BY PRESIDENT PATTON OF HOWARD UNIVERSITY.
The present educational year completes the tenth of my connection with Howard University, and thus with the work of educating the Negro race. An “Abolitionist” since the spring of the year 1837, I have ever felt a deep interest in the welfare of this oppressed people, and the fact of their present freedom has only changed the direction of my anxiety and effort. For I know that the brightness of their future depends upon industry, education, morality and religion. And to this end they must have Christian schools and churches, and an industrial training in shop and store as well as in garden and farm. My experience as president of an institution which in its seven departments—industrial, normal, preparatory, collegiate, legal, medical and theological—covers well the entire range of instruction, except the primary branches, has given opportunity to observe the capacity and the actual progress of the Negro, and to study the wants of the race in this country.
The result is encouragement not uncoupled with anxiety. A great work has been accomplished, beyond question—great in immediate effect, though more so in its prospective bearing. It is rather a great seed sowing than a great harvest. Thousands have been taught the rudiments of knowledge, and a select few have received a higher training. Some ambition has been roused in the masses, and a little progress has been made in supplying them with more intelligent leaders in church and in state. No doubt remains that the Negro may be rendered capable of filling all the stations in life which are occupied by white men. Ordinary acquirements are made with creditable ease. The higher education can also be acquired by the proper proportion of students, but this effort is only partially successful as yet. Poor material is too commonly offered, not only as to native talent, but especially as regards thorough drill in primary studies and the commencement of genuine mental discipline. With an imperfect drill in the lower schools, we can do no perfect work in the higher branches, and we find it difficult to develop and sustain in the mind the idea of a true scholarship, and of the lofty aims of a liberal education. It is but slowly that such an intellectual atmosphere can be made to pervade the colored colleges of the South as is found in the white colleges of the New England States. But the work must be pushed till such a result shall be secured.
Progress always entails added labor and expense. What has been already accomplished by the A. M. A. must not be lost, and the vantage ground must be used to gain new results. When students graduate, their places are more than occupied by others, who have been moved by their example to seek for knowledge. As the spirit of caste is overcome, and places of honor and profit begin to open to colored men, fully qualified persons must be ready to embrace the new opportunities. Every educated and earnest Christian minister sent forth from our institutions will not only supply his immediate church, but will probably organize in the outlying neighborhood one or two others, requiring similar pastors in a short time. And he will also inspire the uneducated preachers of that region to aim at higher work, and to seek school privileges. It is a frequent remark, that the theological department of Howard University has, by direct and indirect influence, revolutionized the preaching in the colored churches of all denominations in Washington, which number about eighty, it is said. Thus the A. M. A. is a leaven hidden in the Southern meal, and destined, with similar influences, to leaven the entire mass.
And this ought to be appreciated by the intelligent Congregationalists of the North, who will rejoice in two obvious results of the operations of the A. M. A. One is, the gradual increase of their own churches and educational institutions, which are becoming respectable in number and great in influence; the other is, the modifying effect upon other denominations, which are thus inspired and toned up to our standard of education, morals and religion. This is secured not only by our example and competition, but also by the enlightening and liberalizing influence exerted upon their own men, who, as teachers and preachers, have been trained in our schools. These are not false to their own sects; they labor faithfully and successfully in their respective charges, but they have gained enlargement of view and a wider charity, and they will be found always on the side of progress in thought and in action, and ready for Christian co-operation.
The movement in progress in both political parties, to obliterate the race-line at the polls, is significant in many respects. It points to a decrease of prejudice, but it also renders imperative increased efforts to furnish the Negroes with intelligent, well-principled leaders, of their own race, to save them from being made tools of by wily politicians among the whites, and by corrupt vote-mongers among themselves. In a section so rapidly developing as is the South, great changes may soon be expected. It is our American Japan. Let us not be backward in supplying the formative influences. The work of the American Missionary Association was never more needed, or more certain to be successful, than at this very moment.