And thus closed the fullest and most hopeful year in the history of this institution, which is beginning to excite the deepest interest among the people of the State, who are awakening to the fact that it is offering the only solution to many dark problems which to them seemed without an answer, or at least one that had anything of hope in it.
We cannot better close this article than by giving the following extract from an editorial from the American, the ablest and most influential paper of the State:
“In the proceedings at the Fisk University, yesterday, another step forward was taken in the way of providing material means for that moral and intellectual growth which is going on silently as a great institution grows and roots itself firmly in the society around it. Universities are not created in a day, nor at all by money, although money is a necessary agency. They grow. The Fisk is passing through with comparatively the early stages of growth, when we compare it with the ideal which finds place in the dreams of its enthusiastic laborers—dreams which enfold the future result. We doubt if the public, although it lend a hearty sympathy and approval, and expect good to flow from it, begins yet to realize the work this institution is to perform. We doubt if there is such appreciation anywhere existent or possible except in the dreams of its enthusiast laborers. These in some way comprehend its future. But the Fisk has had to adapt itself in more ways than one. At first it encountered, as a matter of course, but cold approval from the wealth and culture of Nashville—not hostility, but approval from a languid and cold judgment. But perhaps the hardest task has been to adapt itself to the negro himself. To secure the cold approval of intelligent judgment was apparently easy; to go a little further and secure aid, if it were necessary, would not be hard; but to lift the negro up to appreciate New England culture and conservatism and quiet labor, is like bringing him, in his early religious experience, to accept the calm conservatism and quiet demeanor of the Catholic, Presbyterian or Episcopal churches. In vain is he solicited to enter the intellectual stage of religious experience, when nature tells him that his stage is the emotional, if indeed it be beyond the sensuous. This is the task Fisk has set itself, and is performing, and performing well. It is encountering, and has encountered, a world of prejudice from the very race it seeks to elevate, and must content itself with working upon and with the creme de la creme of the race in the South, while it cannot as yet reach the vast mass unless it let itself down, and we believe that so long as its present laborers are at the helm it will insist on drawing others up and never let itself down. It has a great and widening field, which it is worthily filling, and in the labor of regeneration of a race, no agency will have a higher, or indeed so high a place as this conservative school, which is filling so difficult a position.
“We are not unmindful also of the necessity for quite other laborers in the regeneration of this race. It is just as necessary in school as in church that this yet blind and emotional creature, ‘crying for the light with no language but a cry,’ shall have tendance suited to his condition and upon his own level.”
TOUGALOO UNIVERSITY.
The annual examinations in this institution began on Thursday, May 26th, continuing Friday and also Monday forenoon. Many friends of students were present from various parts of the State. The forenoon of Sunday was taken up with the Sunday-school, with its very instructive lessons from the parable of the talents, and immediately following this a temperance Bible reading, with its intensely practical and stirring appeals. The latter was especially timely, inasmuch as a large number of temperance tracts, pamphlets and papers had been distributed to all the members, just before, for circulation as they return this summer to their own homes, or go forth to engage in teaching. Supplied in this way, the students from this school are the means of disseminating through the State a great deal of good temperance literature, and are enabled to organize a multitude of little temperance societies.
It will not be amiss to note the fact, as illustrating the high value of just this sort of work, that besides these societies established by the students of this University, there is no kind of temperance organization among the colored people in the State. At the same time, the prevalence of drunkenness, and of the habit of drinking among all classes, is appalling. The following incident shows the crying need of a reform movement: A colored church not far from here had communion service, and when it was concluded, the pastor and deacons tarried, and following, as they believed, (?) the instruction of the Bible, where it says, “drink ye all of it,” consumed what was left of the generous supply of wine, and thus made themselves beastly drunk.
Sunday was filled up with impressive services. In the afternoon the Lord’s Supper was commemorated, and five of the students united with the church, receiving the rite of baptism. In the evening, Dr. Strieby preached a sermon from the text. “And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree, therefore, which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” Every word was listened to with closest attention.