OUR WORK, AS A GRADUATE OF FISK UNIVERSITY SEES IT.
BY WILLIAM A. CROSTHWAITE.
The American Missionary Association is doing more to quicken the hopes and aspirations of the Southern Negro, more toward arousing the Southern white man to educate himself, and more toward bringing the two races to an acknowledgment of each other's rights, than any other similar institution in the country.
In the summer of 1884, near Leesburg, Texas, a well-appointed Negro school was burned by the whites of that community. The colored people, seeing their hope of years in ashes, advertised their little holdings for sale, and prepared to leave in a body. But the whites offered to supplement the insurance on the former building and to re-build the school, if the colored people would remain in the community. The terms were accepted, and now West Chapel, which is the name of the school, is excellently furnished and has a $200 bell upon it, and is the best known school in Northeast Texas. Previous to the burning of West Chapel, the whites were continually distracted by factional fights. There was general apathy with regard to improvement in any way whatever. Their teachers were always of the inferior class. But, when they found that the colored people would have a school, they decided to have one also. The colored people bought a bell. So did they. The colored people had a foreign teacher. So must they have one, and they paid $750 a year for him. One of the white citizens of the locality summed the situation up thus:—"West Chapel is to the whites what a coal of fire is on the back of a terrapin." This school was organized by a Fisk student and has ever since been taught by students of Fisk. Thus is the A.M.A. lifting up the Negro directly and the whites indirectly, and establishing friendly relations between the two.
But this is no isolated case. The story is the same wherever the educated Negro comes in contact with the whites. At one time, our school was so far in advance of the white school, that I was told by my school director that "no high-learnt teacher was wanted to teach 'Nigger Schools,'" and I was actually driven from my school by threats of violence.
The North can better understand the work of the American Missionary Association, when it is fully understood that the presence of Fisk University in Nashville brought about the existence of Vanderbilt University. When Fisk began to send out her graduates as refined and upright gentlemen, and the newspapers were enthusiastic in their accounts of its literary and musical exhibitions, the white people said; "We must have a university in Nashville also."
In the recent Prohibition campaign in Tennessee, the students of Fisk were one of the chief factors. In the beginning of the movement, the cry; "Where does Fisk stand on this question?" went up from the good people all over the State. Fisk was the first college to declare in favor of the proposed Amendment, and one hundred young men and women went from her walls and fought valiantly for the cause.
It is due the profound Christian spirit that characterizes the work of the Association to say, that every student and alumnus of Fisk in the State of Tennessee was an ardent supporter of the cause, save two. During the campaign the most cordial feelings existed between the better elements of both races. Heretofore these things were almost unheard of.
There was a time when policy or political expediency had no effect upon the prejudices of the Southern whites, but the educational process inaugurated by the North is elevating a class of colored people to a plane where they are respected as never before. No State or Federal aid can do for us what the A.M.A. is doing. Such aid as the Blair Bill proposed would meet a certain need, and enable the men that are educated by the A.M.A. to get at the masses; but the peculiar work of preparing honest and devout Christian leaders must be otherwise provided for. The complete regeneration of the South is a thing of the future. The A.M.A. must remain among us to hasten on "the harvest of the golden year."