ALABAMA.
TEACHERS’ INSTITUTE AT TALLADEGA.
President, Henry S. DeForest.
Of late it has been the custom to end the spring term at Talladega College with a teachers’ institute, giving special training to those who are so soon to go out and teach. The one just held at the last of March has been very pleasant and helpful. Prof. A. J. Steele, of the Le Moyne Institute, Memphis, Tenn., was present, bearing a large part in its instruction, and giving it the choicest fruits of his own training and experience. The Hon. H. Clay Armstrong, State Superintendent of Education, had a place on the programme, and Rev. Daniel Duncan, the County Superintendent, was present at every session from beginning to end. Three years ago, at the beginning of the series, he said, that was “the first institute ever held in Talladega County, from the creation of the world.” This one, especially, roused all his enthusiasm, and again and again he gave his testimony to the good that was effected.
The need of such institutes and of the steady, persistent work of a college to train teachers and preachers is most apparent, when it is considered that probably not more than one in ten of the blacks, in a State where they make about half of the population, can read so as to make the sense, and half of the voters of all colors are unable to read either God’s Law or the amendments to the Constitution. Some are teaching who have never been at school themselves. School-houses are few, and often without floor, or window, or fireplace; desks and school-books are scarce; the school-year averages only 67 days, and the appropriation per capita for the year is 97 cents.
GEORGIA.
HON. WILLIAM E. DODGE AND ATLANTA UNIVERSITY.
Mrs. T. N. Chase.