Various

“ Doctor, suppose these negroes to whom you talked awhile ago become what you urged them to be—useful, reliant, well-to-do citizens—what will be their status politically? Will the white people, with all this progress of the negro in education, in industry, in independence and in the acquisition of property, acknowledge his political rights? ”

“ Nowhere in the South is the negro so totally a nonentity in politics as in Mississippi, and yet nowhere in the South is there a colored institution so heartily commended as is Tougaloo University by the white Mississippians. ”

“ It is an interesting thought, that these students will go from this institution back to their low-down homes on the borders of rice fields and cotton plantations, where their fathers and mothers have toiled in slavery, and by an inspiration that is divine, will dissipate the dark memories of the past, and will show, by precept and example, that sanctification of spirit and purity of life will shape the destiny of their race for coming time. ”

“ The Indian may have lands and citizenship and an English education, and yet, if he has no strong impulse towards civilization, no motive in his heart impelling him to be an industrious, self-supporting citizen—in short, if he has not a new heart looking to a new life as a citizen and a man, he will become a vagabond on the land granted him, and a skeptic in the school in which he is taught. ”

“ It is very significant that at any time during these twenty years of your life here, it would have been just as delightful to meet and say the pleasant words that leap to our lips, as it is to say them to-day. ”

“ Knowledge is power, whether its possessor be white or black, and unless the white people of the South make the education of their children more of a paramount interest than heretofore, they will find the learning and muscle, the precedents of wealth, combined in the colored race. The rural population will find that they need for themselves and their children a better knowledge than can be acquired from the court-house, saloon, or the village tavern. ”

“ We who have arisen since the war look upon that as the noblest sacrifice which the history of our country presents. But there still remains the great problem of freeing the black man from the slavery of ignorance, superstition and sin. The work increases upon our hands. The South is struggling to rise. It has this problem of illiteracy to settle. We who have grown since the war could not carry a musket in '62, but we are willing to carry the Speller and the Bible now, and we do not consider this work one whit less honorable or necessary than the art of war. ”

“ The girls are never sent to school, as the Chinese do not think it is necessary for girls to be educated. Nearly every boy is sent to school at about the same age as your American boys, six or seven. From this time the boy's playing days are over. If the teacher sees or hears that any one has been playing after the school hour, he would be severely punished. What would your American boys think of such treatment?
School begins at the first dawning of light, and closes when we can see to read no more. No intermission is allowed, excepting for the pupils to go home to get their meals. ”

“ When one of these colored people declaims in the Negro dialect, it is a treat. There is nothing artificial about it.
The year has been a prosperous one. The school-rooms have been crowded to their utmost capacity. 312 different pupils have attended during some part of the year, and average daily attendance has been 230. [pg 206] Excellent progress has been made. Another teacher is needed. More and more are the colored people awakening to their real need—deliverance from the bonds of ignorance. You older people in the North gave your sons to free the slave from human task-masters. ”

“ With Tougaloo doing such a work as this, how could the white Mississippians feel otherwise than kindly toward her. The cry has been that "education ruins the nigger." It has been asserted over and over—so many times that most Southerners believe it as true as gospel—that higher education makes a negro too proud to work. But here is an education the very central idea of which is work—work with the hands and the eyes. Here is a university which gives to the State skilled mechanics vastly superior to those who "pick up" their trades ”

“ The Woman's Christian Temperance Union of East Atlanta, formed in 1885, is an inspiring gathering to visit, with a membership over fifty, and the programme of weekly meetings full and interesting. There are three female physicians in the city who cheerfully address the Union when desired. The pastor of the First Congregational Church, once a month, gives up the mid-week prayer meeting entirely into the hands of this Union. Last week at the close of one of these meetings, a young man told his sister it was the best prayer meeting he ever attended in his life. ”

“ Each boy has a table to himself. None of the scholars sit erect as your American custom. Every boy leans his head upon his hands, so that he can manage to take a little sleep when the teacher is not looking.
We are allowed two meals a day only, and students cannot tell the cook to prepare any private lunch. We can have as much tea as we wish. The only way we can get anything extra is to try and get the cook to buy it secretly, then it is very hard to get a chance to eat it without the teacher seeing. ”

“ Frank G. Woodworth, President of the university, was asked how he accounted for the exceptional esteem in which Tougaloo is held. His reply was: "I think the attention which we give to industrial education has a great deal to do with it. That, and the preparation of teachers, [pg 208] are two things which we make most prominent in our work. The white people can see the good effects of the training we give so plainly that they feel the work we are doing is good." ”

“ WOMAN'S TEMPERANCE WORK IN THE SOUTH.
We regret that the color-line is rigidly drawn in some parts of the South, at least, in the woman's work for temperance. Too much praise cannot be given to the white women in the South for their zeal in this good cause. The day will probably come when they will extend the hand of fellowship to their equally earnest sisters of the less favored race, but at present they do not recognize them as fellow-workers in the same societies. ”

“ The desk at which I sit, and which will compare with skilled work anywhere, was made by one of our students. In the blacksmithing and wagon-making they learn to take iron and wood in the rough and turn out a good, substantial wagon. The value to the colored youth of such training can hardly be over-estimated. They are trained to do skilled work, to be self-reliant and self-supporting.
THE FARM SCHOOL.
But teaching the trades is but part of the system of industrial education at Tougaloo. Each boy is required to work at least one hour a day on the university farm. ”

“ The farm is not run to make money, but to educate. The idea is to make the operation of the farm an object lesson to the students in the better methods of agriculture and stock raising. Several students, enough to take care of the steady and continuous farm work, are employed all day on the farm and attend the night school, but the bulk of the farm labor comes from the students, who give from one to several hours to it outside of school. ”

“ We honor the memory of the early and self-denying workers among the Freedmen. They were ostracised at the South, and were scarcely appreciated at the North. Many of them have laid down their lives in the service, others were compelled to return home on account of ill-health, but others still are toiling on, seeing the fruits of their labors in the new impulse given to the Negro in his great race struggle. Among the earliest and most efficient of these workers was President Ware, of Atlanta, now gone to his reward. ”

“ The teachers are so strict, that it is no wonder the children run away from school; some go fishing, or else to the woods hunting birds' nests. If the boys see anybody not belonging to their company they will climb up a tree as high as the branch can hide them from view. All you boys will know the reason we are afraid any one should see us. I remember running away from school once, but unfortunately my father sent my sister to the school for me to go home on business. As she could not find me, my father knew I had not been to school that day. ”

“ We trust, therefore, that our constituents will aid us to extend, as rapidly as possible, that part of the work entrusted to us. We do not ask for expensive buildings or costly plant. We ask for the means to push forward with the teacher and the preacher among these uncivilized people till, when they come forth from their present anomalous condition, they shall come forth practical Christians, as well as intelligent and industrious citizens. ”

“ One of the latest additions to the system of industrial training for girls at the university is a novelty. A cottage has been set apart—four girls are assigned to it for a month at a time. There they "keep house" in all details. They not only sweep and clean and cook, but they buy their supplies, keep account of all household expenses, and manage as they will have to do when they get homes of their own. A matron looks closely after the cottage feature, which is intended to teach neatness and economy and to develop executive ability. ”

“ Another little girl, not ten years old, had one dollar which she had been saving for sometime. It was her total bank credit. When she heard of our pressing needs, she slipped her dollar into my hand, asking that it be spent for the poor children in our field.
A woman, for years an A.M.A. teacher, but now a bed-ridden invalid, pledges $100 to the work of the Association. What can we not do when there is so much of Christian self-sacrifice in both departments of our field? ”

“ The prejudice which ostracises "a nigger teacher" and which is so pronounced in most communities where there is a colored institution, is rarely observable here. On the Board of Visitors are men of the highest standing, like Col. J.L. Power, for almost a lifetime the head of the Clarion; Oliver Clifton, the Clerk of the Supreme Court, and F.A. Wolfe, the former Superintendent of Education. Mr. W.S. Lemly, one of the leading business men of Jackson, is a member of the Board of Trustees. To visit Tougaloo is not to lose caste in Jackson society, but is altogether a proper thing to do. ”

“ To the Christian public, all other questions subordinate themselves to this, and this needs, not speculation, but hard work; legislation cannot do it, the church must; time will not do it, Christian teaching and example alone can. The vernacular question, so much agitated recently, is important only as it may hinder this practical work.
The Indian problem is not perpetual. The Indian must soon be merged into the American, and whether this shall be for good or for ill, the church must decide, and decide speedily. ”

“ The high schools are quite different from the primary. The students have to lodge and board in the school-house. We get up in the morning before daybreak to study; the teacher and all the students go to the explanation hall for our lesson. The teacher explains the meaning of the lesson, and in the afternoon we are expected to recite and give the explanation as given by the teacher. This is the hardest work of the whole day. Our evening lesson is studying essays and poems by Chinese Princes. About eleven o'clock school closes, and in a very few minutes I am sure you will find no one awake. ”

“ I am satisfied that you, and the noble ladies associated with you, are doing a good work among our colored people, and that, too, in a way that leaves no room with fair-minded men for adverse criticism in any direction. ”

“ This library cost about five dollars.
Every officer in all these four Unions is a Negro except one. They preside with such intelligence, grace and dignity, that our Southern white [pg 218] ladies who sometimes visit them are enthusiastic in their praise. The Unions plan for a mass meeting every three months in some large church.
Its forty departments of organized work give each a place where she can do her best, and its opportunities for visiting the lowly are excellent. To give our money is generous, but to give ourselves is Christly. ”

“ In behalf of visitors from the Raymond Excursion, it gives me great pleasure to express to the officers and students of Straight University our thanks for the interesting reception we have received at their hands. We have come from a long way off, for sight-seeing, and the study of the country, but here we find something more than the wild mountains, and desolate plains, and border towns, that are to make up so much of the interest of our journey. Through institutions like this, a problem suggested to me in one of your streets will find solution. ”

“ These schools of all grades number more than two hundred, and a large per cent. of their graduates become teachers who are giving a mighty uplift to their people. A colored editor could say truthfully two years ago, "We have preachers learned and eloquent; we have professors in colleges by hundreds, and school-masters by thousands; successful farmers, merchants, ministers, lawyers, editors, educators and physicians." To all this it may be added that careful estimates place the amount of property on which the Negroes in the Southern States pay taxes, at one hundred millions of dollars. ”

“ The Temperance Catechism has been thoroughly taught and illustrated. Committees of women are appointed to visit homes and solicit members or attendance on the Union. At the close of the meetings the women have access to a box of leaflets on social purity, training of children, &c., which they read and return.
Atlanta University has a Y.W.C.T.U., composed of over seventy girls in the Higher Normal department. I wish our Northern friends could look into their intelligent faces and watch their eager interest in this work. A committee for visiting the poor reports every week ”

“ The girls get their full share of industrial training at Tougaloo. They have daily instruction in some branch of household duty, ranging from dish-washing to canning and preserving. Sewing is taught from the plain darning and mending to fitting and dressmaking according to the latest fashion plates. It has come to be well understood that the Mississippi lady of a house who gets one of the trained students from Tougaloo has "a perfect treasure." ”