AVERY NORMAL INSTITUTE, CHARLESTON, S. C.
Scarcely had the smoke of the long conflict cleared away or civil authority been fully restored in this long-besieged city, when General Saxton, then Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, opened a school in the Memminger building on St. Philip Street, built for and since used for the education of white children. Here, on the first day of October, 1865, were gathered a thousand children eager for the education so long denied to their race. So great was the pressure to gain admission to this school that one hundred children were seated in the great dome that surmounts the edifice.
The studies during the first year embraced the entire range of elementary branches, from the primer to the Latin grammar. About three-fourths of those who attended this first school were children of freedmen; the others, making up the advanced classes, were born free and constituted an aristocracy of color, a distinction which, after a lapse of more than a third of a century, still exists.
The closing examinations of this first year were attended by a large audience of both white and colored. There were present ladies and gentlemen, missionaries and teachers, civil and military dignitaries, and the leading representatives of both races. It was a novel and moving sight, one that the wildest imagination could not have foreseen or deemed possible five years before.
PROF. M. A. HOLMES, PRINCIPAL.
In its second year the school, then known as the Saxton School, held its sessions in the Military Hall on Wentworth Street, where with a slightly reduced enrollment, it remained until removed to its present quarters, May 1, 1865. The large and handsome building which it now occupies was erected by the American Missionary Association through the Freedmen's Bureau. Rev. Charles Avery, of Pittsburg, Pa., had given a large sum for the education of the colored people, and ten thousand dollars of his bequest were appropriated to the institution, and in honor of this noble philanthropist the name was changed to Avery Normal Institute. Here the enrollment was necessarily reduced and the normal character of its work made more prominent, a feature that had been contemplated from the beginning.
In any survey of the work of Avery, three principals should receive special recognition for their thorough, enduring and Christian labor in this needy field. They are the Rev. F. S. Cardozo, by whom the school was first organized in the Memminger building, Prof. M. A. Warren, who succeeded him and graduated the first class in 1872, and Prof. Amos W. Farnham, now of the Oswego Normal School. Each of these men was distinguished for unusual teaching skill, for great administrative ability, and for complete consecration to the work to which he was specially called. These worthy educators are still remembered here with affection and gratitude, but the full fruition of their labors will be known only in the great day when the books shall be opened.
For over thirty years about four hundred colored students have annually gathered here for the training which was to fit them for life's work. For many years all grades, from the primary to the high school and normal course, were maintained, but in later years the primary and intermediate pupils have been excluded, their instruction being amply provided for in the public and numerous private schools of the city, thus leaving the Institute free to devote itself to higher grades and normal work, in which Avery has been from the first conspicuous and eminently successful. Its graduates now number nearly four hundred and are found in almost every department of human activity. Some are distinguished in professional life, others in trade, or in business. Among them are doctors, skilled and eminent in their chosen fields of labor, clergymen of acknowledged ability, and teachers of long and successful experience. About two-thirds of all its graduates choose teaching as their special vocation; and nearly all prove their skill and ability in the schoolroom, and have reflected great credit on their alma mater and have been a blessing to their race. There has been for the last ten years a steady and growing demand for colored teachers of ability and with special training for their work; and there is not a county in the state to which our graduates do not go as teachers, and in the lower counties and along this malarial coast nearly all the schools for colored children are taught by Avery graduates. In many places conditions are such that no one can undertake this work without jeopardizing health or risking life itself. But there are not wanting those whom zeal and devotion lead into these dangerous fields. Names might be given of those who have even given up life itself at work in these malarial districts, proving their zeal and the missionary spirit which actuated them.