SPELMAN SEMINARY.
The history of Spelman Seminary reads like a romance. Beginning in 1881, in the gloomy basement of the Friendship Baptist Church, Atlanta, Ga., a church owned by the colored people, without any of the accessories needed for successful school work, with but two teachers, Miss S. B. Packard and Miss Harriet E. Giles, and with less than a dozen pupils, it has grown to be the largest and best equipped school for the training of colored girls in the United States.
The institution has a magnificent location, and all of the buildings are specially suited to its needs. Spelman has a large and able faculty of earnest, devoted teachers, an attendance of pupils numbered by the hundreds, a constituency of friends and patrons rapidly extending in numbers and interest, and has made for itself a large place in the educational forces of the South, and established a reputation of a very high order.
The question of the education of the colored people as a preparation for citizenship, just after the war, demanded careful thought and prompt treatment, and among the noble women who ventured into the South, fully equipped to do the service they felt was needed, were Miss S. B. Packard and Miss H. E. Giles. The Southern white people could not reasonably be expected to throw to the winds all their cherished traditions and preconceptions simply because they had acknowledged defeat at the hands of the Northern people. They could not even be expected to at once admit their former slaves into political fellowship, recognizing them as equals in all the rights of citizenship; nor could they be expected to provide schools for the education of these people. Out of a consideration of these facts, Northern people, moved by noble and unselfish impulses, made their way to the South and established these great institutions for the education of colored people.
Both Miss Packard and Miss Giles had made for themselves a reputation before moving from their homes in New England to Atlanta. They were identified with the Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society and had indicated their zeal for the promotion of the Society's interest in the most practical manner. The work done at Spelman is a practical Christian work, and the young ladies who graduate from that institution are the very best specimens of cultured and refined womanhood. This school is modeled after those of like grade established for white people. This should be the case with all Southern schools. There are required the same qualifications in the teachers, the same text-books, the same course of study, the same kinds of discipline that are found in similar institutions. There seems to be no point in the equipment or general management of these institutions where they can diverge safely from those which the history of education has shown to be most desirable and best adapted to their purpose. The grounds, buildings, furniture, libraries, text-books, apparatus, endowments of a Negro school in Georgia, should not differ in any respect from the equipment of a similar institution for white pupils in Massachusetts.
Spelman Seminary is a power for good, and since the death of Miss S. B. Packard is managed by Miss H. E. Giles, principal, and Miss L. H. Upton, associate principal.
ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY.
Roger Williams University was founded in 1863 by Rev. D. W. Phillips, D. D., who was for many years its president. Its present president is the Rev. P. B. Guernsey, A. M. The total enrolment for 1900 was 222—122 young men and 100 young women. The school is beautifully situated in the suburbs of the city of Nashville, in the State of Tennessee.
Nashville has become the chief centre of education in the South, both for the white and colored people. No other city south of the Ohio offers so many advantages as the seat of an institution for higher learning. The University grounds lie close to the city limits, on the Hillsboro' turnpike, just beyond the Vanderbilt University. The location is high and airy, and commands an unsurpassed prospect of the city and surrounding country.