Where I was last winter, the people kept Thanksgiving. Of course I enjoyed that, because I knew you were keeping it here. I had a Sunday-school that was quite large at first, but when big meetings came on it grew small.
I had seventy-five pupils. I cannot see that I did much good, but I hope some good will come out of my summer’s work. Public sentiment seems to sanction the worst things there are.
The people where I taught said they must have a man, that females could not teach, and they could not stand ladies. The whites, on the whole, are better to the teachers than the colored people are. I succeeded in getting six men to stop using tobacco while attending school, and then they said if they could stop fifty-five days they could all their life-time.
Somehow they looked at me like they looked at Columbus when he first came to America. Preachers are all intemperate men, and some of them said they could not preach well unless they had some whiskey in them. I taught four times in the same place, and have had a larger school each time. The morals of the colored people depend on the morals of the whites. I opened school at eight and closed at six. I saw no intemperance, because it was the wrong time of the year. I talked temperance and acted it. There is but little difference between the whites and colored; they eat together, sleep together, and have the same kind of houses.
Now to these reports, only a small part of which I have copied, I will add a few comments:
1. There is no diminution of the desire of colored children to learn, and of their parents to have their children educated. Parents want teachers to teach from early dawn to candle-light, and even to beat knowledge into the pupils.
2. Intemperance and licentiousness abound to a fearful extent, not only among the laity, but also among the clergy.
3. The poor whites need education and moral and religious instruction as much as the colored people, and our students are reaching some of them in their influence.
4. Public school privileges in the South are limited, and it will be a long time before suitable buildings are provided and efficient teaching secured.
5. The whites are, in the main, well disposed toward the colored people, and in favor of their being educated.