The American Missionary — Volume 42, No. 04, April, 1888

by Various

Writing of the educational movement, in a recent book, he says: "Not a few of the best men and women of the North have come to teach in these institutions for colored youth: their motives and their work have not always been understood, but the Great Day will make manifest how they have been constrained by the love of Christ, to spend years in work which has had many discouragements." ('The New South' by J.C.C. Newton.) A few statistics may give some general idea of the extent of this movement.

The State of Alabama has 104,150 colored pupils enrolled in the public schools. It pays an average of $25.97 per month to nearly 2,000 colored teachers, and expends altogether $198,221 upon these colored schools. Georgia has 49 per cent. of its negro school population enrolled; that is, 119,248. In 1871, this State had 6,664 only in all public and private colored schools. Its teachers of this race now number 2,272. 40,909 colored children are enrolled in Louisiana, with 672 negro teachers, who receive an average of $23.73 per month.

Mississippi had last year 154,430 colored scholars. It employed 3,124 colored teachers who receive an average of $28.73 per month. North Carolina enrolled, in 1886, 117,562 colored pupils, employed 2,016 teachers of the same race, paying them about the same as its white teachers, $23.38 per month. The colored school population of Tennessee numbers 158,450, of whom 84,624 are enrolled in her 1,563 common schools, which are taught by 1,621 teachers of the same nationality. A county superintendent voluntarily adds: "I should do our colored teachers an injustice not to speak of them. Most of them are earnest, zealous workers, doing all in their power for their race."

Turning now to Texas we find that this State has nearly doubled its enrollment of colored pupils in three years, which now number 62,040, with 1,696 licensed colored teachers who receive on an average, $41.73 per month. Virginia has 111,114 out of a school population of 265,249 with 1,734 colored teachers who receive $28.65 per month.

That is, in eight representative States there are eight hundred thousand colored pupils who are now being trained by over fifteen thousand teachers of the same race. Now the simple but grave question that every Christian patriot ought to ask himself is, "What kind of teachers are these, and where are they to come from in the future?" I asked that question of a gentleman who of all others ought to be able to answer it correctly and he replied, "Nine-tenths of these teachers come from the missionary schools, and of these nine-tenths, more than one-half come from the institutions of the American Missionary Association." Now we can understand the truthfulness of the testimony of the Rev. J.L.M. Curry, D.D., the distinguished agent of the Peabody Fund, who says: "The most that has been done at the South fcr the education of the negroes has been done by the Congregationalists. The American Missionary Association and those allied to it have been the chief agency, so far as benevolent effort is concerned, in diffusing right notions of religion, and in carrying education to the darkened mind of the negro."

Here is the large door that God has opened for us, and through which we are reaching this people, and in a still larger degree may carry the truths of the Kingdom of God to them. What they need most of all is light. Give them that and the question of rights will take care of itself. When I was in New Orleans last May, President Hitchcock, of Straight University, pointed out to me in his office a pile of letters, which, he said, were applications for teachers for these public schools, and those which he showed me represented the number of applications which he was not able to fill. And yet he is compelled every term to turn away scores of young men and young women seeking to fit themselves for just this work, because there is not room for them and because there are not funds to care for them.

As to this new movement in the South, I do not conclude that more than the first step has been taken, exceedingly important as that step is. Many of the schools as yet are in a wretched condition. The buildings in the rural districts are small and rudely built, and many of them are positively unfit to be used as school houses. There are neither maps, nor charts or other appliances for the teacher's use in his work, and in fact everything about these school houses is of the most primitive type. The school year often does not exceed four months, and many of these teachers are altogether unfit for their tasks.

Are we to think the time has come to withhold our support and our prayers from this great work? Was there ever such an opportunity offered to any land as this which is presented to the Christian philanthropy of our own?

I might tell of the needs of the cabin home life as I have seen them in these States, how the scholars from Christian schools are the leaven that is slowly transforming this, the greatest of all human institutions; how while from one-quarter to one-half of the colored population is progressing, gaining in education, property and character, there is another large part of the race that is either stationary or sinking into more miserable conditions. Are we seeking for paganism to battle with? Here it is in our own proud land. Do we want the opportunity of Christianizing a nation? Here it is; and with possibilities just as marked as those of any people that ever ascended the scale of intelligence and Christian morality.

The problem of the New South is not merely one of successful railroads, of busy factories or of paying plantations, but much more is it one of upright, wise, Christian manhood and womanhood. This is the work to which we are most truly called of the Eternal Father.