OUR WORK, AS A GRADUATE OF FISK UNIVERSITY SEES IT.

BY WILLIAM A. CROSTHWAITE.

The American Missionary Association is doing more to quicken the hopes
and aspirations of the Southern Negro, more toward arousing the
Southern white man to educate himself, and more toward bringing the
two races to an acknowledgment of each other's rights, than any other
similar institution in the country.

In the summer of 1884, near Leesburg, Texas, a well-appointed Negro
school was burned by the whites of that community. The colored people,
seeing their hope of years in ashes, advertised their little holdings
for sale, and prepared to leave in a body. But the whites offered to
supplement the insurance on the former building and to re-build the
school, if the colored people would remain in the community. The terms
were accepted, and now _West Chapel_, which is the name of the school,
is excellently furnished and has a $200 bell upon it, and is the best
known school in Northeast Texas. Previous to the burning of West
Chapel, the whites were continually distracted by factional fights.
There was general apathy with regard to improvement in any way
whatever. Their teachers were always of the inferior class. But, when
they found that the colored people would have a school, they decided
to have one also. The colored people bought a bell. So did they. The
colored people had a foreign teacher. So must they have one, and they
paid $750 a year for him. One of the white citizens of the locality
summed the situation up thus:--"West Chapel is to the whites what a
coal of fire is on the back of a terrapin." This school was organized
by a Fisk student and has ever {131} since been taught by students of