CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AT THE SOUTH.
BY REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D.
The problem that confronts us this morning is that which is presented by the illiteracy of this country, and especially of the Southern States. This is not the only problem before this Association; the problem of the irreligion and heathenism which infest many regions also claims our energies. There is moral evil as well as ignorance to be met and fought and overcome. The Association has an evangelical work as well as an educational work in its hands; and though, as we shall see, these two are properly one, yet it is now convenient to consider them separately. It is the educational work that is now before us.
We educate, because education is the servant of a pure religion. We educate, because we are the missionaries of a faith which always adds to itself virtue, and to its virtue knowledge. We educate, because a genuine Christianity always educates; because the work of the pulpit, the work of the Church everywhere must always be, in considerable part, the work of education; but, more especially, we of this Association educate, because the peoples with whom we work are in peculiar need of education; and because nothing but intelligence will ever break the fetters of degrading superstition by which they are held, and lead them forth into the liberty of the sons of God.
We educate, also, because we love our country, and because we believe that there is no other remedy for evils that now threaten her very existence, but the remedy of Christian education. Thus we are brought face to face with the problem of illiteracy. Illiteracy in a republic; what does it signify? It is the creeping paralysis that unnerves its arm; it is the malaria that poisons its blood; it is the cataract that dims and finally destroys its vision; it is the slow decay that consumes its life. Illiteracy, ignorance, in a republic is, and must always be, assailing and undermining its very foundations. It is the natural and deadly foe of free government. No republic can live, no republic ought to live, in which the voters are ignorant. Voting in a republic is governing; and no man has any right to govern me who does not know enough to govern himself. No man has any right to take part in the government of the nation, who has not some notion of what right government is. I protest against such government. I have never consented to the justice of it, and I never will. I do not believe that the State has any right to intrust this responsible business of governing—and voting is governing—to the hands of men who cannot read the ballots that they cast and who have no conception of the duties of a citizen.
But the State has done it; and what has been done cannot be undone by any political methods. It is with the consequences that we have to do. And the consequences are tremendous, appalling to those who stop to consider them. The total number of men of voting age in the Southern States at the last census was 4,154,125. Of these 1,354,974 could neither read nor write. A little more than thirty-two per cent. of the voters of those States were at that time wholly illiterate. Think of that! Almost one-third of all the voters in sixteen States of the Union so ignorant that they cannot write their own names or read the simplest English sentence! And these are our rulers.
I know very well that you will find among these thirteen hundred thousand illiterate voters not a few men of great natural shrewdness and considerable general information, who may be fairly qualified to discharge the duties of citizenship. There are men to whom all print is shut, who can see quite as far into public questions as many of those to whom print is as wide open as it was to Silas Wegg. The alphabet test is by no means an infallible test. Some who could not pass this test are well qualified for citizenship. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of those who are reported among the literates, who are put down as being able to read and write, and who are yet utterly ignorant. They can manage to scrawl their names, perchance, or to skip and tumble about a little among simple words in a primer: but the reading and writing of which they boast is of no sort of use to them as fitting them to vote intelligently. You would need to add a great many figures to that array in the census if you should state fully the facts in regard to the illiteracy of the Southern States.
I think we shall all agree with Dr. Haygood when he says, as he did at the meeting of the National Educational Association in Washington last winter, “This is bad enough.” And perhaps we should also be able to agree with him in the further statement that it “is far from being the worst of this sad case. The worst,” he says, “is this: the illiterate vote in these States is increasing. From 1870 to 1880 the increase of this army of ignorant voters in the South amounted to 187,671.” Of course this is worse, in one sense; for the more we learn of this illiteracy the worse we are off, no doubt. But there is a brighter side to this picture, thank God! It is dark enough, at best; and I want you to see it in all its blackness; but I do not want to paint it any blacker than it is. After you have seen the facts just as they are, you will still find on your hands a stupendous task; but you will have, I trust, some reasons for believing that it is not a hopeless task.
It is true, then, as Dr. Haygood says, that there was a positive increase of illiterate voters in the South between 1870 and 1880. He makes this increase in round numbers 197,000; the figures I have found increase it a little to 208,000. But that is not a relative increase. The increase in the illiterate vote does not keep pace with the increase of the population. The population increased 30 per cent. in the ten years; the illiterate vote increased less than 20 per cent. In 1870, more than 40 per cent. of the voters of the South were illiterate; in 1880, only 32 per cent. were illiterate.
This is what I call very substantial gain. Under the circumstances I am inclined to call it a splendid gain, one that is quite worth singing the doxology over, one that should cause us all to thank God and take courage.
But there are other features of the case to my own mind still more significant. Dr. Haygood says in the same address to which I have referred: “In this downward progress the two races keep well together.” We have seen that it is not a downward, but an upward progress. And I think we shall see that instead of the two races keeping well together, one of them is falling a good ways behind. Which is it? “The increase of the illiterate white vote,” says Dr. Haygood, “was 93,279; of the illiterate negro vote, 94,392. The whites being in the majority, take the South as a whole, the increase of the illiterate vote is relatively greater among the Negroes.”
This is a great misconception. Dr. Haygood has no purpose whatever of misrepresenting the facts; we all know that. No man in the country is doing better work for the colored people than he is doing; no man deserves more honor; but he has misapprehended the facts in this statement; and I know that he will be glad to be corrected. It is true, then, that the actual increase of the illiterate white vote in the Southern States during the last decade was about the same as that of the illiterate Negro vote; 93,000 of the one, 94,000 of the other. But how was it in 1870? In that year there were in the Southern States 317,281 adult whites who were illiterate, and 820,022 adult Negroes. There were at that time considerably more than two and a half times as many Negro illiterates as white illiterates. Now, if the Negroes have added to their eight hundred thousand illiterates only about 94,000, while the whites have added to their three hundred thousand about 93,000, it seems to me that the relative increase is immensely greater among the whites than among the Negroes. In fact, the increase of the illiterate white vote, in the ten years, was more than twenty-eight per cent., while the increase of the illiterate Negro vote was only eleven and a half per cent.
Dr. Haygood gives the figures with respect to several of the States. “In Georgia,” he says, “the illiterate white voters in 1870 were 21,899; in 1880, 28,571; the illiterate Negro voters in Georgia, in 1870, were 100,551; in 1880, 116,516.” Let us see what these figures mean. In Georgia, in 1870, the whole number of males of voting age was 237,640; in 1880, it was 321,438. The increase of adult males was, therefore, about 31 per cent. But the increase in the whole number of illiterate voters was only about 18½ per cent. according to Dr. Haygood’s figures. The white illiterates, however, increased 30½ per cent. while the colored illiterates increased not quite 16 per cent.
Two other States in which we are deeply interested, are reported to us in Dr. Haygood’s figures, and, neglecting the numbers which he gives, I will give you the percentages, which he neglects. In Kentucky the number of male adults has increased 23 per cent. and the whole number of illiterate voters about 21½ per cent. But the per cent. of increase among the illiterate white voters is very nearly 23, almost keeping up with the increase of population, where the per cent. of increase among illiterate Negro voters is not quite fourteen.
In Tennessee the facts are still more striking. The increase in the whole number of males of voting age was, in the ten years, about 26 per cent., while the increase in the number of illiterate voters was only 13 per cent. The illiterate voters increased only half as fast as the voting population. Here, evidently, a very successful attack has been made upon the strongholds of illiteracy. But where have these victories been gained—among the whites or the Negroes? Almost wholly among the latter. The number of illiterate white voters increased during the ten years 24 percent., almost as fast as the population, while the illiterate Negro voters increased during the same period less than five per cent.
Taking these three States together, we find that the percentage of increase of males of voting age was 27; of illiterate voters, 18; of illiterate white voters, 25; of illiterate Negro voters, 12.
Now these figures completely overthrow the statement that the increase of illiteracy is relatively greater among the Negroes than among the whites. They show that the proportions are all the other way, tremendously the other way; the difference between the two races is startling. The whites are gaining a little in this battle with the powers of darkness; but it is very little; they are scarcely doing more than hold their own; but the Negroes are gaining splendidly; it is to them that the large increase in the percentage of intelligent voters is mainly due.
Now what does this mean? Of course it is due to several causes. The Negroes had had but about five years of opportunity when the census of 1870 was taken; in 1880 they had had fifteen years of opportunity. That a better chance has been offered them, and that they are taking the chance that has been offered them, these figures assure us. But they tell us something more, that, to us, is very significant. The gains of intelligence among the Negroes in all parts of the South have been much more rapid than those of the whites; but they have been more rapid in these three States than in most other parts of the South; and why? Why? Did you ever hear of Fisk, and Berea and Atlanta? The census tables have heard of them, if you have not.
It is to the hundreds of young people that go out every year from these colleges, and such as these, teaching in public and in private schools pupils of their own color, that this gain in the battle with illiteracy at the South is due. They are the children of the light, who are waging this victorious battle with the powers of darkness. There has been great improvement, of course, in the public schools of the South during this decade; but in this improvement the whites have shared as well as the blacks; the great reasons for the more rapid advancement of the blacks are, first, that they are more eager for instruction than the ignorant whites, and, secondly, that they are better supplied with teachers—missionaries of education, who not only do much to supply the demand for knowledge already existing, but who do still more to increase this demand.
We come back, now, from our brief excursion into this fruitful and fascinating realm of percentages, to confront again that large mass of illiteracy that lies athwart the path of this nation. Huge it is, but, thank God, it looks not so vast and unmanageable as once it seemed. It is growing; but the nation is growing faster; relatively it is decreasing. It is far too formidable yet to be let alone; so long as ignorance rules almost one-third of our rulers in all of these sixteen States, no man has any right to relax his vigilance or abate his energies. What these figures show is simply this, that work tells; that our money is not wasted; that our labor is not in vain in the Lord; that if we will only keep it up with our giving and our working, if we will only see to it that these same agencies that have done this grand work in the past ten years are fully equipped to carry it on with increasing vigor, we may hope to gain in the next ten years still more rapid and decisive victories. The word that comes to every friend of the American Missionary Association, to every benefactor in deed or in purpose of these noble schools, is the word that Grant sent to Sheridan after the battle of Five Forks: “Push things!” You’ve got ’em running, these legions of ignorance and darkness; up and after them; harry them on the flank, press them in the rear, till they plunge like the herd of devil-pestered hogs, into the Gulf of Mexico.
You have got the forces to do this work. All you want to do is to give them a better equipment. You want no new machinery; you only want more power; no new organizations, but reinforcements of those in the field.
The kinds of educational work that this Association is doing are exactly the kinds of work that must be done. The industrial training given in some of the schools is admirable; the normal training of teachers is work whose results are immediate and beneficent; the higher education, too, is abundantly justified. If there are any who have doubts on this last score, I am not one of them. There is nothing that these six millions of colored people need to-day more than they need thoroughly educated men of their own race to be their leaders. More than any other class in this country, they are in danger of being misled by petty demagogues and small philosophers. We cannot too soon furnish them with social and political and religious guides who have been trained by severe discipline to think clearly, to consider questions broadly and historically, to reason judicially and dispassionately, to chasten the exuberance and verbosity of their own people with the dignity and judgment that are the fruits of sound learning. Such examples of high character and broad culture scattered about here and there among the Negro people will do more to form their ideals and direct their progress than can be done in any other way. I tell you that the money spent in making first-class men in these colleges is as well invested as any other money that you spend. The only thing to be desired about such schools as Fisk and Atlanta is that their standards be made higher and more inflexible, year by year, and that their work be more and more thorough, so that the diploma shall mean in every case just as much as the diploma of Amherst or Williams or Bowdoin.
It is a Christian education that pupils are receiving in these schools of ours. Most of the pupils who go out from them to become pastors, teachers, lawyers, physicians, merchants, citizens, fathers and mothers are Christian men and women; and they become messengers of a pure Gospel, living epistles of Christ, wherever they go. Especially as teachers do they make their influence felt. We cannot Christianize the public school systems of the Southern States; but if we can Christianize the teachers, that is a much more effective service. And that is precisely what we are doing in all these Southern schools.
This Association has been promoting Christian education at the South in quite another fashion. Gently, without censure or denunciation, by the silent influence of Christly lives, it has been teaching the Southern people that caste is un-Christian. It is a great lesson; it is a lesson hard to learn; and we must not wonder at it: the social maxims and usages of centuries are not changed in a day. But it will be learned by and by; patience and fidelity and sweet reasonableness in those who teach it will have their reward in God’s good time. It only needs that we should quietly bear our testimony and wait; the leaven may be hidden now, but it is working; and the time will surely come, and as speedily as it ought to come, when from churches and from schools the color line will disappear. I do not think that the people who have commissioned and who support this Association in its work—the great Congregational communion, on which it mainly depends—can propose to themselves any better sort of work than that which this Association is doing, or can afford to carry on that work in any other way or by any other hands. It is true, as the figures I have quoted have shown, that the colored people have received most of the benefit of this work, and that the whites have profited by it but little. This is true of the educational work, and of the church work as well. But it is not because the schools and churches of this Association are not open to whites and blacks on equal terms. It is simply because they are open to whites and blacks on equal terms. This is the only reason why the whites do not generally avail themselves of these excellent advantages. It is because the basis on which these schools and churches rest is frankly and thoroughly Christian—because caste is not tolerated in them—that the white people of the South have held aloof from them. For the present, until their convictions and feelings on this subject shall have changed, the white people of the South will, generally, hold themselves aloof from any church or school that rests on this basis, no matter by whom it may be administered. Any society that is as frankly and thoroughly Christian as this society has always been, will have the same difficulty in reaching the whites that this society experiences.
It is possible that churches or schools might be established at the South, nominally open to both races, but really intended exclusively for the whites, into which some whites could be drawn. You might put it into the constitution that no distinctions of color were recognized in the church, and you might still keep saying: “Of course colored people are welcome here, if they want to come; but we think they will be happier and better off in churches of their own.” Probably the colored people would not accept this kind of welcome; and possibly some whites would be satisfied with this method of establishing the color line. It would be an effective method, no doubt. But is this the sort of thing that the people calling themselves Congregationalists want to do? For one I feel sure that it is not worth doing. I don’t believe that we can afford to propagate two kinds of Congregationalism down there, one of which is frankly and bravely Christian in its dealings with the caste of color, and the other of which is, to say the least, less frankly Christian, consenting, by its silence, to the maintenance of the color line. Such a policy seems to me something other than Christian, something less than Christian: and I, for my part, have no time and no money to spend in propagating a Congregationalism that is broader or narrower, or higher or lower, or tighter or looser than simple Christianity. When our zeal for the propagation of Congregationalism leads us to slur over the everlasting verities of Christ’s kingdom, it is leading in doubtful ways.
It has been said that this Association is handicapped by its record and its methods in the work of reaching the whites of the South. Perhaps it is. So was He handicapped in His work among the Pharisees, of whom it was said: “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” The burden it is bearing is the cross of Christ; nothing else. It has gone down into humiliation with its Master to succor and save these His brethren. Would it be better for the Association to fling aside this burden? Would it be wise for any other society going down into that field to work to refuse to take it up or to try to hide it from the sight of men?
The disability under which this Association labors is its glory. And I do not believe that it will prove to be a permanent impediment in its work. No; that cannot be. I believe in the victorious might of Christian principles. The heroic faith and patience of the men and women who have been toiling there so long among Christ’s little ones, identifying themselves with the lowly and giving their lives for them, neither striving nor crying against the scorn that has greeted them, reviled but reviling not again, must triumph in the end. It is the one power that is irresistible. The barriers of caste will go down before it, and the color line will no longer stain the threshold of the Christian Church.
So, then, I do not believe that we, as Congregationalists, need any other agency in the Southern field than the one that has wrought there so nobly in the years now past. I am sure that even the educational work of this Association would be obstructed by the entrance of any other missionary organization into this field. Because I love and honor the Home Missionary Society, I do not want to see it compromise itself or imperil the interests of Christ’s kingdom at the South by turning from its proper work, its urgent work, to try a doubtful experiment. And I trust this Association, in all love and kindness, but with all needful frankness, will express its wishes in this matter. Two little boys were astride of a hobby-horse, and the one who was riding ahead was being crowded out of the saddle, and was clinging with some difficulty to the neck of the wooden steed. Finally he ventured: “Jimmy, don’t you think if one of us should get off I could ride a little better?” I hope that the American Missionary Society will say, by her representatives here, to her honored sister, the American Home Missionary Society: “Don’t you think that if one of us should keep out of this Southern field, I could do my work in it a little better?” I am sure that she has earned the right to express this wish, and I have not the slightest fear that the wish will not be heeded.