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The Indian Presbytery of Dakota, composed of converted Sioux Indians, during the last ecclesiastical year gave $571 more to Foreign Missions than any other presbytery in the synod, and during the last synodical year gave to the nine Boards of that church $234 more than any of the white presbyteries of the synod.
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Nannie Jones, a normal graduate at Fisk University, of the class of 1886, is to go, under the auspices of the American Board, to the south-eastern part of Africa, about 600 miles from Natal. She is the first single colored woman sent out by the American Board. She has been adopted by the Ladies’ Board of the Interior, whose head-quarters are at Chicago.
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We thank our friends anew for the many kind words of sympathy, in view of our loss, and for their appreciative testimonies in memory of our departed associate, Rev. Dr. Powell.
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The hearty commendations of the “AMERICAN MISSIONARY,” with enclosures for renewed subscriptions, are also gratefully acknowledged.
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The death of Mr. Wm. L. Clark, who passed away in November last, has removed from the list of the early and efficient workers of the A.M.A. in the South, one who deserved the warmest regards for his fidelity, his excellent services and his self-sacrificing spirit. Mr. Clark began his work for the Association in 1868, as a teacher, in Bainbridge, Ga., and was subsequently at Thomasville and Atlanta. He was for a time afterwards editor and publisher of a paper devoted to the interests of the colored people and the South. His last years were spent in Washington, D.C.
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An intelligent negro, a graduate of one of our institutions, writes to us these words: “The A.M.A. is doing more to quicken the hopes and aspirations of the Southern Negro, and more toward arousing the Southern white man to just ideas of education, and more toward bringing the two races to an acknowledgment of each other’s rights and duties, than all other institutions or influences in the country.”
When the war closed there were 4,000,000 slaves set free in this country, absolutely poor, absolutely ignorant. The black race doubles itself in twenty years; and it is supposed that there are now about 8,000,000 Negro people. Of these, 3,000,000 may have learned to read and write; there must be 5,000,000 still in illiterate and superstitious darkness. That they are still trying hard to learn, will be accentuated by the perusal of a specimen of letters to us from locations less favored than others: