FREEDMEN.
These our fellow-citizens are proving the wisdom of the Government in putting upon them the responsibilities of the elective franchise as at once their defense and their process of education. Taking into account their own aspiration and the force put beneath them by the scheme of Christian schools, we should expect, as we find, a tremendous uplift among them. In this we have assurance as to the future, provided the appliances be worked with increasing vigor. There is in this matter no halting place for the nation. We must lift them up, or they will drag us down. As one of these helping forces, we come to our own
Educational Work.
Our system of schools during the year has been working with its full force, and its appliances have been materially extended. The large additions made to our accommodations provided the year before were at once taxed to their utmost, thus proving that our appreciation of the necessity was correct, and that our appeal for the extension had not been made too soon nor too strong. And the enlargement secured during this closing year is now met with the response, “we, too, are full to overflowing.” Of the buildings put up the year before, the two dormitories at Hampton, one for Indian and one for colored youth, have had no empty rooms; at the Atlanta University, the wing built to the Girls’ Hall by the Stone Fund did not have capacity enough for the overflow of the main structure; the Strieby Hall at Tougaloo, brought to completion and dedicated since the opening of the year, had to be supplemented in an extempore way; the Stone Hall at Talladega for boys was filled; the Stone Hall at New Orleans for girls, and for the family of teachers, was only opened to find the need of a boys’ hall; and the Tillotson Institute at Austin, turning the ends of halls into apartments, calls loudly for another building.
During this year, at the Fisk University, the Livingstone Missionary Hall has been brought to completion and furnished, providing dormitories for 121 male students, also a chapel, library and recitation rooms. The total cost, $60,000, came from the Stone Fund. This structure, which, in its name, embraces the highest idea of the greatest African explorer, is next Monday to come to its dedication, and some of our friends are to go hence to participate in that service—the address to be delivered by Professor Northrop, of Yale College. At the Atlanta University, the Stone Hall, as the central building of the group, has been erected at an expense of $40,000, and will soon be ready for occupancy. Greatly commodious, and comely enough to relieve the plainness of the halls on either side, it will furnish a chapel, library, reading room and recitation rooms. This structure, as well as the Stone Halls at Nashville, Talladega and New Orleans, has had the wise supervision of Prof. T. N. Chase, who has occupied, meantime, his favorite chair of Greek, and who, as a builder, has shown the rare gift of always keeping within his appropriations. At Macon, Ga., to the Lewis High School we have built a two-room “annex,” to which also was added a wing for the library which is there growing up. At Athens, Ga., our Knox Institute has been renovated, and in it a chapel fitted up for the new church. At Mobile, Ala., our Emerson Institute, that had been burned the second time, has been rebuilt upon an enlarged scale, and at an expense not far beyond the insurance money. At Talladega, the President’s house has been finished, and two cottages on land adjoining our premises have been bought for the use of two of our mission families, one of them being named after Mr. Seth Wadhams, of Chicago, who gave the $1,500 for the purchase. At Marion, a house was built for a parish school. At Athens, the Trinity School Building to accommodate 150 scholars and the family of teachers, has been completed at a cost to the Association of $8,000. For this the colored people themselves made the needed two hundred thousand brick, mixing the clay by the tramp of their one small steer, and they have their proportionate interest in the property. At the laying of the corner stone, the local editor, the Postmaster and the Principal of the Ladies’ Seminary of the place, made appreciative addresses, and Miss Wells had her Jubilee. In Little Rock, Ark., at a cost of $5,500, we have bought and fenced a tract of 14 acres, overlooking that city, as a site for the Edward Smith College, which has been chartered by the State, being so named from a gentleman in Massachusetts who gave the money to buy the land, and who to a surplus now in hand intends to add enough to make his donation $19,000. This institution is greatly needed in that grandly opening State, where there is, as yet, no provision for the higher education of the colored people. This last planting will about complete our circle of State institutions. At Fayetteville, Ark., our Howard School Building has been overhauled, and in it we have re-opened our own school. So at Lexington, Ky., we have refitted our High School Building, and have resumed our own school, the city for the last six years having had the use of the house. At Camp Nelson, the trustees of the Academy are erecting a new three-story building under the lead of the Rev. John G. Fee.
At the South we count 8 chartered institutions, 11 high and normal schools, and 38 common schools—in all 57. During the year we have employed 241 teachers, an increase over the last year of 11. Of these, 13 have performed the duties of matrons and 15 have been engaged in the business departments. The number of students has been 9,608, a gain of 500 over last year. Of these, 72 have been in the theological department, 28 in the law, 104 in the collegiate, 139 in the preparatory, 2,542 in the normal, 1,103 in the grammar, 2,185 in the intermediate, and 3,481 in the primary.
The theological departments at Howard, Talladega and Straight have been doing their good work in training upon the ground just the sort of men who are needed for the peculiar work to be done. Fisk University has three of its graduates in the study of theology at Oberlin, and one in a divinity school at Yale. The law department of the Straight, with a faculty made up of five of the best lawyers in New Orleans, has had 20 students, who are of both races, and who, upon their diplomas, by the statute, are admitted to the bar of all the courts of the State. We are pushing more and more the lines of industrial training. The two farms at Talladega and Tougaloo have this year been put into better shape than ever before. Tougaloo raises fine fruits for the Chicago market and fine stock for the surrounding country. Both raise much of the beef and pork and vegetables for their own use. Atlanta University is pushing fine gardening, teaching the girls of the senior class cookery, and is planning to go into a school of carpentry. The Fisk, this year, under a trained hospital nurse, introduces hygienics and cookery. The Le Moyne, at Memphis, teaches cooking, nursing and sewing. All of our boarding-schools require a certain amount of work. The Storrs school, in Atlanta, has opened this fall a genuine kindergarten under an expert teacher. The Avery Institute, at Charleston, is going into the same, with training also in the use of tools.
But to all intellectual and secular training there needs to be added moral and religious cultivation. This is kept as our steady aim. No teacher is sent out who is not in fellowship with some church, and who does not profess to be actuated in going by a missionary spirit. The large number of conversions, the frequent revivals in these institutions, and the developed fruit of good living, attest the fidelity of these missionary teachers. The judgment day alone can reveal the influence of these consecrated workers, the most of whom are women, upon the life and character of the multitude of youth who have been under their care. The pupils are watched over in the class-room, in the place of religious assembly, and out of school hours. They are invited to private conferences for the correction of habits and views, and there the concerns of the soul are considered; scholars are prayerfully followed up even into vacation by correspondence, until not a few in these ways are led to Christ and into His church. The most of our young men, who are examined for entering the ministry, in giving their religious history, trace it back to the time when they were led to the Saviour by some of their teachers, whose richest reward it must be to see these young men coming into the ministry with ample equipment largely through their own influence. Women’s work for women is the modern discovery of missions. Of those who go abroad, their work is largely that of teaching. Our lady workers, of whom we have 200, besides the 40 in Howard, Hampton and Berea, who are reckoned as teachers, are usually missionaries as really as those who go abroad, or go South under that title. Of this last class of workers, of whom we have twelve, there are some who are very apostles in the garb of womanly delicacy. They teach mothers and daughters things which belong to their sex; they lead to the tidiness and comfort of home; they gather the maternal meetings and lead in the same; they labor in revivals; they become assistant pastors, being often, as the young pastors testify, their own best teachers and guides. The soldiers of the Union are worthy of all the praise and the gratitude they have received, but here has been a small army of heroines, who, forgetful of the best chances, came after the pomp of war, to serve not for three years, but for ten, twelve, fifteen, seventeen years, growing gray by work and by the anxieties and privations of the field, breaking down in health and wearing out their lives, ostracised and despised by those about them, who ought to have given sympathy and succor, and not sustained as they should have been at home, of whom the world is not worthy, but who must have a large place in the heart of Him, who, in their isolation, has been the companion of each one, and who, at the last, shall say, “She hath done what she could, she hath chosen the good part.”
Before the war and since, the wealthy people at the South had a full supply of colleges and seminaries, besides the free use of the best institutions in the North, so that their children were well educated. But there was a class of white people who could avail themselves of no such advantages and for whom there were no free public schools. As a consequence they fell into a distressing state of ignorance and poverty; they lost aspiration; they felt themselves in a hopeless class; and they are just there now. From the beginning our institutions have been open to pupils of all races. As yet the colored youth have been almost alone in entering them. But it is thought that, as they shall be seen shooting ahead, as prejudice shall wear away, many of these worthy white young people will go where they can get an education, a better one, and at a less cost, than anywhere else. A Confederate Colonel says that this will come about in ten years. Already in the medical department of the Howard University, of the 93 students two-thirds are white, while some of the Professors are colored, though accomplished in their profession. In the law department of the Straight at New Orleans there are more white than colored students. Some of the best teachers in the white public schools of Atlanta have visited the class-rooms of our University there, with the purpose frankly avowed of making improvement in the art of teaching. In the country white teachers have gone to those who had been trained at Atlanta to learn their normal methods of instruction and of management. May not such yet say we will go to that training school for ourselves, and get those improvements at first hand? We have one notable illustration of what may be done, and that is at Berea, Ky. This college, planted before the war by the Association, upon being opened after the war, allowed colored scholars to come. After some effervescence the institution settled into its color-blind method, until it has become a great power in the State with the colors in about equal proportion among the students and at the grand commencement convocations. Some of the young folks coming down from the mountains to Berea say they would rather go there than to endure the manners of the aristocratic colleges. The citizens of Cabin Creek, Ky., our old ante-bellum battle ground, are just now erecting an Academy with the money subscribed upon the condition of no caste. The influence of Berea College is felt up in all the mountain country. White youth come down there to get stores of knowledge to carry back. The Professors have gone through that region lecturing on education, holding teachers’ institutes and preaching. At Clover Bottom, 20 miles out, they have gotten up such a mixed school, which is a success, and is now under the patronage of this Association. The Committee have decided to offer those mountain people the aid of our system, if they will only allow the very few colored scholars to enter the schools. Up there the colored children in a whole county are scarcely numerous enough to call for more than one school, and so the law forbidding such mixed public schools is a virtual closing of the doors of knowledge to this class. The Committee have made an appropriation for this work and have already had their Field Superintendent upon a tour of exploration—his report being favorable to kind, patient, persevering endeavor to get the school-master abroad through a region wherein whole counties the few school-houses are cabins with scarcely a glass window in them.
In the growth of the educational department and in the purpose of the Committee to do the very best work in our institutions, it has been found needful to secure the service of an expert in school processes who should help to the most approved methods of organization, discipline, instruction and unification. Accordingly Mr. Albert Salisbury, who had been a Professor in the State Normal, at Whitewater, Wis., and a conductor of teachers’ institutes, has been appointed Superintendent of Education, and has already entered upon service, giving promise of great effectiveness in his line. Doctor Roy will continue in his position as Field Superintendent.