President Cravath read a letter from a county superintendent in Mississippi, who bore the strongest testimony to the honesty, morality and efficiency of the teachers who had gone out from Fisk University.
Mr. Mitchell, a new student, had taught in one neighborhood for two years, in De Soto, Miss. He had succeeded in building up a successful Sunday-school. He had in his school about 150 pupils and three assistant teachers. The citizens encouraged the education of the colored people and took great interest in his school.
Miss Murray had taught in Mississippi for five months. The people were very poor and the children were poorly clad. She taught in the Sunday-school very successfully; she did not think that the people had bought much land, but they had stock and wagons.
Geo. McLelland did not wish to exaggerate, but desired to tell the truth. He taught just above Vicksburg, Miss.; here there is little civilization. In their homes, the large majority of the people are virtually slaves; they pay $9 per acre, or 90 pounds of lint cotton for their lands; they raise nothing but cotton and corn, and often come out in debt; they buy their goods at the store on account, on fall time. In most cases last year they came out behind; in this condition they must give a lien on the next year’s work; some do better than this, but the majority are in this wretched condition. Government land is sold at 25 cents per acre, but the colored people do not buy it to any extent; this year they have done something of this, and have secured forty acres of good land. Saturday night the people go to the store and drink up an acre of government land at the rate of 25 cents a glass.
One church represents all. They worship in a very blind, ignorant, superstitious way. In the church he attended two out of five could read a little. One elder, in telling how we were to get to Heaven, said that after we were dead we must first go to hell and search all around, and if we did not find our names there we were to go to Heaven.
D. Donnel taught in southwestern Arkansas. He had much opposition, but he had, by persevering, found out that there was “a little man in him.” The people are getting homes and becoming owners of land. They had never been aroused before. They were all religious, but they all drank whisky, from the least to the greatest.
The white people did not believe in getting a good teacher from abroad, because he carried the money out of the country.
Queenie V. Moore taught in Illinois and had high ideas of the colored people, but she found them not nearly so well off as the colored people of the South. The young people spent their time near the taverns, smoking and drinking. She had a model school-house, which was also used as a church. The people were from all the Southern States. She tried to inspire the young people with a higher purpose than to wear fine dresses or smoke cigars, and succeeded in getting them into Sunday-school. The white people were very cordial and friendly.
Prof. J. D. Burrus tried to look upon the bright side at Murfreesboro, where he visited, and was surprised to find the colored people so prosperous in getting farms, houses and in educating their children. One man had paid $1,100 for his house and $1,100 for his shop. Within a radius of a few miles he counted up 30 families that owned their own homesteads.
H. C. Gray taught in Texas; was Superintendent of the Sunday-school. He had studied the land system of Texas. A man buys a piece of land and pays a little down and 10 per cent. interest on the notes. Many of them are in debt. The school law is such that each child may ask the judge to set aside his pro-rata for him to go to school upon, so that each child gets his chance to be educated.