Lend a hand - v. 13 Author:Edward Everett Hale Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CALHOUN COLORED SCHOOL. REPORT OF WORK. During several years of work at Hampton, under General Armstrong, our interest was greatly awakened in the Negroes ... more »and their education, and a strong desire was aroused in us to see the plantation Negro in the midst of all the conditions which unite to make him what he is today, and to extend to him the benefits of education. In the spring of 181i1 an opening was found in the Black Belt of Alabama, in the town of Calhoun, a scattered settlement, with a population of twenty-seven hundred Negroes and one hundred whites. A little over a year was spent in maturing our plans and raising the money to buy ninety acres of land (ten acres being given by Mr. N. J. Bell of Montgomery), and build and furnish a schoolhouse and a home for the teachers. In October, 1892, we opened the school with six teachers—two of them industrial—and three hundred pupils. Two hundred of these boys and girls could neither read nor write. The ideas of the people concerning education were very vague. They knew it was a good thing and they wanted it. Out of a poverty almost beyond description, these colored people of Calhoun gave §536 toward the support of the school, besides $350 which they paid in tuition fees. We had not room for all our scholars, so that fifty of then7 had to go with one of the teachers to the church, three quarters of a mile away; but before the close of the year we were enabled to build a small additional schoolhouse and a cottage for our young men teachers. As time went on, the need of a barn was felt. A friend from the North saw this need and most generously supplied it. The year of 1892-93 was largely experimental. Theories were all left behind; for we found ourselves face to face with actual facts that must be dealt with at once an...« less