Our Church Work is attaining a steady and healthful growth. We
do not seek to force the founding of churches where there is no
urgent demand for them; while this might swell our rolls, it would
only serve to weaken and discourage ultimately. Our purpose is
to establish churches where there is sufficient intelligence and
outlook to give reasonable hope that a Congregational church may
do good service for the Master, not only by the benefit accruing
to its own members, but also by its influence upon other and older
churches that have not had the advantages of an educated ministry.
Our whole number of churches is 78, being an addition of five
over last year. These have been organized at Washington, D.C.,
Louisville, Ky., Little Rock, Ark., Thibadeaux, La., and Houma,
La. The total number of church members is 5,472, a gain of 511 on
last year. The number in Sabbath-school, 8,130, a gain of 1,806.
New meeting houses have been constructed at Peteance, La., Little
Rock, Ark., Lassiter’s Mills, N.C., and Wilmington, N.C. At the
latter place a tasteful structure, with accommodations for 400,
was provided by the gift of Hon. Mr. Gregory, at a cost to him of
$3,600, and dedicated with fitting ceremonies, which were heartily
participated in by the leading white clergymen of the city. Church
buildings are under process of erection at Caledonia, Miss.,
Luling, Tex., Frausse Point, La. Parsonages have also been built at
Florence, Ala., Flatonia, Tex., and houses for the Presidents at
Tougaloo, Miss., and Talladega, Ala.
The material prosperity of our churches indicated by these
statements is very encouraging, but the spiritual activity and
growth is far more so. More than one-third of our churches have
reported revivals, with conversions numbering from seven to
forty-four, resulting in a large number of accessions to the
churches.
Our church work is gradually creating a demand for the services
of the students graduating at theological departments under our
supervision at Howard University, Talladega College, Fisk and
Straight Universities, and these are taking the places of white
clergymen from the North in many localities.
The growing interest in theological seminaries for Freedmen is
happily illustrated by the gift of $25,000 to us, for endowment of
the theological department at Howard University.
We have seven State Conferences, embracing the most of the
territory occupied by our schools and churches. These hold annual
conventions, at which large numbers assemble.
The Alabama Conference has associated with it a woman’s missionary
society, which reports the operation of its auxiliaries in
different parts of the State. It is an active, hard-working and
successful society, that does great credit to the missionary
workers connected with it. This Conference also has a Sabbath-school
convention representing many county organizations, and the
Sabbath-school interests of the State. The meetings of this
Conference, as well as those of the others, exert a beneficent and
wide-spread influence, which serves not only to cement, but to make
active and strong, the Congregational church work at the South.
The movement made a few years since on the part of a few leading
ladies at the North to send forth female missionaries to labor in
the homes of the poor and destitute colored people, and to assist
otherwise for their temporal and spiritual improvement, has met
with marked approval and encouraging success. We have commissioned
eleven in all during the past year, and their reports have been
full of interest. We believe the work they have been doing is a
vital necessity, and that it should be extended as rapidly as may
be consistent with the other interests we have in charge.
It is fitting before bringing to a conclusion the report of our
operations among the Freedmen, that proper recognition be made of
the improved sentiment among the whites at the South relative to
our work. We entered the South with right principles. We did not
inquire especially what was good policy, but what was required by
justice, and what was consistent with righteousness. To promote
these ends our missionaries were ready to sacrifice, if need be,
their lives. They never advanced to retreat, but to conquer. Amidst
hardship, ostracism and poverty, they toiled on; the Southern
people watched them; little by little they came to recognize their
worth; they saw massive structures rear themselves in choice
locations in the great capital cities of the South. They were led
to recognize the ability and integrity of the self-denying workers,
who pursued their toilsome way in leading young Freedmen up to
Christian manhood and womanhood; they saw church after church
founded with a pure and educated ministry; some of the best of
them ventured to visit the teachers and their schools. The work
grew on. The children who had been under the care of leading white
citizens in service or in household, exhibited the value of the
work done so strikingly as to remove all doubt of the purpose and
success of the teachers from the North. United States Senators, the
Governors of States, Legislative bodies and companies of good men,
out of interest, out of patriotism, out of curiosity sometimes,
attended anniversary occasions, and lent their interest and gave
their influence to promote the welfare of the institutions under
our care. The result of it all has been to emphasize and establish
the principles with which we started out, and to revolutionize the
sentiment of many leading minds throughout the Southern country;
and now halls of legislation and portions of the press of the
South sparkle with sentiments that would do honor to Northern
patriots, who battled early for the existence and success of this
Association. Governor Brown of Georgia wins his election to the
United States Senate after affirming before the Legislature, “We
must educate the colored race. They are citizens, and we must do
them justice.”
Governor Holliday, of Virginia, who lost an arm in the Confederate
service, comes forward and makes good use of the other in
expressive gestures while urging the claims of the colored people
for education at the anniversary at Hampton.
General Humes, a Major-General in the Southern army, consents to
give the oration at the anniversary of the Le Moyne Institute, and
conveys assurances of the active sympathy of the best citizens of
Memphis for the work carried on; while Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, the
President of Emory College, bursts forth with the exclamation,
“Suppose these Northern teachers had not come, that nobody had
taught the negroes, set free and citizens, the South would have
been uninhabitable by this time. Some may resent this; be it so,
they resent the truth.”
The utterances of the press are not less significant. An editorial
in the Memphis _Appeal_ affirms: “The Southern States have too
long stood aloof and allowed the stranger to do for the negro what
they should have done themselves.” “There is but one thing for
the people of the South to do, and this is, to throw themselves
into the work of educating the negro. We must go forward, and must
take the negro by the hand and make him feel that he is a part of
the great column of the people.” The Nashville _American_, the
most influential paper in the State, through its leading editor,
in giving a report of the anniversary of Fisk University, goes on
to say: “In the labor of regeneration of a race, no agency will
have so high a place as this conservative school.” The Vicksburg
_Herald_ strikes another note on the gamut and illustrates a
change of sentiment on this wise, in response to a narrow-minded,
complaining correspondent: “We are heartily in favor of the South
from the Potomac to the Rio Grande being thoroughly and permanently
Yankeeized. Yankee energy, Yankee schools, Yankee cultivation,
Yankee railroads and Yankee capital are badly needed in the South,
and will be welcomed by every Southern progressive patriot.”
We believe there is nothing to hinder this tidal wave of better
feeling from sweeping the entire South. For our part, we have only
to hold on and press on.
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