Chapter 2

It appears that Prof. Sumner Salter, a graduate of Amherst College, a son of an honored pastor of Iowa, a musical director of exceptional gifts and a teacher of eminent ability, was solicited by parties in Atlanta to take his residence there in the interest of the musical cultivation of such as could secure his services. He soon attracted the patronage of society, and all went smoothly until the tempter came. Alas, there was a serpent in Eden, so there was a skeleton in the closet of the _Atlanta Constitution_. It was a dreadful skeleton. The _Constitution_ seriously publishes the fact that "it was whispered about for some time," until patience ceased to be a virtue, when it sent a guardian of public safety in the form of a reporter to investigate. "Was it really true that a white man who was giving music lessons to white people was also teaching a colored class at another time and place? If so, what about the New South? The black man had no business to be black, but he _was_ all the same, and being so what right had Prof. Salter to teach _colored_ people to sing? Let the matter be thoroughly searched out. The reporter departed on his mission, with a countenance more in sorrow than in anger, and returned _vice versa_.

"'Tis true, 'tis pity, And pity 'tis 'tis true."

The professor was actually doing this very absurd thing. He had taken charge of a colored class in the church of which Rev. Evarts Kent is minister and was teaching them how rightly to use the talents with which God had so richly endowed them. {95}

Accordingly, in the year of grace 1888, the _Atlanta Constitution_ publishes the astounding fact, and calls the world to heed it, in conspicuous head lines:--

"WHITE OR BLACK--A PROMINENT MUSICIAN WHO TEACHES BOTH COLORS--HIS BUSINESS SAID TO BE INJURED."

Then followed the whole sad story. The musician had been interviewed and investigated. He did not deny the serious charge to this superintendent of public proprieties. With a heart as hard as old Pharaoh's he proposed to go on and do more likewise. In short, the representative of the _Constitution_ could do nothing with this intractable professor. Hence "he did not stand upon the order of his going, but went at once," and reported that "_according to Mr. Suiter's own statement, he is teaching a colored class_, and he has lost a white pupil, which shows that his course is hurting his business." "Diligent inquiry has failed to bring to light any proof that he has notified his _white_ pupils that he is teaching _colored_ people."

Leaving out the meanness of this, has anyone read anything published lately more ridiculous? It is not necessary to quote the professor's public reply. It simply claimed the right of manhood and common sense, and doubtless left the _Constitution_ wondering how a man capable of making it appear so foolish could yet descend to such depths of ignominy as to teach people whose ancestors came from Africa, the unpardonable sin of singing praises to the Author of their being. To what deeps some will descend! Why should colored people add to the criminality of being born black, the fearful temptation of pay in advance to one who could teach them while he had pupils who had the merit of having been born white?

This was really transpiring in the city of Atlanta several days in the month of February in the year 1888, and was in successive issues of the _Constitution_, which shows among other things that there is latitude, if not longitude, at a Brooklyn New England dinner. Meanwhile we think we hear Uncle Rastus quoting the prophecy, "The morning cometh and also the night," but he can't help laughing because it is "awful funny."

* * * * *

THE EDUCATIONAL WORK IN THE SOUTH.

BY REV. W.F. SLOCUM.

We may remember at the outset that in this matter of the education of the Negro we are treating a question which must be considered, to a certain extent, ethnically. We are dealing with a people with race peculiarities: but it seems to me that it is very useless to ask whether we are training an inferior stock. There was a time when the Anglo-Saxon stock was far inferior {96} to its present condition. We ourselves are not enough removed from heathenism and barbarism to become very pharisaical.

Here is a race with its idiosyncrasies, and its peculiar latent possibilities, which we cannot know until Christian education has unfolded them through many years. We ought not to wonder that in many respects this people is yet in its moral and intellectual infancy; but who dares say that it has not a future before it, with its statesmen, its poets, its painters, its men of letters; that it is not to have its own peculiar literature, its art, and even its own characteristic religious expression, just as marked and important as those produced by any other race? Certainly we have as much reason for believing it as that the Teutonic race of the second century should produce its Goethe and its Schiller, its Kant and its Hegel, its Luther and its Melanchthon; or that the Frank of the fifth century should develop its Victor Hugo, its Lamartine, its Madam de Stael; or that out of the barbarism, the cannibalism, the paganism of Norseman, Briton and Saxon, there should come Shakespeare, Spencer, Macaulay, Browning and Gladstone. And we may not have to wait as long; for in spite of slavery's binding chain thrice drawn round his soul, the American Negro has been absorbing during the past from a civilization which has been fitting him somewhat for the large Christian movement of the present. We are working for a people which in all probability will form at least one-eighth of our whole population; and we have the problem of lifting them as a race up into Christian enlightenment. The dark skin is growing darker. There will be less and less of intermixture of blood between the two races. Hence all study of this educational question must have in view the large moral and intellectual enterprise of dealing with a race as a race. I believe that there is nothing in all history to compare with this opportunity which has come to our very doors. Here is a nation in our land and with it every perplexity, every difficulty, every embarrassment, and also every encouragement, every hope, and every inspiration for work, that can appeal to any foreign missionary. Here is this God-given task laid at our very thresholds and with all the sentiments of patriotism and Christian devotion urging us to our large privilege.

What the race needs now is right leadership, and for many years to come we are to equip men and women religiously and intellectually, who, in home, in church, in social and business life, will be moral and social leaders. And by this power of leadership I mean something far other than those foolish conceits which have taken possession of a few who have touched only the surface of the new life that is coming to this people.

I have rather in mind leaders who shall have that moral and intellectual fitness which produces reverence, earnestness and humility, leaders who can draw their people away from their foolishness, weakness and self-consciousness into the larger life that is possible for them. Without a {97} doubt, what is needed is true leaders, and I wish to show where these leaders are now demanded.

Before the war, the South knew nothing of the benefits of public schools, and the private school was in harmony with its social and political conceptions; but of late, and especially during the last decade, a remarkable change has taken place which is doing as much to affect the whole Southern problem as anything that has occurred there during half a century. It is a movement in the South, which, however imperfectly it has been developed as yet, has come to remain, and will ultimately affect every institution, social, political and religious, in our section of the country.

_It is now being recognized in every Southern State that free government is based upon a public common-school system_. It has taken two decades to incorporate this public school policy upon Southern institutions, but it has now the evidence of permanency and it is offering to Christian philanthropy an unparalleled opportunity, such as God seldom gives to any people, and one which should rally the churches as never before in support of the great enterprises of the American Missionary Association.

There has been forced upon the New South the conclusion that the best way to increase its wealth is to increase the number of educated, intelligent producers, and with this conclusion it realizes that it cannot afford to let two million colored children grow up in hopeless illiteracy. It perceives that its very institutions will be imperiled by such a condition. I have through personal interviews with leading educators in a recent trip through the South, by correspondence and by a careful examination of documents and reports from nearly all the Southern States, undertaken to find just what is being done at the present time in the public colored schools of the South.

The significance of this public school movement will be understood when it is remembered that the acceptance of the idea that the constitution of a free State rests on universal education, marks a great change in theory; that this has come against the opinions of the old Bourbon party, which never forgets, and, it is to be feared, never learns; whose political economy is represented by the expression, "keep the negro down"; which regards his enfranchisment as a political outrage and his education as a mistake and a failure; that it has risen in the face of the poverty of the South and in the midst of its most intense prejudices. For when the new educational movement began, the property and a large part of the intelligence belonged to the opponents of the new educational policy, but now, in the words of a prominent Southern gentleman: "The conviction has become very deep that in the altered condition of our people the only hope left us is to do all that can be done towards elevating the masses irrespective of race." This certainly represents a tremendous transformation. Without stopping to trace the causes that produced it, or even the large place the American Missionary Association work has in it, let me simply quote from {98} a Southern Christian man, whose sympathies are full of prejudice against the North, but who has wakened with the awakening of the New South.

Writing of the educational movement, in a recent book, he says: "Not a few of the best men and women of the North have come to teach in these institutions for colored youth: their motives and their work have not always been understood, but the Great Day will make manifest how they have been constrained by the love of Christ, to spend years in work which has had many discouragements." ('The New South' by J.C.C. Newton.) A few statistics may give some general idea of the extent of this movement.

The State of Alabama has 104,150 colored pupils enrolled in the public schools. It pays an average of $25.97 per month to nearly 2,000 colored teachers, and expends altogether $198,221 upon these colored schools. Georgia has 49 per cent. of its negro school population enrolled; that is, 119,248. In 1871, this State had 6,664 only in all public and private colored schools. Its teachers of this race now number 2,272. 40,909 colored children are enrolled in Louisiana, with 672 negro teachers, who receive an average of $23.73 per month.

Mississippi had last year 154,430 colored scholars. It employed 3,124 colored teachers who receive an average of $28.73 per month. North Carolina enrolled, in 1886, 117,562 colored pupils, employed 2,016 teachers of the same race, paying them about the same as its white teachers, $23.38 per month. The colored school population of Tennessee numbers 158,450, of whom 84,624 are enrolled in her 1,563 common schools, which are taught by 1,621 teachers of the same nationality. A county superintendent voluntarily adds: "I should do our colored teachers an injustice not to speak of them. Most of them are earnest, zealous workers, doing all in their power for their race."

Turning now to Texas we find that this State has nearly doubled its enrollment of colored pupils in three years, which now number 62,040, with 1,696 licensed colored teachers who receive on an average, $41.73 per month. Virginia has 111,114 out of a school population of 265,249 with 1,734 colored teachers who receive $28.65 per month.

That is, in eight representative States there are eight hundred thousand colored pupils who are now being trained by over fifteen thousand teachers of the same race. Now the simple but grave question that every Christian patriot ought to ask himself is, "What kind of teachers are these, and where are they to come from in the future?" I asked that question of a gentleman who of all others ought to be able to answer it correctly and he replied, "Nine-tenths of these teachers come from the missionary schools, and of these nine-tenths, more than one-half come from the institutions of the American Missionary Association." Now we can understand the truthfulness of the testimony of the Rev. J.L.M. Curry, D.D., the distinguished agent of the Peabody Fund, who says: "The most that {99} has been done at the South for the education of the negroes has been done by the Congregationalists. The American Missionary Association and those allied to it have been the chief agency, so far as benevolent effort is concerned, in diffusing right notions of religion, and in carrying education to the darkened mind of the negro."

Here is the large door that God has opened for us, and through which we are reaching this people, and in a still larger degree may carry the truths of the Kingdom of God to them. What they need most of all is light. Give them that and the question of rights will take care of itself. When I was in New Orleans last May, President Hitchcock, of Straight University, pointed out to me in his office a pile of letters, which, he said, were applications for teachers for these public schools, and those which he showed me represented the number of applications which he was not able to fill. And yet he is compelled every term to turn away scores of young men and young women seeking to fit themselves for just this work, because there is not room for them and because there are not funds to care for them.

As to this new movement in the South, I do not conclude that more than the first step has been taken, exceedingly important as that step is. Many of the schools as yet are in a wretched condition. The buildings in the rural districts are small and rudely built, and many of them are positively unfit to be used as school houses. There are neither maps, nor charts or other appliances for the teacher's use in his work, and in fact everything about these school houses is of the most primitive type. The school year often does not exceed four months, and many of these teachers are altogether unfit for their tasks.

Are we to think the time has come to withhold our support and our prayers from this great work? Was there ever such an opportunity offered to any land as this which is presented to the Christian philanthropy of our own?

I might tell of the needs of the cabin home life as I have seen them in these States, how the scholars from Christian schools are the leaven that is slowly transforming this, the greatest of all human institutions; how while from one-quarter to one-half of the colored population is progressing, gaining in education, property and character, there is another large part of the race that is either stationary or sinking into more miserable conditions. Are we seeking for paganism to battle with? Here it is in our own proud land. Do we want the opportunity of Christianizing a nation? Here it is; and with possibilities just as marked as those of any people that ever ascended the scale of intelligence and Christian morality.

The problem of the New South is not merely one of successful railroads, of busy factories or of paying plantations, but much more is it one of upright, wise, Christian manhood and womanhood. This is the work to which we are most truly called of the Eternal Father. {100}

Nobly has the American Missionary Association entered into these labors; but believe me, there is a larger work before it than it has yet accomplished.

* * * * *

THE SOUTH.

LETTER FROM AN EVANGELIST.

After my return from England for another winter's service in Gospel work among the people of the South, I began at

WASHINGTON, D.C.

I had promised Rev. G.W. Moore last winter, before sailing for my home in England, to assist him in special religious effort. From the very commencement of the meetings a good spirit was manifest, which deepened day by day until forty or more persons professed faith in Christ, young and old being reached by the power of the gospel. One man sixty-one years of age surrendered to the overtures of God's love and received Christ as his Saviour. Another of seventy-five years was pointed out to me as a hardened sinner. When approached he was full of self and reason, "I don't believe in mourner's benches and such like; do you think my going there will make me a Christian or do me any good?" "No, but it will show the people you are intending to make a start for Heaven, and it will enlist their sympathy and prayers," I replied.

Finally he knelt with me in the aisle with his head bowed on the end of the seat while I prayed. Soon the big tears were dropping from his eyes and he went home that night under conviction. The following night he returned. He was again prayed for, but went away undecided. The next night as soon as inquirers were given an opportunity to present themselves for prayers he was the first to respond, and the sinful man of seventy-five years had yielded his heart to Christ, and could sing from his heart "Happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away." His wife, who was present, rushed forward, and tears of joy ran down their cheeks. Scarcely a dry eye was to be seen, while above all there was joy in Heaven over another sinner saved. Deacon R. came to me afterwards and said, "Why, did you ever see what a change in the man in three days, and at last how he 'caved in.'"

Ten persons made profession of their faith, in January. Two of these were teachers in the public schools. There were four conversions in one family. Since these meetings, many extra services have been held, with fruitful results. There are family altars where none before existed. The work in Washington under Mr. Moore is very hopeful. My next point was

SELMA, ALA.

which I entered full of hopes as to successful meetings, and was not disappointed. {101} During my stay there, lasting three weeks, sixty professed to be converted. Most of these, through the efforts of Rev. C.B. Curtis and his wife, were formed into a "Children's Band," while others joined the churches. This is a most important feature in pastoral work, where the majority of the converts are children. They need to have something that will help them in their spiritual and new life and which may be instrumental in preserving them from temptations, snares and pitfalls, laid to entrap them by the enemy of their souls.

I never before realized how easily people are led away by false teachers, nor saw so manifestly brought out the fulfillment of the Scriptures, [2 Pet. ii, 1] "But there were false prophets among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of."

A man calling himself a "prophet" and a "faith doctor" had been for some time experimenting upon people, both white and black, and professed to cure them of all their ailments. He had been holding meetings in a cottage weekly, and had gathered many followers, who were, alas, for the most part professing Christians. He announced that on the following Sunday he would hold the passover feast, burn the Bible, and, in plain words, would do wonders, the like of which had not been heard of for years. Accordingly, on Sunday morning, with a few of his followers, he came to the house of a Negro, and during the ceremony commanded a white woman to place her head on the table and offer herself as a sacrifice. She refused, upon which a Negro woman laid her head upon the table. He immediately raised an old cavalry sword and, with one blow, nearly severed her head from her body, and then commanded that they should "drag her out at once and put her with her feet towards the East and she will rise after three days."

Soon there was a cry of murder raised; the false prophet was arrested after a struggle, and he, with a number of his followers, was safely lodged in the penitentiary, where it is to be hoped he will at least be kept from cutting off any more women's heads. Oh, how great the need of faithful men to lift up their voices like a trumpet, and spare them not, and show to these needy people, so religiously inclined, the way of truth!

TALLADEGA COLLEGE

was the next place visited. Beginning the New Year, which is usually the "week of prayer," for two weeks the "old, old story" was told on every night among the resident students and scholars. At other times, services would be held in the Cassidy school in the morning, or in the afternoon, as school duties would permit. The Theological class, as well as the teachers and faculty, interested themselves greatly in seeking to win the unsaved to Jesus. Following out the teaching of the New Testament, the students {102} went out two and two in the surrounding neighborhood, calling at the homes of the people, conversing and praying in the family. They often returned with great joy to tell of the success and kindness they had met wherever they went. I am thankful to our blessed Lord to be able to report that not only forty or more of the young people were converted but also that professing Christians were strengthened in faith, all promising to do what God had required of them and to go to their respective homes, some of them hundreds of miles away, to make known a Saviour's love and to carry light as far as possible in the surrounding darkness. While here the Macedonian cry was heard from

JENIFER.

I went there for a brief service. The first night the church was full, although the weather was stormy. The spirit of God brooded over the meeting and five came forward for prayer. The next night still was unpleasant, yet some of the congregation came several miles, and at the close eleven inquirers asked for prayers. A brother in the congregation rose, and, in pleading terms, his voice faltering, begged, "Oh, brodder, please do stop wid us; see de mourners; see de work de Lord is doing; please you brodder don't go away and leab us." After such heartfelt words I could but stay all the week, when sixteen professed to have accepted Christ, or, as they put it, to have "found religion."

Miss Smith, at her home for motherless girls, is doing a noble work here. Rev. J.B. Grant is highly respected by all in the village and has a good name, which is worth more than great riches.

IRONATON

was the next place visited. It was exceedingly muddy and dark, yet the people came out well. At the close of the first meeting the congregation arose _en masse_ and asked that I would remain a day longer, which I did.

MARION, ALA.