Visiting Southern Schools by M. BESSIE DeGRAW

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 13, 1908

Visiting Southern Schools

By M. BESSIE DeGRAW

It is sometimes a good thing for us and for our work that we find out what is being done in other places and by other people. I have often felt so in regard to the work of the South. If you better knew the conditions here, you would the sooner determine to lift your share of the burden.

In company with Mrs. Emma Gray, of Armona, Cal., who is deeply interested in the South, I had the privilege of visiting several educational institutions recently; and I came home with a renewed determination to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to interest people in the great South and to train for service here.

At the Oakwood School in Huntsville, Ala., we met the colored teachers of mission schools started by the Southern Missionary Society. It was a pleasure to meet this company of earnest young people who are working for the children of their own race. We visited the schoolroom of one of these teachers. It is in a city of about one hundred fifty thousand inhabitants, and the room is thirteen feet square. Here this young woman teaches forty children. These children sit on home-made benches, and their facilities are the most limited. Nevertheless I did not hear one word of discouragement. Only six or eight of these forty children are from Seventh-day Adventist families. The others come from neighboring homes. That teacher is reaching, we will say, twenty-five families with Bible instruction. Should not such work be helped with means and men?

We were royally entertained at Tuskegee in the school of Booker T. Washington. There eighteen hundred young colored people are being trained for lives of usefulness. In a declaration of principles made at a recent conference held at Tuskegee appear such thoughts as these: “We urge our people to seize upon every opportunity to get possession of land, to the end that they may have homes of their own, and become permanently settled.” “The masses of our people will remain on the farms engaged in agriculture; it is our imperative duty to see that such methods of farming are adopted as will enable us to produce more an acre on the farms, and at the same time build up the soil.” “Nothing should be allowed to interfere with the education of our children. . . . All farmers should make an effort to send their sons, who are to succeed them, to schools where they can obtain instruction in agriculture.” There were many other declarations equally as important, which indicate the tenor of the instruction given in the Tuskegee Institute.

Booker Washington has followed right principles concerning the education of the colored boy and girl; and when I see the work he has done, I only wish that, years ago, we had followed the instruction given us regarding industrial training, that to-day we might be leading instead of slowly bringing up the rear in this great educational movement. It is our privilege to lead; but we missed the opportunity. The son of a slave is outrunning us. Our only hope is to step fast in the advanced light which is ours, and by God's grace to redeem the time.

Near Rome, Ga., we visited a company of most devoted Christian workers. About six years ago Miss Martha Berry gave eighty acres of land for the use of an Industrial school for Highland boys. This school now accommodates one hundred fifty young men,—young men who have been aroused to exert themselves for an education. They carry on the work of the farm, dairy, cannery, and home under the instruction of a few men and women whose devotion to a cause is seldom equaled.

Then we climbed a mountain to a little school right among the Highlanders. Here, too, is a little company of our own workers, struggling to teach forty or fifty children who come from mountain homes, ministering to the physical needs of a people full of aches and pains, who know not how to care for their bodies, and to whom the medical missionary is a Godsend. The school farm in this upland region is the only visible means of support. Some man to whom God has entrusted means, and who can work with boys, could do a world of good here. Is there not some one who wants to know more of this place, not out of idle curiosity, but because the Spirit is forcing from him the words, “Here am I”? I will gladly tell such ones more.

There are hundreds of places waiting to be entered. The school at Madison, Tenn., is here to help prepare men and women for such places. You ought to know something about what you can get here in the way of a preparation for work in the South and in foreign fields, and you may have the information for the asking. M. BESSIE DeGRAW.