SOUTH CAROLINA.
MR J. D. BACKENSTOSE.
During my recent vacation (spent in the State of New York) the question most frequently asked me was, “Are the Freedmen as anxious to obtain an education, as they were when schools for them were first opened?”
I have answered these inquiries by relating some of my experience, and fearing lest Christians at the North have the impression that they are less eager, and so are becoming weary in aiding these poor people in their struggles for an education, I now relate it for the benefit of the readers of the Missionary.
In the fall of ’73, two young men from distant part of the county came to our Institute at Greenwood, S. C., and asked permission to occupy a vacant room in the building and cook their own meals while they attended the Institute. I consented, and assisted them in furnishing the room. From the wood-shed we procured lumber for a bedstead and table, had boxes for chairs, and newspapers for window shades. They were delighted with this, and immediately wrote to their friends that there were excellent accommodations for boarders at Brewer Institute, and before the winter had fairly set in, there were nineteen men living in that room, which measured only 30×32.
Another raid was made on the wood-shed, and three more bedsteads hastily built after the pattern of the first, and on these four bedsteads the nineteen men slept four months. Part of them would retire at an early hour and sleep till midnight, then arise and let the others take their places. While some were sleeping, the others were cooking and preparing their lessons for the next day, in the same room. During all this time, I never heard a complaining word from them. Our rooms are now neatly furnished for students, and we have recently built a good frame house which is also well furnished. We have accommodations for only twenty students, and yet during a part of the past winter we had thirty-three crowded in these rooms, and even then they were unwilling that I should say we were full and could accommodate no more.
So eager are they for an education, that they are willing to live for a time on corn meal, bacon, and molasses. The former they mix with cold water, minus the eggs and butter, and, after baking, eat it with their meat, gravy, or molasses. This three times a day and seven days in a week. Tea and coffee are never on their bill of fare.
The home of two of these men was fourteen miles distant, and once in two weeks they would walk there on Friday afternoon and return on Sunday night, bringing on their shoulders provisions to last them till they should go again.
A young man, a Baptist minister, who was obliged to leave school a few weeks before the close of the term, walked sixty miles in order to be examined with his class at the close of the term.
Could ever a people be more anxious to obtain an education than these are now? Twenty-three of those who have lived and struggled in this way to obtain an education are now engaged in teaching, and have under their care over thirteen hundred pupils. We have a beautiful school building well furnished with everything but a cabinet organ, and we believe that God will put it in the heart of some good friend to send us that.
A lively interest is constantly and in various ways manifested by the people, and everything gives promise of abundant fruit in the future. If our highest hopes have not already been realized, we thank God for the progress made. May He put it into the hearts of the benefactors of this race to add to their gifts and prayers, until not only twenty-three, but ten times that number shall go out from Brewer Normal Institute, as competent instructors of thousands of their brethren now ignorant and despised.