Mr. Benson began his independent life with his unpaid farm of 160 acres. Now he owns 3,000 acres of land paid for and without encumbrance, with the virtual ownership of a fine stream, at some points 500 feet wide, which for five miles runs through his extensive plantations. On this stream he has a brick yard, a saw mill, a grist mill and a cotton gin and compressing mill combined in one and operated by the water of this stream. The farm is worked on shares chiefly, the owner furnishing the land and the stock, the laborers dividing the products half and half.
Kowaliga Creekthrough Mr. Benson's Plantations.
The leases are taken by a dozen responsible and experienced farmers, who sub-contract with the laborers under their immediate supervision. Of the 3,000 acres, one-half is devoted to corn, cotton, cane, etc.; 500 are used for pasturage and 1,000 furnish ample supply of pine, oak and hickory timber for the greedy teeth of his saw mill and the willing embrace of his planing mill. He has cows, cattle, mules, horses, barns and farm implements to meet all necessities. His teams go regularly to Montgomery markets and return with stores for the forty families who live upon his lands and work them, and for the community who purchase of him what things they have. Besides his possessions in land, Mr. Benson has been able to loan to his white neighbors some $6,000, which are secured by mortgages upon their farms. They are running behind and he is running ahead. While I was the guest of this man, opposite me at the table dined a white man who was engaged on the carpentry of the new house. He was a native Southerner but he showed no evidence of social injury, and if he did his carpentry work as thoroughly as he did that of the table he certainly earned his wages.
Mr. Benson has managed with his uncommon ability to pick up education enough to achieve and handle successfully and shrewdly these large interests; not only to know their details but also to realize their significance and somewhat of the larger world beyond his own dominions. The success of this self-made colored man may be somewhat exceptional in degree, but it is not at all phenomenal. The story with the variations of personality and place could be told a hundred times over among the colored people who began thirty years ago without a foot of land or a dollar of money.
Among the colored people in this rural community this man is one. For the most part life has gone on for the others without much advancement. They have not been left without a certain kind of school for their children taught for three months out of twelve chiefly by students who are themselves getting an education in institutions sustained by Northern benevolence; but the teaching has been without continuity and insufficient to make much impress on character. This far-seeing colored man realized this, and his own influence in life might have been greater if chances had come to him in his earlier days. He has, therefore, given his son a liberal education at college and has daughters now in the same path.
When the young man returned from his studies with Christian love in his heart to assist his father in business he took in the situation that there must be a school here commensurate with the needs, where the colored boys and girls might receive the blessings of an education large and thorough enough and of such a positive Christian quality as should change the life of the community. In some aspects it sadly needs radical change.
He called to his side one of his mates at Fisk Universitya graduate of the college departmentunder the conviction that for such work as this there was a call for a thorough as well as a technical education; that there must be breadth of mental knowledge and mental vision as well as skill of hand. The young college man with his diploma in his pocket heard the call, as scores of samples from our institutions in our great system of schools are hearing theirs every year; and when once there these two young men began what is to be the Kowaliga Academic and Industrial School. They each had taken industrial training enough with their studies to know what they were about. They sought good counsel from others and thus the main school building was begun. Mr. Benson, the father, furnished a sufficient allotment of land for the site, the timber and the lumber which his mills sawed and planed, and which his teams carted. The Samples supervised and the young people and old wrought with their own hands. Generous friends from the North lent their names to the undertaking and from and through them contributions came in amounts sufficient to encourage but not large enough to complete. From these were named an advisory board of friends who with an equal number of colored people in the neighborhood were called trustees.
These are the conditions in which I introduce our Samples. It was at this stage of the proceedings when these children of the American Missionary Association called to us for the second and third time, "Come over and help us." We came, we saw, and they conquered. How could we do other than honor their faith and patience with our "watch and care," and with a little faith on our part that help enough would come to us to make their own helpfulness successful. Here in the darkness these light bearers will give light and save life and they will do this better because light has been given to them and they themselves have been saved.
Prof. T. S. Inborden.
Principal Joseph K. Brick Normal, Agricultural and Industrial School at Enfield, N. C.A. M. A.born a slave. Struggled up through poverty, educated himself by teaching vacations and working his way. Was graduated from Fisk University. A Sample.
I have given this story of Samples because it is our latest. Our picture would be out of perspective, however, should it lead any to the conclusion that this typical illustration of conditions and work is other than a sample in itself. Let it be known that this is what is going on in the work of the American Missionary Association constantly year by year, every year, as it reduplicates itself in every State of the South.
Above ten thousand of these Samples are examples. They have taken the torches lighted at our fires and have borne the light of their knowledge on to others in darkness. They are doing it this year. They will do it next year. There are entire counties in the South in which our schools have supplied nine-tenths of all the colored teachers. These teachers, graduates of Normal Schools and higher institutions, are good samples, making full proof of their enlarged powers in the Christian upbuilding of their own race. The man who thinks leads.
Samples, also, in strong ministers of Christ, good and true, who are in "our line," planting little churches and developing little churches into larger ones, bringing dependent churches forward into self-support, and leading the colored people out and away from old-time superstition and evil ways into the pure life of intelligent faith.
Prof. James L. Murray.
Born a slave. Educated by his own endeavors. Taught his way through College. Was graduated at Fisk University. Principal of the Albany Normal School, A. M. A. A Sample.
In the more conspicuous places of life we find our Samples. Some of their "examples" are already on the shelves of science in our libraries, and are hanging in honor in the galleries of art. Not a few of our graduates fill Professors' chairs. Many are already teachers of teachers. They believe that the Negro has intellect as well as hands. They believe in the development of manhood and womanhood along all lines, and do not believe that an elementary education for an elementary people is enough to save a race. They have been taught in our schools that our thought of education is that the knowledge which is of most worth "is that which stands in closet relation to the highest forms of the activity of the spirit created in the image of Him who holds nature and man and life alike in the hollow of His hand." Our idea of the educational process is that it is vital and not merely technical; that it is indeed but another name for the unfolding and growth of the human spirit. It has not, therefore, been along a single line of material helpfulness, and its ends are not reached with mere technical skill.
Our supreme purpose is "to give light and to save life," but we have never tried to save disembodied spirits. We have written Christianity large over and in all of our work in the school rooms, in the manual training shops, in the farm instruction, because we are sure there is no recuperative energy in the colored race, nor in any other, sufficient to save itself. There is nothing so practical to uplift men or races as Christianity. Said Archdeacon Tiffany the other day at Yale, "A prevailing idea is, to create an environment is to develop Christian life. Put people in the right places and they will be all right, a statement, however, which experience has denied from the Garden of Eden until now. Environment is a great factor but it does not furnish the life impulse. Recognize the help of environment but do not depend on it. How often environment does not make character but may retard it." Our work strikes its roots far deeper than in externals. Nevertheless, Christianity assumes intelligence and depends upon it. With Christian character and intelligence we hear the call for technical skill and provide for it in our industrial annexes side by side with our work in mental development. Hence you will find the Samples "in our line" as easily as a commercial traveler finds the stores which handle his goods.
Industrial Room, Orange Park, Fla. A Sample.
We have industrial samples also in educated farmers, architects, carpenters, masons, contractors, merchants and bankers, who in the industrial competitions of life are proving the mettle of their pasture in the fields where they were fed and trained. While we were teaching them first of all to be larger and better in mind, stronger in heart and will, teaching them to have a large and intelligent faith in God, and an honest following of Christ, we have taught them at the same time how to till the soil wisely, how to excel in the trades, how to keep their accounts accurately and how to have accounts to keep. We would like to have the great American Missionary Association constituency see these samples as we have seen them and do see them, not alone in pulpits, in schools and on farms and in trades, but also in commercial life and in places of extended influence. We should like to show our Samples in their Christian homes, homes which are not made of brick and mortar and boards and shingles, but which are only sheltered by these; homes where there is educated intelligence, where there are books and thoughtful minds that can appreciate them; homes where there is refinement, and where samples are examples of exalted life which in itself stimulates and uplifts life all aroundthese are centres of untold good. The light streams out from them day by day. They are the leaven of a rising race. I go not anywhere in towns or in rural places in any Southern state where I fail to find such samples and examples which in their various ways are thus holding forth the word of life and justifying the farsighted wisdom and benevolence which planted the system of American Missionary schools upon "our line" and which in sustaining them is building up the Kingdom of God on the Master's line as it builds up thousands of men and women towards the mind and heart of God.
College Graduates. Samples.
Small Samples, En Route to the Twentieth Century.
The little people pictured above are "children's children." Parents who came under our care thirty years ago, but one remove from all that was wrapped up in hopeless slavery, can now give their children better chances than they themselves could secure in the early days of freedom. In our great system of schools one may look into thousands of such earnest faces turned inquiringly toward the twentieth century. What the coming days shall hold for them and through them for the kingdom of Christ is in good part to be answered in positive Christian schools, where character building is made the supreme foundation for future homes and opportunities. These "children's children" began their climbing on a higher round than did their parents, and there are more of them to climb
"More and more, more and more,
Still there's more to follow."
COMMENCEMENT AT STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY, LA
BY REV. G. W. HENDERSON, D.DOur school year, which closed May 25, has been crucial in many respects. It has tested the attachment of the scholars to the school on one hand, and their desire for an education and the willingness of themselves and of their parents to make sacrifices to this end on the other; for the fever and the rigid quarantine delayed the opening in the fall, paralyzed business, and made it difficult for parents and students to earn the means not only to meet school expenses, but even to obtain the ordinary comforts of life. But, notwithstanding these discouragements, our old scholars remained loyal and patiently awaited the opening, and the attendance has been goodthat in the higher grades coming up to the average figure. How much solicitude, earnest planning and brave self-sacrifice all this involved no one who has not lived in the midst of the people can realize; no one but the All-Knowing can understand.
The list of our various exercises is somewhat long, yet each represents some special department of our work, or is a manifestation of some special form of its manifold activities, and for this reason cannot fail to be of interest to our readers.
Junior Exhibition, May 4, was the first exercise on the program; two weeks later came the Recital by the Department of Instrumental Music. The Address, Sunday morning, May 22d, to the Christian Associations by Rev. J. M. Loring, D.D., of this city, and the Baccalaureate, Sunday night, by President Atwood, were both greatly enjoyed by the large audiences that came to hear.
A feature of growing power and usefulness is the Sumner and Alpha Literary Societies, whose anniversary is always an occasion of great interest. The able and eloquent address this year was given by Rev. L. H. Reynolds, D.D., the successful pastor of the leading African Methodist Church in this city. He made his auditors feel that, though their lot had many hardships, it also had many compensating advantages, and that to the educated and consecrated youth of the race the field for usefulness and distinction was large and inviting.
The Class Day Exercise, Monday night, came up in point of interest and attraction to the usual high standard. The Grammar Department had the right of way Tuesday 1 P. M. Certificates admitting them to the Normal and College Preparatory Departments were given to forty-two bright boys and girls. And truly, the boys in their neat fitting suits and the girls in their white gowns presented a beautiful sight. The history of their efforts to reach this landmark in their educational life is full of pathos and romance. Observe that girl sitting yonder on the right. Her happy face glows with the interest of the occasion; her dress is neat and cleanly. Yet that girl left the washroom or laundry when she came to school this morning, and will return to it when the school day closes. Back from the street and enclosed by larger buildings and shut out from the blessed sunlight and pure air is the house she calls her home. She is the oldest of five or six children. The hard worked mother, who seldom leaves the wash-tub except to retire to her weary couch, is only able to keep this girl in school by the most rigid economy and self-denial, and when she has finished her course, then by her help the others may have a chance.
This is one of many cases which the kind and faithful teacher has discovered among her scholars. The lesson of it is that the race which has such mothers, so patient, so self-sacrificing, is sure to rise, and is worth taking some stock in by the friends of Christian missions; nor need we be surprised to learn that out of a colored voting population of 120,000 in Louisiana, nearly 39,000 have acquired within thirty-five years the ability to read and write.