The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 11, November, 1888

Our missionary work has been largely in schools. It was God's providence. But these were always missionary centres.

Their number at the present time is ninety-three; seventeen of these in the Southern States are Normal Schools from which a large proportion of the pupils go forth as teachers. It is computed that of the 15,000 Negro teachers in the South instructing 800,000 pupils, 13,500 became teachers from missionary schools, and that a great army of more than 7,000 of these teachers received their education in the institutions of the American Missionary Association. Thus the faith of the churches multiplies and accelerates itself.

These Normal Schools are located in WILMINGTON, N.C., CHARLESTON and GREENWOOD, S.C., ATLANTA, MACON, SAVANNAH, THOMASVILLE and MCINTOSH, GA., MOBILE, ATHENS and MARION, ALA., MEMPHIS, JONESBORO, GRAND VIEW and PLEASANT HILL, TENN., LEXINGTON and WILLIAMSBURG, KY., to which must be added the large Normal and Industrial School at Santee Agency, Nebraska, the Oahe Industrial School and the Fort Berthold Industrial School, both in Dakota, and all three for the Indians, making altogether 20. The Association provides also the entire teaching force at the Ramona Indian School at Santa Fé, New Mexico. To these Normal Schools, we may add the six normal departments in our colleges with their superior normal instruction. From nearly all of these, strong appeals for enlargement have come to meet the demands of a healthy growth. We have cut, trimmed and denied, with a resolution that has been painful both in the office and in the field, and yet the growth is upon us. Without pushing our work, it is pushing us.

While ignorant millions need the truth and knowledge which we have, and there are resources in the hands of the disciples of Christ enough for this vast and increasingly urgent work, the necessity of denying the provisions for the development of success becomes well-nigh oppressive.

AT PLEASANT HILL, TENN., an important centre in our Mountain work, we have now, in addition to the new church, a school building unequalled in that region. A second building for a dormitory and boarding hall is nearly completed.

THE GRAND VIEW ACADEMY in the Mountain region, has also increased its school accommodations, and the look forward is to a large institution with far-reaching influence in the valley of the Cumberland and on the plateau. If we are to hold this region, we must take possession now.

We have also reassumed charge of a school at Beaufort, N.C. The people are already appealing to us in the accents of their own sacrifices for its immediate enlargement.

Providentially, and without our solicitation, a generous giver, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who had already added to many large benevolences in the South, the fine building known as Ballard Hall and the excellent shops for industrial training at Tougaloo, made a proffer of $11,500 to erect at Macon, Ga., a school building of brick, capable of accommodating six hundred pupils. This successful school had grown until it had taken possession of the church building for school purposes. This noble gift, bestowed after a personal inspection on the part of Mr. Ballard, and upon personal conviction of its immediate necessity, could not be refused, and the substantial and spacious building, with its furnishings, is now nearly ready for occupancy. It will call for increased contributions from the churches.

DORCHESTER ACADEMY, at McIntosh, Ga., is in a rice region remote from civilization and educational privileges, among thousands of Negro people very ignorant and poor. It cannot receive the pupils who beg for admission. Children are punctual at school from a distance of eight miles, lest they shall lose their privileges by tardiness or absence. Africa itself could scarcely send out a cry of greater need. We had decided to increase the capacity of this school, but are compelled to wait.

AT GREENWOOD, S.C., the interests are so great and the appeals were so reasonable, that it was voted to enlarge the facilities for the growing institution; but at the last we could not do this, and the laborers there continue their prayers and their hopes.

THE LINCOLN NORMAL INSTITUTE at Marion, Ala., was established in the year 1868, by the A.M.A. In the year 1874, the State of Alabama asked to assume the school, which had won a good name, and to increase its facilities for the education of the Negro. This was done. Last year, the work was deserted by the State and came anew into our hands. This, also, is an enlargement upon our schedule of work.

At LEXINGTON, KY., our Normal School has grown to such a degree that even the vestibules and halls of our insufficient building were crowded with eager pupils. Teachers were teaching, and pupils were studying, in conditions that none but missionary teachers would accept. For lack of room, industrial training has been impossible. The locality, meanwhile, has been surrounded by saloons, and houses that are worse. A benevolent lady who became acquainted with these facts offered $2,000 to purchase four acres of land for school and industrial purposes, and to give money sufficient for a new brick edifice with eight large school-rooms and all needful appointments and furnishings; the gift amounting to $15,000.

We believe that we were not wrong in accepting this trust in your behalf, even though it means more teachers and increased expenditures. We are confident that your Christian faith would not decline this Christian benevolence. Hence the plans for Chandler School are in the hands of the builders. Could some like-minded wealthy steward of the grace of God visit Williamsburg, Ky., in our Mountain White work, we might be compelled to face another such dilemma.

AT MERIDIAN, MISS., where Christian parents have besought us for years, past to open a missionary school, through which their children might be saved to morality and integrity of character during the formative periods of their lives, we have at last seen our way to answer their pathetic appeal in part. A day school with an industrial department is ready for the opening, the building having been constructed during the months of summer. For valuable aid in sympathy, counsel and influence in Meridian, we and the people to whom we are sent are greatly indebted to Rev. Wm. Hayne Leavell, of Meridian.

WHITNEY HALL, for the Indian boys at Santee Agency, is another noble gift of large Christian faith for our Normal School in Nebraska. We summoned our courage to take this, also, with what the enlargement includes.

These are the chief additions to our system of schools, though there have been less marked enlargements in other places. They are simply the growths of strong faith and strong life. They are the free and special gifts which came to us through the convictions of others who had realized the need.

The common schools, 35 in number, in eight different Southern States, are in the hands of faithful teachers.

There are six Chartered Institutions, behind which we have stood the year past.

TALLADEGA COLLEGE in Talladega, Ala., has had a year of exceptional interest. The college work is developing and the theological school was never better. The industrial departments in agriculture and the mechanic arts offer fine advantages. The institution increases in popular favor and is full of students.

ATLANTA UNIVERSITY in Georgia, under the temporary presidency of Prof. Francis, who was also college preacher and pastor, has moved on in its usual course. Through the successful solicitation of Prof. Bumstead, with our cordial and constant endorsement, sufficient Christian money came into the treasury to meet the deficiency caused by the withdrawal of $8,000 from the State of Georgia. The Association was able in its grants to share in this satisfactory result. At the last meeting of the Trustees, Prof. Bumstead was elected President for the ensuing year, and Prof. Chase, in view of a removal to New Mexico, resigned the professorship which he had ably held many years.

STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY at New Orleans, located in the most influential city of the Southwest, draws its students from refined Creole homes and from the rude cabins of the remote plantations. An interesting report gathered from twenty-two of its students who taught school during the summer vacation, tells us that they instructed 1,398 pupils in day schools and organized thirteen Sunday-schools, in which were taught 1,574 children, most of whom were absolutely unreached before. This summer record of Straight University students is a partial illustration of what is going forth from it year by year; and not from Straight only, but from all of our higher schools. The theological work in Straight is of incalculable importance.

TILLOTSON INSTITUTE, at Austin, Texas, has invigorated its normal course and has inaugurated a hopeful college preparatory department. The recipient of a special gift, it was enabled to complete a new industrial building, in which has begun a course of industrial training. It greatly needs a second dormitory hall for young women, and were not the institution so remote, some prophetic giver would see the urgency and the strategy of such a gift, and would make it. If, without the sight, some one shall be led to do this for Tillotson, he will reap the blessing of those who do not see and yet believe.

TOUGALOO UNIVERSITY, near Jackson, Miss., is an institution of exceeding interest. It has a department of Biblical instruction added to its course of study, in which students are prepared to preach the gospel. Its industrial facilities are excellent, both for agricultural and mechanical training. The students can take the timber from the tree, and the iron in the rough, and make wagons and carriages sufficiently good to compete with the best makers in the State. The school in all of its parts is controlled by the missionary spirit. Rev. F.G. Woodworth, of Connecticut, last year assumed the Presidency.

FISK UNIVERSITY, at Nashville, Tenn., is one of the oldest and most complete of all our Southern colleges, and has no superior among all the institutions in the country devoted to the education of the Negro. Giving relatively less attention to the industries, it models itself after our Northern colleges, and emulates them in the rigor of its intellectual studies and in the thoroughness with which it seeks to make good teachers and preachers; educators in the larger way for the race. It also has a department of theology. It has made its place, which it holds with enthusiasm and fidelity. If some one would give us, or leave us, money to endow this institution, he could scarcely send his influence further down the centuries than in this way. It would tell upon the race and upon the Nation.

In this glance at our schools, we see Christian schools. But they are more, they are missionary schools. We are bearing the torch of Christ into places of darkness. We teach the industries to them because they can be made tributary to the salvation of the people. They are the leaves of the tree of life, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the people.

We may not close this review of our school system without remembering those institutions now standing alone; great Hampton, in whose rich gifts we rejoice, and Berea, another child of the A.M.A., now grown to strength.

TO HOWARD UNIVERSITY, at Washington, also, we extend the sympathy of a common purpose, together with such financial aid as we may for the support of its theological course.

We point to these great institutions which have been planted and fostered by the A.M.A., together with those which are still upheld by us, with a feeling akin to that of the renowned Cornelia when she said, "Behold my jewels."

We have, in addition, 17 Chinese Schools on the Pacific Coast, with 39 teachers.

CHURCH WORK

We turn now to our Church Work.

In every school we have an incipient church; in many of these are organized churches. From all of them there is a continual going forth of a predisposition towards Congregational Churches, which will make for churches in the future.

The statistics are as follows:

Four new Churches have been organized during the year. These are at Decatur, Ala., Crossville, Deer Lodge and Pine Mountain, Tenn. A fine church edifice has also been erected in Ironaton, Ala., which is soon to be dedicated. The members have sacrificed nobly to secure it. The church at Meridian has united with the Association in the erection of a beautiful house of worship which, with the new school and the teachers' home, will be ready in a few weeks for occupancy. The church at Knoxville has been enlarged and is practically new. It will soon be re-dedicated. The church at Pine Mountain is a year old; is already the center of four Sunday-schools, with an attendance of 415 children, only 10 of whom had ever been in a Sunday-school before.

Revivals of religious interest have been reported from our churches in Washington, Wilmington, Charleston, Talladega, Mobile, Athens, Marion, Selma, Birmingham and New Orleans. Those of the churches which are side by side with our educational institutions are most hopeful; but wherever we have planted churches, they stand forth to represent the ethics of Christianity, the purity and truth of character which must be contained in a worthy discipleship. A large proportion of our pastors are children of the A.M.A. Parsonages have been built for our churches in Mobile, Ala., and in Dallas, Texas.

MOUNTAIN WORK

This year has laid great emphasis on the fact that we have entered, in the Southern mountains, a missionary field of vast importance, pressing needs and unbounded hopefulness. We have in this region, where a few years ago there was nothing, two normal schools, two academies, five common schools, and twenty churches.

In a territory five hundred miles long, and more than two hundred miles broad—twice the size of all New England—are at least between three and four hundred counties with a population greater than that of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut combined, without schools worthy of the name, without Sunday-schools, without prayer meetings, without an educated, spiritual, or even moral ministry, without a weekly Sabbath religious service of any kind, or any of the institutions of the gospel which really elevate them. They have a religion which is not a pure Christianity and which does not even involve morality.

The Christian work, lately introduced and already done among them, demonstrates that they are capable of a rapid and radical change, when once the vivifying touch of the gospel has reached their hearts.

Instead of twenty Congregational churches among them, there is room for a thousand, and instead of nine Christian schools, if there were twenty-five normal schools, it would be only one to each hundred thousand people; and if there were a hundred common schools, there would be one to each three or four counties for models. There should be one good college. If there were Congregational churches in this region in the same proportion as in New England there would be a full thousand. If they were in the same proportion as Connecticut, there would be twelve hundred churches; as New Hampshire, thirteen hundred; as Vermont, sixteen hundred.

Congregationalism goes to these people as the representative of pure, intelligent and progressive Christianity. We can gather them into schools, Sunday-schools and churches, anywhere where we can put a Christian worker. Our only limit is consecrated workers and the support for them. The field is as ripe this very day for a thousand as for a score. But the school and the church must go together.

This is one of the richest of the mineral regions of the world. Great forests of black walnut, poplar, and other valuable timber, are awaiting the woodman's ax and the lumberman's mill. Railroads are either built, building or planned for every part to carry away its wonderful natural resources. The people are poor, but the land is rich, and a few years hence will see wealth in the place of poverty, in the hands of either the natives, or those who will have displaced them. All the motives which urge the establishment of the church and the school for the incoming population of the West, press us to build them in this great empire of the South; and they become doubly imperative when we take into account the fact that a population of between two and three millions is already in the land and needs to be saved now. The motives for home and foreign missions are thus combined, and impelling us for Christ's sake, for humanity's sake, and for our country's sake, to give the gospel to this people.

We are not building pauper institutions in this mountain country to be forever a dead weight for the Northern churches to carry, but institutions which will very speedily take care of themselves, and give to others as they have received.

This is a portion of the South where slavery scarcely existed. When war came, it was loyal to the Union almost to a man. This fact shows that they have a natural affiliation with "Northern ideas." The caste spirit is among them—as it is indeed in the North to some extent—but it much more readily yields to reason and loving teaching than in other portions of the South. Vigorous and extensive missionary work can and will mould the ideas and sentiments of this whole region, and thus establish no-caste churches and schools, where they would demonstrate to the South that they do not carry with them social disorder and every baleful influence.

Amid the success, joy and hopefulness of the year's work, came the affliction of the shooting of Prof. George Lawrence, while about his duties in our school in Jellico, Tenn. It was the work of a miserable creature whose brain was fired with whiskey, and who was urged on by the saloon element as a retaliation for earnest temperance work. After long and anxious weeks of intense suffering, a brave fight against death proved successful, and we now hope that our missionary's life is spared for many years of usefulness. Nearly a hundred men have been shot already in this one place, and the place itself is not more than six years old. Is it strange that these mountain people who have a glimpse of better things, are appealing to us every week of the year to plant institutions among them? Is it not the voice of Christ clearly commanding us to possess and subdue this land, and to transform it into a part of his peaceful and beneficent Kingdom, which shall join hands with us to pass on the torch of Christ to others yet in darkness?

THE INDIANS

The people of America are determined to press the Indian problem to a speedy solution. Provision has been made for giving lands in severalty, and the next great movement should be to induce the Government to provide secular education, and the churches to furnish religious instruction to all the Indians. The American Missionary Association, during the year, has responded to this new impulse by enlarging its work—in the opening of new stations, in the erection of new buildings, and in the appointment of more missionaries and teachers.

At the Santee Agency, Nebraska, our oldest mission station and school has had marked prosperity in its normal, theological and industrial departments, and, better than all, in a deep and wide-spread religious interest that has pervaded the school and the church. The new building, named Whitney Hall—from its giver—has been erected, affording accommodations for twenty-two of the larger and more advanced pupils, and furnishing rooms for the treasurer's family. A liberal gift from Mrs. Henry Perkins, of Hartford, Conn., provides, for the present at least, for the running expenses of the Boys' Hall, and, in appreciation of the gift, and of the interest in the school which the gift implies, the building will hereafter be called Perkins Hall.

At Oahe, Dakota, on the beautiful Peoria Bottom, both the school and church have prospered. The school is crowded to its utmost capacity and a greater number of pupils has been granted in the contract with the Government. A new building is urgently called for. The closing exercises of the school were attended by a picturesque group of three or four hundred Indians, who were encamped around the station. Some of these came a hundred and twenty-five miles to attend the exercises.

One marked feature in the enlargement of the work has been the opening of two more Central Stations: one at Rosebud Agency, the other located at Fort Yates, near the junction of the Grand River with the Missouri. The new mission house has been built, and by the aid of special gifts from benevolent friends at the East, a commodious building has been erected for a hospital.