THE SOUTH.
Rev. Dr. A.G. Haygood, the author of Our Brother in Black, and the general administrator of the John F. Slater fund, was in Macon a few days ago, visiting officially Lewis Normal Institute, which he pronounced an admirable school. The doctor made a thorough inspection of the school, and expressed himself as greatly pleased with its present management under Mrs. L.A. Shaw. He remarked that the improvement within the last two years is very noticeable in all departments, that the teaching is very thoroughly done and the industrial training systematically and efficiently carried on. Dr. Haygood preached, Sunday morning, at the Congregational Church to the edification of all who heard him.
The governor of Mississippi in his recent message commends our Institution at Tougaloo in the following generous terms:
"The information derived from the President and Board of Visitors of Tougaloo University is of the most satisfactory character. During the year, additional school and industrial buildings have been erected, thus making all the appointments of the Institution excellent and commodious. The University is indebted to a generous-hearted gentleman of New York, Stephen Ballard, Esq., for the funds necessary for these buildings. The labor of erecting them was performed by the students under the direction of the Superintendent of Industries, thus economizing cost of labor, and at the same time demonstrating the valuable training of the students. The timely and generous donation of Mr. Ballard serves to carry on under the same roof, blacksmithing, wagon-making, painting, tinning and carpentry.
"This University not only endeavors to encourage and conduct intelligently farm work of every description, but to teach and thoroughly instruct the boys in the several industries mentioned, as well as in the use of the steam-engine, saw, etc. The girls, in addition to the studies prescribed, are taught practical household duties in all their details. During the year Rev. G.S. Pope, who has been President of the University for a decade, and who labored faithfully to advance its interests, was transferred to another field of labor. His place is filled by Frank G. Woodworth, who assumes the Presidency of the Institution and who will earnestly strive to advance its interests and sustain its already excellent reputation. This University, by its successful management, commends itself to your favorable consideration."
The most important gathering of negroes that probably has ever occurred, was in Macon, Ga., a few weeks since. Five hundred leading Negro representatives convened to discuss and adopt "a thorough plan of State organization." A permanent organization was effected and named the "United Brotherhood of Georgia," the purpose of which is "to resist oppression, wrong and injustice." We note the following resolutions, which were passed by the convention:
Resolved, That we, in convention assembled, respectfully but earnestly demand of the powers that be, that the Negro be given what, and only what, he is entitled to.
Resolved further, That never, until we are in the fullest enjoyment of our rights at the ballot-box, will we cease to agitate and work for what justly belongs to us in the shape of suffrage.
Further resolved, That it shall be the policy of the colored race to vote so as to bring the greatest division to the white voters of this country, for in this we believe lies the boon of our desire.
The last resolution is not entirely plain to us, and we refrain from comment upon it, but the convention itself, the fact of leadership taking shape among the Negroes, and the forth-putting of their purposes, are very significant.
When the Glenn Bill was born, and when the Georgia House of Representatives stood sponsor for its baptism, we believed that the enemy of righteousness had made a mistake, and that this particular piece of artillery would kick. They who think to thwart the providences of God usually help them forward. Christianity has had many a help from its opposers.
Upon the incidental question of temperance, the sentiments of the convention were voiced by one of the speakers in these words: "The best thing for the Negro is industry, temperance, virtue, economy, union and courage. Get land, get money, get education; be sober and be virtuous. We have drunk enough whiskey since the war to build a railroad from Atlanta to Savannah. The Negro race cannot be great except as individuals rise towards greatness." They are rising. A little more yeast, good friends.
The following illustrations of some features of our work are not sent forth for the sake of a smile, but for the thought which will be under the smile. The text of the thought, which may be expanded at pleasure, will be found in an ordinance of the United States, dated 1787, viz.: "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged."
ENGLISH AS SHE IS "NOT" TAUGHT IN OUR SCHOOLS.
CONTINUED FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF A MISSIONARY TEACHER.
Go to the great physicianer.
I use consecrated lye.
She is a crippler.
I seldomly hear that.
O Lord, give us good thinking facticals.
The meeting will be in the basin of the church.
O Lord, throw overboard all the load we'se totin, and the sins which upset us.
Jog them in remembrance of their vows.
I want her to resist me with the ironing.
I want all you people to adhere to the bell.
There will be no respectable people in heaven. (God is no respecter of persons.)
I was much disencouraged.
It was said at the startment of this meeting.
I take care of three head of children.
We have passed through many dark scenes and unseens.
May we have the eye of an eagle to see sin afar off and shun it.
I have made inquiration at several places.
A letter written jointly to represent the opinions of several persons, thus expresses itself to us: "We are happy to write this letter to you in a conglomerate manner."
THE EDUCATIONAL WORK OF THE A.M.A.
BY REV. FORREST F. EMERSON.
The report of the Executive Committee on educational work in the South, confirms the conviction which must have impressed itself on many minds, that the Association is a divinely-appointed agency for carrying forward a work delegated to us as a nation. God calls nations as he calls men, and consecrates them to a special work. Rome had a call, and fulfilled it, under the Divine Providence, and that call was to work out the idea, and demonstrate the necessity, of government, and to cultivate in the minds of men everywhere regard for the authority of law; Greece had her mission, and it was to teach the value of individual culture, both physical and intellectual; the people of Israel had their call to teach the doctrine of God, of his moral government, and of the eternal nature of moral law; and this Christian nation has its divine call, and that call arises from the peculiar relation which it sustains to the other races and nations of the earth.
For a long time it seemed as if this land was to be given exclusively to the English race. The Dutch who settled here were assimilated and absorbed; the Spaniards and Portuguese found a congenial clime in South America; the French, by the progress of events, were prevented from gaining a foothold in New England, and with the sale of so-called "Louisiana"—an immense area extending from the Gulf to British America,—France relinquished her last claim to ownership of any part of our domain. The period of history, from the landing at Jamestown and Plymouth to the war of 1812, and later, was the unfolding of events which pointed to the supremacy of the English in North America. Our religion was Protestant and English; our literature took root in English forms of thought; our free institutions were the outcome of principles which had been, and now are, influential in English politics; our common law was English, our traditions of liberty were English, and that union of liberty and law which makes us strong, we inherited from our English fathers. So that in 1820, two hundred years after the arrival of the Mayflower, we were essentially an English nation; old England broken away from old forms and precedents, the natural expansion of England under new forms of government and society.
Now it would have been pleasant, to human ways of thinking, if we could have remained always thus homogeneous. But God had a work for us to do. We were not left to sit down amidst the vast resources which the land affords for material prosperity, and just watch and foster our own growing and expanding life, but God gave us four problems to solve. These four problems came to us from the four quarters of the globe, the Indian of America on the North, the Chinaman of Asia on the West, the descendant of Africa on the South, and the emigrant of Europe on the East, who poured, in great masses, through our Eastern gates, the German unbeliever, the Irish Catholic, the Mormon convert, and representatives of every race of Europe.
The English race, which still represents the heart and brain of the nation, confronts these four problems. The problem on the North and South we brought on ourselves, as results on the one hand of our neglect and injustice, and on the other of our cupidity and cruelty. The troubles that come to us through our Eastern and Western ports, are drawn to us by the attractive influence of our free institutions and our material prosperity.
What are we to do with these alien elements? Do as Rome did. When Rome heard of a hostile nation on her borders, she conquered it, attached it to the Empire, and made it a new pillar of imperial power. So are we to conquer every element of darkness and attach it to the kingdom of light, making it an element of strength in our American civilization and our American Christianity. The difference in the method is the difference between paganism and Christianity, for while Rome conquered with a sword of steel, we conquer with the sword of the Spirit. We conquer by giving gifts unto men, the four gifts of law, land, letters and religion. We have given law to the African and the European with citizenship and the ballot; we have given land to the African and the European, and, thanks to Christian statesmanship, we will soon give it to the Indian in severalty; and to all will we give letters and religion.
It is the peculiar glory of this Association that it deals more directly than any other agency with the gravest and most urgent of these problems, the education of the colored race, so that while the Government gives the Negro citizenship, and permits him to own land, this society undertakes the work of fitting him for the ownership of land and for the responsibility of citizenship. And it is doing this in the genuine way, through the gospel of Christ, and education as the handmaid and helper of the gospel—that helper without which Christianity would be falsely conceived, and erroneously applied, and without which a failure would result in the ethical training of the colored race. The Association, by its educational work, is thus fulfilling the divine purpose in the call made to us as a Christian nation.
The report of the committee also suggests the heroic element in our work. It brings to mind the obstacles and difficulties which we are called upon to overcome. The illiteracy of the colored people is a fact immense in extent and dark in its prophetic significance. Your hearts were rejoiced, I know, by the statements of the changes going on in the education of the colored children in several States through free schools. The need of this movement will be appreciated when we remember the figures which bring before us the present illiterate condition of the people. I present the outline of a report made in January, 1885, based on reports of Albion Tourgee, and on articles in the North American Review. According to that report, seventy-three per cent. of the colored population of the South cannot read and write. In the eight Gulf and Atlantic States, seventy-eight per cent. are in the same condition. Over two millions of colored people in these eight States cannot read and write. But this is not all. We must take into account the rapid increase of the negroes. In three States of the South they already outnumber the whites. In eight States, they are about one-half the population. In all the Southern States they increase faster than the white population. From 1870 to 1880, in the eight States mentioned above, they increased thirty-four per cent., the whites only twenty-seven per cent. The immigration of foreign-born whites will not change the proportionate difference of increase, as the foreign-born white population has decreased 30,000 since the war, and the immigration of northern-born whites amounts to only a fraction of one per cent. According to the present rate of increase, the colored race in one hundred years from now will have a population many millions in excess of the whites, since, while it will take thirty-five years for the white race to double its numbers, the blacks will do so every twenty years. In less than twenty-five years from this date, the colored race in the South will outnumber the whites in nearly all the States, and then the world will witness a conflict of races, the aspiration of the negro against the caste-prejudice of the white, the end and result of which no man can foresee.
These facts all point to the greatness of the work undertaken by this Association. Christian education is the only education for a race having before it such a future. The illiteracy which we deplore must be overcome, but something more than that; that change must be provided for, when the Negro in large numbers will pass from the quiet and peaceful pursuits of agriculture to be massed together in mine and factory and the work of the mechanic arts, but something more than that; intelligence for the burden of citizenship must be given, but something more than that; incentives to the accumulation of property and the building of homes for themselves and their families must be encouraged, but something more than that must be done. If we were simply patriots, we would educate these people; if we were only philanthropists, or wise statesmen, or political economists, we would still feel bound to educate them. But we are more than these, we are Christians, and so there is one other thing we must do besides these I have mentioned, something which includes all these and so is greater than they all—and that thing is to make them Christian. Education is a part of the means to be used, and not the total end and aim.
For what is education? Not the mere accumulation of knowledge, nor the mere training of the powers of the mind, but the building of manhood. You have tempered your Damascus blade, but who is going to hold it—the patriot, or the rebel? You have your educated man with his printing press, but what is he going to print—the Police Gazette or the Gospel of St. John? You have built your college and found your young man, and trained him up to the very highest point of mental excellence and power, but what is he going to do with his mind? The mind is only an instrument under the direction of the man. The great thing is the ethical man who is going to use this mind. If there is any thing the American people need to learn, it is that there is one thing greater than talent, and that is character—the love and regard for righteousness.
It is here that this Association does its work in the genuine way, regarding education as necessary for the colored race and for all races, not as an end in itself, but as an instrument in the hands of a man ethically and Christianly trained. The gospel must go with the school, so that we may train not only the hand and the brain, but also the conscience and the heart. When I think of the future of the Negro race in America, of the possibilities of that race already being revealed, of the immense political significance of its position to-day, of the certain increase of its numbers, of the inevitable collision of races by and by, unless there be a change in the spirit of the whites, I feel that no education is to be trusted but Christian education, an education based on the gospel of Christ.
And to what purpose can any of us, with better hope of success, devote our time, our money, our labor? Let us have more money for this work. I would say no word to depreciate foreign missions, but is not this after all the work of foreign missions? How will you influence the future of China, or of Japan, or of Africa, or of Europe, in more direct, sympathetic, permanent ways, than by giving the gospel, and the education that goes with the gospel, to those at our very doors from all these lands, who shall carry back, and send back, to their own native countries the same gospel they have learned in this?
TO THE MEMORY OF DR. POWELL.
BY A PASTOR IN THE SOUTH.
One night, entranced, I sat spell-bound,
And listened in my place,
And made a solemn vow to be
A hero for my race.
He plead as but a few can plead.
With eloquence and might,
He plead for a humanity,
The Freedmen and the right.
His soul and true nobility
Went out in every word,
And strongly moved for better things
Was everyone that heard.
Too soon has death made good his claim
On him who moved us so;
Too great and white the harvest yet,
To spare him here below.
O! "why this waste?"—forgive me, Lord,
I would not Judas be;
Yet who will plead as he has plead,
For Freedmen and for me?
Perhaps, ah, yes! I know he will—
This sleeping Prince of Thine,
In many a multitude be heard,
Yet plead for right and mine.