RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS A PREPARATION
The separation of the Negro churchmen from the white organizations,
however, was not necessarily a declaration of war. Most Negroes regarded
this as the right step toward doing for themselves what others had
hitherto done for them and some whites so considered it. As a matter of
fact, the ties which have bound the Negro church organization to the
whites were not such as could be severed by a mere change in the
management of church affairs. The Negroes had already been divided from
the whites by an unwritten law. The upheaval of the Civil War merely
furnished the occasion for the separation. There still remained among
the northern whites numerous philanthropists who desired to help them in
the promotion of religion and morality. From this group, therefore, came
numerous Christian workers supported by funds freely contributed to
deliver the captive and proclaim the year of jubilee.
[Illustration: WILBERFORCE UNIVERSITY DURING THE CIVIL WAR.]
These Christian workers, however, cared not so much about proselyting as
they did about education, the greatest need of the freedmen. The
Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, who had considerable
communicants among the Negroes prior to the Civil War, took the lead in
this movement, establishing at strategic points schools which they
believed would become centers of culture for the whole race. The
Baptists established Shaw University at Raleigh in 1865; Roger Williams
at Nashville and Morehouse at Atlanta in 1867; Leland at New Orleans and
Benedict at Columbia in 1871. The Free-will Baptists founded Storer
College at Harpers Ferry in 1867. The Methodists, who were no less
active, established Walden at Nashville in 1865, Rust at Holly Springs
in 1866, Morgan at Baltimore in 1867, Haven Academy at Waynesboro in
1868, Claflin at Orangeburg in 1869, and Clark at Atlanta in 1870. The
Presbyterians, who could not compete with the Baptists and Methodists in
proselyting Negroes, largely restricted their efforts to the
establishment of Biddle at Charlotte in 1867 and to the promotion of the
work begun at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, established as Ashmun
Institute in 1854. The Episcopal Church showing the tender mercy of the
wicked, established St. Augustine at Raleigh in 1867. The American
Missionary Association, an agency of the Congregational Church,
established Avery Institute at Charleston, Ballard Normal School at
Macon, and Washburn at Beaufort, North Carolina, in 1865; Trinity at
Athens, Alabama, Gregory at Wilmington, North Carolina, and Fisk at
Nashville in 1866; Talladega in Alabama, Emerson at Mobile, Storrs at
Atlanta, and Beach at Savannah in 1867; Hampton Institute in Virginia,
Knox at Athens, Burwell at Selma, now at Florence; Ely Normal in
Louisville in 1868; Straight University at New Orleans, Tougaloo in
Mississippi, Le Moyne at Memphis, and Lincoln at Marion, Alabama, in
1869; Dorchester Academy at McIntosh, and the Albany Normal in Georgia
in 1870. The Congregationalists, moreover, figured in the establishment
of Howard University, which was chartered by the United States
Government in 1867 with provision for the education of all persons
regardless of race.
Some other less effective forces were at work during this period
accomplishing here and there results seemingly unimportant but in the
end productive of much good. In 1862 Miss Towne and Miss Murray, members
of the Society of Friends, established the Penn School on St. Helena
Island. Cornelia Hancock, a Philadelphia woman of the same sect, founded
the Laing School at Mount Pleasant, near Charleston, South Carolina.
Martha Schofield, another Friend of Pennsylvania, opened at Aiken in
1865 the Schofield Industrial School. In 1864 Alida Clark, supported by
Friends in Indiana, engaged in relief work among Negro orphans in
Helena, Arkansas, and in 1869 established near that city what is now
known as Southland College. The Reformed Presbyterians maintained a
school at Natchez between 1864 and 1866, and in 1874 established Knox
Academy at Selma, Alabama. The United Presbyterians opened a sort of
clandestine school in Nashville in 1863, and in 1875 established
Knoxville College as a center for a group of schools for Negroes in
Eastern Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Northern Alabama.
Franklinton Christian College, maintained by the American Christian
Convention, was opened in 1878 and chartered in 1890. Stillman Institute
was established by the southern Presbyterians at Tuscaloosa in 1876.
Paine College was founded at Augusta in 1884.
With these striking examples of sacrifice in behalf of the education of
their race, the Negro churches themselves began to participate in the
extension of education as a means to spread the gospel through an
intelligent ministry and to enable the laity to appreciate it as the
great leverage in the uplift of the man far down. The African Methodists
had through the efforts of Bishop Payne already undertaken the
establishment of Union Seminary near Columbus, which was finally merged
with Wilberforce, established by the Methodists in 1858 near Xenia,
Ohio. The African Methodists also established Western University in
Kansas. To extend their educational work in the South, however, this
same denomination established Allen University at Columbia in 1881;
Morris Brown at Atlanta in 1885; and later other schools at Waco, Texas;
Jackson, Mississippi; and Selma, Alabama. The Zion Methodist Church too
was planning the establishment of Livingstone College in 1879 and
removed to the present site of Salisbury in 1882, was popularized
extensively by the eloquent J. C. Price. Early emphasizing education,
the Colored Methodist Church opened Lane College at Jackson, Tennessee,
in 1882 and later established other schools at Birmingham, Alabama,
Holly Springs, Mississippi, and Tyler, Texas. With the support of the
American Baptist Home Mission Society the Negro Baptists have done
likewise and, moreover, have established independently of the whites
other such schools as the Virginia Theological Seminary and College at
Lynchburg, largely developed by the talented Gregory W. Hayes; the
William J. Simmons University of Louisville; the Arkansas Baptist
College, now under the direction of the efficient J. A. Booker; and the
National Training School for Girls in Washington, D. C., an institution
so well managed by the noted orator and indefatigable worker, Nannie H.
Burroughs.
[Illustration: J. C. PRICE
An orator and educator in the church.]
To make proper use of the schools various organizations cooperating
under the name of Freedmen's Aid Societies sent workers into the South
to meet every need of the Negro. These efforts were not altogether those
of the church, but so many churchmen were connected therewith that the
story of the Negro church would be incomplete without it. Cooperating
with these agencies, the American Missionary Association had in 1868 as
many as 532 missionaries and teachers working among the Negroes,
spending as much as $400,000 a year. Then there came the National
Freedmen's Relief Association of New York with 14 teachers and funds
amounting to $400,000 and $250,000 in supplies; the Pennsylvania
Freedmen's Relief Association or Philadelphia Society with a force of 60
teachers and a fund of $250,000 in 1865; the Western Freedmen's Aid
Commission with receipts aggregating $227,000 to support teachers in the
South in 1865; the Northwestern Freedmen's Aid Commission sending to the
South in 1865 as many as 50 teachers. In the District of Columbia, among
the Negroes themselves, there were organized and operated the National
Freedmen's Relief Association and the National Association for the
Relief of Destitute Colored women and children, the latter being
supported by funds appropriated by Congress.
The Friends, a distinctly religious body, early participated in the same
work through various local agencies. Among the first was the Friends
Association of Philadelphia and its vicinity for the Relief of Colored
Freedmen, which between 1863 and 1867 expended $210,500 among the
freedmen in Virginia and North Carolina. More interested in education
and religion, the Friends' Association for the Aid and Elevation of the
Freedmen worked among the Negroes of Virginia and South Carolina, where
between 1862 and 1869 they maintained 14 schools with 732 students and
expended for schools, seeds, supplies, donations to asylums, and 50,000
copies of the New Testament, $57,500. The New England Friends began
work among the freedmen in 1864 in Washington, D. C., operating there a
store at cost prices and conducting day, evening, and Sunday schools.
Finally there cooperated with the New England Friends those of Maryland
organized in 1864 as the Baltimore Association for the Moral and
Educational Improvement of the Colored People. This society was
fortunate in receiving annually for some time a subsidy from the city of
Baltimore to the amount of $20,000.
Foreign friends of the race were equally active in promoting education
and religion among the freedmen. In 1863, members of the Society of
Friends in England contributed to this relief work L3,000. The following
year L5,000 came from this source in England and L1,500 from Ireland.
That same year there came through the New England Society $2,100 from
the London Freedmen's Aid Society, smaller sums from France and Ireland,
and $1,313 from five Parsee firms in London. Similar contributions were
secured from abroad by other relief societies organized in the United
States. According to facts obtained by the Freedman's Bureau the English
aid societies contributed to the relief of the Negroes between 1865 and
1869 at least $500,000. Dr. J. L. M. Curry believed that the total
receipts in money and supplies reached $1,000,000.
The facts set forth above well represent the activities of the Friends
and of the Congregationalists, Free Will Baptists, Wesleyans,
Methodists, and Reformed Dutch, for whom the American Missionary
Association served as an agent; but there were in the field several
churches working independently. Among these were the Methodists,
Baptists and Presbyterians. To systematize its efforts the Methodists
organized in 1866 "The Freedmen Aid Society of the Methodist Church."
The first efforts of this society were directed toward primary, normal,
and higher education. In 1868 the Methodists had then established
through this agency 29 schools with 51 teachers and 5,000 students in
Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and
Georgia. By the end of the sixth year of its existence the receipts of
the society amounted to $315,100.
During these years the American Baptist Home Missionary Association
supported by Presbyterians and United Brethren in Christ, was sending
workers right in the wake of the Union armies invading the Mississippi
Valley. The Baptists had opened a school for Negroes in Alexandria in
1862, and by 1864 had sent missionaries into the District of Columbia,
Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Louisiana. Because of the
freedom exercised by the Baptists locally, there was among them much
duplication of effort which resulted in confusion; but the American
Baptist Home Missionary Association finally emerged as a unifying factor
among these workers. This society had made such rapid strides by 1867
that it had in the field 50 ordained ministers and a large number of
Negro students in training for the work. The Free-Will Baptists while
cooperating with the American Home Missionary Association made some
efforts by themselves. They carried on some work in the Shenandoah
Valley and in the West with 40 missionaries and teachers and 3,467
students.
The Presbyterians also took this work seriously. The General Assembly in
session at Pittsburg in 1865 appointed a special committee on freedmen,
with 18 members, two of whom were designated as secretary and treasurer.
As there were already in the field 36 teachers as missionaries supported
by local societies, this general bureau took over their work. The
following year there were in the field 55 missionaries, reporting 3,256
day pupils, 2,043 Sunday School scholars, and six churches with 526
members, in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Kansas. The income
for this work was $25,350 in 1865, together with 30 or 40 boxes of
clothing; but between 1865 and 1870 this denomination expended $244,700
to maintain their workers, who in 1820 had increased to 157, of whom 105
were Negroes. The Old School and United Presbyterians did not accomplish
so much but they had a few missions here and there. In 1864, there were
in Washington five schools with 174 students supported by the Reformed
Presbyterian Board of Missions with an expenditure of $3,000 a year.
Some other sporadic efforts in behalf of the freedmen deserve at
least casual mention. The Protestant Episcopal Freedmen's Commission was
organized in 1865 to engage in this work, but with the exception of some
physical relief extended the unfortunate it accomplished very little.
From The Massachusetts Episcopal Association for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge among the Freedmen and other Colored Persons of the
South and Southwest, organized that same year, still less assistance
came. The American Bible Society up to 1868, however, distributed a
million copies of scriptural and religious works among the freedmen. The
American Tract Society also sent out such works, opened some schools,
and conducted church services in Washington.
The Negroes, although poor in the goods of this world, soon made
sufficient sacrifice materially to give impetus to the relief work among
themselves. The Negroes in Maryland gave $23,371 to aid the relief work
promoted by the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational
Improvement of the Colored People. They organized bodies of their own,
moreover, to participate directly in this uplift work. In 1864 there was
established in Brooklyn "The African Civilization Society," which
gradually extended its work through churches and schools into the
District of Columbia, the Carolinas, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia,
Mississippi, and Louisiana. The reports of this organization show that
in 1868 it employed 129 teachers instructing 8,000 students at an
expense of $53,700. For some years the society operated in Brooklyn an
orphan asylum with the aid of the Freedmen's Bureau, but in 1869 the
management found itself embarrassed for lack of funds. From 1864 to 1868
the African Methodists so extended its mission and school work as to
have 40,000 Sunday school pupils and 39,000 volumes in school libraries.
It will be interesting to mention some of the men in the North, who
constituted the management of the home offices of these aid societies
and who used their time and influence in raising the necessary funds.
Among the officers of the American Freedmen's Aid Commission, a sort of
general agency in New York for several relief societies, were William
Lloyd Garrison, the famous abolitionist, as vice-president; Frederick
Law Olmsted, the noted traveler through the South prior to the war,
serving as general secretary; and, as directors, John G. Whittier, the
anti-slavery poet, Francis G. Shaw, another abolitionist, and Henry Ward
Beecher, the true and tried friend of the Negro. Lyman Abbott became
general secretary of the combined organizations. The American Freedmen's
Aid Commission and The American Union Commission added to their staff
William Cullen Bryant, Phillip Brooks, Bellamy Storer, and Edward L.
Pierce, who had done so much for the contrabands in South Carolina prior
to the close of the war. When most of these societies in a convention in
Cleveland united under the name of the American Freedmen's Union
Commission, they had for president Chief Justice Chase, who not only by
word but by actual sacrifice of his means did much to promote the
Christian education of the freedmen.
Among the supporters of the New England Society there appeared many
workers known before as friends of the Negro. The Rev. Edward Everett
Hale and J. M. Manning were most active in Boston in raising funds and
finding teachers and missionaries to work in Negro schools. Gov. John A.
Andrew served as the first president of the New England Freedmen's Aid
Society, Edward Atkinson as secretary, and James Freeman Clarke as
vice-president. And from New England came scores of workers, following
up the work commenced by those gallant soldiers, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, and Robert Gould Shaw.
Southern people were not exactly neutral on the enlightenment of the
Negro. They did not, as a whole, seriously object to it and in the
course of time there appeared among them men of their own group
fearlessly advocating Negro education. Dr. A. G. Haygood, a
distinguished churchman among the Methodists, deserves here some
mention. He represented in a large measure the best thought in the South
concerning the Negro. He came forward to impress upon the South the
claims of the Negro on the "sympathy and helpfulness of all who were
more fortunate, especially those who called themselves the followers of
Jesus Christ." This sentiment he set forth in a book, entitled _Our
Brother in Black_, which struck the North with agreeable surprise and
led the South to think more seriously of another solution of the
so-called Negro problem. Invited to be the Director of the John F.
Slater Fund established soon thereafter, Dr. Haygood had an opportunity
to spend nine years translating into action the theory set forth in his
book.
Less interested in Christian education but nevertheless effective in
promoting generally the cause which made the situation of the Negro
church so much better in the South was Dr. J. L. M. Curry, a lawyer and
congressman, representative of the Southern Confederacy. His work as
Director of the Peabody Fund, easily connected with the systematic
efforts of Dr. Amory Dwight Mayo, a northern man, who investigated the
Negro schools in the South, set forth methods for their improvement and
kept the North and the South well informed as to the forces at work
among Negroes for the good of all. The southern churches as a whole
during this period, however, did not so quickly forget their prejudices
as to do anything of consequence for the good of the Negroes. The Negro
had been begrudgingly granted his freedom and the northern teacher and
missionary seemed like interlopers to be tolerated but not worthy of
cooperation. The South, moreover, could not have done very much for
Negro missions for the reason that immediately after the war it was
decidedly impoverished; for many of the aid societies which assisted the
Negroes ministered also to the whites in the desolated areas.
These missionary teachers came with a determination to do something like
that of Francis Xavier, Henry Martyn, and Adoniram Judson, who bore the
religious message to the Orient. They came to change the character of
the freedmen through an intelligent religion based upon actual knowledge
of God as revealed in the Bible. Among these workers one should mention
Rev. D. L. Johnson, a teacher of refugees in Washington; Solomon Peck, a
volunteer teacher of the contrabands at Beaufort, South Carolina, in
1862; Horace Bumstead, afterward President of Atlanta University; and
Gen. O. O. Howard, President of Howard University.
The sort of education promoted by these workers will further explain the
significance of the movement. All of the church aid societies and many
of those beyond the control of churchmen had for their purpose the
industrial, social, intellectual, and religious improvement of the
freedmen. The capstone of the structure they would build then had its
foundation in moral and religious instruction. Most workers, therefore,
were chosen with regard to their fitness to function in these positions
as missionaries in the school room. Few persons volunteering to do such
work at that time could be devoid of a sympathetic nature, but more than
this was required to build in these new citizens that Christian
character which would make them helpful to their fellows and useful in
the work of the Master. While education was necessary for the Negroes as
for all other persons, the chief need of the Negro, as most of these
workers observed it, was religion.
Acting upon this idea, therefore, almost every Negro school provided in
some way for religious instruction. If the course of study were not
sufficiently broad to base thereupon a more advanced course, there was
usually provided some instruction in the English Bible. In case the
course of study became so pretentious as to style itself a college
curriculum, there was usually added the regular course in theology,
which, in spite of the fact that it was the only professional work in
which such institutions engaged, was sufficient for them to take over
the title of university. Although lacking adequate understanding
sometimes, however, these institutions had so much of the right spirit
that they accomplished all but wonders. While they did not always hold
the students long enough to impart all that a college graduate or a
professional man should know, they so inspired the youth with the love
of study that the habit once formed led them into fields of research and
endeavor which men much better trained often failed to reach.
The emphasis of the northern churches upon instruction rather than upon
mere proselyting immediately after the war, therefore, was not
misplaced. They no doubt wrought more wisely than they thought. The
Negro already had his predilections toward the Methodists and the
Baptists and the mere contest for the increase of church membership to
be recruited among a people, the masses of whom could not then serve God
intelligently would have been love's labor lost. Northern denominations
wisely cooperated with one another regardless of sectarian lines to do
whatever was needful whether or not the largest contributor to the
success of the enterprise received credit for it. Negroes who went from
these schools had, of course, the impress of the respective
denominations to which they owed their education, but very often, as it
was in the case of the Presbyterians, the denomination lost to the
others of a more popular appeal most of the men which it trained.
Lincoln and Biddle Universities have by their training of men who, on
leaving school joined the Methodists or Baptists, contributed to the
success of these denominations. When one thinks of Walter H. Brooks, the
popular Baptist minister in Washington, and of Joseph C. Price, the idol
of the Zion Church, as graduates of Lincoln University, this contention
becomes convincing.
With all of these workers in the field promoting religious education
without regard to creed, the Negro churches soon had a much larger
number of men equipped to extend their work. The minister who could
neither read nor write became an exception to the rule and when still
ambitious in spite of such shortcomings he sometimes ceased to have a
following. Preaching became more of an appeal to the intellect than an
effort to stir one's emotions. Sermons were made as an effort to
minister to a need observed by careful consideration of the
circumstances of the persons served, hymns in keeping with the thought
of the discourse harmonized therewith, and prayers became the occasion
of thanksgiving for blessings which the intelligent pastor could lead
his congregation to appreciate and of a petition for God's help to live
more righteously. In fact, the tone of worship in the Negro church had
been as a result of the post bellum efforts in education very much
changed as early as 1875 and decidedly so by 1885.
Given such an impetus the work of the Christian church among Negroes was
rapidly carried forward. Within a few years the neglected masses of the
freedmen unto whom the gospel had never been successfully preached were
generally evangelized and provided with some sort of facilities for
religious instruction. Publication societies sold through colporters and
missionaries religious literature adapted to the special needs of the
freedmen and religious workers organized in churches circles devoted to
the study of Christian doctrine and the Bible. As the church thus
liberalized offered the Negroes a much better opportunity for
development than the other institutions, many of which for years after
emancipation were regarded as spheres which the Negro should not enter,
the freedmen specialized in the study of this one concern thrown open to
them, mastering in a few years the principles of the Christian religion
and the story of the Bible to the extent that their friends and enemies
were all but startled. As a result, therefore, Negroes of to-day have a
much more thorough knowledge of these fundamentals than most white men.