dollars for Negro health and education. This has already been passed by
state Legislature. This amount of money put into health and education
in any community will make a change. It shows an enlightenment of
public sentiment and a change of attitude on the part of the citizens
of the state. Progress cannot and will not be thwarted. Education,
enlightenment, Christianity—this trio is the saving grace of any
community. I do not know of any place better than North Carolina. _This
is my subconscious mind._ It never errors.
We leave Moore County and cross into Montgomery County. This is what
we call a hickory country. The land is rocky and red with hills almost
precipitous. We could not visit many of the colored people because of
the inaccessibility of most of the rural homes. The colored population
is about 4,000, and they pay taxes on about 8,000 acres of land. They
are engaged in general agriculture, corn, tobacco and cotton being
their prevailing crops. They have a few cotton factories in the town
of Troy and more in the county, and many lumber mills. The Pedee River
and its tributaries furnish a large part of the power for the factory
work. The county has a real gold mine which was profitably worked a few
years ago. It was my pleasure to visit it some years ago when it was in
operation. It has been abandoned, and the machinery and buildings show
signs of a past prosperity.
The town of Troy has one of the two wooden courthouses left in the
state. It was being replaced by a modern stone structure. It will
cost when finished about $200,000. I am told that the stone in the
construction of this building was taken from the site on which the
building stands. It rather reminds one of our Northern centers in that
it stands at the juncture of a number of the public roads leading into
the town.
The Peabody School, under the auspices of the American Missionary
Association of New York, is the only institution in all of that part of
the country giving anything like a high school education to the colored
people in all of that section of the country. The school is beautiful
for its location just out of the city. It fronts a public road and is
on high ground with splendid drainage. Several of their buildings are
new and up-to-date for school purposes.
A hard-surfaced road is in construction from Charlotte to Raleigh. The
distance is nearly two hundred miles. It will probably pass through
nine counties. It will open up a country of immense possibilities. A
cement bridge connecting up this road is already in construction across
the Yadkin River. This bridge will be nearly or quite 2,000 feet long.
It would ornament the approach to any Northern city.
From Troy we went to Biscoe, Star and Ashboro in Randolph County. This
is also an oak and hickory county. The roads took us through a very
fine section of the country. The country looks very undeveloped. The
roads were very fine. The rural homes appeared rather small. Many of
the women along the roads were seen bottoming chairs. Chair-making
seemed to be one of the main industries in that section. The frames of
the chairs were made at the factories and sent out to the country women
to have the bottoms put in them. These bottoms were made of white oak
splits. The absence of colored people engaged in this business seemed
very noticeable.
The town of Ashboro had all the appearances of being a hustling town.
More than a half dozen buildings were going up. We saw no colored
carpenters or bricklayers on the job anywhere. We were advised that
no colored men were allowed to work at their trade in the town. We
saw several colored mechanics with their kit of tools packed, leaving
the town. Some of them we knew to be the equal of any mechanics in
any other group of workers. Still their mechanical efficiency counted
nothing. It was their unfortunate tradition, and their black faces
which counted them out. Here my conscious mind came up again. We did
not have the feeling that we had when we left Lee County. A man ought
to be passed on his merits and not on his color. They wanted mechanics,
but not black mechanics. These men would do well to migrate. Wherever
they went I know they were in the frame of mind to swear vengeance
against any community that would tolerate that sort of condition. That
is what makes socialists, bolsheviks, and Catholics out of us.
We soon find ourselves in Guilford County. We arrive in High Point and
remain long enough to see friends and inquire about the conditions of
our farmers.
I think it true that there are more manufacturers of furniture in
this county than in any other county in the state. The Brick School
has bought furniture in New York only to await shipment from High
Point. Later we have gone to High Point and seen this furniture in
the making. These two cities are in the oak and hickory section of
the state. I have seen its street cars in Philadelphia, New York,
Baltimore, Washington, Asheville, Atlanta, Ga., Birmingham, Ala. Of
course a business of this size will give work of one sort or another to
a great many of our colored laborers. There are 15,000 of our people
in Guilford County. They own 3,000 homes and farms. They are paying
taxes on 17,000 acres of land. The Negroes in Guilford County have
the inspiration of one of the best state colleges for Negroes to be
found in the South. The college ought to be the center of all the best
influence for farming in a hundred miles about it. If they are found
to be using poor farming methods they ought to be fined. Alamance,
Orange and Durham counties are rather small counties, but they have
some of the best farms and form some of the best farming and industrial
communities to be found in the state. Durham is really the emporium
for Negro enterprise and thrift. Tobacco, cotton and corn, and some
wheat are the leading farm products in this section of the state.
Gibsonville, Burlington, Graham and Hillsboro are thriving towns. They
are centers of cotton and furniture manufacturing interests.
This study took us through about fifteen counties. We were not
investigating the town and city conditions, but the farming interests.
In counties where they had rural supervisors there was a marked
difference in the attitude and progress of the farmers. Their outward
appearance was different from what we saw several years ago. The
farmers were better clad; their work animals were in better condition;
their teams were not all dilapidated; many of them are using improved
machinery; their barns and houses were more orderly built and better
maintained; the houses in which they live are a decided improvement
over the old houses we usually see along the railroad. They are giving
more care to their wells and pumps. They are learning to screen their
windows. The ancestral waste barrel in many cases are being removed
from their kitchen windows. They are using more paint not only to save
their houses, but because it adds beauty to their premises. They are
planting flowers. They are putting out fruit trees and investing in
thoroughbred chickens, hogs and cows. These are all good signs. They
are really coming. Some have had to come from so far down the road that
it may appear that they have not made any progress. They are coming
nevertheless. At no place where we stopped did we have to confine our
diet to sweet potatoes and boiled eggs in order to preserve our health
by the osmosis process.
We saw in many places attempts made to improve the soil. We found
alfalfa, red clover and crimson clover in the red clay sections. Peas
were grown generally. The farm demonstration agents and the farmers’
conferences have been an inspiration to the farmers to grow legumes to
help the land to bring forth its fruit. They are learning that they
cannot use up the fertility of the soil and still have it. They are
learning that an investment in legumes is one of the best they can make
for crop productions.
The papers have been saying that one man in four in the American army
is uneducated. If that is true it is a sad comment on the conditions
of this country. There is no power in the world to equal that of
education. We cannot exaggerate its power and its importance. A trained
mind, a trained hand and a trained heart are indomitable. An unlettered
man lives in isolation. He cannot appreciate the creation of nature.
There is no progress in isolation and a static mind atrophies. Whatever
be the proportion of illiteracy, those of us who move about among
the masses know that notwithstanding our private schools and public
schools, ignorance and superstition are simply appalling. It is not
only appalling, but it is dangerous to any environment. It is a menace
to the state and government.
BRICK SCHOOL IN PERSPECTIVE
Work began at the Brick School in 1895 under the auspices of the
American Missionary Association. The “Estes Farm,” named after the
owner, General Estes of the Civil War, came into the possession of Mrs.
Julia E. Brewster Brick, of Brooklyn, New York, who found it a burden
on her hands. Mrs. Brick had visited the community, and her heart had
been made sad by the sights which greeted her on every side. The sad
faces and depressed spirits in a large environment of Negro congestion
appealed to her heart. She was responsive to this appeal. It was the
voice of God which she did not mistake.
Her life and thoughts and heart had been attuned to this appeal, and so
she sought how best she might help the situation. The advice of General
Oliver O. Howard was sought. He introduced Secretary A. F. Beard and
Mr. H. W. Hubbard, at the time Treasurer of the American Missionary
Association. The result of this counsel was that a large farm of 1,129½
acres of land in North Carolina three miles from the town of Enfield
was given to the American Missionary Association for Negro education.
With the gift came also from the same source $5,000 for the first
building.
There followed other gifts from Mrs. Brick and from the American
Missionary Association, so that the farm was soon stocked with hogs,
horses, mules, cows and farm implements. Houses of various sorts,
including school buildings, dormitories, teachers’ cottages, tenant
houses and barns have been put up, valued at several hundred thousand
dollars. This beautiful munificence has been our saving grace during
the last twenty-seven years of stress and strain in the financial world.
We began work with the modest number of five teachers. We now have
about twenty teachers and a few less than 400 students. The students
come from a dozen states and from nearly all the counties in North
Carolina. The larger number of them comes from a radius of fifty miles.
The purpose of the institution is to teach the students to do the
things the best way in the community where they may live. Being rurally
situated, the first and greatest appeal must be made along the line of
an agricultural education. The knowledge of how to extract from the
soil the largest and best products which the community may need for
its consumption is an asset in which any group of people may well take
pride. Most town and city boys coming to us have an aversion to this
form of education, and especially to the strenuousness necessary to an
efficient application of the most vital principles of agriculture.
Horses have to be shod, and farmers have to have houses in which to
live and under which to shelter their stock. So we have to teach the
boys to work in iron and wood. Along with this goes some drawing and
planning. Tools and wagons must be kept in repair. Boys going back to
their communities ought to be later the real leaders in the community.
In many instances they are the leaders.
While the boys are investing their time in the farm crafts and the shop
crafts the girls are learning to do needlework and house cleaning,
washing and sewing. They learn the home life by getting some of the
conventionalities of it here in the classroom under teachers who get
from Pratt and Columbia and other good schools the best they have
to offer. These teachers are themselves largely the products of our
American Missionary Association Schools. They have not been satisfied
to “graduate and quit,” but they have continued to study. In addition
to giving the boys work on the farm and in the shop, and the girls work
in the kitchen, laundry, dining-room and sewing-room, and general house
cleaning, all are offered a first-class high school course covering six
years, preceded by six years of elementary education.
The writer of these notes is himself a product of Oberlin and Fisk
University. He knows how to do a great many things, including
typesetting, printing, farming, plumbing, some work in wood,
poultry-raising and agriculture, stock husbandry. He lectures, preaches
sometimes, and writes for newspapers. He counts himself a fair judge of
artistic values wherever they are on exhibition. He knows how utterly
impossible it is to try to do any one of the above things with any
degree of efficiency or even ordinary skill without mental training.
The mind is the master, and unless that has training and poise the hand
fails. The academic course is to meet this condition. Many of the boys
and girls stay to finish it, but the bulk never finish. Many of them
do not stay for the full course—not that they do not have the money
in many cases—but because education among the masses it not popular.
They have had a propaganda for many years that a little learning is a
dangerous thing. They have been advised that they belong to a subject
group, and that they need only the rudimentary necessaries of life. A
fine horse and buggy or a car and nice clothes make an appeal above any
sacrifice for study. It is the appeal for the glitter and the glare.
This false notion comes to the half grown youth because they got a
bad start. They were neglected in the public schools—parents ignorant
of the necessity of education on the one hand, and poorly prepared
teachers on the other hand, and poorly furnished and constructed
schoolhouses. The whole school environment has not been psychological.
It has rather been repulsive.
Some who return to their homes are making good farmers, as evidenced by
their better crops, better fertility of their soil, better kept work
animals, better kept machinery, better homes, yards, and community life.
Many of those who finish the high school course attend other schools
and later enter the ministry, dentistry, or become physicians,
teachers, Y. M. C. A. or Y. W. C. A. workers, or instructors in
agriculture either in our schools or as county farm demonstration
agents. The best examples are Isaac Bunn, farmer, and owns his own
farm of 250 acres bought and paid for in Halifax County; Benjamin
Bullock, under the Smith-Lever Fund, in charge of agriculture in the
colored state college in Texas; Rev. A. S. Croom, Baptist minister,
Salisbury, N. C.; Dr. Joseph Harrison, physician, Kinston, N. C.;
Dr. Willie Sessoms, dentist, Rocky Mount, N. C.; Dr. R. R. Robinson,
physician, Los Angeles, Cal.; Miss Hattie Green, Miss Lucy Richmond
McCoy, Miss Susie Adams, Young Women’s Christian Association work,
New York; Miss Annie Rhodes, teacher in the city schools of Chicago;
Miss Lula Bullock, teacher in city schools, Louisville, Ky.; George
Bullock, manual training in city schools of Louisville, Ky.; Joseph
Bullock, a captain in the army, and now a student of dentistry. More
than a hundred have gone out as graduates, and all are a leavening in
the community in which they live. The influence of the Brick School
has counted in the community life of the masses more than any other
agency in operation. We mean by “Community” the area of a circle of
which the school is the center and whose radius is twenty-five miles.
We have three counties virtually inside of this circle whose Negro
population is more than 60,000. The circle cuts into six other counties
whose combined population is more than 148,000 Negroes. The nearest
institution under private auspices doing anything like high school work
is exactly sixty-three miles away. We have a field all our own. The
area in this circle is “our community.”
We have sought all these years to better the community life by reaching
the farmers directly. To this end we have annually and semi-annually
farmers’ meetings. They come and spend one or two days at our expense
for entertainment, where they have contact with our teachers and with
men and women sent by the State Department of Agriculture at Raleigh,
who lecture on the best methods of farm and home life.
We must do more than talk. We must help them. We have here a local
Federal Farm Loan Organization, and this organization in the last three
years has put into Negro farms more than $130,000. This money is let by
the United States government and on conditions that can be met without
hardship to the borrower. Titles are investigated, deeds are properly
made, and a new spirit is put into the farmers of the community. We
are encouraging our colored men to buy small farms of twenty-five and
fifty acres and build for themselves modest homes near their public
schools as far as they can, and not too far from their local churches.
We advise them to patronize these institutions freely and to build up
their community life.
The vision has been a long ways off, like the rainbow, but they
have begun to catch it. In these three counties they are paying
taxes on more than 100,000 acres of land. Their homes are very much
improved. Their churches are excellent for rural communities. They
are contributing largely for the Rosenwald schools. In Halifax County
they have twelve, and more are now in construction, the colored people
paying one-third of the cost.
They have helped us generously to erect several teachers’ cottages here
at Bricks, and $5,000 is now pledged for further improvements, which
will be paid as soon as farming conditions and prices enable them to do
so.
Righteous public sentiment is of slow growth, and one cannot expect to
change traditions quickly whose roots have penetrated every strata of
society. It takes sympathy, patience, years, work, and some money.
T. S. INBORDEN.
May 17, 18, 1922.
_The_ JOSEPH K. BRICK SCHOOL
BRICKS, N. C.
was organized twenty-seven years ago under the general supervision
of the American Missionary Association. It offers a first-class High
School Course, including Domestic Science, Domestic Art, Agriculture,
Work in Iron and Steel, Mechanical Drawing, Instrumental and Vocal
Music.
Board, lodging, light, heat, and laundering cost per calendar month,
$14.00. Tuition $2.00 and $2.50. Poor boys over sixteen years of age
may work out a part or all of this amount.
The School Farm contains 1,129½ acres.
There are 23 school buildings and cottages.
The postoffice handles four mails each day, giving money order,
registered mail, parcel post service.
The telegraph and telephone connections are through Enfield, N. C.
Atlantic Coast Line Trains 33 and 34 stop at Bricks on signal.
Prepaid freight may be sent direct to Bricks, N. C. Express may be sent
to Enfield, N. C.
The enrollment for last year was 385 students, under the leadership of
22 teachers and officers.
The students maintain religious, musical, and athletic organizations.
There is a student brass band to enliven outdoor sports.
For Catalogue and other information, write
T. S. INBORDEN, _Principal_
MITCHELL PRINTING CO., RALEIGH
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 3 Changed: Mojave Desert into Death Valley and to Sanfenando
To: Mojave Desert into Death Valley and to San Fernando
pg 3 Changed: Santa Barbarbara, Ventura, Gaudaloupe, San Lois Obispo
To: Santa Barbara, Ventura, Guadaloupe, San Luis Obispo
pg 6 Changed: Minnesota is the synonym for “Gold Metal”
To: Minnesota is the synonym for “Gold Medal”
pg 6 Changed: To the unitiated it might seem
To: To the uninitiated it might seem
pg 12 Changed: the towering snow-capped mountins
To: the towering snow-capped mountains
pg 14 Changed: try the water as it somes fresh
To: try the water as it comes fresh
pg 15 Changed: southern part of the valley, and also Bakerfield.
To: southern part of the valley, and also Bakersfield.
pg 16 Changed: largest ferry boat in the forld
To: largest ferry boat in the world
pg 16 Changed: We crossed the Sierra Madre over the Tehachepi
To: We crossed the Sierra Madre over the Tehachapi
pg 17 Changed: known as the Tehachepi Mountains
To: known as the Tehachapi Mountains
pg 17 Changed: fruits and nuts, hay and forage, dairy prducts
To: fruits and nuts, hay and forage, dairy products
pg 17 Changed: daily tours to many of the surburban towns
To: daily tours to many of the suburban towns
pg 18 Changed: When we were crossing the Techachepi Mountains
To: When we were crossing the Tehachapi Mountains
pg 19 Changed: Rodrigeez, Cabrillo, Don Gasper de protola
To: Rodriguez, Cabrillo, Don Gasper de Portola
pg 19 Changed: said to have four hundred squire miles
To: said to have four hundred square miles
pg 20 Changed: We also pass Stamford University.
To: We also pass Stanford University.
pg 21 Changed: public roads in Los Angeles and San Barnardino
To: public roads in Los Angeles and San Bernardino
pg 24 Changed: We are in Humbolt County
To: We are in Humboldt County
pg 24 Changed: several hundred miles through this tortious
To: several hundred miles through this tortuous
pg 26 Changed: The road is tortious,
To: The road is tortuous,
pg 27 Changed: Passing Council Bull in Iowa
To: Passing Council Bluffs in Iowa
pg 28 Changed: from Spokane to Seattle to San Barnardino
To: from Spokane to Seattle to San Bernardino
pg 30 Changed: Dr. Burton is a product of Taladega College
To: Dr. Burton is a product of Talladega College
pg 32 Changed: I never say anything finer.
To: I never saw anything finer.
pg 32 Changed: has lost one the greatest stars
To: has lost one of the greatest stars
pg 32 Changed: but whereever they have had the opportunity
To: but wherever they have had the opportunity
pg 33 Changed: After the world war he went to Tusla, Oklahoma
To: After the world war he went to Tulsa, Oklahoma
pg 35 Changed: average farmer to take into his parnership
To: average farmer to take into his partnership
pg 42 Changed: school poulation is around 10,000
To: school population is around 10,000
pg 43 Changed: the main thoroughfares ars so fine
To: the main thoroughfares are so fine
pg 48 Changed: there are more manfacturers of furniture
To: there are more manufacturers of furniture
pg 48 Changed: college ought to be the certer of all
To: college ought to be the center of all
pg 48 Changed: preserve our health by the osmos process
To: preserve our health by the osmosis process
pg 50 Changed: school buildings, domitories, teachers’ cottages
To: school buildings, dormitories, teachers’ cottages