WOMAN’S WORK FOR WOMAN.
Specific missionary work by devoted women, among the colored women and girls in the South, is one of the many interesting departments of our enterprise. “Woman’s work for woman” has not been neglected, although it has not been made prominent before the public by the Association. It is enough to say that more than three-fourths of our missionaries have been women, and the majority of our church members and pupils, females, to make it evident that much work of this kind must have been done; still it has not been singled out and magnified as the work to which, as an association, we had given ourselves. It has all along been a matter of deep regret that we could not make more of this branch of our work. We have noted the inexpressibly sad condition of the colored woman in the South—no future before her, public opinion giving her no recognized standing of respectability, dooming her to an evil reputation, whether in character she was deserving it or not, and this, too, in a Christian country—these things we have noted and felt; but our receipts were all swallowed up in the current demands of our general work. We are glad to be permitted to record that a step has recently been taken, promising relief in this direction. A lady in one of the Western States, who has been for years known as an indefatigable worker for Christian missions, has had the elevation and salvation of the colored women of our country on her heart and mind for years. She has made herself thoroughly acquainted with the fact that if anything is done, it must be in addition to what the ordinary receipts of the American Missionary Association would warrant. Self-moved, she said to our Executive Committee a few months ago, “If you will commission a competent and devoted woman missionary and assign her to one of your mission stations, to give herself entirely to the work of visiting the homes of the colored women, for the purpose of saving them by the use of every method her enlightened judgment may suggest as wise, I will become personally responsible for her support, and will pledge that what I do shall not in any way interfere with the general receipts of the Association.” The Executive Committee thankfully accepted the proposition. A lady missionary was appointed and sent to Memphis, Tenn., in November. She entered at once upon the field, and the beginnings of her work are full of promise, and already assure us of the usefulness of her mission.
We hear from Memphis the week after her arrival of the favorable impression made, and of the rejoicing on the part of our teachers that there is help for them in the homes of their pupils and in mothers’ meetings, etc. One teacher says, “I hope to visit with her a little, especially to take her to the homes of our girls.” Another writes, “We regard her being sent here as a special Providence in our favor. I think there is no place where she could do more.”
We trust that many such workers may be sent by the Christian women of the North to these their needy sisters in the South.
The Advance mentions the Church Sewing Circle as the medium, and the spring as the most convenient time, to carry out the following suggestion. In this way, it says, there need be no friction between what is done for the A. M. A. and other missionary work:
“There was a time, directly following the war, when the American Missionary Association was wonderfully aided in its work by the special efforts of the philanthropic women. There has been nothing finer done in the way of immediately urgent but far-reaching influence, by the Christian women of America, either before or since. Every one rejoices in the helpfulness of the Woman’s Boards, creating and fostering as they do a mighty interest on behalf of their benighted sisters in heathen lands, and we will not believe the Christian women in our American churches incapable of again inaugurating some similar work, equally worthy of them, toward meeting the inexpressibly urgent moral necessities of their sadly darkened and depressed sisters nearer home.”