LE MOYNE INSTITUTE, MEMPHIS, TENN.
BY PROF. A. J. STEELE, A.M., PRINCIPAL.
A graduating class of thirteen, averaging over twenty years of age, recording an average attendance at Le Moyne Institute of six and a half years per member, before an audience of three thousand people on the evening of June 2d, attested the interest felt in the school and the work it has done in West Tennessee.
A varied program of essays, orations, recitations and personations, with musical selections of choruses from composers of high rank, all occupying fully two and a half solid hours—these made the crowning event of the twenty-seven years' work of Le Moyne Normal Institute.
The proud and eager interest of the masses of the colored people in those of their young men and women who persevere in the face of great difficulties and many discouragements to complete a course of study, presents a very attractive and hopeful indication to a student of the rising race.
One who has carefully and for years noted the position and influence of these graduates among their own people, the stand they generally take for order and system, and the force and intelligence they naturally bring to bear on the many questions of social and moral well-being constantly arising to be dealt with by the masses of their people—one who has noted the complex working of the moral and intellectual forces largely represented by the graduates of such schools, will not wonder at the interest manifested by all classes in the conferring even of a Normal School Diploma.
The year's work has been one of exceptional earnestness and value. A total enrollment of 750 in all grades, places the attendance for the year at the extreme high-water mark, and the extensive use students are coming more and more to make of the valuable library and other auxiliary appliances and helps of the school, attests a growth in breadth of view and of scholarship which is very hopeful and encouraging.
The religious work and tone of the school have, as always, been among the prominent and foremost forces, dominating and directing every other thought and resulting in a steady growth of character among the pupils of all grades and in the conscious and open choice of a goodly number of pupils of the life of faith; among others this choice was made, late in the term by a student of the senior class, the last one not a professing Christian.
Nearly every young man in the school and many of the young women are working their way through the course by serving, usually in white families, mornings and evenings, and so, while sustaining themselves in school, incidentally giving a very effective object lesson to many who have professed great doubt as to the value of education for the colored people.
Few things have done more in Memphis than this sort of association to convince those who would not listen to any other sort of argument, that the "old time negro servant" is not so altogether lovely and desirable under the new conditions, even as a servant, as he is often rated by those who think regretfully of the ministrations of slave labor under the old conditions.
In a survey of the whole field of labor among the colored people, while there are very many disheartening conditions and situations, especially to one who is looking for the worst, yet a fair application of the rule of science known as the survival of the fittest, must inevitably and surely work out the conclusion that these efforts of school and of church for the upbuilding and evolution of a race are to have their final reward in the accomplishment of the great work, whereunto in the manifest providence of God they have been called.
By this unwavering confidence has the American Missionary Association, with its teachers and missionaries, been sustained through all these years of perplexing and difficult labors. In this faith thousands of young colored men and women have stepped into the front line of the advance movement of a race, and by this hope all that is promising in the race looks out and forward to the rising dawn of equal opportunity which American fairness, not to say civilization and Christianity, is certain finally to concede.