The Memphis Appeal, in an editorial column upon the Education of the Negro, taking as a text the recent Episcopal Congress of colored men in this city and the Louisville Convention, says to certain representative men:
“We recommend them to get the annual reports of the American Missionary Society, of the Southern and Northern Methodist Churches, and of the African Methodist and Baptist Churches. From these they will find that more than $20,000,000 have been expended by these religious organizations since 1864 in building and maintaining handsome school-houses in which the Negro has been trained and educated and fitted for the noble task and important duty of training and educating others. They will find, too, from these reports that in all these years white men and women of learning and culture have labored, often in the face of prejudice and within earshot of contumely and hate. What these missionaries have done, the world at large has made little note of, but the days are not far distant when everywhere, through the South at least, it will be acknowledged as the greatest of all the great works accomplished in the United States since 1865. From the Potomac almost to the Rio Grande the academies and colleges of the American Missionary Society are to be found at nearly all the large centers of population, and they are flourishing because their work is a practical work and their purpose the plain one of widening and deepening the stream of learning at which the once slaves of the South may drink freely and at will. These institutions are the results of a generous benevolence, and have been maintained by a self-denying zeal worthy of the glorious Luther, whose birth a grateful world is everywhere celebrating with gladness. We recommend them to read the reports of the Rev. Atticus G. Haygood, of Oxford, Ga., who, since he wrote the Brother in Black, has launched into the work of furthering the education of the Negro with the zeal of a missionary, and the spirit of a soldier in a noble cause. Dr. Haygood, not long ago, made a tour of the South in the interest of the fund for which he is the dispensing agent, and the result is a more fervent devotion to the good work and more fervid and appealing speeches in its behalf. A gallant ex-Confederate, a Southerner by birth and breeding, and the son of a slaveholder, brought up, too, in a wealthy planting section of Georgia, he entered upon his, at first, self-appointed task as a mere private, a volunteer in the ranks where he found so many noble workers. But his knowledge of the Negro, of his capacity, and his needs, and the best methods of reaching practical educational results soon marked him for the high position he now occupies as the trusted and confidential agent of a fund bequeathed by a benevolent Northern man, whose desire for the advancement and betterment of the Negro Dr. Haygood is furthering by helping all the schools at the South that have these for their objects. Already, in the first year of the existence of the fund, this good, strong man finds encouraging results following upon what he has expended of it, and he pleads on every possible occasion with voice and pen for the extension of the practical system of education so long pursued by the American Missionary Association, and in which he sees the best possibilities of the dark race. Dr. Haygood speaks plainly, as well as eloquently. He calls a spade a spade. He does not spare any who set themselves in his way or in the way of the work he has so much at heart. He knows that education makes every man better, stronger and happier than he could be without it and he contends for its dissemination by compulsion if other means fail of making it general, of bringing it into every man’s house as essential to the maintenance of the peace that passes all understanding. It is in the nature of things that such a man should encounter opposition; that he should even be reviled, abused and misrepresented, but he has only to take counsel of those who have occupied the field he is now in during the past twenty years to find a sweet solace and a consolation for it all. He can read in their lives the opening chapters of his own career in the field of Negro education, but he can also read of a generous if tardy recognition of their labors by the best educated men and women of the South, who willingly acknowledge their indebtedness to them for the patient, earnest, laborious work by which in so short a time nearly forty per cent. of the Negro population has been taught to read and write, and so many thousands have been trained and fitted after the most approved technical methods to teach in Negro public schools and thus perpetuate the blessings they rejoice in the possession of.”
An Apostolic Salutation.—At Birmingham, Ala., a city of only a decade, in its iron and coal interest worthy of its English namesake, Field Superintendent Roy found Congregational representatives of half a dozen of our other schools and churches, who had been drawn to that busy metropolis, as so many acquaintances of the Apostle Paul in Asia Minor had been drawn to Rome to be addressed by name in the salutatory chapter of his Epistle to the Romans before he had himself ever been to that city. Canon Farrar argues that that chapter must belong to some other Epistle, on account of the difficulty of the Apostle’s knowing so many people at Rome. If the Canon of Westminster had only been a Superintendent of Missions he would have had no such trouble. Dr. Roy could have given the apostolic salutation to the Saints of this new church.
NOTICES ON THE OPENING OF SCHOOLS.
SELECTED FROM CORRESPONDENCE.
Storrs School, Atlanta.—We have enrolled three hundred and seventy pupils and have been obliged to refuse admittance to fifty on account of room. We are all wishing for more room and an increase in our teaching force so that we may receive all that apply. I have thought for several years that the necessity of the continuance of Storrs School would cease as the public schools for colored people increased in number, but I am becoming satisfied that it is a permanence. The increase in population of this fast growing city, and the desire of the people for a thorough education keep all the schools of any value full.
Talladega College.—So far as I can now judge we are to have all the students we can find room for, and I think more will pay at least a part of their expenses than heretofore.
Charleston, Avery Institute.—Our opening was admirable in order, large in numbers, and blessed by the presence of parents and patrons who gave me a most cordial welcome. There was every evidence of sincerity about it, and I am delighted with my induction and with the two days. The institution is one of the grandest in design, scope, and progress, and is sufficient to excite my highest pride.