THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO
We have studied the Negro, both slave and free, in his native home
and when transplanted. We have looked upon the picture which his life
exhibits under these varying conditions. We have traced his career
through the school of slavery into the larger school of free American
life, and seen the picture which his life has wrought here. We turn
now to the forces which have produced a transformation not short of
startling to the casual observer. The two forces are education, which
occupies this chapter, and the Christian religion which will engage
us in the next.
* * * * *
Among the educated colonists of the early years, there was no
question raised as to the education of slaves. Schools were few for
themselves, and in most cases instruction in letters fell among
family duties. Slaves were as yet indentured servants, few in number,
and were probably taught, if at all, along with the children of the
family. Intelligent masters naturally regarded intelligent servants
as most profitable to their mutual interest. Unlettered owners quite
as naturally had neither the wish nor the ability to instruct their
servants in letters, and both alike enjoyed the freedom from such
mental strain.
As the population—free and slave—increased, and as social life became
more complex and the status of the slaves fixed, questions as to the
education of the latter were raised. The cultured slave-holders very
generally, and the missionaries universally, contended for their
education; the exploiters and materialists usually opposed it; though
there may have been exceptions on both sides. It was not until after
the insurrectionary movements around 1835, that laws against negro
education were possible because upheld by public sentiment. By this
time it was very generally feared that ability to read would be the
ready means of learning of uprisings abroad and of suggesting them at
home.
Perhaps the earliest systematic effort toward negro education was in
1691, when, in Virginia, the Church became the agency through which
the apprenticeship of Negroes was made. Youths gifted mechanically
and industrially were indentured on condition that the talent be
developed and that they be taught to read; in some cases “to read the
Bible distinctly” was specified. Both before and after that date,
there is abundant evidence that parochial instruction was not unusual
by the missionaries, especially in the southern colonies.
In 1704, Elias Neau, a French Protestant, who had come to New York
and conformed to the English Church, opened a school for the Negroes.
Success attended his efforts; but, in 1712, attempts were made to
close his school as contributing to insurrectionary movements. Mr.
Neau was able to prove that only one of his pupils had joined such a
movement, and the school continued its good work under successive
teachers and rectors for more than half a century. Originally this
school was under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel (“S. P. G.”), but later it came under parochial support,
presumably that of Trinity Church.
The S. P. G. required of its teachers that the Negroes and Indians
be taught to read the Bible and other useful books and poems, and be
grounded in the Church Catechism. Some three years before the opening
of the Neau School, the Rev. Samuel Thomas had established an S. P.
G. school in Goose Creek Parish, S. C. Mr. Thomas in his account of
the one thousand slaves in his parish, reported that many of them
could read the Bible distinctly. Gradually schools were here and
there dotted over the colonies, in connection with the churches.
The most ambitious enterprise of these early years, was the school
established in Charleston, about 1741. Two slaves were bought, Harry
and Andrew, selected for their unusual intelligence, and trained to
be the teachers of others, and especially of slaves who could carry
back to their homes the learning acquired. Commissary Garden erected
the building and launched the school with about sixty young students
at the opening. The promoters planned to send out annually from
thirty to forty youths as teachers. Unhappily its life was short,
less than twenty-five years.
About the same time the Catechetical Schools in St. Peter’s and
Christ Church, Philadelphia, were opened with William Sturgeon, a
graduate of Yale, as instructor. His nineteen years of service and
its satisfactory fruits entitle him to rank among the great teachers
of his time.
Commissary Bray of Maryland, through influential friends in
England, gathered a school-fund whose benefactions overflowed into
Pennsylvania on the North, and North Carolina on the South.
Meantime the Quakers, who had been the first, were always the most
consistent in teaching the Negroes, often defying both sentiment
and local laws that they might be true to their convictions. The
Moravians also were active in the settlement at Bethlehem, Pa., as
well as in New Jersey and in the Carolinas.
An interesting private venture was that of Mrs. Elize Lucas Pinckney,
mother of the two patriot statesmen and soldiers of the Revolution,
who, while managing her father’s South Carolina estate, found time to
teach a class of young Negroes to read. This about 1740.
Quite naturally, the American Revolution stimulated greatly the
cause of education, both of the Whites and of the Negroes, when it
was declared to be both the duty and the right of man under the
new institutions. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison,
were foremost in commending gradual emancipation after education
and training for citizenship. The following passages from Doctor
Woodson’s _Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_, fairly express
the teaching of these and other Fathers of the Republic. “Many
Americans who considered slavery an evil, had found no way out of
the difficulty, when the alternative was to turn loose upon society
so many uncivilized men without the ability to discharge the duties
of citizenship.” “These leaders recommended gradual emancipation for
States having a large slave population, that those designated for
freedom might first be instructed in the value and meaning of liberty
to render them comfortable in the use of it.”
How many of the heartaches and tragedies of the succeeding long years
might have been prevented, had the people of America been as ready to
follow their leaders in making pathways for peace and righteousness,
and in establishing right and justice and self-government for their
Negro and Indian people, as they had been ready to follow them in
paths of war in fending their own rights and establishing their own
self-government! But self-interest makes partisans of the general run
of people not less now than then.
The Fathers of our Country, of our (then) new model of social life,
found the motive of education to be comfort in freedom and usefulness
in citizenship. They looked forward to the day when present slaves
would be future citizens. They looked out upon their day in which
education was the preparation of the embryo citizens. The thought of
the era greatly stimulated interest in education.
In the northern States, education of the Whites took a leap forward;
and not a few schools for Negroes, often separate at their own
request, were opened and adapted to their needs and occupations.
In New England, Boston taking the lead, the negro children were
generally admitted to the schools. The Negroes opened a school for
themselves in one of their homes and applied for its admission and
better equipment as a separate school, but this was declined.
The Clarkson Hall Schools in Philadelphia were the most successful,
perhaps of the time; and by 1815 were offering free tuition to
more than 300 pupils. Evening sessions were opened for adults.
In Maryland, the Roman Catholics and Quakers were foremost in
this field of endeavor. In Virginia, the cities of Alexandria,
Richmond, Petersburg, and Norfolk were chief centers of education.
In Alexandria, both races attended the same schools, a practice
probably growing out of a like custom in Sunday school. In the rural
districts, the instruction of the Negroes was done through the
churches very generally, spelling and reading of the Bible being the
goal.
North Carolina was even more liberal in her attitude toward
education, and the Negroes “attained rank among the most enlightened
in ante-bellum days.” A remarkable instance, all the more so because
the only one known, is that of the Rev. John Chavis, a Presbyterian
minister, described as a full-blooded Negro of dark brown color,
whose intellectual gifts early attracted the attention of his white
neighbors of Oxford, N. C. He was sent to Princeton to see if a Negro
would take a collegiate education. There he took high rank as a good
Latin, and a fair Greek scholar. Upon graduation, he spent many
years as a missionary and pastor until laws were passed, in 1831,
forbidding Negroes to preach. He then became a teacher, opening a
classical school for white pupils. Some of the most distinguished men
of the State were his patrons and pupils. Professor Basset of Trinity
College, N. C., tells his story, and names among his pupils, W. P.
Mangum, afterwards U. S. Senator; Archibald and John Henderson, sons
of the Chief Justice; Charles Manley, afterwards Governor of North
Carolina; and Dr. James L. Wortham, of Oxford.
Beyond the parish school instruction, there were no schools reported
in South Carolina outside of Charleston. In that city, schools for
the free Negroes taught by white teachers were maintained up to the
Civil War, and, indeed, until about ten years ago, when the Negroes
requested their own teachers to be substituted for the Whites.
The combined result of the Abolition movement and the insurrections
in 1830 and later, was a reaction against such education, very
general over the entire country. Even in New Hampshire and
Connecticut, attempts to open schools for Negroes were thwarted.
Prudence Crandall, a Quakeress, was imprisoned in Connecticut; and
a newly built school in Canaan, N. H., was wrecked. By about 1850,
hostility had abated, and, in the north, activities were revived and
stimulated; while in the South, Negroes, in small numbers, received
some teaching in private or clandestinely. There were exceptions to
this last statement, for there were open schools in Petersburg, Va.,
and in Charleston, S. C., as well as in North Carolina.
Before the Civil War, there were three opportunities for higher
learning opened to the Negroes—Oberlin College, 1833, and
Wilberforce, 1856 (both in Ohio), and Lincoln University, 1854, in
Pennsylvania. Apart from these, a very few Negroes, as in the case
of the Rev. John Chavis, were by favor admitted to other colleges in
the North and West. The Episcopal Church was first in the field of
education as of evangelization, the two were wedded together; but it
was not until after Emancipation that higher education was made a
part of her school system for the Negroes.
It is well to remember that, from our present point of view, the
era we have been reviewing is a primitive one. Up to 1860, most of
our population lived isolated, rural lives, and about one-half of
our white citizens were deprived of schooling, and were classed as
illiterate. Literary ambition was not a normal asset. Among the
Negroes, but a bare ten per cent were literate at the close of this
period; and, of these, the far greater number were free Negroes in
the upper tier of States. During the Civil War, this percentage seems
to have declined; and, at its close, something like six to eight per
cent expresses the ratio of the literate.
The after-war period opens with the operations of the Freedmen’s
Bureau, created in connection with the War Department, to instruct
and prepare the Negroes for the exercise of the rights and duties
of citizenship. In this, the Government acted in conjunction with
Boards of Churches, either already formed or at once organized.
In the South, the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic were the
only large and undivided bodies with which such alliance could be
made. The disaffection among the negro members of the Episcopal
Church stripped her of any great powers of usefulness; therefore,
the Boards acting with the Freedmen’s Bureau were generally
northern. Among these, the American Missionary Society, at first
interdenominational and later Congregational, must hold distinction
as first in service.
The most notable achievement of the movement was Hampton Institute,
whose foundations were so wisely laid by General Armstrong. At once
our Board of Missions organized a Freedman’s Bureau; and through its
co-operation there were opened, by 1870, a score or more of schools
in North and South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and
Kentucky. Of these, St. Augustine’s, Raleigh, has had a continuous
and distinguished career, the story of which appears later.
In 1873, the Petersburg School became a Normal School under Major
Giles B. Cooke, a Confederate officer who, entering the ministry,
became rector of St. Stephen’s Church for Negroes. The story of
this school is interesting as the model of other less noted ones
throughout the South.
Early in 1866, our Church Freedman’s Bureau sent, to Petersburg,
Miss Amanda Aiken (whose memory has ever since been revered) as the
teacher and organizer of St. James’ School which was first opened
in a private room. After many vicissitudes, the school was finally
established in a house which, though inconvenient and distant a
mile from the old site, served to shelter a good number of the 320
pupils formerly enrolled. Under the name, St. Stephen’s, a new and
attractive church and school were completed in 1868, and the Rev.
Jos. S. Atwell, a colored priest, took charge the following year
and conducted the parochial school until 1873. Then “Major Cooke,”
as he was generally called, already a teacher of the Negroes in the
neighborhood, became rector. The greatest need of the time was for
negro teachers, hence the expansion into the Normal School. About
as great a need was for ministers, and soon the Normal School added
a course for their training under the Rev. Dr. Spencer, and became
a branch of the Virginia Seminary. The “Major’s School” became a
recognized institution, gaining the complete confidence of both races
in a day when such an achievement was not easy. Among the first
pupils sent out was the Rev. J. H. M. Pollard, later Archdeacon of
his native Diocese. The Rev. Jos. W. Cain had received his early
schooling under Miss Aiken, and later was a deputy to General
Convention from Texas. The Rev. James S. Russell was the first
student of the Theological Training School, which laid the foundation
for the Payne Divinity School. During its fourteen years of life,
many were the teachers sent out by Major Cooke’s School, and they
were in great demand because of the excellence of their training.
One other type of school of this period (the type of many) should
attract the interest of the student of the subject—i. e., the country
schools. There is no better sample, perhaps, than the Clarkson
School in Middle South Carolina on the Wateree River. The first
Clarkson was an Englishman who settled in his Wateree home, east of
Columbia, early in the last century. He at once built chapels on
his plantations for his Negroes, and had them taught by a clergyman
in catechetical schools. At his death, he left a substantial sum
for this purpose; but the laws were adverse, and the bequest could
not be fulfilled. It was to their honor that each generation should
have desired to do more than compensate their Negroes for this loss.
The last of the immediate family, Miss Julia Clarkson, is now the
devoted teacher and lay missionary. The war and its aftermath were
very destructive to the region, and the Chapel in Middleburg fell a
victim, with other property. Only occasional Services could be held,
and instruction was intermittent. The Rev. B. B. Babbitt, a graduate
of Amherst, with a spirit and zeal holier than a crusader, had left
his New England home to make good the promises for the Negroes. He
took orders and was a welcome helper and pastor to the Clarkson’s
Chapel whenever his duties in Columbia allowed.
It was not until 1879 that Mr. Thomas Clarkson, in middle life, was
ordained. He served his entire ministry fulfilling the ancestral
trust as pastor and teacher. He rebuilt the Middleburg church largely
with his own hands, and preached and taught until his death.
His wife continued the school to her death; and, since then, the
daughter. Both have also taken the duties of lay-reader as necessity
required. Mrs. Clarkson moved the school to her home in the Sand
Hills. Services and school being held under a great maple tree at
first, or, when the weather required, in a farm house, until, through
the kindness of the Rev. Dr. Saul of Philadelphia, a chapel was built
and later a separate school house.
The ideal had been a boarding-industrial-school, for two obvious
reasons which the terms suggest. Then another fire destroyed the
Chapel; but again it was restored, largely by the negro members, and
renamed St. Thomas in memory of their beloved rector, Mr. Thomas
Clarkson.
The transformation in the life of the neighborhood is strikingly
described by Miss Clarkson. The moral tone appears immeasurably
better, marriage relations far more constant, embarrassment of
inquiry about the parentage of children immensely relieved as
compared with the postwar period of retrogression, and families quiet
and reverent at Chapel, and sending their children to school. “The
school house is the center of community life, the clubs meet there,
the Woman’s Auxiliary, and other organizations. We have sociables,
wedding receptions, sometimes dances, and, last January, a Golden
Wedding!” Sewing and cooking are taught, the former during the
summer, and, at present, the latter in Miss Clarkson’s kitchen, there
being no domestic science outfit. A small canning outfit serves the
school and community, and is used to the limit in summer. A colored
missionary, the Rev. J. C. Perry, now serves the mission, baptizes
the babies, and administers the Holy Communion. Miss Clarkson is the
tireless day-by-day minister to all needs of the needy.
This description is extended to the present. It is a fair sample
of the rural schools—more than fifty—throughout the Fourth, or
Sewanee, Province, some of them with long histories and some recently
opened. Scarcely one of the older schools but illustrates some
motive of devotion on the part of white churchmen toward their negro
friends; and most of the later ones illustrate equally the zeal and
self-sacrifice of more fortunate Negroes for their less favored
brethren. The story of each is a tempting romance of missions, into
which lack of space forbids our entrance in this study.
There were in 1922 fourteen such parochial schools in the Diocese
of South Carolina with an enrollment of over 1,000 children, and in
North and East Carolina there were twenty-one similar schools. These
schools furnish the bulk of the students who attend such institutions
as St. Paul’s, Lawrenceville, and St. Augustine’s, Raleigh. Many
of them give courses in cooking, sewing, and manual training, with
rudiments of a good high-school education.
In any discussion of the education of the Negro is involved naturally
the all-important question, what is the purpose of his education? It
has already been mentioned that a general prejudice against higher
education existed, because of the fear that an educated Negro
might be a trouble-maker. The weak points in much of the education
of the Reconstruction Period have also been noted. But present-day
conditions have brought the education of the Negro prominently to the
fore among our national problems as we realize what it means to the
nation to have within its heart not only a race within a race, but an
illiterate race within an educated democracy.
Feeling that the Church held the only satisfactory answer to this
question, in that the purpose of education in the Church is to train
mind and soul and body for a Christian citizenship, the idea of a
Church Institute was suggested in 1905, and its incorporation was
strongly and successfully advocated by Bishop Greer and Mr. George
Foster Peabody of New York. This proposal was approved by the Board
of Missions, and, in 1906, the Institute began its work. The Rev.
Samuel H. Bishop, as General Agent, was the happy choice of the
corporation. He immediately made a thorough survey of the educational
system of the South, and a second, equally thorough, of the work
of the Church in educating the Negroes. The ultimate purpose was
to be of assistance to all the schools in the Dioceses, but it was
necessary for the new Institute to walk before it could run. The
South was doing much, though with inadequate resources, and the North
had become somewhat apathetic because of the many independent appeals
by individuals with no organizations behind, or authority over,
them. Confidence had to be restored in order that interest might be
awakened. So the Institute was virtually an authorized medium of good
faith between the northern helper and the southern school worker.
It was expected that this special organization would tend to
emphasize the obligation of the Church for the moral and spiritual
advancement of the Negro together with his intellectual advance. Its
purpose was to give unity to the educational work already being done
by the Church among the Negroes, and to make clear the great need of
extension and thorough organization. The intention was that it should
come to the relief of every Southern Diocese by developing in each
at least one Industrial High School for the Christian training of
teachers and leaders of the negro race.
The founding of the Institute was to many a doubtful venture since
it began its career without an endowment, and with an exceedingly
limited list of subscribers; but the faith of its founders has been
justified. In 1906, only three schools, St. Paul’s, St. Augustine’s,
and the Bishop Payne Divinity School, accepted the supervision of the
Institute. Today there are ten schools affiliated with it, with an
annual enrollment of from 2,700 to 3,000 students.
The three largest and best defined of our schools—St. Augustine’s,
Raleigh, N. C., St. Paul’s, Lawrenceville, and Bishop Payne Divinity
School, Petersburg, Virginia—were chosen as institutions out of
which “to create typical examples of successful correlation and
development,” as Mr. Bishop advised. These represented respectively a
high degree of industrial excellence, advanced collegiate standards,
and thorough training for the ministry. The first two furnished
models for future Institute Schools in every needed feature of
education. The Payne Divinity School should furnish all that the
Church will need, for many generations, in its special sphere.
St. Augustine’s, Raleigh, N. C., the oldest, owed its birth to the
Church Freedman’s Bureau. It was incorporated in 1867, and opened
its doors in 1868, the Rev. J. B. Smith, D. D., being Principal. As
soon as the Civil War was over, the need for teachers to instruct the
millions of freedmen was recognized, and this was St. Augustine’s
first motive. As in the case of Major Cooke’s School in Virginia,
the need for clergymen was felt in North Carolina, and a theological
department was opened about 1875. Here were trained such excellent
men as Alston, McDuffey, Perry and Delany.
From the beginning, the collegiate department has been emphasized,
and it now has no superior among the schools for Negroes in the
South. All departments, however, are allied with the industrial and
mechanical. Several of the school buildings are testimonials of
the skill and industry of the students in carpentry and masonry,
and there is abundant witness to that of the young women in the
furnishing of rooms, hospital, and chapel, and in the making of their
own clothing. There are 110 acres occupied by the school, affording
both recreational grounds and agricultural training in intensive
farming. St. Agnes’ Hospital, founded in 1896 on the school grounds,
has long established its reputation both for its benefits to school
and community and as a training school for nurses. From sixty to
eighty patients from the two Carolinas are generally in the wards,
and thirty nurses continually under training in a three years’
course.[1]
The fruits of St. Augustine’s have gone forth to nourish the
Negroes of every State beyond the seas and in every profession.
Clergymen, trained in this school, have laid the foundations of negro
parishes and missions everywhere. Teachers, like Alfred Griffin,
Professor Atkins of the A. M. E. Zion Church, Wm. A. Perry of our
St. Athanasius’ School, are everywhere multiplying the influence of
their Alma Mater in geometrical ratio. Young men and women of St.
Augustine’s, wherever met, are holding up the high standard which
made them what they are. Physicians, like young Delany of Raleigh
(son of Bishop Delany), nurses, teachers, etc., have gone forth
steadily from the student-body grown from the three of twenty years
ago to the nearly five hundred of today.
St. Paul’s Normal and Industrial School at Lawrenceville, Va., was
founded in 1888 by the Rev. James S. Russell, now familiarly known
to the whole Church as “Archdeacon Russell.”[2]Confidence was soon
established, the school increased, and in 1888, the Rev. Dr. Saul,
of Philadelphia, furnished a building adequate for the needs of the
time. Mr. Russell’s ideals enlarged with the progress of his work.
Property was secured upon other people’s trust in the integrity of
the hard-working young clergyman; for there was no money as yet, only
faith. Gradual extensions were made, industries were introduced,
buildings were erected by the pupils, and the farm was made
productive.
Today the school has 1,600 acres and 40 buildings, large and small,
three of which are permanent brick structures. The brick and much
of the lumber are products of the school’s lands and student-labor.
There are fifty officers and teachers, and quite 500 pupils from
twenty-six States, as well as from Cuba, Porto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica,
and even Africa. Fully one-fifth of the negro clergy have been its
students. It has sent out 600 graduates, and given training to 5,000
other undergraduates.
Doctor Frissell said of Brunswick County that St. Paul’s School “has
well-nigh revolutionized it.” Literacy has risen from 12 per cent to
75 per cent. Moral standards have advanced, and the jail is deserted.
Industrial standards share the impetus, and negro farmers occupy
their own homes in great numbers in the two contiguous counties.
County school houses have been improved, the sessions lengthened, and
local self-taxation enlarged; while new schools have risen to meet
the increased demand. The missionary spirit of St. Paul’s is strong
in its students. Numerous are the chapels and schools which owe their
existence to its graduates. Doctor Frissell’s judgment is more than
justified.
The Bishop Payne Divinity School at Petersburg, Va., incorporated
in 1884, “had its origin in the necessities of the case,” as its
catalogue announces. It grew out of the theological department of
Major Cooke’s St. Stephen’s Normal School. Doctor Spencer, the first
teacher, was appointed and supported by the Trustees of the Virginia
Seminary. The school is finely located and has five good buildings,
including a beautiful chapel recently completed, and maintains the
same standard that other such schools have attained. The late Rev.
C. Braxton Bryan, D. D., member of an old and distinguished Virginia
family, was its Dean from the beginning. Examining chaplains find the
graduates fully up to those from any of our Seminaries. The happy
combination of able white professors with the splendidly trained
and equipped negro warden, the Rev. Samuel W. Grice, and the close
association between the faculty and the students, make an ideal
atmosphere for the highest and holiest results. The students have
further training in life-work through their missionary activities in
and around Petersburg.
Statistics of the school show that 92 students prepared there have
been ordained to our Ministry; 16 of these have died in Orders; 76 of
the Alumni are now in Orders. If you will add the two latter figures,
you will find that every one of the ninety-two men prepared at Payne
Divinity is honorably accounted for. Not one has, so far, put his
hand to the plow and turned backward. These statistics do not take
account of a considerable number who studied at the school, but for
one reason or another were not ordained. The ten students this year
in attendance are from ten Dioceses. Of these “three students served
in France during the war, two of them were lieutenants in the Army,
one was in the Navy.... Two of our Alumni have been elected to the
Episcopate, the Rev. James S. Russell, D. D., of St. Paul’s School,
Lawrenceville, and the Rev. Samuel W. Grice, B. D., Warden. Both
declined the honor in order to continue their work in these important
schools.” Who will undertake to measure the value of the investment
in human life represented in the Bishop Payne Divinity School?
By 1910, the strong, wise direction of the Rev. Mr. Bishop had so
impressed the Church and made friends for the great cause which he
advocated, that the American Church Institute felt itself strong
enough to add three other schools to those under its patronage.
Concerning them, Mr. Bishop wrote as follows in announcing their
acceptance: “They are located in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,
where the need of effective work by our Church is greatest; and,
notwithstanding pitifully small resources, they have done work of
which the Church may well be proud.” We review them briefly.
St. Athanasius’, Brunswick, Ga., began its existence as a parochial
school in 1884. In 1889, it was made a diocesan school. In 1910 a
charter was obtained, and St. Athanasius’ became a Church Institute
School. Mr. William Augustus Perry, son of the rector of St. Mark’s
Church, Tarboro, N. C., and a teacher in his father’s school, was
called to be Principal. Mr. Perry is a graduate of St. Augustine’s,
Raleigh, and a B. A. of Yale University. His purpose for the school
was unconsciously expressed in this extract from a letter to Mr.
Bishop: “I find myself arriving nearer and nearer to the conclusion
that all unhappiness, all failures, all sins, are the result of
ignorance somewhere—ignorance of self, ignorance of other people,
ignorance of nature, ignorance of God. My people are accused of
general incompetency, lack of skill, lack of finish; and to a certain
degree, justly so. The cause of it all is that we do not get the
thoroughness of preparation which we ought to have, and too much is
expected of us with such poor fundamental training.... The standards
are not too high nor the pace too great _per se_. What we want, what
we need, and what we must have, is more system, more definiteness,
and greater thoroughness in our early training.... If we get, in
our youth, the thoroughness of training which the Church can give,
we will shake off the stigma of inefficiency and superficiality.”
This has been his consistent effort throughout his eleven years of
administration, and with marked success, as a visit to the school
reveals.
* * * * *
The growth has been steady; and the attendance here, as in every one
of our schools, fully taxes the capacity of the buildings. Industries
are taught to both boys and girls, which minister to the needs of the
community. The daily chapel, with instruction and lectures, make the
spirit of the school-family.
St. Mark’s School, Birmingham, Ala., was opened about twenty-six
years ago in a rented room, with eight pupils. A lay-reader, C. V.
Augustine, was teacher, and the mission was directed by the Rev. J.
A. Van Hoose, of Alabama, a perpetual deacon whose enthusiasm and
earnestness and great business ability have been the chief assets
of the growing enterprise. A handsome building, now very valuable,
is the present home of the school. During these years, the Negroes
have contributed over $25,000 in fees and otherwise to its operation.
In its curriculum, the school correlates literary, industrial, and
religious education. The story of its graduates, too long to tell
here, forms an interesting exhibit of splendid influence traveling
to remotest country neighborhoods as well as to city homes and shops
and offices. Plans for the enlargement of the scope of the work are
in the making. The Rev. C. W. Brooks, a native of Baltimore and, for
twenty-two years, Principal, is a graduate of Howard University and
King Hall. He has devoted his entire life to this splendid school.
The Vicksburg Industrial School, Miss., began as a parochial school
during Bishop Thompson’s later years, under the two Middletons,
father and son, who were successively rectors of St. Mary’s,
Vicksburg. A suitable property was bought in 1907, when the St.
Mary’s School became twice as large. Upon reorganization, its name
was changed, and industries suited to community life were introduced.
Archdeacon R. T. Middleton, a rare soul, gentle and strong and
modest, was the pervading spirit whose influence, to the day of his
death in August, 1921, was powerful over the two hundred and more
young pupils who annually attended. Here, as everywhere, the school
has won the confidence of both races, and its graduates are generally
making good everywhere from the Gulf to the Lakes. The School has
its own Principal, but the rector of St. Mary’s, now the Rev. S. A.
Morgan, is also rector of the school, and in charge of religious
instruction.
The Fort Valley High and Industrial School, Georgia, accepted by
Bishop Nelson of Atlanta, and helped by the Institute in 1912, was
finally incorporated as an Institute School in 1919. It had its
beginnings some thirty years ago. Its new life upon its present
broad foundations is the result of the consecrated wisdom of a
Negro layman and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. H. A. Hunt. They are both
thoroughly practical and constructive teachers, who know how to
relate the theory of books to the practice of industry. Fort Valley
is the strategic negro school of Georgia, both because of its central
location and because of its good plant and its unexcelled history of
success. The Principal is an authority on the sort of education which
Fort Valley illustrates as no other can in that neighborhood. His
work is of high value in community and State, as through institutes
and conferences he disseminates his tested and approved methods.
It would be invidious to select any one avenue of excellence to
illustrate the work of Fort Valley, where all attain so high an
average. Thus guarded, it may be proper to say that the contribution
to the rural schools made through graduates equipped to meet rural
problems, alone justifies every dollar of annual expenditures.
In 1914, the Rev. Samuel H. Bishop, General Agent of the Institute,
died. His genius as a constructive critic had worked wonders in the
improved standard of all the schools. The Rev. Robert W. Patton, D.
D., succeeded him, bringing to the task other and equally valuable
gifts, and the Institute has gone steadily forward in building upon
the now well-established foundations.
Heretofore, the absorbing purpose of the Institute has been to
establish the character of the schools; not so much to produce
uniformity as to encourage and to strengthen the individual
characteristics of each, while developing an “Institute character”
in all alike. This had been well accomplished by Mr. Bishop. The
Institute could now look out with confidence upon the mission of the
schools to the life of their constituencies. The supreme need of the
time was, and is, for teachers properly equipped and with adequate
development in Christian character to be the builders of others. So
the schools have been impressed with this great motive to which the
broad culture of class-room work, domestic trade, and agricultural
training all contribute, to the great advantage of the teacher. The
word “teacher,” as here used, comprehends all callings, from pulpit
to farm, through which others may be guided. At the same time special
care is taken to train teachers, technically so called, for service
in schools both public and private.
In 1914, St. Paul’s School, Atlanta, was added to the list of
Institute Schools. But in 1916, a disastrous fire carried the
building away, along with many city blocks.
In 1920, the Okolona Industrial School, Mississippi, and the Gaudet
Industrial School near New Orleans, applied for admission among those
under the Church Institute. The Okolona School was accepted by the
Diocese of Mississippi and by the Institute, and began life under the
new relation, January 1, 1921. Its founder and strong administrator
ever since, is President Wallace A. Battle, one of the foremost
Negroes of his native and adopted States, Alabama and Louisiana, a
Negro of the Negroes. His father was a landowner, and on the farm
young Battle won the title, “the hardest worker on Cowikee River.”
He attended Talladega College, Alabama; and, still later, Berea
College, Kentucky, where he graduated, with the B. A. degree. Summer
courses in Agricultural Colleges in Illinois, and in the University
of Wisconsin, further fitted him for his chosen life-work.
“It was at Talladega,” he wrote, “ten years before Okolona was
founded that I resolved that there would be an industrial school with
high standards in the most needy State in the Union, if the Lord
would give me strength to finish. I kept my vow, and Okolona is the
result.” Nothing has ever been able to tempt him from this child of
his consecrated love. In the most lean and trying years, he declined
the Presidency of Alcorn, the State Agricultural College for Negroes,
and other flattering offers. Through all, and from the beginning,
among white friends, two stand out as unfailing sympathizers—The
Hon. Benjamin J. Abbott, an old Confederate veteran, after whom the
first large permanent building is named; and Capt. A. T. Stovall, a
distinguished lawyer, and son of another old Confederate officer.
There was prejudice to be overcome and these two were friends at
home to keep watch as fathers while the infant enterprise proved its
right to live. A disastrous fire soon swept away the first building.
Capt. Stovall sought home-aid to replace it. Prejudice was not yet
dead. Approaching a group he asked aid. Quickly the response came
from one, a stammerer, “I will g-g-give you a h-h-h-hundred dollars
to b-b-blow the d——d thing up.” Many responded in better kind, the
building was restored and the stammering friend, now a staunch
supporter as everybody is, told this anecdote on himself at the last
Commencement with the announcement that Battle’s School had converted
him completely, and that it had no warmer friend than himself.
There are four hundred acres of fertile prairie land bordering the
town, which, with the buildings, is worth quite $180,000. The farm
was the best in the State during the year 1921. The work done is
similar to that at Fort Valley. The industries are adapted to its
prairie home. Its graduates prepared for teaching are accorded the
Teachers’ Certificate of the State, and places are always ready for
them. Many choose agricultural and industrial pursuits.
The Gaudet Normal and Industrial School, named for its founder, was
tendered to Bishop Sessums of Louisiana, and accepted by the Diocese
and by the Church Institute, between 1920 and 1921. Mrs. Francis
Joseph Gaudet was led to found the school through the tragedies
witnessed in her long and remarkable work in the interest of prison
reform. Little children of her race, the offspring of criminals, were
often committed to prison because the State had no other provision
for them. Their morals were early corrupted in such surroundings.
Mrs. Gaudet championed their cause, and the story of her fight for
reform is one of the heroic romances of modern times. She brought the
matter before the Prison Reform Association who represented her cause
to the authorities.
“We cannot change conditions; we have no money,” was the answer.
“I vowed,” she said, “that I would build the home and school for
these neglected ones if God would help me.”
Shortly after this event, she was appointed to represent the Woman’s
Temperance Union in their International Convention at Edinburgh,
Scotland. Hoping to further the cause of the Home and School, she
accepted, mortgaged her home for the money needed for the journey,
and set forth upon her double mission, determined to suffer any
privations needful to fulfill her mission. After the close of the
Convention, Lady Henry Somerset, President of the Temperance Union,
kept Mrs. Gaudet busy upon a lecture tour in Europe for six months.
She returned to New Orleans with about $1,000 towards the Home and
School. Soon a suitable site was found upon the outskirts of the
city, and a first payment made. The farm of 105 acres now has three
main buildings, a barn and other small industrial houses, and a
beautiful campus, shaded with pecans and adorned with shrubs.
“Through God’s agents,” wrote Mrs. Gaudet, “the buildings are
furnished throughout, even to an ice pick. The whole plant is worth
about $100,000. I place this plant in the hands of the Episcopal
Church in the Diocese of Bishop Davis Sessums.”
At present the classes run through the 8th grade. “We teach also
domestic art, mattress making, chair caneing, practical truck farming
under an experienced truck gardener, and the rudiments of carpentry.
We have a well equipped blacksmith shop, but haven’t the funds to
supply a smith to teach the boys. We have at present (1922) eighty
children, boys and girls, a majority of them orphans. I would give
every child a good school education with manual training, and compel
each to learn a trade, for I have observed in my travels through the
State prisons that fully 90% of the prisoners have no trade. People
who have trades are too busy earning a living to get in trouble.”
Two other schools—St. Mary’s, Columbia, S. C., and Hoffman-St.
Mary’s, Keeling, Tenn.—are assisted by the Church Institute, and will
doubtless develop, in time, as have those here briefly described,
when the forward movement of the Church fully reaches them. Of
St. Mary’s, Bishop Guerry writes: “Out of it is expected to come a
diocesan school at the close of the Nation-Wide Campaign for the
Church’s Mission.” Hoffman-St. Mary’s has a rural setting ready to be
developed in order that it may minister to the great negro population
in the Mississippi Valley of Tennessee. These are two golden
opportunities for the Church.
In January, 1922, comes news of the adoption of St. Philip’s School,
San Antonio, Texas, by the Province of the Southwest, this being
the only school for Negroes in that Province. Bishop Capers of West
Texas writes: “I have asked the Church Institute to include this
school within the selected number of southern negro schools that it
fosters. The purpose of St. Philip’s is to educate young negro women
in practical learning, domestic science, etc.”
Every one of our schools, whether parochial or affiliated with the
Institute, is crowded. With double the equipment the attendance would
at once be doubled. There are nine million Negroes in the South. If
an estimate may fairly be based upon the facts known regarding a
half-dozen cities in two States, then quite one-fifth of the children
have no room provided for them at all. If the overcrowded condition
were relieved, another one-fifth would have to be provided for. The
Church could quadruple its parochial-school equipment and still be
unable to meet the demands.
In our Church Institute Schools, we are dealing with the smaller
class who are able to go, some of them much beyond the common
schools, and others to the College course, and still others to the
University. From them must come the teachers, preachers and leaders.
In most of our States, from twenty to thirty per cent of the teachers
are not properly equipped. Here again, to supply the demand for good
teachers alone, not to mention the ministers and other “learned
professions,” we should quadruple our present provisions. For we must
remember that schools of the character of ours are few indeed. If
this does not constitute a clear call to service, what indeed does?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Appendix, Note 1.
[2] See Appendix, Note 2.