MISS ANNA M. CAHILL, FISK UNIVERSITY.
If an astronomer wishes to show to any one through his glass the celestial visitor whose presence brightens our morning sky, he must arrange the instrument from his point of vision. Then, stepping aside, his friend will see the object nearly as he sees it. If now I am to bring nearer to you the work for the women of the South, whose interests are uppermost in our hearts to-day, I must adjust the glass from my own standpoint, at the risk of touching upon points that have been presented at other meetings, and without showing you some of the features which you are, perhaps, anxious to see.
Were I a physician among the people for whom I speak, I should urge upon you the physical wants, many and terrible, of that people, for which the ignorance of the women is so largely responsible, and from which they especially suffer.
Were it my mission to carry help and counsel to the lowly homes of our city, I might tell you such tales of the wretchedness and discomfort of many of these homes as would fill your hearts with pity—a wretchedness growing out of an utter lack of comprehension of the meaning of home, and showing the need of instruction in the simplest facts of household economy.
To carry so much of light and knowledge into these homes as would make them abodes of health and thrift is a work worthy the noblest effort of any Christian woman.
But I come from no such special work among the women of our people. Only a few hours ago I stepped from the platform of my school-room, where were gathered before me a room full of upturned faces, some of them familiar from years of acquaintance, some just stamping themselves upon my memory by the interest they are awakening as I meet them in these first days of their stay among us. To an unusual extent this year the numbers on the boys’ side and on the girls’ side are the same, the one side gaining, then the other, as new pupils are added to the school. September’s report showed exactly the same total for each. I like this; it looks as if our girls are to stand side by side with their brothers in life’s battle; as if both were stretching out their hands for the same weapons to help them in the strife.
My interest and work are thus divided; justice to the school demands that I consider the good of the whole; that I assign lessons not for one side nor for the other; that I chide or commend without special reference to sex—in short, that I consider all as members of a common society, and plan for them as having common rights and responsibilities.
When, therefore, I bring this subject to you, it is that you may look at it from the teacher’s standpoint, that you may consider the colored woman of the future—the colored girl of to-day—in her relations as a part of the social organization of the new South.
That the South is new no one who even passes through her great centres can doubt. New railroads are opening up her resources and carrying her trade; the flames of her furnace light up the darkness of many a mountain valley; even her fields are blooming with new abundance under the improved husbandry and greater diligence of her sons. As the morning sunlight strikes the brick walls of factories in view from my window, and nearly all of which have grown up within a few months, I can almost imagine myself in a New England town.
Woman’s place in Southern society (I use the term society in its wider sense) has always been quite different from that which she holds in the North. Accustomed to be protected, and taught to consider a limited social life as her only sphere of activity, she was often beautifully womanly, but lacking in self-reliance; having no confidence in her own mental powers, and not considered as being able to plan or execute any important measures. This feeling is, I think, gradually giving way before a more just appreciation of her own power, and as that power is developed, to a change in public sentiment as to her capacity and her duty.