BY REV. GEORGE W. ANDREWS, D.D.
The so-called Black Belt of Alabama is a wide tract of land extending across the central portion of the State, from east to west, embracing twenty counties, more or less. In general it is level, differing widely in this respect from the hilly and mountainous region lying directly north of it. It is the great cotton producing section of the State. The soil is either sandy or a black loam, and some of it is exceedingly fertile. Here you will find the canebrakes and cypress swamps, as well as the prairies and the vast fertile regions. Here also are cities and towns of importance, such as Montgomery, Selma, Marion, Greensboro, Demopolis, Tuskegee, Eufala and the like. In the rural sections of the belt are the vast plantations and imposing mansions of ante-bellum days. Here slavery was at its best and its worst.
This part of Alabama came to be called the Black Belt because into it were gathered so many people of African descent—about 400,000—to till the soil and harvest the crops. Some say the name originated from the character of the soil. At the present time the ratio of colored people to white people varies in the different counties from two to six of the former to one of the latter. Averaging the twenty counties, the ratio is about three colored to one white, while the ratio in the State, as a whole, is about one to one. It is thus seen that the Black Belt has an interest and a character of its own, and problems somewhat more pronounced than similar problems in other parts of the State. This was far more the case thirty or even twenty years ago than now. It is doubtful whether any other section of Alabama has made more rapid progress along intellectual and moral lines the past twenty-five years than the Black Belt. Here multiplied schools and colleges and missionary efforts have been doing their utmost, and great has been the result.
Just about twenty-seven years ago the writer came from New England into this Black Belt, curious to see and to hear. One Sabbath afternoon it was noised abroad that a famous colored preacher was to speak in one of the large town churches. His text was, "And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels." Rev. 12:7. A very difficult text. The sermon, however, was almost wholly about John the "revelator," and not on the text at all. The preacher began by informing his hearers that John was a very wonderful man, and the Romans wanted to kill him, so they put him into a kettle of oil and boiled him and boiled him, but could not kill him. Hence they determined to banish him to Patmos, so they put him on board a ship and sailed for three months over the great ocean, and then they got out the telescope and looked for three thousand miles further over the mighty waters, and there they saw the tip of a great mountain coming up out of the sea, and the great serpents were coiled around the top and were sliding down the sides into the waters, and there was not a cracker there for John. And so, with scarcely a grammatical sentence and with most unfitting words, he went on for an hour with a discourse full of wildness and weirdness, and full of untruth, while the people looked on with amazement at the wonderful knowledge and power of the man. Twenty or thirty years ago you might hear many similar sermons. But now, were you to go into the churches in the cities and larger towns of the Black Belt, you would find no place for the old-time preacher or the old-time sermon, but instead you would find in the pulpit a man of considerable education and refinement, preaching good gospel truth to an attentive audience.
Some of the causes and evidences of progress in the Black Belt, both of preachers and people, may well pass in review at this point.
In the first place, at the close of the war there were no schools for colored people; now you will find at least twelve hundred common schools for them in the Black Belt alone, besides a goodly number of select and higher schools of different denominations, while just up out of the Belt, in a most beautiful and healthful region, is Talladega College, well patronized by the people of the lower and less healthful parts of the State. These many schools could not fail to set in motion great changes affecting the homes, heads and hearts of the people. The ministers have powerfully felt their influence and in large numbers have been drawn into them or have been driven from the public leadership which they once had. The American Missionary Association schools and churches are at the foundation of all that has been accomplished. Others have patterned after these.
Again, previous to the time when the Christian missionary work began in the South, I cannot learn that there was more than one regularly ordained colored minister in the region under consideration, or that there were any regularly organized churches among them. At the present time there are at least sixteen hundred such churches in the twenty counties, and probably nearly as many ordained ministers—not to mention the five thousand licensed preachers, many of whom are hoping for ordination. These ministers and churches are working out a great problem. It is true that much of the work is of a low grade, but it is equally true that much of it is intelligent, earnest and effective. There are only a few college and theological graduates among them—perhaps not more than half a dozen. There are many more who have had normal and theological training, and a still larger number who have had a partial course of Bible study and who can manage a church fairly well. Of the more than six thousand ministers and preachers of the Black Belt, perhaps it would be a generous estimate to say that one hundred are in a measure educated. These are the leaders of the unschooled thousands counted among the preachers of the gospel.
Other evidences of progress in learning and piety are such as these: All over the State, as well as in the Black Belt, the churches are calling loudly for a more intelligent ministry. Not a few churches have been rent asunder by this issue, the more progressive part going out to organize a new church and secure a more acceptable minister. Scarcely an important church can be found where the subject of a competent ministry has not been agitated. There have also been erected within the past ten years a surprising number of new and greatly improved church edifices. Those whose "care of all the churches" has led them up and down through the Black Belt declare with emphasis that the quality of the preaching has greatly improved; that more books are bought and read; that the churches are better organized; that the conferences, associations and conventions of the ministers and churches are immeasurably in advance of what they were even ten years ago; that the subjects discussed in these gatherings are of a higher order and more intelligently and spiritually handled, and that there is a growing sense of responsibility and an earnest desire to meet it. I have been in many of these gatherings, especially among our American Missionary Association people, where the sermons and papers were excellent.
Also, it should be noted as a hopeful sign that the preachers and many of the pastors are greatly desirous of a more complete literary and theological education. Those who seek such an education are numerous. We sometimes have at Talladega applications from fifty such in a single year. It is often pitiful to hear their appeals to be admitted to school, when denial is forced upon them, since there is neither room nor money. Still, there are many who secure books, seek help, and blindly plod on.
Let no one suppose the work in the Black Belt or the State is finished. It is only gloriously begun. The Black Belt is probably better provided with schools, churches and ministers than any other part of the State. The mining regions about Birmingham and in North Alabama are more destitute and the condition of the people quite as deplorable. There are hundreds of preachers and not a few ordained ministers who cannot read or write, and many more who know very little of God's Word. One such recently sought ordination, and when asked to find the book of Jude, he replied, after a fruitless search, "That book is torn out of my Bible and I can't find it." He was ordained just the same. Our friends may be sure, however, that the leaven has been cast into the meal, and in due time will leaven the mass. But, oh, the darkness, the moral corruption, the sorrow and ruin that comes from the long delay. Where we can put one good minister into the field we need a score, and where one boy or girl is in school there should be a dozen. May the dear Father open our eyes to see His work and to know the joy of self-denying service for Him!