THE STUDENT PERIOD.
From the time of his conversion, young Walker was an active and
zealous Christian, and at once became prominently identified with every
branch of church work--the prayer meeting, the Sunday school and the
preaching service. He had not been long converted before he was deeply
impressed with the thought that he was called of God to preach the
gospel. He felt, nevertheless, that he must restrain this desire until
he had acquired some education. He had been taught his A, B, C’s by his
mother. She had also taught him to read the fourteenth chapter of John.
He has preserved to this day the old Bible from which his mother taught
him to read. It is needless to say that his mother’s Bible is to him a
priceless treasure. Subsequently his entire schooling had been confined
to two terms of five months each in the schools conducted in Augusta,
Ga., by the Freedman’s Bureau. His first teachers were two Northern
young ladies, Miss Hattie Dow and Miss Hattie Foote. In order to secure
better school advantages, and in order to fit himself for his life
work, he came to Augusta in 1874 and entered the Augusta Institute,
a school which was specially designed for colored preachers. This
school was presided over by the late Rev. Joseph T. Robert, LL. D. Dr.
Robert was a native of South Carolina and had been a slaveholder. After
emancipation, he felt moved of God to take up the work of training
Negro young men for the Christian ministry. He wrought well in his day
and generation; he made the Augusta Institute a great school; no man,
before or since his time, has left a deeper impress upon the history
of the Negro Baptists of Georgia; and there is no man whose name is
more honored and revered among them. He was a polished and scholarly
gentleman of the old school; he possessed a great degree of what is
called personal magnetism; and, by his upright living and Christian
fervor, he had the power of inspiring his pupils to higher and nobler
things. In the autumn of 1879, Augusta Institute was moved to Atlanta,
and the name was changed to Atlanta Baptist Seminary. More recently
the name has been changed to Atlanta Baptist College. It is still the
largest and most influential school for young men in Georgia, and is
regarded as the headquarters of the Negro Baptist ministers in the
State.
In school young Walker was soon celebrated for his thoroughness,
his exemplary deportment, and for his native talent. He had only six
dollars in money when he entered school. With this he rented a room in
a private family, for which he paid two dollars per month. In this room
he lived during his first year in the Augusta Institute. He did his
own washing and cooking--cooking only twice a week, on Wednesdays and
Saturdays. He did this in order to save time for study and to keep down
expenses. He had only one suit of clothes, which he used on Sundays as
well as on week days. When he had exhausted his six dollars, he picked
up his little bundle, and was on the verge of leaving school, having
decided to walk back to the country and find work to enable him to
re-enter school at the opening of the next school year. Some of his
friends among the students, finding out the reason for his proposed
departure, remonstrated with him and, presenting him a small sum of
money, urged him to be patient a day or two longer. One of his fellow
students, the late Rev. E. K. Love, D. D., of Savannah, Ga., went so
far as to agree to provide for Mr. Walker until other arrangements
could be made. In the course of time this same Dr. Love came to
be, all things considered, one of the brainiest and most brilliant
Negro preachers in America, and as an organizer of men in religion,
education, politics or business, he was probably unequaled by any of
his contemporaries. For fourteen years he pastored the largest Negro
church in the world--the First African Baptist Church, Savannah, Ga. At
the time of his death in 1900, Dr. Walker, who came all the way from
New York to Georgia to speak at his funeral, referred with much feeling
and tenderness to the strong ties of personal friendship which had so
closely bound them for years, and spoke with gratitude of Dr. Love’s
ready assistance to him during his student days.
Through some of the students, Dr. Robert, the President of the
Augusta Institute, was informed of young Walker’s sad plight, and,
through Dr. Robert, three gentlemen in Dayton, Ohio--Mr. G. N. Bierce,
Mr. A. B. Solomon, and Mr. E. B. Crawford--became interested in him,
and, through the kindness of these three men, he was enabled to
prosecute his studies at the Augusta Institute for five years. Two of
these three gentlemen--Mr. Bierce and Mr. Solomon--are still living.
Both are still very wealthy, and are among Ohio’s most successful
business men. In November, 1901, Mr. Bierce went to New York to attend
the Jubilee Dinner of the International Y. M. C. A. While in New York,
he visited Dr. Walker at his home, went with him to the church which
he serves as pastor, and also to the Colored Branch of the Y. M. C. A.,
132 W. 53rd St., which was founded by Dr. Walker. In his speech at
the Colored Men’s Branch, Mr. Bierce, among other things, said that he
had made many investments in his life, but he believed that the money
he had invested in Dr. Walker’s education had yielded the largest and
best returns of any investment that he had ever made. He also told
how he came to be interested in the elevation of the colored race.
He said that during the late Civil War he was a soldier in the Union
Army, and had drifted with his regiment into Kentucky. While there he
was seriously wounded and left for dead on the battlefield. After many
hours he managed to make his way to the house of a white Southerner,
and asked for shelter and food. Seeing that Mr. Bierce was a Union
soldier, the white Southerner denied him both, but called one of his
colored servants and told him that he might take charge of the man and
care for him, if he desired to do so. The colored man took charge of
Mr. Bierce, and, in their lonely cabin, the colored man and his wife
carefully watched and nursed the wounded soldier, and in a few weeks
brought him back to health and strength. After the war, Mr. Bierce made
many efforts to find these faithful Good Samaritans and reward them
for their kindness. Failing in this, he decided that, as he owed his
life to the attention and care of two members of the Negro race, he
would let no opportunity pass to help any of the race who might need
assistance. And true to his pledge, Mr. Bierce has been the steady
and consistent friend of the colored people from that day to this.
Dr. Walker is only one of many beneficiaries of his kindness, and Dr.
Walker is a conspicuous example of what a little money, wisely placed
in the education of one colored man, can do toward the elevation of an
entire race.
Though Dr. Walker finished the prescribed course at the Augusta
Institute, he was not graduated from that institution. No graduates
were sent out from that school until long after it had been moved
to Atlanta, the first class being regularly graduated in 1884.
Subsequently, by vote of the trustees, it was decided that the names of
nearly fifty young men who had finished the prescribed course prior to
1884, should be placed in the catalogue and marked “entitled to rank as
graduates.” Dr. Walker’s name is in this number. But whether graduated
or not, Dr. Walker easily excels any man who was graduated there, and
no man, living or dead, has ever heard him express any regret that he
does not hold a diploma.
In September, 1876, after two years in the Augusta Institute, and in
the eighteenth year of his age, young Walker was licensed to preach.
The first Sunday in May, 1877, he was ordained to the sacred office of
the Gospel ministry.