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Title
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"The Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People," The Freedmen's Record, August 1, 1866
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Date
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08-01-1866
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Description
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Discusses the accomplishments of the Association, including having 70 schools, 76 teachers, and an average attendance of 5,645 students. Also mentions the failures of the city and state of Maryland to support African Americans, the goal to be co-laborers with African Americans, and burning of churches as a result of schools being made. The article requests funding from the North to support their work.
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Transcript
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THE task of educating the colored people of Maryland was undertaken by a society of gentlemen in Baltimore, under the above title, well known in the community and prominent in various professions. They were, with scarcely an exception, born and reared under, and believers in, “the peculiar institution.” At the national crisis, as men new-born, they saw the new duty, and at once set themselves to meet it. With almost no encouragement from a community whose prosperity and security have already been vastly advanced by their labors, against every disadvantage and discouragement, they have steadily kept at their work, and, aided mainly by the charities of the North and West, and by contributions from the societies of Friends in Great Britain, have achieved a success which only those resident in the State and personally cognizant of facts can appreciate. The first school was opened in Baltimore, 9th January, 1865; and at the close of the schools, 30th June, 1866, we report seventy schools in city and State, with seventy-six teachers, and an average attendance of five thousand six hundred and forty-five scholars out of a register of seven thousand. There are but three counties in the State in which schools have not been opened, while we have applications from at least a dozen places for new schools in the fall.
The amount of pecuniary assistance from other than sources enumerated has been — from donations in the city, about six thousand dollars; from the city government the first year,—with the acknowledgment that much more than this was due the colored people as their portion of taxes paid for support of schools which no colored child could attend,—ten thousand dollars; from the State, nothing. The city has failed to make a second appropriation for our second year.
Our plan has been to make the colored people understand that they were to be co-laborers with us, and we expect them to bear a portion of the expense. This they have generally done with cheerfulness and alacrity. In the counties they provide the school-room and the boarding-place, and pay the board of the teachers. The amount thus contributed, including cost of erecting new school-houses, the lumber of which was provided by government through the Association, will exceed ten thousand dollars. In the city, a little different method is necessary from that adopted in the counties; but abundant evidence is at hand to prove that this is the true way of enlisting and holding the interest and sympathy of the class to be benefited. When it is remembered that many of the schools are kept in the churches, that many of these churches have been burned because of the schools, that insurance upon church property has become impossible, the aggregate of cost to the black man is seen to be by no means small.
In connection with these schools, a normal class has been established in Baltimore, for which all colored applicants are examined, and where they are fitted to become teachers. For our schools, we have been careful to select the very best material New England can afford. We are determined that they shall be first class every way, and that colored teachers, upon whom we are satisfied that the great task of regenerating their race must mainly fall, shall be properly trained. Our hope is to be able to establish a normal school , which shall not only supply our own immediate necessities, but become a source of supply to a want which must increase as both white and black more and more understand how entirely education lies at the base of the colored man’s prosperity and success.
Industrial schools, attended with very marked results, have been in operation in the city for the past ten months, managed by an association of ladies acting under an executive committtee. For their success they are mainly indebted to Miss Helen A. Learned, who, for some time a successful teacher, left us to recruit her health at the North, and returned with a large supply of material, and over one thousand dollars in money, which she had collected during her absence. Entering with zeal into her new work, and overtasking her impaired strength, she has fallen a victim to the cause, leaving a memory endeared to all who knew her, and mourned as a friend by those for whom she gave her life. The colored people propose to place a simple memorial-stone above her grave.
The examination of the city schools, at their close in June, surprised all but the few who had watched over them and knew the wonderful progress that had been made. I think even they were surprised; and when I recalled the so hopeless beginning upon the utterly untutored material, and contrasted the inattention and disorder of the first weeks with the order, the attention, the enthusiasm of that day, which I well know obtains every day, I could only feel that we had every reason to thank God and take courage. Our teachers, under great disadvantage and discomfort, even under peril of life, have proved themselves, with but trifling exceptions, admirably qualified for their work; and to them are the Association, the colored people, and the State largely indebted. When will the latter rouse to a sense of her indebtedness, and take to herself a charge she never should have left to others, and which fast outgrows the means of those others to manage?
Beside the advantage the schools have been to those whom we immediately desired to help, they have been the means — and they will be still more so as results are more and more palpable—of lifting, somewhat, the prejudice of a community unmoved by anything before. The race is making its own way toward victory. No person has ever visited these schools, or seen their results, without confessing surprise and acknowledging a capacity heretofore denied. It is not too much to say that there is not a thinking man or woman in Maryland, however shrinking from allowing it, however unwilling to aid, but owns that the school is vital, not merely to the race, but to the progress and safety of the Commonwealth. Once get this conviction on to the surface, and let men speak out what they reluctantly admit to themselves, and we shall be able, instead of asking help from abroad, ourselves to help in this which is to be the great philanthropy of this generation.
The colored schools in the counties have acted as a stimulus upon the white schools; while, in the city, those capable of forming an unprejudiced opinion declare the system and thoroughness of instruction to be superior to that which obtains in the same grade of white schools. In some places, where they exist side by side, the colored man has the better school-house; or, where they begin to build together, the colored man finishes and occupies first, while it is getting to be felt that there will have to be some grand awakening of the whites in the rural districts, or the blacks will distance them in the race. The same patient persistence which has characterized this abused, misunderstood, remarkable people in their great hope, energized into activity, is as striking a characteristic in their purpose and efforts to raise themselves in all worthy ways.
The Baltimore Association furnishes the only instance in the Southern States of the residents taking hold of this work for themselves. Very recently, Gen. Howard said he had no idea that there was any such organization, and expressed his surprise at the character and position of the gentlemen concerned in it. The work they are doing is a permanent work. It is fixing the status of the race. They are at home. They know the community, white and black, in its past as in its present, and they build for the future of both. They are in immediate contact with the thing, see it every day, know it every way. They apply themselves directly to the want. They see and oversee; are not obliged to trust to agents or reports, but keep the whole matter directly under their own eye. They have systematized their work admirably; and their methods, as well as the field occupied and results attained, have received honorable mention at the meetings of the Northern Aid Societies. Their office is a busy place; their executive committee sit once a week, to whom special school and sub-committees constantly employed, and a state agent visiting the county schools, weekly report. Less than two years ago, in a hostile community, we began an experiment with a few hundred dollars; to-day we have a success requiring an annual outlay not far from $75,000.
We ask sympathy and help, and we ask without hesitation. Our work is peculiar; our position anomalous. We have and must have ways of our own. What is applicable to States further south is not applicable to us. We are the pioneer State in the work. We are working for those who live with us; in whose advancement we ourselves advance. We are vitally concerned, yet not selfishly. Strangely, Maryland has had the lead in the great reforming, reconstructing work. Every step taken so far has been taken here first. This has been the battle-ground of men and of ideas. If the 19th of April was the precursor of the war, the State Act of Emancipation, of which the lamented Winter Davis was the parent and the champion, preceded the great national proclamation. In nothing is she, or will she, be neutral; and the questions to-day opening, upon the decision of which hangs so much the true prosperity of the future, will be first met and decided here. As Maryland goes, so will go the whole South. She is destined to be the great leader in a work which cannot be done at the North from without, but must be done from within by the South itself.
Friends at the North, help us! In the name of the freedman, in the name of the white man, in the name of humanity, for the hope of the nation and the race, help us! We are here upon the spot, and we can do as none others can. We need money. We do not overlook the claims of other States; we do not forget others needing help. Only this we say, if you will so throw your aid in our behalf that we can accomplish the work which we see before us, enabling us to enter in and reap these waiting fields, we shall so establish the fact of the value of the work and the capacity of the race that the problem will be solved, and the South and Southwest be compelled to do likewise, leaving your hands and charities free for yet waiting imperious necessities. Give us the means not of half doing but of wholly doing, and the fact and example of our success ensures the emancipation of both black and white from degradation and ignorance.
J. F. W. W.
