deliberately, with personal knowledge of the agitation
of the infamous “Glenn Bill” in Georgia,
and notwithstanding the prejudice in Alabama which
broke up the colored normal school formerly existing
in Marion, and afterward successfully opposed its
re-establishment in Montgomery, or rather refused
the previous State aid. Having been for many years
on the Board of Trustees of Atlanta University, and
being personally acquainted with a number of the members
of the Georgia Legislature, yet I am prepared to state
this astonishing paradox—that even the legislators
who voted for the Glenn Bill have a much higher regard
for the colored race and for the A.M.A. schools than
they formerly had. I cannot take time to explain
this singular phenomenon, but it is true. One
of the prominent members of the Georgia Legislature
said to me on the streets of Macon, when he heard
the news of President Ware’s sudden death at
Atlanta University: “Mr. Ware was a hero
of the nineteenth century, and deserves a monument
to his memory from the State of Georgia.”
So, notwithstanding Col. Glenn and his followers,
the same Legislature of Georgia has recently added
two million dollars to the school fund of the State.
The efforts of such brave and fearless leaders as
Rev. Dr. Haygood, Rev. Dr. Curry, Hon. Walter B. Hill
and others have not been in vain, and the good results
of the A.M.A. work have commanded respect and even
wonder from its bitterest opponents, whose number
and zeal decreases. Wisdom and discretion in
future will rapidly increase its friends.
3.—I could say much more concerning the
colored work, in which (at Macon, Georgia) I spent
eight and a half of the happiest years of my life.
That branch of work needs to be sustained and extended
for years to come. Having now been for eighteen
months in the mountain white department of work, and
having visited nearly all its most important posts,
I am prepared to say that this, also, is a most needy
part of the great missionary work which this Society
has undertaken. Here are nearly two millions
of people, scattered here and there over this great
Cumberland Plateau, who because of their inaccessibility,
their poverty and indifference, have been largely
passed by until recently. The great tides of
missionary effort have swirled and risen to the east,
the south and the west, but have reached only a little
way up into the caves and valleys of this great island
plateau, which towers a thousand feet above the surrounding
country. The inevitable effects of isolation,
of intermarriage, of stagnation and neglect in mental
and spiritual matters, has brought about a condition
of things which calls for the aid and sympathy of
all good Samaritans. They have not suffered in
the same way as the colored race, from the former
oppression and contagious vices of a superior race;
but left alone in their mountain fastnesses, left
behind in the march of human progress, they have been
a nation of Robinson Crusoes, deteriorating and retrograding