Tougaloo University
Tougaloo University, established in 1869, located at Tougaloo, Miss., on the Illinois Central Railroad, is one of the chartered schools of the American Missionary Association. Its enrollment is now over four hundred, with seventeen teachers. Accessible from all parts of Mississippi and adjacent States, no school of the American Missionary Association is better located for effective work among the Negroes. In the four nearest counties, the colored population which was, in 1880, a little over 87,000, is now probably more than 100,000, none of it more than thirty-five miles from Tougaloo. Within a radius of seventy-five miles there are not far from 450,000 Negroes. By the last census, Mississippi's colored population was 650,291. The lowest estimate of the present number is 800,000. At least seventy per cent. of this population is illiterate. Tougaloo is thus in the very midst of America's Africa. Just at hand, also, is the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, into which Negroes are pouring from other States. Here they are gaining homes and establishing communities. Their numbers are expected continually to increase. It will probably be as prosperous and influential a Negro section as any in the land. Tougaloo is the nearest school of high grade to this Delta region. From lower Arkansas, central and upper Louisiana, Tougaloo is drawing increasing numbers of pupils each year. With such a location the only limit to the growth of Tougaloo in numbers and influence will be that set by the means which Christian beneficence provides for its support. Tougaloo aims to give a thoroughly practical [pg 156] education to colored youth of both sexes. A colored minister well expressed it when he said: "It is the aim of the teachers of Tougaloo to enable the Negro to have the grace of God in his heart, knowledge in his head, and money in his pocket."
Is there not in this work a rare opportunity for an investment that will return an ever increasing rate of interest? Enlightened patriotism, philanthropy, Christianity, all urge the prompt and generous support of such a work as this.—Tougaloo University Reporter.
Rev. Eli Tapley, pastor of four of our churches in Mississippi, died March 2, in Lowndes County. He was born in the same County and State in 1839. When he was eight years old, his parents moved to Alabama. At seventeen years of age he was converted, and immediately entered with zeal upon the active duties of a Christian life. Uniting with the Methodist church, he was soon appointed class leader and Sunday-school teacher. Afterwards as exhorter and licensed minister he labored without salary, as he had opportunity, both among white and colored people. In 1869, he removed to Lowndes County, Miss., united with the Congregational Church there and was ordained to preach, and for many years he continued his work under the Christian Commission for Free Missions, of Wheaton, Ill. He was often the subject of great persecution, because he labored among the colored people and refused to take any part in the Civil War. In 1881, he began labors under the American Missionary Association, which he continued until his death, filling the pastorates of Salem, Piney Grove, New Ruhamah and Pleasant Ridge Churches in Mississippi. He was an earnest and true man. One of his latest rapturous exclamations, with face beaming with smiles as if in full view of the Celestial City, was, "Heaven through Christ."