VACATION REPORTS.
PROF. T.N. CHASE, ATLANTA.
A stranger could hardly obtain a more vivid and correct idea of the far-reaching influence for good that one of the higher institutions of the American Missionary Association is exerting, than by listening to the reports of the students as they return from their summer’s work of teaching. At Atlanta University the first Sunday afternoon of the fall term is devoted to these reports, and to the teachers it is one of the happiest and most inspiring occasions of the whole year. We wish that many of the readers of the Missionary could have been with us on last Sunday, and seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears, since the full rich tones of voice, dignified composure and simple earnestness of these student-teachers cannot be transferred to paper. But I did not see you present, and so will give you the benefit of some notes I took down, departing from my original plan of arranging and classifying the “testimony,” omitting quotation marks, and introducing the successive speakers simply by beginning on a new line.
I taught in Tatnal. Other pupils were afraid to go there because it was a democratic county. People did not want a teacher from outside of the county, because they did not want the money to go out of the county. They liked me very much. Colored people have from one acre to 2500 acres of land, and are about as well educated as the whites. Children are compelled by their parents to come to Sunday-school. I kept up a Sunday evening prayer-meeting. Several of the children acknowledged Jesus and turned over to the church. I made two or three speeches on temperance.
My Commissioner is well disposed toward this Institution. I made two or three lectures against intemperance, and encouraged the people to educate themselves and accumulate property. At my exhibition three lawyers were present and forty or fifty other whites.
The Commissioner did not examine me, saying that this school was the best in the world and he never intended to examine a pupil from it. He was a Saturday-Sunday man and did not do any business on Saturday. I tramped a week and a half for a school and found one on Col. ——’s place. Parents want their children whipped, and do not think they are taught any thing unless they are whipped.
Some of us had a convention on temperance, tobacco and morals. The colored people own a good deal of land and make lots of cotton. One man made twenty-one bales, but saved only eighty dollars.
Col. —— said Atlanta University must be the best disciplined school in the State. The poor whites do not want to go to school, and are more intemperate and degraded than the blacks. If the colored man would only stand up for his rights, he would not be hacked.
I taught in a district called “Dark Corner.” I think I gave them a right start. Had a prayer meeting which was largely attended. Poor whites use more whiskey than the colored people. Whites seem kind to blacks, lend them money and horses, and help them in every way.
I had an average attendance of thirty-three and a night-school of fifteen. Taught on an old plantation, on which there used to be five hundred slaves. Ignorance has great sway there. People have good stock, but cannot buy land. There is a temperance lodge in Camden of one hundred and forty members.
It was a bad county where I taught. I was careful about teaching there. They never had a school before. No land is owned by colored people. There is much opposition to their education. The immorality of the place is explained by the fact that they formerly had stills there. Preachers are not moral men. They are opposed to “foreign” teachers. Poor whites create a good deal of disturbance. Land is owned by those who owned it during slavery times, and they will not sell it to white or colored.
I was the first lady teacher that taught in the county and was quite a novelty. They had bad teachers. One white one was intemperate. White people were friendly. Three whites raised their hats to me, which was quite a new thing. I had a very good Sunday-school; white people attended my exhibition. They like this University very much, and the Commissioner wanted me to encourage the boys and girls to come up.
Most everybody uses whiskey and tobacco. I talked on temperance, distributed temperance papers and read to them. Took the New York Witness and read it to the people. I think I did some good among the children. The children of the poor whites are knocking about on the road all the time. They had a school one month, then gave it up. Young men spend Sunday in gambling; guess they are doing it right now. Some said I was not teaching them anything because I did not use the blue-back speller. The houses of poor whites are just like the colored, but their clothes are not so good.
The people where I taught are intelligent and well-to-do. Most of them own their own homes. The whites want the colored people educated. A speaker at an exhibition of a female seminary said that the colored people were leaving them in the dark, and if they did not look out, the bottom rail would be on the top. Six or eight colored people own from one hundred to five hundred acres and stock. The Commissioner’s wife asked me into the parlor and gave me a rocking-chair.
Where I was last winter, the people kept Thanksgiving. Of course I enjoyed that, because I knew you were keeping it here. I had a Sunday-school that was quite large at first, but when big meetings came on it grew small.
I had seventy-five pupils. I cannot see that I did much good, but I hope some good will come out of my summer’s work. Public sentiment seems to sanction the worst things there are.
The people where I taught said they must have a man, that females could not teach, and they could not stand ladies. The whites, on the whole, are better to the teachers than the colored people are. I succeeded in getting six men to stop using tobacco while attending school, and then they said if they could stop fifty-five days they could all their life-time.
Somehow they looked at me like they looked at Columbus when he first came to America. Preachers are all intemperate men, and some of them said they could not preach well unless they had some whiskey in them. I taught four times in the same place, and have had a larger school each time. The morals of the colored people depend on the morals of the whites. I opened school at eight and closed at six. I saw no intemperance, because it was the wrong time of the year. I talked temperance and acted it. There is but little difference between the whites and colored; they eat together, sleep together, and have the same kind of houses.
Now to these reports, only a small part of which I have copied, I will add a few comments:
1. There is no diminution of the desire of colored children to learn, and of their parents to have their children educated. Parents want teachers to teach from early dawn to candle-light, and even to beat knowledge into the pupils.
2. Intemperance and licentiousness abound to a fearful extent, not only among the laity, but also among the clergy.
3. The poor whites need education and moral and religious instruction as much as the colored people, and our students are reaching some of them in their influence.
4. Public school privileges in the South are limited, and it will be a long time before suitable buildings are provided and efficient teaching secured.
5. The whites are, in the main, well disposed toward the colored people, and in favor of their being educated.
6. Many of the colored people are acquiring homes and other property, although in some places the owners of land will not sell it.
7. In some instances the colored people are cheated out of the benefits of their labor, and ill-treated in various ways.
8. Atlanta University stands high in the estimation of the people, and needs liberal pecuniary support from its friends to keep up its reputation and do the great work that lies before it.
9. Social prejudice seems to be yielding somewhat, although the fact that a white lady invited a colored girl to sit in a rocking-chair in her parlor, is not so common an occurrence as to make it unworthy of mention. Tidiness, gentility, intelligence and morality will yet be considered superior to a light complexion.
10. The hope of this race, as well as of any other, lies in the training of children, and hence the value of good schools, both day and Sunday.
11. The American Missionary Association is doing a valuable work among the whites, by showing them what education will do for poor people, and stimulating them to try to keep the “top-rail” where it is.
12. No one can estimate the influence our school is exerting in favor of education, industry, economy, temperance, Sabbath observance, chastity, social order, and, in short, morality and religion.