“It is a travesty on religion, this disposition to canonize missionaries who go to the Dark Continent, while we have nothing but social ostracism for the white teacher who is doing a work no less noble at home.  The solution to the race problem rests with the white people who live among the blacks, and who are willing to become their teachers in a missionary spirit.”

Cruel and unreasoning is prejudice, but when the public platforms, and especially the pulpits, begin to yield in their utterances to the sway of logic and humanity, by and by public opinion will feel their force.  Our institutions and our missionaries have compelled the respect of the Southern people.  This year many expressions of it have been heard.

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EDUCATIONAL WORK.

CHARTERED INSTITUTIONS.

During the past year we have directly sustained five chartered institutions in the South—­Fisk University, Talladega College, Tougaloo University, Straight University and Tillotson Institute.  Every year that passes emphasizes anew that these are most wisely located, so that each is a center of far-reaching power, and supplements the work of all the others.

Fisk University at Nashville, Tenn., with its 503 students, has had a year of great prosperity, and solid, telling work.  Its buildings have been full, the quality of the work done has been excellent.  A graduate of Fisk recently took his diploma from an Eastern school of medicine, with a rank two per cent. higher than any other man in his class.  Another graduate of Fisk is a missionary in Africa under the American Board, and is not only declared by the Secretaries to be one of its best missionaries, but has shown such business capacity that he has been chosen treasurer of his mission.  His wife, a worthy helpmeet, is also a graduate of this institution.  Fisk has high ideals—­few institutions in the South have higher ones, or come nearer reaching them.

Talladega College, in Talladega, Ala., has had 427 students in all departments.  Its year’s work has shown most satisfactory results.  Talladega is closely connected with the church work of the State.  All the pastors in the Congregational State Association but four are from its theological department and several other States have found pastors there.  The last State Association, with its fine body of young men, educated, dignified and earnest, was a most emphatic demonstration of the good work done in this institution.  The students of Talladega have carried forward during the past year, under direction of a member of the Faculty, a systematic mission work in the surrounding neighborhoods, which has yielded large results, both in the good done in the neighborhoods and in the training received by the workers for future usefulness.