The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1892-11-28

| members of the society occupied FORT
land pulpits. Among them was Rev. M.
| G. B. Mason, D. D., OF Georgia, who
spoke to a large audience at Chestnut
street church last evening.
DR.. Mason is true black man, his
complexion betraying none of that mix
ture of Caucasian blood so common to
many of the ablest men of the colored
race. In very apt, Introductory speech
Rev. Mr.. Hughes told the large audience
that DR.. Mason was one of the samples
of the work of the Freedmen's Aid and
Southern Educational Society. He was
born in slavery, and was II years of age
before he had the opportunity to learn to
read and write. But by the aid of the
Methodist church society he was ena-
bled to graduate from New Orleans Uni
versity, and later from a Georgia Theo-
logical school. He had used his oppor-
tunities SO well that he had been honored
by the General Conference with the right
to take his place in Church Universal as
the peer of any man.
DR.. Mason is in many ways an excel
lent type of the best negro orators. His
voice did not seem strong last night but
in command of language, in ability to
use anecdote effectively, in style, ar
rangement and in clearness and breadth
of treatment of the subject he showed
himself an able orator, and that, too,
measured by the standards of white ora
tors.
In speaking for the work which his So
ciety is doing, DR.. Mason wished first to
give general view of the field of this
work,-a field containing forty eight and
one-half million whites and seven and
one-half million blacks. OF the two
million ignorant voters in the nation, one
and half million were in the South.
Illiteracy was the only legacy that slave
for you of the North, unfortunately for
us of the South, unfortunately for citi-
zenship everywhere, this illiteracy has
two aspects. OF the one and one-half
million illiterate voters, $50, 900 are white
men.
What do these figures show? That
there were two systems of slavery in the
South, one that enslaved the negro, the
other that enslaved the poor white man;
so that in reality the stroke of Abraham
Lincoln's pen freed ten and one-half mil
lion whites and four and one-half mil
lion blacks.
Our appeal to you is in behalf of our
effort to give to all citizens, whether
black or white, the opportunities which
they need for their highest development,
materially and spiritually. And before
you that we are already upon a sure
foundation.
There is no firm foundation upon
which we can build except that of faith
full Christian work, the converting of
souls and the gathering of them into
churches.
And this we are doing successfully.
Where we had scarcely 10000 members
in the border and southern states in 1860,
we have now 100000, and are adding 90,
600 members yearly.
So it is settled in our work that we
can build churches and gather people
into them. We can succeed, for we have
done it.
Twenty-Five years agoit was problem
atical whether we could found and
maintain the school. The church had to
borrow $500 to send the first teacher into
the South. People ridiculed the attempt
when they compared it's humbleness to
the tremendous size of the task.
But today we have 46 institutions of
higher education; one hundred thousand
pupils; and yearly we are turning out
A0A oa1ora1 4aoo
young women trained both spiritually
and intellectually for the work before
them.
So we can
Build Churches and Establish Schools
But then come forward the people who
have always croaked and say, ''you can
not succeed unless you can give success
full leadership to the black man. He is
too thick headed to learn
Now it is at last settled that the black
man can learn. will prove this by the
best of testimony, the testimony of those
who at first declared that we never could |
learn.
Rev. A. G.. Haywood, a bishop of the
church South, who at first took the
ground against us, has been forced to |
confess that we can learn.
The state school commissioners of |
Georgia in a report made five years ago |
declared that the colored scholars edu- |
Gated in the schools established by |
northern benevolence, passed examina-
lions for teachers as successfully as did |
the white scholars from the schools and |
of Georgia.
Then there was Rev. DR.. Clark, an |
eminent white divine of Georgia, who in
4 recent article had agreed that the re-
port of the state school commissioners
was true and that the negroes were
earning rapidly. But the speaker SAID
ne was forced, in justice to DR.. Clark, to
add that DR.. Clark attributed this readi-
less of the negro to learn not to his in
capacity, but to his teach
sbleness.'' The speaker dwelt upon this
new term in intellectual philosophy with
some of his most entertaining pleasant
res, ending by convulsing his audience
with the story of Uncle Jim, an old
Georgia negro, whose loud '.amens' and
'hallelujahs" much disturbed some of
5he members of the church, who consid-
cred themselves very refined. When
new and very eloquent preacher was
coming they promised Uncle Jim pair
IF boots if he would rafrain from |