is reached, her whole being permeated by noble ideas, her
fine taste enriched by culture, her tendencies to the beautiful
gratified and developed, her singular and delicate nature lifted up to
its full capacity; and then, when all these qualities are fully matured,
cultivated and sanctified, all their sacred influences shall circle
around ten thousand firesides, and the cabins of the humblest freedmen
shall become the homes of Christian refinement and of domestic elegance
through the influence and the charm of the uplifted and cultivated black
woman of the South!

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE EDUCATIONAL LEAGUE OF GEORGIA[19]

BY JOSEPHINE ST. PIERRE RUFFIN, of Boston, Mass.

_Founder of the National Association of Negro Women_

[Note 19: June, 1889.]

_Ladies of the Georgia Educational League:_

The telegram which you sent to Governor Northern to read to his
audience, informing the people of the North of your willingness to
undertake the moral training of the colored children of Georgia, merits
more than a passing notice. It is the first time, we believe, in the
history of the South where a body of representative Southern white women
have shown such interest in the moral welfare of the children of their
former slaves as to be willing to undertake to make them more worthy the
duties and responsibilities of citizenship. True, there have been
individual cases where courageous women have felt their moral
responsibility, and have nobly met it, but one of the saddest things
about the sad condition of affairs in the South has been the utter
indifference which Southern women, who were guarded with unheard of
fidelity during the war, have manifested to the mental and moral welfare
of the children of their faithful slaves, who, in the language of Henry
Grady, placed a black mass of loyalty between them and dishonor. This
was a rare opportunity for you to have shown your gratitude to your
slaves and your interest in their future welfare.

The children would have grown up in utter ignorance had not the North
sent thousands of her noblest daughters to the South on this mission of
heroic love and mercy; and it is worthy of remark of those fair
daughters of the North, that, often eating with Negroes, and in the
earlier days sleeping in their humble cabins, and always surrounded by
thousands of them, there is not one recorded instance where one has been
the victim of violence or insult. If because of the bitterness of your
f