Historically Black College
1909
TEXAS.
Eliza Dee Home, Austin, Texas.
(Scholarship, $50.)
Twenty-eight finished the different courses in the Eliza Dee Home. The school can not grow for want of room. Here, too, our needs are great and pressing. We have no place at all for our industrial classes. Were it not for the great kindness of the Samuel Huston College, we could only keep a boarding-house. We must have a wing and better accommodations. I have asked that a building for Eliza Dee Home be the next to receive money from the building fund. I am sure that there is no other Home so needy. I have gathered a small amount, but must have at least $10,000 before we begin to build. What can we do under such embarrassments? You will surely help us to rise up and build.
In these Homes habits of industry are inculcated, economy practiced, knowledge is being imparted, and character developed, the four cardinal principles of any symmetrical development.
The Negro's ability to learn is no longer doubted except by a superficial observer. The danger-line in Negro education is not so much in his education as in the lack of it. Knowledge is power, but ignorance, too, is power. Ignorance may destroy in a day what knowledge reared in a century.
Education enhances the Negro's power as an economic factor the same as it does for a white man.
The times demand skilled workmen. Even in the digging of a ditch now there is science. The great mass of mankind, black or white, will never enter the so-called higher walks of life—the fine arts and the professions. The demand is for intelligent, conscientious workers in every field, but chiefly in physical and manual labor. Upon patient, persistent effort, health, home, and the family rest. Our brother in black ought to have the largest liberty to develop hand and brain and heart.
In the near future he must furnish the teachers for his race, and they need the equipment of the broadest culture of intellect and character to fit them for the task of uplifting a race from ignorance and degradation.
To-day there are indications of a reaction of sentiment towards the Negro in the North. It is seen in cases here and there like Hyde Park and other communities.
Nothing is so blinding as race prejudice. We hear of the Indian question, the immigrant question, the Chinese and Japanese question, the Negro question, and the yellow peril. But no one whose vision is bounded by color or race can come in contact with that breadth of thought which is highest and best.
Only he who has world-wide sympathies and whose vision, thoughts, and plans take in humanity, can reach the broadest and highest plane of usefulness in life. There is no defense or security for any of us in a republic except in the highest intelligence and broadest development for all. There is no escape through the law of man or God from the inevitable.
"The
laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor
with oppressed,
And close as sin and suffering joined,
We march to fate abreast."
In the economy of God there is but one law by which individuals, races, or nations can succeed. And that law is righteousness and obedience to the divine will.
In our land the American standard is the measure by which all must be tested; and it is largely intellectual and economic. The Negro will rise or fall as he measures up to this shibboleth.
This race is now passing through the crucible. There is much dross to be eliminated, and the burning fire of the testing process will be painful and slow. They are to be tested in the moral qualities of patience, forbearance, perseverance, power to endure wrong and to withstand temptation, and the economic qualities of economy, thrift, and skill, and to compete with a race which has a thousand years' start and far superior in training and knowledge, and yet side by side in competition. Vast and almost hopeless undertaking; yet there are twenty million hands outstretched to us asking our help.
I bespeak your interest, your sympathy, your moral support, your gifts, and your prayers, and pray you to come over to Africa in America, and help us make these Homes which we have established great centers of light and influence which will result in Christian mothers, Christian homes, and Christian character, the surest and only defense of a nation.
Mrs. L,. G. Murphy, Secretary.
Eliza Dee Home, Austin, Tex.
(Scholarship, $50.)
Here our very success embarrasses us. We still have three in some beds, and with this crowding can only accommodate twenty irl the Home, though more than 160 have been in our industrial classes. What can I do when my Superintendent writes me thus? "More than forty applicants; can not take half of them." I can only say, "Turn these hungry girls away." Far worse than if it were bread hunger, for they could get bread. But this is the hunger of the awakened mind, and the heart-hunger for developed ability, usefulness, and character. O, that the daughters who are at ease in the Zion of our beloved Methodism would awake and come to the relief ! I want $100 Student Aid and $200 for current expenses. We must have a wing on this building. We have no place to hold our Industrial classes. Only by the suffrance and great kindness of the Samuel Huston College do we have a small, inadequate room. The college needs this room. And if they did not let us have it, we would be obliged to close our school. O, sisters, pray that the Lord will open the heart of some one to give us this building.
Miss King, the Superintendent, is one of our most capable missionaries and financial managers. Several thousand dollars are paid into these Homes annually by the students, who are now largely pay pupils. Is it not a significant fact that more girls are turned away from our doors than we can accommodate in our Homes? What are our responsibilities as women and as a Church to these people, with these conditions confronting us? The children and youth in our Homes largely come from the two- room cabin, where squalor, poverty, uncleanliness, and dense ignorance exist, and where no adequate home training can be received. Hence the missionary must take not only the place of the mother, but also of teacher and priestess. At the age when every word heard is a seed thought which will germinate, and when the plastic mind and heart is like wax to impress and marble to retain, the importance of ethical, moral, and religious training needs no argument. So few of the nine millions of the Negro race have as yet been reached, that the task seems well-nigh hopeless. The past, however, has yielded most cheering results. Many beautiful characters have gone forth from our Homes, which have been, and still are, a great inspiration to future effort. Our task is persistently to teach them to discover themselves, and the divine spark within them, that noble, useful, beautiful, and pure lives may result. The victory is not yet won; but with tireless purpose and His blessing the triumph is sure. May God help us to bear our share of the obligation to these "Children of the Sun."
Mrs. L. G. Murphy, Secretary.
WEST TEXAS.
Our Conference has been blessed in raising all pledges made at the Philadelphia meeting. We have met all requirements of our Conference beneficiary, who is fifteen years old. We have the full care of her, and much is paid out where no vouchers can be given.
'At our anniversary, held in Victoria, November 14, 1908, we planned an emergency fund, and through this medium we hope to be of great help to the poor and needy of our Conference. We observed the Day of Prayer for the first time, and those present will never forget that day.
Our Eliza Dee Home is crowded to its utmost, and the work becomes better each year under our proficient Superintendent, Miss King. We are very anxious for the annex to the Home, and will not cease to ask until it is built.
I attended during the summer the five District Associations, raised $200 for the Society, and sold $14 worth of fancy work done by the girls in the Home.
My people are becoming more interested in the work, and we are at all times doing our best.
Mrs. E. S. Spriggs, Corresponding Secretary.
WEST TEXAS.
I am always glad to speak of the work done in the West Texas Conference. I have worked earnestly to secure all pledges made for 1908, and rejoice to say that we paid them all and more.
I met the five District Associations during the summer; the sisters seem fully awakened to the worjc. There have been three new Auxiliaries organized, while two older ones have disbanded.
Our anniversary was held at Martin, November 30, 1907. Miss King, our most proficient Superintendent of the Eliza Dee Home, made the annual address. I find Miss King very helpful indeed, and the girls in the Home usually want to please her.
We have now in trust about fifteen hundred dollars to build an annex, and now ask the Board to please allow us to have more room, as we are over-crowded and have been from the day the doors were thrown open. The times demand that we enlarge, or find ourselves losing. I will put forth every effort to raise funds for that cause. The West Texas Conference has had a beneficiary from the beginning. I am still successful in getting a good price for the fancy-work done by our girls in the Home. Mrs. E. S. Spriggs, Corresponding Secretary.
Annual report of the Board of Managers of the Woman's Home Missionary ...
by Woman's Home Missionary Society (Cincinnati, Ohio) - 1909