Several of the schools we visited require just a little help to make them very prosperous and useful. Those at Lawrenceville, Va., and Kittrell, N. C., managed by Hampton graduates, are especially to be commended and should be strengthened. A good nursing school might be established at Mr. Joyner’s school at Columbia, S. C., where they have a little hospital, closed for want of means. Five hundred dollars given to Claflin would enable it to do the same work. Especially would we urge assistance to the two rural schools in the black belt of Alabama, where Hampton and Tuskegee graduates are bravely toiling and truly civilizing the people around them.
As we have said, we saw the negroes at their best in the institutions we visited, and among those graduates who were pursuing their avocations. These served to show the possibilities of the race, their aptitude for acquiring knowledge and amassing property. But the great mass still lies under the burden of poverty and ignorance—and it is this mass that must be lifted up, before we can hope for any permanent elevation of the race,—and that must be done by work in the cabins and among the women. It is impossible to look for a moral community, where the women have never been taught by example and precept that Christian virtue which raises the human being above the animal.
It is perhaps unwise at this time to give full expression to our views regarding the moral condition of the negro women. It is sufficient to say that the reports that had been made to us by others, before we undertook our investigations, were fully confirmed, and we hope that in the near future the women of the South will become so interested and roused to the importance of the subject that they may be inclined to cooperate with the women of the North in some plan for the elevation of these descendants of their former servants. Meanwhile, we would make the following suggestions to the Trustees of the Slater Fund in regard to the special object of our mission—the elevation of the women:
The elevation should commence at the bottom. We would propose to employ pious, intelligent women, white or colored, to travel in the rural districts of say Virginia and Alabama, and to start Mothers’ meetings, where the average ignorant woman, who cannot now hope to receive an education, may at least be taught the way to keep a decent home and to elevate the moral standard of her humble life. Through her to inspire her husband and children with the same aspirations, so that if there be no public school in their vicinity they may both learn to desire and seek to obtain one started by the State. The State should then be districted, and two or three central schools in each district should be so aided as to give courses of lessons in sewing, cooking, and “First Aid to Injured.”
These branches of instruction, so vital to woman, might be taught by teachers of each branch (paid by the Slater Trust) passing from school to school, giving a course of lessons at each, and leaving the pupils to pursue the study until the teachers return to examine them. These examinations would enable the teacher to determine the capacity of the girls and their fitness to be sent to the higher schools, where many now go when unfitted to enter and occupy places which should be filled by girls of superior ability. By this process of selection, the most intelligent and ambitious could enter Hampton, Tuskegee, Spelman, etc., while those of less ability will have learned the decencies of life, the elements of school education, and those feminine occupations which will fit them to be good wives and mothers.
By giving them courses in “First Aid,” they will learn how to act in sudden emergencies, the importance of cleanliness and good air, and the general principles of caring for their sick and their children.
The kind of work we propose to do cannot be done by the State at present. It is personal influence that is required; it is the highest missionary spirit which can alone inspire it. No board of education appointed by any Government or State authority can choose such agents. Each woman who undertakes it, must go for the love of the work, and must be selected by those who know its needs. The money so liberally expended by the North would never have produced the results we have seen, if it had been given to the State; it is because it has passed through the hands of devoted Christian men and women who by precept and example have taught the beauty of honor, truthfulness and purity of life, that the speech was made possible at Atlanta, which elicited the applause and drew tears from the thousands who listened to it.
In conclusion, we would respectfully urge the appropriation by the Slater Trust of a few thousand dollars to be expended for a few years as an experiment in the manner we have suggested. If the work is carefully supervised, we are convinced that it will be of incalculable value in enlarging the opportunities for self-support and usefulness among the rising generation of colored girls, and, through them, influence for good thousands of the colored race.
Respectfully submitted,
Elizabeth C. Hobson,
Charlotte Everett Hopkins.