It is not a long journey from New York to Enfield, N. C. We will not find
a New England village there when we leave the Weldon and Wilmington
Railway. It is quite another part of the world. A ride of four miles among
plantations and cotton fields brings us to the latest-born school of the
Association. Here are a thousand acres of arable land, which ought to be a
fortune to its owner and has been in years gone by. Now, however, cotton
and corn have ceased to be kings, oftentimes they are more like beggars.
Thus it came to pass that this noble plantation became the property of a
benevolent lady in Brooklyn, N. Y., who made it a splendid gift to the
Association, with sufficient money to build the fine brick building which
stands in the center of this great farm, the beginning of the "Joseph K.
Brick Normal, Agricultural, and Industrial School."
Is it needed? We will say it is when we have acquainted ourselves with the
condition of the colored people in these parts. I know not what could have
been their condition in slavery. Except for the buying and the selling, it
could not have been worse than we find it here to-day. Rags, ignorance,
poverty, and degradation indescribable are in the cabins. Have the
children been taught in any school? No. Can the parents read? No. Shall we
find a Bible in the cabins? No. Weak, wicked, and absolutely poor, in dumb
and stolid content with animalism and dirt, here families are herding like
cattle, in windowless and miserable cabins of one room. The children who
fail to receive the benignity of death grow up here and exist and suffer
in this dreadful life. Yet we can ride by this plantation and in sight of
it any day on our way to Florida, and never see what is so near.
Nevertheless, here it is a reality much worse than it reads, for ten times
one are ten and ten times ten are one hundred.
In such environment and conditions is our "Agricultural and Industrial
School" now half way through its first year.
[[Illustration: PRINCIPAL T. S. INBORDEN.]]