If one would again take the trip which I made in the summer of 1893, he would find that two-thirds of the land lying between Snow Hill and Carlowville, a distance of seven miles, is now owned and controlled entirely by Negroes. In Carlowville, instead of the old one-room-cabin church, there is a beautiful church with glass windows. An acre of land has been bought, and a neat and comfortable schoolhouse with glass windows has been erected, and a graduate of my school is the teacher. Many families in that section are now owning homes. A great revolution is also taking place in Tilden. John Thomas, one of our graduates, Class of '01, has gone into this place, induced the people to buy thirty acres of land, on which they have erected a splendid building having two rooms, and the school is being conducted seven months in the year. Many farmers in this section are now owning homes, some of them owning as much as 400 acres of land. This improvement is steadily going on in all sections where the influence of our school has reached.
Thus it will be seen that the work in the class-room is only a small part of what we are trying to do for the uplift of the Negro people in the Black Belt.
In order that this good work may be pushed more rapidly, it is necessary that we give some time to this particular movement. This can only be done by our having here a strong and healthy institution with an endowment sufficiently large to relieve us of our great financial burden. An adequate endowment would meet this need. While we are anxious to raise an endowment fund, our burden could be partially relieved by the school securing possession of a large plantation in the neighborhood which is now, and has been for three years, offered to us. This plantation contains between three thousand and four thousand acres of land, and can be bought for $30,000, and would afford us unbounded opportunity for the extension of the agricultural features of our work, which would enable us to raise more, if not all, of our food supplies.
I have tried as simply as possible in this article to state the real condition of the people in the Black Belt section of this State, and to tell how we are trying to cope with these conditions. Our constant feeling is that there is so much to be done, and that so little has been accomplished.
In closing: The inspiration derived at Tuskegee; the instruction given in shop, and field, and class-room; the guiding hand of its illustrious Principal—all of these have had their impress upon me and have urged me to dedicate myself unreservedly to these people, among whom I was reared, among whom I shall continue to labor, among whom I shall at the last be buried.
XI
A DAIRYMAN'S STORY
By Lewis A. Smith
In any attempt to write a story of my life and work, the "work" feature must predominate.