The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 12, December, 1883

by Various

Now these figures completely overthrow the statement that the increase of illiteracy is relatively greater among the Negroes than among the whites. They show that the proportions are all the other way, tremendously the other way; the difference between the two races is startling. The whites are gaining a little in this battle with the powers of darkness; but it is very little; they are scarcely doing more than hold their own; but the Negroes are gaining splendidly; it is to them that the large increase in the percentage of intelligent voters is mainly due.

Now what does this mean? Of course it is due to several causes. The Negroes had had but about five years of opportunity when the census of 1870 was taken; in 1880 they had had fifteen years of opportunity. That a better chance has been offered them, and that they are taking the chance that has been offered them, these figures assure us. But they tell us something more, that, to us, is very significant. The gains of intelligence among the Negroes in all parts of the South have been much more rapid than those of the whites; but they have been more rapid in these three States than in most other parts of the South; and why? Why? Did you ever hear of Fisk, and Berea and Atlanta? The census tables have heard of them, if you have not.

It is to the hundreds of young people that go out every year from these colleges, and such as these, teaching in public and in private schools pupils of their own color, that this gain in the battle with illiteracy at the South is due. They are the children of the light, who are waging this victorious battle with the powers of darkness. There has been great improvement, of course, in the public schools of the South during this decade; but in this improvement the whites have shared as well as the blacks; the great reasons for the more rapid advancement of the blacks are, first, that they are more eager for instruction than the ignorant whites, and, secondly, that they are better supplied with teachers—missionaries of education, who not only do much to supply the demand for knowledge already existing, but who do still more to increase this demand.

We come back, now, from our brief excursion into this fruitful and fascinating realm of percentages, to confront again that large mass of illiteracy that lies athwart the path of this nation. Huge it is, but, thank God, it looks not so vast and unmanageable as once it seemed. It is growing; but the nation is growing faster; relatively it is decreasing. It is far too formidable yet to be let alone; so long as ignorance rules almost one-third of our rulers in all of these sixteen States, no man has any right to relax his vigilance or abate his energies. What these figures show is simply this, that work tells; that our money is not wasted; that our labor is not in vain in the Lord; that if we will only keep it up with our giving and our working, if we will only see to it that these same agencies that have done this grand work in the past ten years are fully equipped to carry it on with increasing vigor, we may hope to gain in the next ten years still more rapid and decisive victories. The word that comes to every friend of the American Missionary Association, to every benefactor in deed or in purpose of these noble schools, is the word that Grant sent to Sheridan after the battle of Five Forks: “Push things!” You’ve got ’em running, these legions of ignorance and darkness; up and after them; harry them on the flank, press them in the rear, till they plunge like the herd of devil-pestered hogs, into the Gulf of Mexico.

You have got the forces to do this work. All you want to do is to give them a better equipment. You want no new machinery; you only want more power; no new organizations, but reinforcements of those in the field.

The kinds of educational work that this Association is doing are exactly the kinds of work that must be done. The industrial training given in some of the schools is admirable; the normal training of teachers is work whose results are immediate and beneficent; the higher education, too, is abundantly justified. If there are any who have doubts on this last score, I am not one of them. There is nothing that these six millions of colored people need to-day more than they need thoroughly educated men of their own race to be their leaders. More than any other class in this country, they are in danger of being misled by petty demagogues and small philosophers. We cannot too soon furnish them with social and political and religious guides who have been trained by severe discipline to think clearly, to consider questions broadly and historically, to reason judicially and dispassionately, to chasten the exuberance and verbosity of their own people with the dignity and judgment that are the fruits of sound learning. Such examples of high character and broad culture scattered about here and there among the Negro people will do more to form their ideals and direct their progress than can be done in any other way. I tell you that the money spent in making first-class men in these colleges is as well invested as any other money that you spend. The only thing to be desired about such schools as Fisk and Atlanta is that their standards be made higher and more inflexible, year by year, and that their work be more and more thorough, so that the diploma shall mean in every case just as much as the diploma of Amherst or Williams or Bowdoin.

It is a Christian education that pupils are receiving in these schools of ours. Most of the pupils who go out from them to become pastors, teachers, lawyers, physicians, merchants, citizens, fathers and mothers are Christian men and women; and they become messengers of a pure Gospel, living epistles of Christ, wherever they go. Especially as teachers do they make their influence felt. We cannot Christianize the public school systems of the Southern States; but if we can Christianize the teachers, that is a much more effective service. And that is precisely what we are doing in all these Southern schools.

This Association has been promoting Christian education at the South in quite another fashion. Gently, without censure or denunciation, by the silent influence of Christly lives, it has been teaching the Southern people that caste is un-Christian. It is a great lesson; it is a lesson hard to learn; and we must not wonder at it: the social maxims and usages of centuries are not changed in a day. But it will be learned by and by; patience and fidelity and sweet reasonableness in those who teach it will have their reward in God’s good time. It only needs that we should quietly bear our testimony and wait; the leaven may be hidden now, but it is working; and the time will surely come, and as speedily as it ought to come, when from churches and from schools the color line will disappear. I do not think that the people who have commissioned and who support this Association in its work—the great Congregational communion, on which it mainly depends—can propose to themselves any better sort of work than that which this Association is doing, or can afford to carry on that work in any other way or by any other hands. It is true, as the figures I have quoted have shown, that the colored people have received most of the benefit of this work, and that the whites have profited by it but little. This is true of the educational work, and of the church work as well. But it is not because the schools and churches of this Association are not open to whites and blacks on equal terms. It is simply because they are open to whites and blacks on equal terms. This is the only reason why the whites do not generally avail themselves of these excellent advantages. It is because the basis on which these schools and churches rest is frankly and thoroughly Christian—because caste is not tolerated in them—that the white people of the South have held aloof from them. For the present, until their convictions and feelings on this subject shall have changed, the white people of the South will, generally, hold themselves aloof from any church or school that rests on this basis, no matter by whom it may be administered. Any society that is as frankly and thoroughly Christian as this society has always been, will have the same difficulty in reaching the whites that this society experiences.

It is possible that churches or schools might be established at the South, nominally open to both races, but really intended exclusively for the whites, into which some whites could be drawn. You might put it into the constitution that no distinctions of color were recognized in the church, and you might still keep saying: “Of course colored people are welcome here, if they want to come; but we think they will be happier and better off in churches of their own.” Probably the colored people would not accept this kind of welcome; and possibly some whites would be satisfied with this method of establishing the color line. It would be an effective method, no doubt. But is this the sort of thing that the people calling themselves Congregationalists want to do? For one I feel sure that it is not worth doing. I don’t believe that we can afford to propagate two kinds of Congregationalism down there, one of which is frankly and bravely Christian in its dealings with the caste of color, and the other of which is, to say the least, less frankly Christian, consenting, by its silence, to the maintenance of the color line. Such a policy seems to me something other than Christian, something less than Christian: and I, for my part, have no time and no money to spend in propagating a Congregationalism that is broader or narrower, or higher or lower, or tighter or looser than simple Christianity. When our zeal for the propagation of Congregationalism leads us to slur over the everlasting verities of Christ’s kingdom, it is leading in doubtful ways.

It has been said that this Association is handicapped by its record and its methods in the work of reaching the whites of the South. Perhaps it is. So was He handicapped in His work among the Pharisees, of whom it was said: “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” The burden it is bearing is the cross of Christ; nothing else. It has gone down into humiliation with its Master to succor and save these His brethren. Would it be better for the Association to fling aside this burden? Would it be wise for any other society going down into that field to work to refuse to take it up or to try to hide it from the sight of men?