It may seem to persons not informed incredible, but it is no less a fact that where racial prejudice runs highest in the South and the demarcation between the races is most distinct along social lines, there the Negro is most prosperous, and, strange to say, advances most rapidly in material wealth. Self-help, self-dependence, faith in self, seem to spur to success as nothing else does. The drug store is the creature of Anglo-Saxon prejudice in denying Negroes accommodations at the soda-water fountains run by white men. In a score of channels the Negro is pushed on to success by Anglo-Saxon discrimination. What seems a curse is in reality a blessing to the race. Anglo-Saxon prejudice forces the Negro to take advantage of his great opportunity to get rich.
TOPIC XXII.
WHAT IS THE NEGRO TEACHER DOING IN THE MATTER OF UPLIFTING HIS RACE?
BY PROF. A. ST. GEORGE RICHARDSON.
PROF. ARTHUR ST. GEORGE RICHARDSON.
Far out in mid-Atlantic ocean about 700 miles east of New York lies the group of sunny isles known as the Bermudas. On one of these beautiful coral formations called St. Georges was born, July 5, 1863, the subject of this writing. Arthur was sent to Canada in 1878 to attend the public schools of St. Johns, N. B. Being an apt pupil he soon finished the curriculum of studies of the grammar schools and in 1880 entered the high school from which in three years' time he was graduated.
Not considering his education complete at this point, Arthur matriculated at the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton, in the fall of the same year, being the first and only colored young man to enter this institution of higher learning. As in the high school so now in college young Arthur distinguished himself among his classmates by winning a scholarship and at times leading his class in Greek. He was graduated from the university with honors in classics, June, 1886.
He was then elected principal of the Wilberforce Collegiate Institute at Chatham, Ont., where he served one year, increasing the attendance, and greatly improving the work of the school. The following year, 1887, he returned to his native home and visited his parents from whom he had been separated nine years. The next year after his return to Canada he was invited by Bishop W. J. Gaines to come to Georgia and assume the principalship of Morris Brown College in Atlanta. After much hesitancy, Mr. Richardson accepted the invitation and took charge of Morris Brown College when it was a school of small proportions and modest pretensions. Here Professor Richardson served ten successive years, each year adding something to the fame and increasing popularity of the school.
In 1898 he was offered the Presidency of Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Fla., by Bishop W. J. Gaines, who felt that the educational work in Florida then needed just such a person as Professor Richardson had proven himself to be in Georgia. Resigning his position in Atlanta he came to Florida and at once set to work to restore Edward Waters College to the confidence of the people. In a year's time the school was again assuming the flourishing condition that it once had.
The great fire of Jacksonville, May 3, 1901, caused him to lose all his possessions in the destruction of the college buildings, nevertheless he has held on unflinchingly to the work and at great sacrifice and loss has kept the school together, and is now serving his fourth year at the head of this institution.
An examination into the earliest records of history will reveal a fact that is not observant to the casual reader—that man, as an individual, has ever been groping in darkness, seeking hither and thither to find a ray of light that would safely guide him and lead him through the mystic vale of doubt and uncertainty—be a "light to his pathway, a lantern to his feet."
To this end he has lent all his energies and directed all his forces. Long and tedious have been the ways and the journeys, yet onward and upward has he continued to travel, through storm and tempest, amid trials and vexations, until finally, after many centuries of progressive endeavor and honorable achievements, he has reached the loftiest pinnacle of fame, and there, on its rugged summit, has inscribed in letters of gold the result of his many conquests in literature, science and art, in religion, philosophy and commerce.