WORK AMONG THE FREEDMEN.
BY MISS BERTHA ROBERTSON.
Dear Friends:—It gives me much pleasure to bring you a report, which will not be a discouraging one, of a part of the work this grand old American Missionary Association has undertaken. It would be simply impossible to give you a true idea of the work done among the colored people. Already you have heard many accounts, but to fully realize what is being done, you must either see the people over whom the influence of our schools extends, and compare them with those who have not enjoyed such privileges, or enter the field as a worker. In giving an outline of our work at McIntosh, Ga., perhaps a general idea may be gained of what the A. M. A. is doing for the freedmen. The colored people where we are, and I think it is the same throughout the South, have an idea their teachers can do anything from housekeeping to preaching a sermon or mending clocks, but before we should be allowed to undertake similar work in the North, it would be necessary that we should have M.D., D.D., or some other initials after our names.
We teach school. This does not mean exactly what it does in the North. You must remember, when the children come to us, they have had no home training whatever.
You can imagine something of their condition, when you remember that the majority come from miserable log cabins, consisting of one room, where parents and children live huddled together, and where the furniture is a mere apology, consisting generally of a table, bench and two chairs.
They have no hopes and ambition such as white children have. They never think of the possibilities the future may hold for them. When we ask our boys and girls what they are going to do when they leave school, they look at us in blank amazement. This is a new idea to them; they had not looked beyond the present.
Their standard of morality is low. Did you expect anything else? Who were the parents of these children? Slaves. Slaves who in return for hard labor received from the white man the cruelest wrongs and basest indignities; and yet people to-day speak as though this first generation born in freedom should be pure and virtuous. On every side you hear, “They lie, they cheat, they steal, are lazy, and it is simply impossible to do anything with them.” Many times this summer I have heard this sweeping assertion made, and by Christian people, who had simply traveled South, and who drew their conclusions from the servants they met in the hotels. Had they visited some of the A. M. A. schools their statement would not have been quite so extended as to the impossibilities of improvement.
The Bible is the foundation of all our teaching. Religious and moral training first. A half hour each morning is given to devotions. Friday morning the school all meet together for prayer, in which our pupils take part. We have been greatly blessed in these meetings. Friday afternoon the girls all meet in one room, and while they are taught sewing, the Principal of the school gives the boys a talk on morality, in another room. We visit the pupils in their homes, and they, with their parents, feel at liberty to come to our cottage at any time. It is with much pleasure we note the improvement in their cabins and the taste the girls display in trying to make their homes resemble our cottage. After school every Friday afternoon, we have a missionary meeting for the mothers. Here, while they sew, simple religious stories are read to them, and before they go home we have a Bible reading and prayers. Three years ago this society sent ten dollars to the Morning Star, and for the past two years they have sent fifteen dollars to the A. M. A. for the Indians. They are trying to do a little for the Master’s Kingdom.
Besides these meetings, we have Sunday-school and mission-school, and on Saturdays we go to settlements six or eight miles distant to hold mothers’ meetings. Many a poor soul in these meetings has heard for the first time the blessed news of personal salvation.