THE LITERATURE OF OUR SOUTHERN WORK.
It makes no pretension. It has been a growth from nothing. And yet it is worthy of mention. The Southern Workman, the organ of Hampton Institute, is a monthly, well filled with matter historical, scientific and newsy, and well adapted to interest the Freedmen and their friends, as also the civilized Indians and their friends. The Hampton Health Tracts, in a series of a half dozen, treat of the great essentials of health and of physiology. It was a happy hit to give the late children of bondage these first lessons in civilization. This list of tractates has also not a little of instruction for many people who pass among the enlightened class. The Fisk Expositor is an occasional issue that gathers up the history and progress of that University, which the Jubilee Singers have done so much to endow and to make famous. The Southern Sentinel is a monthly, published at Talladega College, and designed, as is the Southern Workman, to interest the colored people in all matters pertaining to education, agriculture and mechanic arts. On both, the work of type-setting and printing is all done by the colored students, who have learned the process while in school, and who make this their means of support, besides the acquiring of a trade that will secure them a respectable livelihood. The young women make capital compositors. In both of these offices not a little of job work is also done. The mechanical work upon the American Missionary was for a time done by the office at Hampton. The Straight University at New Orleans has also its occasional medium of communication with its constituency.
Eight chartered institutions issue their annual catalogues, which compare favorably with the current literature of the kind. It seems not a little strange, in these annual reports of schools among our fellow-citizens, the late slaves, to come across not only the lists of the Faculties and the long roll of students, but also the several departments, normal, scientific, classical, medical, legal and theological. Then of the six General Associations for our Southern churches, four have issued their annual “Minutes.” Those of the original one, the Central South, furnish quite a compendium of our church work. Those of Alabama are rich in records of discussions upon vital themes and of missionary activities. Those of Louisiana glow with revival reminiscences. The first of Georgia makes a dignified document that gives promise of not a little of church activity. Texas and North Carolina will soon come on to the dignity of printing the Minutes of their Associations.