'to 
 
 PAM. 
 N. AMER. 
 
 EAST CENTRAL STATES BUREAU 
 
 MRS. E. L. ALBRIGHT, BUREAU SECRETARY 
 HE question is asked, What are the schools and 
 
 homes in the East Central States doing for the 
 
 evolution of the Negro? We answer with full 
 assurance that, because of their influence, the best 
 types of men and women of the Negro race are in the 
 making. The work of this Bureau is not confined to 
 women and girls, for in these schools boys and young 
 men enjoy equal privileges. 
 
 The work at Asheville, North Carolina, begun by Dr. 
 L. M. Pease, the noted founder of the Five Points 
 Mission of New York, and carried on, under his direc- 
 tion, in a remodeled livery stable, consisted of an un- 
 graded school of both sexes and all ages, whose mental, 
 moral, and religious faculties were of the most primitive 
 and undeveloped type. This school property, with a 
 teacher’s cottage, was transferred to us by Dr. Pease as 
 a gift; and the generous donor lived to see how\ under 
 the care of our Society, the livery stable gave place to 
 the spacious Allen Home, and the heterogeneous school 
 to the well-graded academy and industrial school. 
 
 During the years in which these external improve- 
 ments have been made greater changes have taken 
 place in the mental and spiritual condition of the hun- 
 dreds of boys and girls under instruction in the classes 
 ranging from primary to academic. Its boys, manly 
 and intelligent, are eligible to the best places of em- 
 ployment in the city and vicinity. Two of the girl 
 graduates have been employed as teachers by our So- 
 ciety. Several others are teachers in the mission 
 schools of other denominations. Some are teachers' In 
 the public schools of the city; and scores of them have 
 been teachers in the country schools. Miss Dole, the 
 superintendent, who has remained here through all these 
 years of improvement, thoroughly understands the 
 
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colored race, its deficiencies and its possibilities, and 
 how to overcome the one and achieve the other. The 
 atmosphere of the home is refined and cultured, and the 
 religious life of the girls is kept sane and strong. In 
 the school the most modern methods are employed, 
 and the pupils respond to these readily, as they do 
 also to the work in the sewing and cooking classes. As 
 a rule, every room and bed in the Home is occupied, and 
 the school building is so crowded that many more than 
 can be seated must be received. 
 
 The work at Camden, South Carolina, like that of 
 Asheville, was begun before the organization of our 
 Society, and came to us by transfer from Mrs. Sarah 
 Mather. At that time the property consisted of the 
 school building which is still in use, and the Home, 
 which has been considerably enlarged. Since then we 
 have added Babcock Chapel, which has on the first 
 floor an audience room seating three hundred and fifty, 
 and above, dormitory accommodations for about twenty- 
 five. We have also an industrial building which, with 
 its equipment, greatly facilitates the work in the 
 industrial classes. For a number of years we have 
 had from sixty to seventy girls in the Home, and about 
 two hundred and twenty-five hoys and girls and young 
 men and women in the Academy. Of the remarkable 
 corps of New England women who cared for this work 
 for many years, Miss Russell alone remains, her service 
 here covering a period of twenty years. Thoroughly 
 intelligent, and so alert and watchful that no deficiency 
 in mind or manner escapes her notice, she has directed 
 the school with remarkable efficiency, considering that 
 the pupils are, perhaps, the crudest of all who enter 
 our schools. The majority come to us direct from the 
 plantations and the cotton fields; but with the faithful 
 work of our teachers and the influence of the life in the 
 Home, they soon reach a most satisfactory condition of 
 knowledge and culture. For a number of years we 
 have usually had as many as three of our graduates as 
 assistant teachers. More than a hundred girls each 
 
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year are in the sewing classes, and work is done that 
 would be creditable to any city establishment. 
 
 A few years ago, coming out from the city of Camder< 
 on a railway train, a southern gentleman, none toe 
 friendly to the Negro race, called my attention to a farm 
 so well kept that it would have done credit to any 
 wealthy, northern farmer, saying, “That farm, with 
 another like it and a good store in the city, belongs to 
 a colored man, who is altogether the leading colored 
 man of the State.” He did not know that but a few 
 days before this same colored man, standing on the 
 porch of Browning Home, had said to me, “All that I 
 have or am I owe to the New England women who 
 came here after the war and opened this school.” He 
 Is to-day not only a safe leader for his own race but 
 also a citizen welcome in counsel with the white men 
 of his own city. 
 
 Several of our men graduates have taken civil service 
 examinations and are in government employ. Some 
 are in railway offices and others have entered the law. 
 The large majority of our girl graduates are teachers in 
 this and other southern States. , 
 
 Connected with this work are the plantation schools 
 at Ephesus and Wesley. Much of the country along the 
 Wateree River is still held as large plantations, and 
 hundreds of Negroes employed are isolated here. At 
 my first visit to Ephesus I found the old church of 
 slavery time, windows barred with planks, roof partly 
 gone, floor decayed, and open door through which two 
 little girls were sweeping the dirt with a bundle of 
 brush. Inside was a little company of girls seated od 
 rough benches without backs, around the body of a 
 stove propped on bits of brick. Here they waited for the 
 sewing lesson, and, as their clumsy fingers tried to 
 follow the instruction of our teacher, they were learning 
 to recite the Psalms and the multiplication table. Since 
 that day a change has come. Stimulated by teaching 
 received along all lines, and helped directly and indi- 
 rectly by our Society, the people have built a good 
 
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frame structure, whose bright carpets show that the 
 brush broom has been banished. They have now church 
 and Sunday school, with the usual officers who do their 
 work intelligently. The Sunday school has about one 
 hundred in attendance, taught by our teachers and our 
 graduates who live on the plantation. One of the 
 graduates is organist. 
 
 A similar work is going on in connection with Wesley 
 Church, about equally distant from Camden in another 
 direction. This church has nearly five hundred mem- 
 bers, and on special occasions such as quarterly 
 meetings, often has an attendance of a thousand per- 
 sons in the church and the surrounding forest. The 
 people come from miles away with their baskets of 
 lunch and spend the day; so that this becomes a center 
 of interest and offers a great opportunity for instruction 
 in right lines of living and worship. In the Sunday 
 school one of our teachers instructs the . women and 
 girls, and another has a class of boys, young men, 
 and fourteen of the older men of the church who are 
 class leaders, exhorters, and local preachers. Through 
 the .latter other churches are receiving the benefit of 
 this theological school in the forest. That there is some 
 need of instruction can be judged from the wish ex- 
 pressed by a pastor for his teachers: “May the super- 
 intender’s cabinet be airtight, ahd may they stand as 
 the stars on the brow of the eagle.” As a result of our 
 work in this school, twelve boys and girls are walking 
 daily from seven to eight miles to be in the school at 
 Camden. Though there is still ignorance and spiritual 
 need, there is yet great progress and much spiritual 
 growth, and the workers in this Bureau see the oncoming 
 light. 
 
 WOMAN’S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY 
 METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
 150 Fifth Avenue, New York City 
 
 50 or less. 6c.; 50 to 100, 10c. 
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