Various

“ She cannot be the father of a family; but what she may be intellectually, morally, spiritually, as a mother, as a woman, can be known only when she has opened before her unlimited opportunity for her untrammeled powers. She may not transcend nature’s limitations, but she ought to insist that man’s ignorance and prejudice shall not prove a more insuperable bar to what she may do. ”

“ No question presses upon the Christian and patriotic thought of our land with greater urgency, or bears within it farther reaching consequences, than this same question of the education of our negro population. The hour of opportunity is now. We ask the friends of the Freedmen to heed this second call that comes to them, to prosecute the work of Christian education among the negroes, with a greater zeal and greater enthusiasm than ever before. If we are faithful, a rich harvest will be ours to reap. ”

“ The expressed aim of the societies is to promote intelligence, industry and piety among the women and girls, believing that the missionary spirit will as naturally follow as that flowers in good soil will bloom in the warm sunlight and soft showers. ”

“ When emancipation summoned the American slaves to freedom, nothing appealed with stronger effect to the sympathies of their friends than their wonderful eagerness for education. They thought that if they only could obtain a knowledge of letters they would also come into possession of the white man’s power and the white man’s privileges. ”

“ Ignorance does not tend to produce knowledge. Let the feeling settle down on the colored youth that all avenues for intellectual culture are closed against them, and ambition for improvement will soon disappear, and when the brood of evils to which ignorance is the prolific parent has been once fairly let loose upon the land, it may be too late to remedy the mischief. ”

“ An associate editor of one of our largest dailies, a widely influential man, commended, not simply by its excellence, but by way of contrast, the work done at Hampton, not because in the pursuit of its own aims it left the work of higher education to other schools, but because it taught its negro pupils to work, and did not make fools of them by teaching them Latin and Greek, and this, not because he is opposed to higher education for any one, but because such an education unfitted the negro for his place. ”

“ We respectfully submit that the only possible apology for slavery as it existed in this country was based upon the assumption that the white man had the right to determine just the place in the scale of being that the black man should occupy. ”

“ The Association met with a most cordial welcome by Brother Clay and his church at Terrebonne, the place of our last annual meeting. The good pastor has been sadly afflicted during the year by the loss of his devoted wife and daughter, but he has met his troubles with the faith and fortitude of a true Christian. Terrebonne—worthy of its name, “good-land”—is situated in one of the most beautiful and productive sections of Louisiana. The chief staple is sugar, and it requires only capital and enterprise to cause the entire country to bloom like a garden of roses. ”

“ Under its power, old men and old women, young men and maidens, children and youth, flocked into everything that was called a school for Freedmen.
This unprecedented manifestation of a hunger and thirst for education was promptly met by a large supply of missionary teachers and educational facilities. The promise, however, was larger than the fulfilment. Old people could not learn, and young people must improve by the diligent application of persistent effort extending through years. ”

“ To those who believe that it is a prime necessity to the Freedman to own his homestead and to become a part of the “realty” of this Southern country, it is especially gratifying to see the modest homes and fruitful gardens and cultivated acres of our newly made citizens, and to hear them say: “This is mine; no man holds a mortgage on my home.” ”

“ When we have assented to the proposition that nature has allotted to a race a certain position, we have assented, logically, to the further and co-ordinate proposition that it should be fitted for the place and kept in it; thus the whole code of slave laws stands approved and justified. ”

“ The time is coming when it will appear incredible that a man’s place in the intellectual and social world shall be assigned to him because of the color of his skin, any more than because of the color of his eyes, or of his clothes. ”

“ While the wise teacher sees to it that he shall not neglect thorough training in the most elementary branches in order to become a smatterer in Greek and Latin, it should be done on the general principle applicable to all races and every individual, that any other course would be consummate folly. The theory to which our practice should conform is this: Give to every child of God the best opportunity possible for him as such, and let him in the untrammeled exercise of his powers find out what his Creator designed him to be and assigned him to do. ”

“ I venture the statement that in ten years, no other State in the Union will, in proportion to the number of her people and area, do so much for the instruction of the young as Texas. Many are coming to see eye to eye and stand foot to foot on this question of universal education. ”

“ This opportunity offered suggests also that there are many such. We do not know of any better or more satisfactory work for an auxiliary than to assume the support of a student at Hampton, Carlisle, Fisk, or some other kindred institution. There is certainly no surer way to have a hand in the strengthening and purifying of our country as well as in saving individuals, for the large majority of those so helped go directly into the work of helping up their own race as teachers, and all so brought under the power of a Christian education must be centres of good in the nation. ”

“ It is all right for colored men to do the work South, but they must have a white overseer. At the barber shops in Topeka they shave both white and colored, but let a colored man shave a black man in Savannah, and he will have no white customers. If a white man and a colored man walk the streets of Savannah together, the colored man must go behind, like a dog, not walk by the white man’s side. ”

“ In Savannah it is the reverse; nearly all drink. The moral instruction in Topeka is deficient, as the instruction is largely given by ignorant colored people, except the Sabbath-school sustained by the A. M. A. I believe it a great mistake of the A. M. A. not to put more laborers into the field in Kansas, where there are nearly 60,000 freed people. By no means neglect the South; all the work now being done is needed and twice as much more, but do not neglect this important field in Kansas, where all that pertains to true manhood can be far more rapidly developed than at the South. ”

“ Miss Strode, a former student from Emerson Institute, being called upon, arose and gave some of her personal experiences. Miss Stevenson, the visiting missionary at Mobile, in a few words, gave expression to the gratitude she felt toward the kind people of the North, who, during the past winter, had sent her fifteen barrels of clothing and over $100 in money to assist, in relieving destitution and want among the people for whom she is laboring, thus making her the dispenser of their generosity. ”

“ The colored people of Topeka have equally good schools with the whites, where separate schools for them are established. The State Superintendent has ruled that any district which does not supply equal advantages for both white and colored can have no State appropriation. Savannah has tolerably good public schools for a little over one half of the colored children, but the poorest teachers are employed especially outside of the city. Everywhere through Kansas the blacks are as well supplied as the whites. ”

“ I am getting along well in this school, I like the colored students for they help us how to talk English. I am very glad that some white people thinks that Indians can learn, I know some thinks they can not learn, and thinks that it is no use for them to come to a good school like this; if the old Indians had been educated like the old white people, we would have been even in schools. The Government have just started schools for Indians. When these Indians at Hampton first came here, they did not know a word of English, they were dressed in Indians’ cloths ”

“ That nature has placed any disqualifications upon the negro, and has thus indicated or determined what is or what is not possible for him to accomplish, we cannot know until we have so far removed the obstacles we have put in his way, and stricken off the chains with which we have bound him, and thrown open an opportunity which we have barred against him, that he shall have a chance to show what the purpose was with reference to him ”

“ The people are not only kindly disposed, but are pleased with the work carried on; they do not all have equal faith, but nearly or quite all acknowledge that it is a work that should be done, that the colored people must be educated. ”

“ An intelligent Christian woman, fairly representative, we believe, of the best friends of the negro, herself engaged in the work of negro education as an amateur, in the literal meaning of the word, during her annual sojourn in the South, said to us recently that she did not believe in the attempt of Fisk, Howard, Atlanta and like schools to give this people a higher education. ”

“ We have a good lively Sabbath-school every Sabbath, and all seem to enjoy the lesson. All are Christians but six, and I hope to gain those for the Lord. We are going on in peace as pastor and people. We did not pay all we owed on our church farm last year, but we will pay all of it this year, and then we will give $25 or $30 every year to carry other work on. My members want to give as much as any one else to the work. I hope they will. I have put my horse on the church farm to work. Bro. Y. gives his entire attention to the farm, and he rents more land to make out a full two-horse crop. ”

“ The Topeka Ministerial Association invites negro ministers to come in and join indiscriminately in its deliberations. In Topeka every white man encourages the colored man to save his money and get a home; in Savannah it is right the reverse. In Topeka a majority get homes; in Savannah but very few. In Topeka a majority of the whites encourage temperance, and, as the result, the colored vote goes nearly solid for temperance. ”

“ It is not natural for scholars to be running ahead of their teachers and enthusiastically shouting back for them to come on. As a rule, the teacher must lead. Ability to inspire pupils with a love for study is one of the essentials for success in teaching. The work of education, like everything else good in this world, must be pushed. ”

“ Art. VIII. This society, in collecting funds, in appointing officers, agents and missionaries, and in selecting fields of labor, and conducting the missionary work, will endeavor particularly to discountenance slavery, by refusing to receive the known fruits of unrequited labor, or to welcome to its employment those who hold their fellow-beings as slaves. ”

“ In Topeka a colored man can take jobs and superintend business when he is competent, and all are willing he should, but in Savannah I employed a very competent negro to superintend a job of mason work. ”

“ Although in general they have fields of labor chosen by themselves, it often happens that they look to the parent society to furnish them; and indeed one of the chief offices of the Association is to bring together the need and the supply, those who want help and those who have the heart and the hands ready to help. ”

“ I spent five years in Savannah, devoting my whole time to the colored people. Savannah claims 30,000 inhabitants, of whom about 15,000 are colored. Topeka has 16,000 inhabitants, 5,000 of whom are colored. Physical wants can be more easily supplied in Savannah than in Topeka. In nearly all of the South the bare necessities of life are more easily secured than at the North. ”

“ There should be one missionary, a wise and earnest Christian, with good business capacity, and one well-educated Chinese helper; and as the school grew and scholars were prepared to preach, the range of studies and the number of teachers could be increased. ”

“ They feel that they need to know the English language. Of course, there are public schools where both the English and Chinese languages are taught by the British government, but all have their sessions in the day-time; consequently, the children are the only ones benefited by these schools. There remains the laboring class unreached. If a free evening school is opened, I have no doubt that much good could be done among them.
2d. Hong Kong is a great highway to all foreign ports, especially San Francisco. Through Hong Kong nearly all the Chinese in the United States have come and will return. ”

“ Curtis is an invalid and a great sufferer, being unable to visit among the homes, it seemed at first an unfortunate topic for her consideration; [174] but when we listened to her paper and saw how she had been directed of the Lord to reach the mothers and help them by bringing them to her own home, and there giving them the perfect illustration of what a true Christian home may be, and of counseling and instructing them, we were led to say, “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. Man deviseth his ways, but God directeth his steps.” ”

“ The young and ambitious are pressing forward, and they are doing it with eyes wide open to the difficulties that must be encountered, while at the same time, to give them confidence and hope, they have before them the living examples of scholarly achievement on the part of some of the youth of their race. ”

“ In China proper, exclusive of Chinese Tartary, Thibet, etc., there are eighteen provinces, among them Kwong Dioung, of which the well-known city of Canton is the capital. This province embraces 77 districts, and almost all of our Christian Chinese come from four of these districts, which lie in a cluster about eighty miles south-west of Canton, and 100 miles west of Hong Kong. To these districts our young men expect to return, and many of them already have returned. ”