Our Opportunities in the South

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 6, 1909

Our Opportunities in the South

In a speech at Atlanta, Ga., recently made before the Conference for Education in the South, a fuller account of which appears elsewhere, Gov. Hoke Smith, of Georgia, offered, as a partial and practical solution of the negro education in the South, the suggestion that Northern men move among them, and that employers in the North seek the services of the negro; for, as the governor showed from statistics, the negro develops best when scattered among the whites. There are two very needy classes in the South, the poor whites and the negroes, both of which demand the uplifting efforts of the gospel. Work for these people is made very possible at this time by a sentiment in the South thus forcibly voiced by the governor of Georgia.

It was conclusively demonstrated at the conference that the most effective means for doing a permanent work of value for these classes is through the school. These people perhaps always need to be led; consequently work of a pastoral character is imperative. The civilizing influence of a school which teaches the value and dignity of manual work, and particularly agriculture, is of the greatest value. While it is true that much of the work begun will have to be followed up by continual labor, yet it is also true that many of these people may be so educated that they can, in turn, carry on similar work for others in like conditions.

Much can be done for this needy people. But it is evident that this work can not be best prosecuted by desultory or spasmodic efforts. If it rests upon us, and it does, whether we realize it or not, we should organize for more effective work than we have heretofore undertaken. The value of unity and organized effort is as great in this field as any in the world. Not every one is qualified for work in this land, and those who go need the counsel and support, financially and otherwise, of those who are studying the field as a whole. We have hundreds of families living in our crowded cities of the North, and even in rural districts, who, it would seem, could be speedily prepared for valuable service as teachers and gospel workers, to live among these needy classes, and give to them the uplifting and soul-saving influence of the gospel. Surely the gateway to a great, broad avenue of opportunity is wide open.