The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-30

That schools should be kept open through
all the warmth of summer vacation, with
full and voluntary attendance of the pupils,
seems rather incredible. That they should
be kept open nearly under the Tropics, in all
the heat of Southern summer, seems more
incredible. But that they should be kept
open in summer, under q tropical climate,
at the request of the BOYS and
girls themselves, and partly at their
expense, seems altogether incredible; it
is not juvenile human nature. And yet it is
the fact. So desirous of learning are the
dark-hued scholars of our Southern States,
that their schools, when closed for three
months of summer, that their Northern teach
ers may return home to recuperate have been
reopened and their old teachers either en-
gagged to remain or new ones been employed
of their own color, and therefore somewhat
inferior. In some cases these vacation teach
ers have been the best and most advanced of
the scholars in the late schools, who thus pre-
pare themselves normally for wider experience
in school-teaching on their own account In
Louisiana, in the summer of 1868, 17S schools,
with 6e6 pupils continued through July with
their old teachers. The same season, the
| superintendent of the Freedman's Bu
reau in Mississippi made special effort to 90
through the hot weather with all his healthiiy-
located schools, and succeeded: Is day schools,
with an average attendance of $500 scholars,
| and AZ Sunday schools, with an average of
$500 pupils, were kept open through all the
heated term. In Kentucky, last year, so
schools were continued through August with
1921 pupils.
Such an eager desire for learning makes
| the establishment of new schools an
easy task. And yet it is wonderful to see
how this intense longing for culture
| on the part of the negro, met by the
nation in the Freedman'a Bureau and by in
dividuals in various benevolent organizations,
has resulted in the establishment of so many
institutions of learning -Four years of peace
have intervened since the light of freedom
| began to dawn upon the dark chaos of igno-
rance that brooded over the black man.
Within these four years there have been
established colleges-too often s06-dtSGRt
universities-at Washington with its law,
medical, and theological schools) Nashville,
Atlanta, Oxford, Mobile, Allegheny; 81 normal
schools, at Hampton, Charleston, Macon,
Talladega, Mobile, and other places; high
schools at Wilmington, Beaufort, Savannah,
Memphis, Chattanooga, and Louisville; 800
graded schools, and 400 common and Sun
day schools, with an attendance of 256, 900
| pupils, where four years ago not school nor
q scholar could be found.
These make an educational advance such as
the world has nowhere else seen. In few
years these 500 graded schools, these 80
normal and high schools, these colleges and
|
of teachers, similar in race to the taught; but
even at this early stage over thousand of
| the teachers are colored.
Much of the educational work has been
done by the Freedman's Bureau, that has SO
faithfully guarded the interests of the ma
tons wards But much has also been done
by liberal charity developed in all denomi-
nations and through manifold organizations.
Of all the societies. however, the American
Missionary Association has been the most
forward, chiefly because it was earliest in the
field. 1t has had at one time nearly six hun
dred teachers in colored schools, educating
100000 scholars. In the retributive or
dinance of wise Providence its
first school was established at
spot where, two hundred and forty-six years
before, the first cargo of slaves was landed
upon American soil. To-day that association
has more normal schools raising up corps of
colored teachers than there were States in
the late Confederacy. But it has also inau-
, gurated a manual labor normal school, that
bids fair to give great impetus to the edu-
cation of the negro. This institute-located
, at Hampton, Virginia. where General Butler
/ invented the audacious fiction ''contraband
of war"-boards the scholars at $1'75 pei
r week, which is met by the scholars laborine
l for little more than day and half each
A week More than two-thirds of their time
is thus given to education; and if the board
r seems cheap and poor to us, we must remem-
} ber that this is one of the few cases where the
boarding school furnishes better board than
: the scholars obtain at home. The four hun.
I dred and twenty barrels of cabbages the
scholars have raised the past year, the two
[ hundred and thirty barrels of peas theii
strawberries, beets and cucumbers, have
d netted them two thousand dollars. They
v have paid their way. The successful result
of this plan is likely to introduce this class Of
g schools into general use at the South. Already
q are there seventeen industrial schools rails
r ing up skilled laborers as well as scholars.
d To comprehend fully the magnitude of this
q educational advance, we must recognize tn,
n circumstances under which it has occurred.
f The negro started with poverty-houseless
9 andless unszilled in labor, and with ter
/. | rible prejudice against him. He lives OIL
Q large plantations, away from great thorough
I | fares and where there are no common
!. | schools after which he can pattern His tim
: has been all needed for his material support
. He has never known the beauty or excellence
@ of knowledge by personal acquaintance AM
# yet through all ranks and ages there is thi
universal, widespread desire for knowledge
o teacher in Washington told the write
d the past winter-which was one @
J. unusual severity there from lac
n of work-that many of her scholar
A. would go home at the days close to fin
70 neither food nor fire, would sleep on the bar
1t ground of their miserable huts, and the
n come to school the next morning breakfast
e. less; they had eaten no food for twenty-fou
hours, but they would come to school. Th
,r Superintendent of Schools in Virginia say
le that more than half of the pupils in th
II ~