PRESIDENT HENRY S. DE FOREST.
This issue of the Missionary contains a view of Stone Hall, built of Alabama bricks at Talladega. Its completion, it is believed, marks an era in the history of the College. With better equipments than ever before, with a field as large as it can wish, the College, backed by the history of half of one generation, looks forward with hope to the growing and unfolding future. From what has been we may attempt to previse something of what may be.
In 1867, only fourteen years ago, when the Freedmen’s Bureau was acting as Interex between past bloodshed and coming chaos, the building now known as Swayne Hall, with ample and beautiful grounds, was purchased, and the future College begun with spelling book and Bible primer. A few wise men of the East were there at its birth. They wore blue and carried swords, though in the scabbard. But many black men, who had been waiting through a long and starless night, thought they heard an angel chorus and forthwith were praising God. A white male high school building, reared by the unrequited labor of the slave, was bought at a mortgage sale and opened for the Christian training of all, without respect to color or sex. Men, black either in pigment or in figment, began to come, and the reconstructed building gave shelter to school and church. But a home was needed, and two years later, in 1869, Foster Hall was built, affording rooms for the girls and teachers, and also table accommodations for the entire family. From the beginning, Talladega has united the three great forces in shaping character, namely, the school, the church and the home. The foundations of the second building, Foster Hall, were laid while the Ku Klux Klan was brandishing its weapons and grating its teeth. The Nehemiahs of that time carried their weapons in one hand and wielded the trowel with the other. But they built, and the God of Heaven prospered them. From that time forward the quadrennial period has been observed. The year following a Presidential election, Talladega College has inaugurated some new thing. In 1873, Graves Hall with additional land was secured for the theological department. In 1877, when President Hayes was holding out the olive branch, we attempted more of the peaceful pursuit of agriculture, and Winsted farm was bought. And now in the beginning of President Garfield’s administration, the third brick building is reared, and Stone Hall opens its door to eighty young men.
Surely this is rapid progress. Not half of one generation has passed, and the spelling book is supplemented by normal, college preparatory, to some extent college, and theological studies. Some of those first primary students are preachers now. The babes of those recent days have become the leaders of their race. Figures are not juicy; but it is noteworthy that one hundred and sixteen of our students were teaching during the last summer vacation; that three hundred and eighteen who had pursued something of Normal studies have gone thence as pedagogues; that of our forty-two Theological students, fifteen are pastors of A. M. A. churches; as many more are ministering in other fields, and the remainder are still in training. Such facts are inspiriting and full of hope. These results, let it be remembered, have been realized with meagre resources and poor appliances. If now our means could be made more commensurate with our necessities, if our resources could compare with our opportunities, what a grand work of patriotism and Christianity might not the College attempt and expect in the near future. As regards the higher branches of learning, the College has an unrivaled place in a great State, half of whose population is black. It has in Alabama more than 600,000 colored people from whom to draw its students. It cares for muscle as well as mind, and for heart most of all. It teaches industry and thrift and economy. It emphasizes the fundamentals, and believes that the foundations of learning should be laid before the superstructure is attempted. Still in its care for the masses, it is seeking for wise leaders, and wishes to take certain elect souls through as long and as thorough a course of study as the circumstances will allow. It aims especially to furnish men well equipped for the Gospel ministry, and thinks it has found a place for uplifting not only America, but Africa, and that by laboring there among the foot-hills of our own Blue Ridge, it may help beautify the Dark Continent with salvation. As long as cotton grows on those black bottoms, or those hills yield their treasures of iron and coal, so long will Talladega College be needed, and so long it hopes to stay. It desires to grow with the generations and increase with the ages. Already it feels its need of permanent investments, and is asking for the beginning of an endowment. It calls for the personal service of some, and asks for the gifts of others who cannot offer themselves. In both cases it gives an opportunity for usefulness as large and as lasting as can be desired.
Rev. A. D. Mayo, D. D., writes in The Christian Register of Talladega College as follows:
“This year the institution numbers two hundred young men, women and children, of whom eleven are in the theological, eleven in the preparatory college, forty-eight in the normal, fifty-nine in the intermediate, and seventy-two in the primary department. Rev. Henry S. De Forest is president, and Rev. George W. Andrews pastor and instructor in theology. Three men and six women teachers in addition make up the teaching force; and an abler, more devoted, and more attractive people we have never met in any seminary of learning in any part of the country. They are all white, and represent every section of the Union and the Dominion of Canada. Talladega may congratulate itself on its “negro college,” for probably no institution in the State represents more thoroughly the best modern ideas of education.”