these noble schools, is the word that Grant sent to Sheridan after the battle of Five Forks: “Push things!” You’ve got ’em running, these legions of ignorance and darkness; up and after them; harry them on the flank, press them in the rear, till they plunge like the herd of devil-pestered hogs, into the Gulf of Mexico.

You have got the forces to do this work. All you want to do is to give them a better equipment. You want no new machinery; you only want more power; no new organizations, but reinforcements of those in the field.

The kinds of educational work that this Association is doing are exactly the kinds of work that must be done. The industrial training given in some of the schools is admirable; the normal training of teachers is work whose results are immediate and beneficent; the higher education, too, is abundantly justified. If there are any who have doubts on this last score, I am not one of them. There is nothing that these six millions of colored people need to-day more than they need thoroughly educated men of their own race to be their leaders. More than any other class in this country, they are in danger of being misled by petty demagogues and small philosophers. We cannot too soon furnish them with social and political and religious guides who have been trained by severe discipline to think clearly, to consider questions broadly and historically, to reason judicially and dispassionately, to chasten the exuberance and verbosity of their own people with the dignity and judgment that are the fruits of sound learning. Such examples of high character and broad culture scattered about here and there among the Negro people will do more to form their ideals and direct their progress than can be done in any other way. I tell you that the money spent in making first-class men in these colleges is as well invested as any other money that you spend. The only thing to be desired about such schools as Fisk and Atlanta is that their standards be made higher and more inflexible, year by year, and that their work be more and more thorough, so that the diploma shall mean in every case just as much as the diploma of Amherst or Williams or Bowdoin.

It is a Christian education that pupils are receiving in these schools of ours. Most of the pupils who go out from them to become pastors, teachers, lawyers, physicians, merchants, citizens, fathers and mothers are Christian men and women; and they become messengers of a pure Gospel, living epistles of Christ, wherever they go. Especially as teachers do they make their influence felt. We cannot Christianize the public school systems of the Southern States; but if we can Christianize the teachers, that is a much more effective service. And that is precisely what we are doing in all these Southern schools.