I was asked to give a little of my personal experience. I dislike to do this: but if narrating any of my personal experience will give an insight into the work that the American Missionary Association is doing, I will gladly consent. My story is the story of hundreds of young men in the South. Only in the larger cities can we get a good English education, except we go to schools established for us by this Association. I went eight years to Fisk University. I have a brother there now in the senior college class. This is his tenth year, and I have a sister who is also in her tenth year there. It takes a long while to get through. My father had no money to send me to school. In his slavery days he had stolen a little bit of learning, and had learned how to write and read and a little arithmetic. I was about four years old when the stroke for freedom was made. My father began to teach me arithmetic, and many a day in his shoemaker's shop, as I sat and kept the fire going, he would teach me and carry me as far as he could; and he put into me the idea of getting an education. At fifteen he told me I might have my own time. At that age I had advanced far enough to pass the examination of the district school, and, having passed, I made my way to Fisk University. I had not known that there was such an institution in the land, or such a thing as the Missionary Association; but going once into an adjoining county, I happened to fall in with some Christian young men from Fisk, and they told me about that school. I had always had a great desire to be educated, and so I went down there. When I arrived there, I thought it was a strange place. I was familiar with white people, but I think I had never up to that time had one of them shake hands with me. When I found what they were doing there, and that it was an earnest Christian school, my whole soul was uplifted, and I determined to seek for better things. I thought I was pretty well educated, but when I found myself down stairs among those learning [a] grammar and arithmetic, and that there were nine years before me, I concluded that after all I was not very well educated, but I set out to go through that long course of study.
During all those years of study I taught school every summer. For nine years I was not out of the school room a month in the year. I was either a pupil or a teacher. Wherever I was teaching, I would try to set up a little Fisk University of my own. You know that the school teacher who goes out into these country places is everybody and everything. He is law and gospel, and he must know everything—at least, he must not let people know that he does not know everything. So I was not only school teacher, but I organized a Sunday-school, and preached, also. Especially in Mississippi I did that kind of work, where there was much need of it. This is the way that hundreds of young men have gone through Fisk University and other institutions. We get our education sometimes at great cost, and at great hardships. Sometimes we break down under this constant strain of teaching. Many a time in Mississippi swamps I have waded up to my knees in water going to school, and many a time have I taught lying sick on my back; but the money had to be made. This is the way we get through, and not only the young men but the girls. There are two things which it teaches us: It teaches us how to be men, and it teaches us how to work. We are forced to do it for the money's sake, and it is not only for the money's sake, because we are sure that these young men and young ladies go out with a Christian desire to do good, and a young man, whether he is a Christian or not, feels that he must do Christian work when he is teaching in the summer. He is hardly respectable if he does not do that sort of thing during his service as a teacher. In that way the great masses of the people are being reached by Christian students going out among them.
So it seems to me as though the problem were being slowly yet truly solved, and by and by the Negroes will be lifted up on the same footing with other people. That is the only thing we want. We are not fighting for social equality, or this or that thing. No intelligent Negro has any desire to put the South into the hands of the Negroes for rule. No man who is intelligent could wish the government of the South to come into the hands of any ignorant and inexperienced people, whether white or black, and that is what we are as a mass. But we do want recognition, so far as we have those qualities that would cause the same thing to be granted to us if we were not Negroes. This is the only thing that we ask for, and this is what is withheld from us. There are those even in the South who are willing to give us this recognition, and little by little they are getting over some of their prejudice and are inclined to recognize us so far as we have a right to their respect. Of course there are those who are determined to keep the Negro down; but these are coming over slowly but surely, and by and by there will be in this land no Negro problem.
Bureau Of Woman's Work.
Miss D.E. Emerson, Secretary.
In our February number, in mentioning the special work of some of the Woman's Organizations, we referred to the four teachers of the Woman's Home Missionary Association. These have been assigned them from the ranks of the American Missionary Association additional to their former work in the Southern field. They having transferred to the American Missionary Association their former work, have now eleven missionaries under our auspices.
We also failed to mention in our February number the Woman's Union of Iowa, which is rendering us so substantial aid in the support of our Beach Institute at Savannah, Georgia.
And here comes yet another pledge—the Union of Kansas starting in with three hundred dollars toward the support of a missionary. Nebraska has also come forward with a pledge of a definite amount.