REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON EDUCATIONAL WORK.
Your Committee upon the educational work of this Association would congratulate its friends upon the great prosperity which has marked the past year, and which gives such rich promise for the years to come.
We find as causes for thankfulness:
1st. The permanent improvements to our various educational institutions in new and better buildings and increased endowments.
2d. The growing appreciation by the colored people of these educational privileges.
3d. The increasing confidence and sympathy of the Southern whites in the education of the Freedmen, and in the schools founded for them by the North, as shown by the words and deeds of prominent individuals and the articles in leading journals.
4th. And lastly, we are devoutly thankful that the Holy Spirit has been so manifestly present in the labors of the year, and that revivals of religion have given evidence of God’s favor on the work, and promise of men and women for the great missionary work lying before the American Freedmen.
Your Committee feel constrained to urge the importance of the following measure:
1st. This Association should concentrate its efforts upon its work in the States, among the negro, the Indian and the Chinese, as offering its distinctive missionary field.
2d. The friends of the Association should redouble their efforts to put its schools upon a permanent endowed basis, and thoroughly equip them for giving a high Christian education to the Freedmen.
3d. In view of the vast educational structure to be built from the very foundations, the pressing importance of immediate education for millions of illiterate children, the poverty of the South, and the insufficiency of benevolent contributions from the North, the National Government should be urged to immediately inaugurate some additional and more adequate system of national aid.
C. T. Collins, Chairman.