STUDENT'S LETTER.
Talladega College, Talladega, Ala., April, 1885.
It is wonderful to notice how many and what interesting changes may take place during the few years of one's life. The first eleven years of my life I spent as a slave, but I have lived to see these glorious days of freedom. I was born upon my master's plantation in Monroe County, Ala., where I lived till 1865, when I was set at liberty with the rest of my unfortunate brethren.
While living upon that plantation I saw many of the horrors of slavery with my own eyes. One of the mean and degrading things I remember was the way the slaves had to live, crowded together in one house. There were three or four different families, consisting of twelve or fifteen persons, all living in the same room. There was only one house for colored people, and it had only one room.
Although my master did not have so many slaves and was not so mean as some other slave-holders about him, still, the treatment which his slaves received was shockingly cruel. I remember very distinctly the paddling block, the paddle, and the great whip used upon that place. There comes very vividly before my mind the whipping of a hired man. I know just how every rag of clothes was taken off, and how he was tied down in the front yard between the gate and the house, so that he could not move hand or foot, and how the master would whip him a while and walk about and smoke his pipe a while, as the poor hired slave lay upon the ground and cried for mercy, but there was none to help him.
Whenever my thoughts go back to those dark days, I recollect the time when my own brother ran away because he was not willing to take the whipping which the master wanted to give him late one afternoon. I think of how the bloodhounds came, and how they chased him, while mother, brothers, and fellow-slaves stood trembling, and how glad all were when we learned that the dogs could not catch him.
If I could forget all other heart-rending scenes of those dark days, I could not erase from my memory the cruel treatment which I saw my own mother receive. Though I was small, I think of how I used to see her work hard, and how she was scolded and cursed as she was driven about like a dog. I saw her laid upon that paddling-block, and I heard her distressing cries, but, like the rest of her children, I could do nothing.
I love to contrast my present condition with what it was a few years ago, and as I do so I do not forget the A. M. A., whose workers found me in the lowest depths of ignorance and helped me up. When liberated, soon after the surrender, I could not read a word and did not know a letter. I do not remember that I had ever seen the inside of a book of any kind. It was in 1867 that I learnt the alphabet upon the plantation by the light of pine knots. During the years 1868 and 1869 I was a rag-picker in the streets of Mobile. God has led me on, and now I am a student in Talladega College, and expect soon to have finished a course of study which will enable me to go forth to lead men to Christ and to teach them better methods of living. I speak of this contrast not boastfully, but humbly and with deep gratitude to God, who took me from the woes and degradation of slavery and has given me a double freedom. I am so glad for the schools the A. M. A. has in the South; I am so glad for what they have done for me. Through one of these schools I was led to Christ. Soon after that I felt called to the ministry; and in Talladega College I am permitted to finish a course of study, and to some degree equip myself for the work of life. All praise to an organization that seeks for poor, ignorant and sinful men, leads them to Christ, instructs them, and then sends them out to bless the world.
A Student.