CONCERNING ENDOWMENTS.
The success already achieved by the institutions of this Association and the favor already won by them among all classes of the Southern people, amply justify the work hitherto carried on. It is believed that the time has fully come when this work should be put upon a more substantial basis. Permanent endowments are needed that these institutions may achieve that larger success which is rightly expected of them.
Certain phases of our work, sometimes overlooked, greatly emphasize this need. Careful attention is invited to the following points:
1. The unusual difficulties attending the successful prosecution of our work. It is no ordinary school teaching that we have undertaken to carry on in the South. Our pupils bring to the class-room absolutely no inheritance of scholarly mind. Only two or three generations separate them from the heathenism of the most uncivilized continent in the world. Some of them come with the most meagre vocabulary——a few hundred tattered and torn remnants of English words. Many of them have no equipment of general information, such as other children absorb from their parents. But worse than all is the evil inheritance which many of our pupils bring from centuries of heathenism and slavery. Let us be frank and add that even the great boon of freedom, so righteously conferred, has, by the very suddenness of its bestowal, unavoidably brought peculiar peril and damage to many of the freedmen.
It is not a light task to deal with such material as this. Moral character must be developed at the outset and carefully nurtured all along. The rubbish of incorrect speech must be cleared away, and a correct and copious vocabulary formed. The commonest facts of general information must be imparted. Of course, in our higher institutions there is less of such work to be done; but a still more responsible and difficult task takes its place——that of preparing college and normal students to perform this same arduous primary work as teachers and leaders of their own people. Never was such a mass of ignorance thrown so suddenly upon the educational resources of a civilized people. But there is a brighter side.
2. The unprecedented facilities now available for the prosecution of our work. Never was a civilized people so well prepared as our nation now is to meet this great emergency. The progress made in the science of education was never so great as it has been in recent years. The adaptation of methods of teaching to the varying necessities of pupils was never so well understood as now. Text-books and school apparatus, juvenile literature and helps for Biblical study were never so excellent as at present. The value of industrial training, even as an element in the most liberal culture, is receiving unwonted emphasis. In short, the accumulated wisdom of the latest and best century stands ready to serve us, if we only summon its aid. Much of it is in service already; but far more is needed than our present financial resources can command.
3. The necessity of a high order of talent in the teachers and managers of our work. To understand thoroughly the needs of such pupils as crowd our schools, and to apply successfully the most approved educational methods, requires something more than an ordinary teacher. An eminent advocate of popular education has stated it as his belief that the most interesting and valuable improvements yet to be made in pedagogical science will be made in connection with the education of the colored people. But tyros and bunglers in teaching will never give us much that is interesting or valuable. The very best teaching ability must continually be employed in our schools and colleges, and be properly remunerated.
4. The relation of our work to the future of education in the South. The justification of all Northern missionary teaching in the South has been that it was designed to accomplish what the Southern people were not prepared to do themselves. To whatever extent they may in the future take up our work, it will still be our mission to maintain that helpful leadership which it has been our privilege to exercise from the beginning. Our institutions should be the best and do the best work of any in the South. We should be the first to discern the peculiar needs of Southern pupils and the first to introduce whatever is new and excellent in educational appliances. We ought, for instance, to have at once industrial departments connected with all our larger institutions. Every normal and college graduate should be able to use intelligently either the wood-working or the iron-working tools; and the same expenditure of time and money which the Harvard and Yale boys make in learning to wield the oar and the bat would accomplish this much desired end. Already our institutions are being visited by Southern teachers eager to witness the advanced methods of teaching already introduced. We should always be able to reward such visitors by showing them something which they have not seen before. Above all, we should send out from our institutions such noble specimens of young manhood and womanhood as shall prove a stimulus to the whole educational work in the South.
The destiny of the colored race is to be largely determined by the character of the young men and women now crowding forward into active life. The immediate future will demand all our resources, and more, to save these young people. In the more distant future, our success as influential leaders in education will depend largely upon the promptness with which our institutions are now put upon a substantial basis. Every consideration of past success and of present and future need enforces our plea that these endowments should be provided at once.
Rev. J. M. Williams, of the Mendi Mission, died at Freetown, February 21. Mr. Williams was a native of British Guiana, and born in 1828. He was early impressed with a love to the Saviour and to Africa by his grandmother Christina, a native of the interior of Congo. He was educated in Ebenezer Chapel School, and studied theology with the pastor of the church; became assistant minister, then tutor in training school at Clarkson. But in his own words: “The promise of my childhood made to my grandmother that I would carry the word of God to Africa for her, when a man; this promise made with no other object than to soothe her in her tears for Africa, grew up with me, till I felt I would rather travel from town to town with my Bible, reading and publishing Christ the Saviour to my benighted brethren in Africa, than fill the most exalted and lucrative position in British Guiana or anywhere else.” In 1861 he went to Africa, and with the exception of three years spent in England remained there till the time of his death. Mr. Chase, who visited him in 1880 at Kaw Mendi, where the last five years of his life were spent, says: “For Africa Mr. Williams’ effort may be considered a success. Very few missionaries could accomplish so much in so short a time in any field in Africa.”