ATLANTA UNIVERSITY.
Atlanta University--Rev. Horace Bumstead, D. D., President--located
at Atlanta, Ga., has special claims for recognition and support
because of the somewhat unique character of its work for the Negro.
It is not duplicating the educational work done by the State or most
other private institutions. It is supplementing and strengthening
the work of the public schools and of private industrial and trade
schools by furnishing thoroughly trained teachers and manual training
superintendents to carry on the elementary and industrial education of
the masses. It is elevating and purifying the domestic and civic life
of the Negroes, by furnishing those moral and spiritual forces needed
to counteract the gross materialism which threatens to engulf them.
It is providing intelligent and conscientious leaders for this race
so sadly deficient in power of organization, so that it may become
self-directing and cease to be, what it has so long been, a dependent
race. To accomplish all this Atlanta University is now, more than
almost any other institution in the South, confining itself to the work
of Higher Education. It receives no students who have not had a good
grammar-school training or its equivalent.
Higher Education is not given to the Negro in Atlanta University in
any merely sentimental spirit, but with a practical end in view. No
attempt is made to force it upon the masses of the race, but to give
it to the few for the sake of the masses. It is not given to these
selected few as a luxury, but as a trust; not as a mere means of
personal profit and enjoyment, but as an equipment for the service of
others. It does not educate the students away from labor, but from
lower to higher forms of labor, more profitable to himself and others.
It does not dishonor manual toil even in its humblest forms.
[Illustration: INDUSTRIAL BUILDING. BOYS' HALL. STONE HALL. GIRLS'
HALL.]
Industrial training is an integral part of the Higher Education which
Atlanta University gives, and it is compulsory upon all students. It
differs, however, from that which is found in the more distinctively
industrial or trade schools. No attempt is made at productive industry.
The methods are educational rather than commercial. The shop exists for
the boy rather than the boy for the shop. As soon as skill is acquired
that might have some commercial value in some one particular direction,
the boy is set to learning something else that he may have skill in
many directions. He is himself the product of the shop rather than the
table or wheelbarrow which he might make for the shop.
Graduates to the number of nearly 300 have been sent out during the
past twenty-six years from the College and Normal courses. Of these
about two-thirds are teaching, mostly in public grammar and high
schools, in Southern cities and towns. In the other third of the living
graduates are ministers, lawyers, doctors, business men, and married
women.
Students to the number of 265 are enrolled this year in Collegiate,
Normal, and Sub-normal classes under twenty-three officers and
teachers. Rather more than half of the students are young women.
Nine-tenths of the whole number are members of churches.
The institution is chartered, is controlled by an independent Board of
Trustees, is undenominational but earnestly Christian in its religious
influence, owns sixty-five acres in the city of Atlanta with four large
brick buildings, and other property, valued at $250,000. In strategic
location, efficient organization, successful maintenance of high
standards, and opportunities for future development and usefulness,
few institutions present so strong a claim for liberal support and
permanent endowment.
An endowment of at least $500,000 is needed. Of this amount less
than $5,000 is as yet secured. The institution has about $28,000 of
scholarship and library funds, but these are not available for general
current expenses. It is earnestly hoped that the needed endowment maybe
provided by friends either in their wills or, better still, by their
generous gifts while living. The corporate name of the institution is
"The Trustees of the Atlanta University," in Atlanta, Ga.
Donations to the amount of $25,000 a year are needed to provide for the
present unendowed work. Scholarships of forty, fifty and sixty dollars
each are solicited to cover the cost of the tuition of one student for
one year over and above the nominal tuition fees paid by the student.
Gifts of any amount, large or small, for general current expenses are
asked for.
Remittances may be made, or requests for further information sent to
the president either at Atlanta, Ga., or at his Northern address:
PRESIDENT HORACE BUMSTEAD,
Care of the J. F. Bumstead Co.,
340 Boylston street, Boston.
BEREA COLLEGE.
This remarkable institution, which has done in some respects more
for the colored race than any other, is a monument of the old
anti-slavery sentiment of the South. It was founded before the war
among liberal-minded Southerners--John G. Fee, Cassius M. Clay, and
others--and the first principal, Rev. J. A. R. Rogers, and his
wife were so popular that they attracted the sons and daughters of
slave-holders even while the school was running the gantlet of mobs and
persecutions.
Soon after the war colored students were admitted on the same terms
as whites--the first, and to this day, almost the only instance in
the South. In the words of Geo. W. Cable, "Berea is a college which
predicts the millennium."
This just and fearless course has led to none of the evils which were
feared by many good people. There has never been a collision between
white and colored students, and the relation of the two races is more
pure and natural in the sphere of Berea's influence than in any other
part of the South.
[Illustration: BOARDING HALL, CHAPEL, LINCOLN HALL.]
The college has given well-trained teachers to the colored schools of
Kentucky and other States, men like J. H. Jackson of the Normal School
of Missouri, J. W. Bate of Danville, Ky., J. C. Lewis of Cairo, Ill.,
Green P. Russell of Lexington, Kirke Smith of Lebanon, Ky., E. H.
Woodford of Manassas, Va.--besides those in other occupations like Rev.
James Bond of Nashville, Tenn., and Lieut. Woodford of the 8th U. S. I.
Berea enables young people of color to measure themselves by the
standard of the race which has had greatest opportunities in the past,
and teaches white young people to know the merits and respect the worth
of colored students.
The school, like Hampton, is earnestly Christian, and managed by a
board of trustees representing all the leading Christian bodies, no one
of which has a controlling influence. It has buildings and equipments
valued at above $150,000, including a library of over 15,000 volumes,
and was attended in 1898 by 674 students, 169 of whom were colored.
Alone among Southern schools it has had superior advantages sufficient
to draw a considerable number of white students from the North.
The institution includes Collegiate, Normal, and Industrial
Departments, and is making decided progress under the presidency of Wm.
Goodell Frost, Ph. D., formerly of Oberlin College, who is a grandson
of Wm. Goodell, the great anti-slavery editor. Associated with him are
Geo. T. Fairchild, LL. D., late President of the State Agricultural
College of Kansas, Mrs. General Putnam, and about thirty other
instructors.
Receiving no aid from any State or society, Berea is mainly dependent
upon individual gifts. Remittances should be made to the treasurer,
and bequests to the trustees, of Berea College, Berea, Madison Co.,
Kentucky.
This college is now doing much good for the so-called "mountain whites"
as well as for colored people.