Matilda A. Evans

“ One Sunday morning, the sun in all its radiance and splendor lighting up the whole world, doing for the earth and every creature and plant on it (giving them light and warmth and moisture that they might develop and grow to perfection) just what God would have us do—help along everything good that we can—on such a morning as this—a band of armed men approached Miss Schofield’s home and demanded that she quit teaching Negro children and return to her home or she would be forced to do so. ”

“ It is true that Martha Schofield was a fighter. She dared to contend for what she believed was right, but always took counsel, weighed things carefully, and, when she took a stand that she believed was right, believing she was right, there was no earthly power to turn her from her course. Martha Schofield is not dead—she lives in the memory of her students scattered all over South Carolina and other States. She will live in the memory of their children and their children’s children, for there are few colored homes in which her name and deeds are not recounted in the family circle. ”

“ What motive led this young woman of only twenty-six, surrounded by wealth, by culture, and every circumstance that made her not only acceptable but desirable in the highest circles of society, to abandon all—home and friends and money and the pleasures which her position in the social world brings—for a life of the most arduous toil among a barbarous, if not a savage people, whose skin, unlike hers, was black and whose habits and customs were thought to be repugnant and repelling to those of refinement? ”

“ Her doctrine of the elevation of the Negro so as to meet the necessities of the new standard of civilization which freedom had thrust upon him, spread like wild fire on a western prairie, and was, of course, shocking, even inconceivable to the imagination of the Southern white mind, which had been taught and religiously believed that education impaired the usefulness of the colored people, both as productive machines in the hard field of toil and as mediums for the expression of the divine messages of power. ”

“ The good being accomplished here in a small way is one of the great triumphs of the life-work of Miss Schofield, it being her greatest aim in life not to create and endow great institutions of learning with money and high sounding names, but to plant in the heart and soul of every child coming under her influence those principles of efficiency that would enable them to get out into the world and actually do something to lift up the fallen. ”

“ And all this time Martha Schofield and her little band of Negroes, whom she was endeavoring to lead out of the depths of darkness, despair and crime into the light of reason, courage, and industry were daily praying for their enemies, for the deliverance of men of all races from the fetters of greed, avarice and revenge, which was responsible for the suffering and misery to be seen on every hand. ”

“ The great Civil War predicted by Martha as inevitable in the settlement of the problem of slavery broke out in all its fury in 1860-61 and was not only attended by the loss of hundreds of thousands of priceless lives, whose bodies filled countless hospitals of pain, and made gory the prairies and furrows of old fields, as they on the side of the South as well as they on the side of the North bled and died for the eternal right as each saw what was their duty ”

“ His hands, red with the blood from the wounds that had killed Makie Meriwether and his heart beating in unison with his rankling mind at thought of the imaginary injustices already done, or to be done, by the Negro, the state of his feelings made him anything else but fit to pass upon the lives of the men now at stake, even had he been an honest man and inspired by high and lofty ideals as it must be conceded many of the whites in the Hamburg riot were. ”

“ The hope of the race lies in the multiplication of the opportunities for every member to obtain an education, such an education as Martha Schofield contemplated for all; and the demand by the law abiding, God serving element of the white race that the colored people be given every opportunity for the exercise of their powers that equity and justice dictate. The Negroes want nothing more, ask nothing more, but in justice to their own self respect and the rights of man can accept nothing less. ”

“ That solution is segregation. It offers intact all the advantages which the opportunities of life among a highly civilized race create without the demoralizing and humiliating influences at work on account of race prejudice. It frees the whites and Negroes alike and enlarges the opportunities for the development of each race, under a common flag, that will no longer be under the necessity of polluting the pure air of Heaven by withholding its protection from among even the humblest of its citizens. ”

“ Martha Schofield, having lived to see accomplished the task to which her life had been dedicated on the day her father rescued Laura Duncan from the blood hounds of the slave holding oligarchy, died as happy and serene as an angel, perfectly confident that the work she had been doing would gain momentum and go on more splendidly each year, until illiteracy and physical and moral degradation would be an exceptional thing among the Negroes. ”

“ In words of eloquence, made eloquent by both the truth in them and the manner of delivery, she told the people of the North that the rights of man rose above the rights of state government as the Alps rise above the valleys; that government, both state and national, is only good in so far as it respects and protects human rights. “If a state government fails to measure up to its duty in its functions affecting the most vital rights of the people,” said she in an address in the North, “then it becomes the duty of the general government to interfere. ”

“ She felt and believed that enlightenment, through education, the day would come when the Negro would be controlled only by according to him every right to which he may be entitled, and had great confidence that education also would so improve the intelligence and morals of the white people that they would have too much respect for their own manhood to prostitute it by declining to grant absolute justice to the race. ”

“ Above all prove to him by thy treatment of the Negro that thee has no prejudice on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. Let them see by thy relation to the Negroes that thee looks upon mankind as brethren, indeed, in whose service thee are not only willing to work but to suffer for the good thee may do not alone to the Negro but to the heathen as well. ”

“ It also demands the same freedom of action for the Negroes in the exercise of every function of a citizen that is allowed the whites and contemplates their assimilation in the political life of the nation to the extent of their being eligible to the highest office of trust without regard to any qualification other than that of all citizens. Of course, it is worse than useless to say that the demand carries with it the observance of every principle of equality before the law without discrimination on account of race or color. ”

“ For the latter she had hoped and prayed with the earnestness, desperation and despair with which she so long warded off the entreaties and appeals of Dodson when he first made the advances which finally culminated in the degradation of her life. Her miserable life was spent in his home only under compulsion, the compulsion of a labor contract entered into by her in legal form, a breach of which she knew from the experience of other colored women employed under such terms and conditions meant only one thing—a term of penal servitude at the hardest of the most degraded sort of labor! ”

“ Martha Schofield’s conception of an education included a great deal more than the mere matter of acquiring a fund of knowledge. She taught that knowledge without the ability to use it was worthless, and inspired every one coming under her influence with the necessity for a means of practicing what they were taught. This made her work intensely practical and enabled her students to succeed in overcoming difficulties as they saw her overcome them. ”

“ Miss Schofield assured her that the question of social equality with the whites was never considered by her in her work except to disparage it; that while she had no regard herself for the color of a person’s skin she taught her students that a deep racial prejudice existed among all races everywhere, especially in the United States, but that it should not be allowed to interfere with their Christianity, that they should show a Christian spirit to all mankind—Jew or Greek, male or female, friend or foe, Negro or white. ”

“ She had been teaching all her life that to give was more blessed than to receive; then why not give to the needy Negro right at her door? Why not stimulate and encourage every effort being made to convert him into a useful and intelligent citizen? His labor she knew, even though his hands and face were black, would be worth a thousand per cent. ”

“ It started her to reasoning, that if from a selfish point of view if not from a Christian standpoint, it were not better to encourage the work of Miss Schofield. She was not an ignorant woman, but on the contrary highly intellectual, and although but superficially educated was well enough informed to know that the Negro was here and here, perhaps, to stay. “Then why,” she silently asked herself, “would not one’s greatest defense and security be more certainly attained in the development of the intellectual and moral powers of the race?” ”

“ Being absolutely honest in all her promises she did not look for dishonesty in others, especially not in the people of the North who had spilled so much blood and expended hundreds of millions of dollars in extending the guarantee of life, freedom and liberty to the Negroes. Their failure to make their promises in this matter good was shocking to her sense of honor and inspired her greatest contempt. ”

“ The Schofield School at Aiken has sent out into the world many young men and women who have gone back among their own people accomplished teachers, ministers, physicians, farmers and artisans, leading the colored race of the South to the highest appreciation of what Martha Schofield’s motto for life was—“Thoroughness,” thoroughness not only in books and the industrial arts, but in thought and action as well. ”

“ Then laying her arms around the body of the inconsolable wife and mother she spoke words of consolation and cheer, assuring her that God in his own way and wisdom would destroy the power of the government of human beings by the lash, would break the chains that bind the hand and foot and visit a just retribution on all those responsible for the sale of babies from the breasts of mothers. ”

“ The records of the conduct of Negroes in office, with the exception of the rascality of those in power in the South during the Reconstruction Period, are creditable indeed, to the race from which they sprang. Responsibility for the scandals attaching to the rule of the race in some of the Southern States directly after the war are chargeable not to the Negro but to the corruption of the white men who imposed on the Negro by taking advantage of his ignorance and making him the cat’s paw with which they attempted to extricate themselves from many difficulties without the stain of dishonor. ”

“ Martha Schofield’s activities in broad-casting stories of these hideous outrages and appealing for the continuance of the reign of the military authorities in South Carolina as the only means of making life at all safe and possible under the circumstances, drew to her the contempt and hatred of the white people, who of all the people on earth were best suited by reason of their position and knowledge to assist her in her work. ”

“ In fact, every line written and every word spoken in the interest of, or inimical to, the interest of all related enterprise affect each other for good or evil, in the same proportion. This makes the attempts to injure one race of human beings by another race without injury to itself impossible, and is the foundation rock upon which the Negro race can stand with perfect confidence, that absolute justice will eventually be done it.
To the intelligent supervision of the organization of the Bettis Academy much credit is due Martha Schofield. ”

“ All went away feeling verily that any harm to that woman or her school could be inflicted only at too great an expense, either in the loss of all self-respect or in remorse of conscience, if not actual conflict in earnest, with the authorities at Washington. She drove her tormentors away with kindness and kept them at a safe distance with the philosophy of MacBeth, which made all who cared to do her an injury feel that in murdering her work they would also murder their own sleep and peace both here on earth and throughout all eternity. ”