Rev. H. P. DeForrest.
Rev. G. S. Pope, of Tougaloo, Miss., spoke upon the topic.
The report of the committee on the “Normal Work of the Association” was presented by Rev. W. W. Adams, D. D., as follows:
Your Committee congratulate the Association on the work of the year, as represented in the Report. It is but seventeen years since the first school for Freedmen was opened, and but twelve years since the first Normal school was started. Last year 7,229 pupils were under instruction in the schools of this Association, of whom 1,459 were in Normal schools. The increase in the number of pupils of all grades last year, over the number of the year before, was 1,789; in Normal schools the increase was 126; in college and professional schools, 50. The eagerness of the colored people to obtain at least a rudimentary education has ever been a most encouraging sign. The young man who last year walked fifty miles with his trunk upon his back that he might enter school, recalls the zeal of the late Dr. Goodell, of Constantinople, who, in his youth, also walked sixty miles, with a trunk strapped upon his back, that he might enter the Phillips Academy at Andover. The demand for teachers from the Normal schools—quite beyond the ability to supply them—is one of the surest indications that the schools are meeting an urgent need. But the tendency of some pupils to consider themselves qualified to become teachers, after obtaining the merest rudiments of knowledge, is earnestly to be deprecated and discouraged. It needs to be dealt with as an easily besetting sin. The replacing of the burned buildings by new ones, at a cost within the amounts of insurance recovered, the better location of some of them, the increasing, and increasingly expressed sympathy of the better classes of Southern whites with the educational work of the Association, are also occasions of congratulation. The devotion of a portion of the time of pupils to manual labor is to be commended on grounds of economy, of industrial training, of the best and most diversified moral culture.
We very earnestly commend to the friends of the Association the appeal of its officers for permanent endowments of the higher institutions. The elevation of the colored race must be in large measure the work of colored men and women. But they must first be trained for their work in institutions established among them. Without endowment there is no assurance of permanence in the institutions we have already given them; without endowment they are not established; the labor of the past is not secured from total loss in the future. It needs to be distinctly emphasized, also, that the permanent establishment of educational institutions of a high order is the great work of this Association among the colored men, and the foundation for all uplifting work beside. The continuous training of our schools—intellectual, industrial, social and moral training, all in one—is needed for the development of higher ideals and nobler types of character, and, we are happy to add, has already resulted in such development in not a few of the pupils. This training is needed as a counterpoise to the operation, otherwise mischievous because unbalanced, of some prominent forces of the African temperament; needed to hold the imagination within the limits of reason and righteousness, to curb emotional excess, to save life from becoming the sport of changeful impulses. Experience has proved that the training given changes the type of piety greatly for the better. It is not less fervent, but it is less exclusively and wildly emotional. It becomes more rational, more consistent; it has more of principle and character in it; it is more truly a service of righteousness, more reputable, more effective for good. In order that church membership may be helpful rather than harmful to righteousness, and that church life among the Africans may be genuinely Christian, there is urgent need of a worthier Christian education of the African ministry. It is peculiarly our work to give that education. The general education provided for through our Normal schools is indispensable, that the colored people may deserve and command the respect of their white fellow-citizens at the South; that they may clearly understand their rights as citizens; may know how to secure them and make wise use of them.
It has been truly said that the work of uplifting the colored race is, from beginning to end, a long, slow process of education. In that process the Normal schools and higher institutions of the American Missionary Association have a place second in importance to no other. We have begun a good work; the question now is, whether we shall do it or leave it undone through lack of establishing the institutions we have founded.
Rev. Wm. W. Adams, D. D.
Rev. J. W. Wellman, D. D.
Rev. E. H. Merrill, D. D.
Remarks were made upon the report by Rev. Edward H. Merrill, D. D.
After singing, the Association adjourned to meet at two p. m.