Knoxville stands for the most thorough training possible in an intellectual way, and at the same time provides for the most helpful industrial training. It is in hearty sympathy with all efforts to teach the trades to the colored people, and is maintaining a thorough industrial department for that purpose. At the same time the literary standard is not lowered one whit, but is being constantly elevated. The courses of study offered are classical, scientific, theological, normal and common school. The industrial department offers training in agriculture, carpentering, electrical work, printing, sewing and housework.
The college occupies a commanding site on one of the hills made historic by the siege of Knoxville during the Civil War. The buildings consist of a recitation hall, McCulloch Hall (boys' dormitory), Elnathan Hall (girls' dormitory), boys' home, girls' home, mechanical building, heating plant, president's cottage and barn. Its property is valued at $110,000.
The work the college is doing is best seen in the lives of those who have gone out from it. The profession of teaching claims the larger number; but these, for the most part, do not confine their efforts to one profession, but teach, both by example and precept, some manual art—farming, sewing, printing, or some other useful occupation.
NORFOLK MISSION COLLEGE.
Located at Norfolk, Virginia, is under the management of the United Presbyterian Church. Rev. Wm. M'Kirahan, is Principal at this time, and has under him an able body of teachers. The teachers employed are both white and colored.
The wisdom of the Board of Freedmen's Missions of the United Presbyterian Church in the location of one of its Schools in Norfolk is easy of vindication. In behalf of the Mission College appeal may confidently be made both to its supporters in the North and its patrons in the South. Nearly ten thousand colored children of school age have their homes within a radius of four miles of its walls. Two-thirds of these are not in any school.
A good Normal course is given there, and an Industrial training is given in sewing, garment-making and fancy work for girls.
Boys are taught the trade of printing. That department gives employment to 28 pupils for a short time each day. The training given here includes the application of the rules of grammar and rhetoric as well as instruction in composition and press-work. Several of the boys who spent some time in this department are now employed as compositors on one of the city papers.
The graduates of the Mission College number one hundred and thirty-four. Nearly all are usefully employed. More than half are teachers. A good number are in colleges and professional schools receiving further preparation for life's work.
THYNE INSTITUTE.