avening power into the houses, towns and
villages of the Southern black population; girls fit to be the
wives of the honest peasantry of the South, the worthy matrons of
their numerous households.
"I am looking after the domestic training of the _masses_; for the
raising up of women meet to be the helpers of poor men, the _rank
and file_ of black society, all through the rural districts of the
South.
"A true civilization can only be attained when the life of woman 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 through the
influence of the uplifted and cultivated black woman of the South."
The above appeal is in the line of our American Missionary Association
work. While we have higher schools and institutions for more thorough
education, which these Negro women need as much as any women in the
world, we are increasingly developing this idea which Dr. Crummell
eloquently pleads.
We remind our friends and those Christian women who are interested in
the uplifting of Negro womanhood, that the American Missionary
Association, the _ordained agency_ of the Congregational Churches for
this work, could do much more of it if the means were forthcoming. The
marked success of the domestic training in our schools at Tougaloo,
Miss., Talladega, Ala., Thomasville, Ga., Memphis, Tenn., and other
points, shows the advantage gained in the twenty-five years'
experience which the A.M.A. has had in its work for the Negroes.
We need the co-operation of all Christian women in carrying on these
Industrial Schools already established, and to enable us to establish
and carry forward _many more_.
* * * * *
{108}
YOUNG FOLKS.
WHAT SUSIE FOUND AT TOUGALOO.
(SEE FEBRUARY AMERICAN MISSIONARY.)
A roomful of girls of various sizes and complexions, all very much
intent upon their work, and no one thinking just at that moment of a
traveled fairy daughter, to adopt and love as her own, sent by a
beneficent and tender-hearted northern "Fay." I doubt if Susie ever
before saw so
|