II. HOW WE HAVE COME.
(a) Not long since a white merchant of this state remarked to me: “No people have ever improved so much in so short a time as your people have.” I replied: “I think no people ever had a more faithful, self-sacrificing leadership.” I think it may be said of us that we have done what we could. The work began when we owned neither land for home nor land for church house—when there was no church, no association, no mission board to offer any pay for labor. I speak of course of the rule. True, there were a few colored churches in “slavery time,” three missionary and one primitive; but what were three churches in the midst of such a vast population, scattered over so much territory? What could they do in their poverty and want of training to support 400 or 500 pioneer organizers? We went to the battle at our own charges. With homeless mothers and fathers, with homeless wives and children, and with oppression on every side—with all these burdens and much more which cannot be told, upon us—we bravely undertook the work of building the walls of Zion. The writer knows a minister who, (between 1866 and 1875, especially between ’66-’77, during the reign of the “K. K. Klan,” when the people could not in many places be induced to open their doors after dark for fear of being shot), has endured some of the severest privations and performed some of the hardest toils known to the ministry, at his own charges. This case is only one in hundreds. Our ministry, whatever the faults and imperfections which have attended them, have wrought nobly and wrought to good results.
The following will serve to show why the writer is inclined to believe these early pioneers were often especially favored of God in controlling the people for good: On one occasion two preachers met for the first time. The younger man spoke, and the elder was one of the hearers. The sermon was ended. The two preachers, approaching each other and grasping hands, spoke to each other thus: The younger man: “I feel the Lord wants me to preach, but I am not able to preach.” The elder man: “God has called you to preach the gospel, but you are not now in the spirit of the ministry. You are proud and ’pend too much upon yourself. You get self out so God can fill you up with his spirit. Go and pray to God for the spirit of the gospel ministry.” This advice was heeded and the end revealed the correctness of the elder man’s views. Another case:
A young man of some attainment in letters, who taught school under the “Freedmen’s Bureau,” being anxious to rid himself of a sense of duty to preach the gospel, decided to go off to another state where his church connections were unknown. He did so. After he had quit the train and put down his baggage at the home of a family who had consented to entertain him, and as evening drew on, he was requested by his hostess to attend the preaching which was to come off at a neighbor’s house that evening (there was no church house). The young man went. A pen picture of the preacher is given after this fashion: Lean, brown skin man, whose shirt showed much of his breast; whose feet were sockless and in shoes which left the toes uncovered; whose stiff locks held a comb. He told us of a wicked city that was laying beneath the pending judgments of God.
It needed a message of warning—only this, and it would face about and clothe itself in humble penitence. God had the message, and He imparted it to the messenger and ordered him to go. Here the preacher drew a picture of Jonah: He is shrinking from his glorious charge—has his back toward Nineveh, and is fleeing in an opposite direction; is boarding a ship that he may go to regions over the sea; is going down into the hold of the ship; is fast asleep. Here the storm and the raging deep receive notice: A cloud rises and quickly covers the skies; winds attend it with a fury hitherto unknown to the shipmen, who seem at once to discern in the storm the tokens of judgment; the sea is wild; the sailors, as a last resort, awake Jonah and cast lots; the lot falls upon Jonah, and he is cast into the maddened sea, where a sea monster swallows him. At this point, changing his voice more into the imperative tone, the preacher said: “I ’spect there is a Jonah here to-night, and I warn him to take the message of his God and carry it to poor, lost sinners who do not know their right hands from their left; I warn him to go before he shall be in the belly of hell.” The reader is left to imagine how this affected the young school teacher who was fleeing from his duty. In some parts of Limestone county the people use an improvised lamp, the oil vessel of which is a snuff bottle. This is a rough vessel, but it holds the oil which feeds the flame. This reminds us of Mr. Spurgeon’s beer-bottle candlestick. Well, I want to say that God used these men, whatever were their imperfections—they had power. But we have had help from without.
(a) Our white neighbors—some of them, at least—have aided us. They have helped us build our church houses and, in some cases, contributed to our schools. They have taught in our Sunday schools, preached in our pulpits, helped us in the work of organizing associations, etc. They have taught ministers’ classes and held ministers’ institutes among us. The writer once held the position of teacher of institutes under the appointment and support of the white Baptist Convention of Alabama, and Dr. McAlpine now serves under the appointment of the Southern Board. Several of our best men were enabled to attend the Home Mission schools on money given by their white brethren.
(b) We have been improved by our public schools. It is a strange providence which, in our public school system, now returns upon the black man something of the interest due him in consideration of unrewarded labors. These schools have given us some choice men and women, who are strong in the work of the church. However, it is in place to say that we have not derived from our public school system all the good which it is capable of bestowing, first, because poor teachers have far too often been put upon the people. But, on the other hand, there has been loss because we have not properly appreciated our needs and opportunities, as considered from an educational point of view. The sessions of the public schools could be supplemented and extended in most cases so as to cover six or eight months of each year.
(c) The Publication Society has rendered substantial aid in the gift of books to our ministers and Sunday Schools as well as by the personal touch and teaching of their Sunday School Missionaries.
(d) The Missionary Societies of the Baptist women of Chicago and Boston have done a great work among us. Their good missionaries, such as Misses Moore, Knapp, Voss and others whose names will ever be precious to our people, have given themselves to work among our women and girls. They have breathed into our home life their beautiful piety, and they have acquainted our mission bands and church workers with the latest and best methods of labor. We have seen with their eyes and felt with their hearts.
First Baptist Church, Selma, Ala. C. J. Hardy, Pastor.
(e) The Selma University, with one exception, is the source of our greatest blessing. It is simply impossible to estimate the good that has come to Alabama Baptists out of this institution. What it has done is beyond the power of calculation. Only Omniscience can reckon up the good effects of its power upon the people. God be praised for Selma University! When we began the school in 1878, we hadn’t one single graduate in our midst. Since that time graduates have gone forth as follows:
1884.
R. T. Pollard, S. A. Stone, W. W. Posey, T. H. Posey, R. B. Hudson, L. J. Green, C. R. Rodgers, A. A. Bowie, D. T. Gully, A. W. Hines, and Miss Washington, now Mrs. R. T. Pollard.
1885.
J. A. Anthony, W. E Large, J. H. Eason and Mrs. Thompson.
1886.
W. S. Matthews, H. L. Thomas, Dr. L. L. Burwell and Mrs. H. M. Baker.
1887.
M. M. Archer, S. H. Campbell, J. C. Copeland, W. T. Bibb, W. A. Watson, F. P. Tyler, J. H. Culver, P. A. Kigh, C. H. Patterson, Mrs. R. B. Hudson, Mrs. A. W. Hines, Vannie Brooks.
1888.
S. H. Abrams, D. A. Bible, R. D. Taylor, Mrs. M. F. Wilson, E. J. Nelson and Mary F. Williams.
1889.
R. M. Williams, E. L. Blackman, Mrs. P. F. Clark, Mrs. W. T. Bibb, P. E. Gresham, D. L. Prentice, J. R. Willis and Dr. W. R. Pettiford.
1890.
W. J. Bryson, R. T. Payne, J. F. Payne, Dr. R. Tyler, Dr. L. Roberts, E. W. Knight, J. C. Leftwich, L. A. Sinkler, Mrs. W. B. Johnson, Mrs. G. A. Brown, Wm. Cooper, Emma Garrett, M. Turner, Mary L. Smith, P. S. L. Hutchins.
1891.
P. B. Taylor, C. E. Clayton, Mary Osborne, Lula Gray, Ida M. Wilhite, Viola Hudson, Mamie C. Welch, A. M. Jackson, J. McConico, J. H. Hutchinson, M. M. Porter, E. T. Taylor.
1892.
R. L. Hill, G. P. Adams, E. M. Carter, W. T. Coleman, I. B. Kigh, B. R. Smith, Chas. White Jr., M. J. Brown, A. E. Gilliam, Pattie Richardson, Amelia Tyler and Maggie Johnson.
1893.
J. A. Graham, W. M. Montgomery, H. E. Grogan, Eva Green.
1894.
I. T. Simpson, C. J. Davis, W. H. Wilhite, Annie Stone, T. W. Calvary and Eliza Fuller (Mrs. Knight).
1895.
Lula E. Ware, Annie L. Jones, Comer E. Carter, Benjamin F. Sanders, Lila L. Jones, Julia L. Sanders, Mary F. McCord, Emma P. Jones, Earnest W. Brown and Donnie E. Hillson.
We see very little that these names mean except we associate them with the masses of the people in the various walks of social and business life. But, associating them thus, we see them as so many stars lighting up the dark places around them. However, to do this is by no means to place ourselves where we can see the whole truth. What has been wrought upon the thousands of students who failed to finish the prescribed course? They are elevated and they have borne their elevation to their neighbors. From their teachers and from the refining atmosphere of the school, they have drunken purer thoughts, loftier aims and a stronger manhood. This they have carried to others less favored than themselves, and now it works as the leaven in the dough. Again, the school has strengthened us by its weight upon our hearts and hands. Labor, well directed, develops strength in the laborer. We are greater because we have been compelled to care for that institution, and it has caused us to have faith in ourselves. We now know that it is possible for us to maintain an educational work. It is needless to say that by means of it, we have looked larger in the eyes of others. Somehow, he who can do something good and great commands our respect.
(f) The Home Mission Society.—This society has served us to greater results than any other agency. To this society the university owes above half the money which has given it support all these years. They have given us missionary aid which has served to produce higher life and better order in our churches and associations. And from their schools beyond our state we have received many of our most capable persons, among whom we may mention Drs. Dinkins, Purce, Stokes, Owens, our eloquent Fisher, and Jones, our scholarly Peterson, the urbane Jackson of Eufaula, the industrious Bradford, and others whose names I cannot at this moment recall. Mrs. C. S. Dinkins, as well as Mrs. C. O. Boothe, came to us from the Roger Williams University, a Home Mission Society School. But what has been said will suffice to show us how we have come to be a wiser and a better people than we were thirty years ago. And if we see what has blessed us in the years gone by, no doubt we shall be able to see that the same things may, if we will permit them to do so, bless us in the years to come. May our steps not be forgotten by our children.