On the afternoon of January 30, the Kowaliga School for Negroes,
located in the high pine lands of Elmore county, Alabama, was destroyed
by fire. Only two buildings remain of that unique industrial
settlement which has been successfully working among the Negroes of
the surrounding community for thirteen years. The school was started
by William E. Benson, a son of a former slave who had returned to
the Alabama plantation after the war and become one of the South's
most successful Negro farmers. Young Benson was graduated from Howard
University and returning to his father's plantation saw the real
need for a good school for the Negro children of the community. From
Patron's Hall, built by the combined efforts of "the neighbors,"
Kowaliga School was started.
When the five buildings were burned there were 280 pupils and twelve
teachers in attendance. The loss will be about $20,000 with practically
no insurance owing to the extreme difficulty that Negroes always
experience in the South in getting their property covered against loss.
The Kowaliga School is distinct in the service it is rendering to the
community. Its aim is not to train skilled workmen or highly educated
leaders, but rather to properly fit the Negro boys and girls of the
community to live better in that community. The "book work" is carried
as far as the eighth grade. The boys are taught agriculture and manual
training and the girls are trained in the home life which they will
probably take up on leaving school. As the school grew, Mr. Benson
felt that it was not enough to train these boys and girls without
giving them some opportunity to put their training to practical use.
Consequently in 1900 the Dixie Industrial Company was founded "to
improve the economic condition and social environment of the farm
tenants of the South by establishing seasonal industries and furnishing
them with steady employment the year round; to build better homes and
help them to avoid the oppressions of the old system of mortgaging
crops." The company now owns about 10,000 acres of farm and timber
lands, operates a saw-mill, a turpentine still, cotton ginnery,
cotton-seed and fertilizer mill, a store and forty farms, affording
homes and employment for 300 people. It has a paid-up capital of
$66,000, a surplus of $12,000, is earning eight per cent annually, and
paying four per cent annual dividends.
The industrial company provides work the year round for the rural
population and thus fills in the time of the seasonal workers who
before were busy only about half the year.
The fire will not directly affect the Dixie Industrial Company. It will
temporarily cripple the school and until funds are forthcoming that
work must be discontinued. "It means beginning all over again after
thirteen years' work," said Mr. Benson, who was in New York at the time
of the fire; "but I am going back this week and make another start."