The avidity with which they receive education, and profit by it, is another indication of their capacity for advancement. True, there is still an appalling illiteracy among them, some 70 per cent. of them in the South being unable to write. But we must remember that hardly a quarter of a century ago it was a crime to teach one of them to read; they were sedulously kept in compulsory ignorance, and since the ban was removed, poverty, lack of schools and teachers, and other causes have prevented their advancement as rapidly as we may expect in future. But much has been done for them in this particular. Dr. Haygood estimates that about $50,000,000 has been spent for the education of the Negro since the war, nearly half of which has come from the benevolence of the North. Through the American Missionary Association alone some $10,000,000 has gone into the school and church work for the Negro, both alike educational. There are some 200 schools carried on in the South by different benevolent organizations, having over 28,000 colored youth in them. Of these, ninety are colleges or high schools, and furnish teachers and educated leaders for this race. Three-quarters of a million dollars a year flows southward from Northern generosity to this work. And besides this, is the work being done by the South itself for the colored youth in its public schools. A million Negroes are in the 15,000 colored schools of the South to-day, being taught by 15,000 teachers of their own color, the best of whom have been educated in these schools nurtured by Northern benevolence. And what is the result? The illiteracy in this race diminished 10 per cent. between 1870 and 1880, showing the eagerness of the people for improvement. It is estimated that two millions of the blacks can now read the Bible for themselves. And the universities for higher education find the Negro as susceptible to the best culture, as capable of receiving thorough discipline and of being highly educated as the white boys and girls in our Northern colleges. The time is not far distant when colored college graduates, instead of being reckoned by hundreds as now, will be numbered by thousands, and when we shall see some Mark Hopkins in ebony.
The time has gone by when intelligent men can talk about the inferiority of this race. When representative Southern men declare that they were mistaken in their former view, when such men as ex-Governor Brown, of Georgia, convinced by the examinations of our Atlanta University, publicly declares, "I was wrong; I am converted," that ought to be enough. But if not, the men of recognized ability and success among the blacks refute the old misrepresentation, now being revived in some quarters. When our Government sends its ministers abroad, Frederick Douglass and John M. Langston; when Senator Bruce and Representative Lynch are regarded as peers of their white brethren in the political arena; when college chairs are ably filled by such men as Professor Gregory, of Howard University; when colored delegates captivate a National council by their eloquence and ability; when Harvard University and Cornell University, by the choice of the students themselves, elect colored men to be their representative orators, surely it is much too late in the day to talk of the inferiority of the colored race. They are as well endowed by the Creator as any people in the world, and with training, culture, and a fair chance they will play their part in the world as well as any. It is such a people that we may predict will have a large share in adding to our National prosperity in the future.
Our first duty is to aid the Negro to attain more of moral power. Whatever he wins in the future he must secure because he deserves to. It will not come to him by favoritism nor by chance, but because he conquers the situation, and by his own ability and resolute endeavor fairly captures the prize of success. This the weak, degraded, untutored, semi-barbarous Negro can never do. He must develop a strong, clean manhood, equipped with the virtues to which success is fore-ordained, if he would be master of the future in a large way. Providence is helping him by the discipline of present exigences, making even the wrongs and hardships he is suffering a gymnastic to eliminate weakness and develop moral power. His ambition is chastened, his indolence is rebuked, his patience, courage, and persistence are being trained. But Providence waits for us to give him more direct assistance in this matter. We can re-enforce him in certain directions where he is now in great need of help. There are certain vices against which he needs to be armed and aided. In answer to the inquiry, What is the greatest hindrance to the advancement of the colored race? the answer comes promptly from several sources, "Drink." This is one of the new perils of his freedom, for in the old days of bondage it was a penal offense to sell liquor to a slave; but since the war, drunkenness has been a widespread curse among them, and to-day hangs like a mill-stone to the neck of many a Negro to prevent his rising. The sin of licentiousness prevails also to an alarming degree in many quarters. And wherever intemperance and social immorality abound, you find also the kindred vices of dishonesty, lying and laziness. No people can possibly have a great future in whose life these iniquities burn like a consuming fire. The manhood will be utterly burnt out of them before it can bear fruit in a large success. We need to send apostles of reform among them to turn them from their vices. We need to erect barriers of defense to protect them from temptation. Above all, we need to teach them a religion indissolubly joined with morality, a religion that means character and virtue, whose daily experience will mean the constant increase of moral power. The Negroes, like the Athenians of Paul's day, are very religious. They revel in camp meetings and fairly wallow in revivals. But too often their piety is the mere gush of emotion, and in hideous conjunction with gross evils. They need an intelligent piety and an educated ministry. As Dr. Powell said, they ought to have 7,000 educated ministers, when now in our sense of the word educated, they have hardly 500. The church work of this Association is a powerful aid to their moral upliftment.
Our next duty is to furnish the Negro plentifully with opportunities for education. An ignorant race can have no future, save one of degradation for themselves, and of increasing danger for the nation of which it is a part. The ignorant Negro must be abolished by the school-house. Training for the mind, training for the hand, the development and drill of all the powers of life are necessary to make the Negro no more a peril, but a factor of immense value in securing the future prosperity of this country. We must do far more in this direction than has ever yet been done. The South is still poor and cannot furnish adequately the means for doing this work as it should be done. The benevolence of the North must furnish still larger sums for education, that the colored race may be made safe for us and for themselves.
And, last but not least, we must secure to the Negro the full enjoyment of all his rights and privileges in church and State. He cannot attain the measure of success and usefulness toward which Providence points, if he is to be kept in a state of peonage. A black man is no better for being black, but he is none the less a man on that account. The simple thing to be insisted on is that he shall be treated as a man, entitled to the same rights as other men, and protected in his enjoyment of them. This is no time to relax our emphasis on this point, when the bitterness of the caste spirit is venting itself in violence, and in assertion that white supremacy must be maintained by illegal means if it cannot be by legal. We maintain that the only safety for the South, and the only way to its large prosperity, is by securing fair play to every man within its borders. There must not be one law for the white man and another for the black. There must not be one standard of legal protection in the North and another in the South. Anarchy in Chicago is not a whit worse nor more dangerous than anarchy in the South, that defies law and rules by the mob in order to gratify race prejudice. Conspiracy to murder in Chicago is not more outrageous and perilous than the conspiracy of men of one color in the South to get rid of obnoxious men of another color by the shot-gun. Injustice and wrong will always bring forth a harvest of disaster in any part of the country. Fair play for every man must be our motto. We must have no color-line in politics, no color-line in the church; but equal rights for all before the law, and in the church equal privileges of Christian brotherhood.
It is for us to clear the way thus for Providence to carry out its wise designs for this race. And if we fulfill our part of the work faithfully, what may not this people, educated and regenerated, add of blessing and benefit to our common country. If out of a race of slaves God in the old time could raise up a Moses, if out of a rude race of sea pirates and robber chiefs, who drank their mead from the skulls of their enemies, He could raise up a Shakespeare, what may He not develop out of this long despised and defrauded people? Let us furnish freely the channels through which God may work, that in His providence "the weak things of the world may become mighty" for good to our land.
Bureau Of Woman's Work.
Miss D.E. Emerson, Secretary.