Emigration and the Schools of Liberia

I am often asked if I favor colored people's emigrating to Liberia, Africa.

My answer is, "Yes," and "No."

Yes, if the right kind of emigrants go. For in this country, if the right kind of emigrants come, we need have no fears. But it is the flood of ignorant Italians, uneducated and untrained, and poor Polish Jews, and Irish, and Germans, who have no interest in America whatever, only for what they can get out of it, have no love for its institutions, no love for its government, have not been taught any of its principles, don't know anything about them, and don't care to—these are the people that we don't want in America; women ignorant, men ignorant, and, of course, herds of children equally ignorant; worse than the heathen in Africa, and much harder to enlighten, because they have been steeped in Romanism, and the African comes only with his superstitions, which he soon drops, under the civilized and Christian influences. Now, without there has been a vast improvement since I was there, the Liberian government is very poor, but makes out to manage somehow. And if educated, industrious, intelligent black men, with money, would go there, for the love of the race, and with the love of God in their hearts, and go with no other object than to sacrifice their lives and their money for the good of the republic and their fellowmen (and it would take but a little while to do that; but this is the only way for black men to go to Africa; and I believe this is the proper way), then I say, yes, emigrate.

On the other hand, I say "No." For I don't believe it is

right to take out men and women indiscriminately, and generally of the poorest that are in the South, or anywhere else, ignorant of the principles, and the need and duties of the Liberian government, as the poor, ignorant Italians, or Polish Jews, or others with no knowledge of the country or its customs, no love for it in any way, only what they get out of it, have not been taught, have no love of loyalty, only as they may borrow it for selfish ends, then I say, "No, No!"

God bless the Colonization Society. It was raised up at a time of imperative need; and so was John Knox, of Scotland; Wesley of England. It did its work. But from the standpoint I look at it, I would move its disbandment forthwith, and let white people who want the Negro to emigrate to Africa so as to make more room for the great flood of foreigners who come to our shores, know that there is a place in the United States for the Negro.

They are real American citizens, and at home. They have fought and bled and died, like men, to make this country what it is. And if they have got to suffer and die, and be lynched, and tortured, and burned at the stake, I say they are at home.

Like many of the foreigners that come, they are not all industrious; and to be poor, and ignorant, and lazy is bad enough at home. But to be seven thousand miles away in a heathen country, is ten times worse.

At first sight, it would seem all right; but one cannot know Africa in a week, or a month. It is quite easy for a stranger to go there and make a call or two, on some of the best people, have a fine dinner, big speeches, and all that (all of which they can give you), but, Lord bless you, that is not knowing the people, any more than it would be knowing the people in Italy because you dinned with the king. And there is where people are so often deceived about Liberia, and often the real state of things is misrepresented. What a pity! What a pity!

I believe that if the real facts in the case of that republic had been known twenty years ago, she would have been in a better condition, financially and commercially, and she would have had the sympathy, and respect, and admiration of the world. But the Liberians have a false that to speak of their failures or mistakes in any way, means to reflect upon them, because it is a black republic. But I never thought so, and told them I didn't believe

it. But my people often called me "White folk's nigger," anyhow. So I am in for it, and I don't care. All I care to do is to keep in favor with God and man as much as lieth in me.

During my stay of eight years in Africa there was not a government school building in the republic, and never had been, as far as I could learn; but their schools were held in churches, or private houses. I remember there was a high school talked of and arranged for during the session of the legislature in 1885 or 1886. A Mr. James Lewis, of Sinoe, was appointed by the government as teacher. I was in Greenville, Sinoe, when he returned home from the Legislature with his appointment.

Of course there was a great deal of talk about this new department of school work. Mr. Lewis was thought to be the man for the position. And I thought from the talk that they would erect a building for the purpose. But no; when Mr. Lewis opened his school, with quite a nice number of pupils, it was on the veranda of his own private dwelling; and his seat was a hammock!

Many times I have passed by, or from my window could see him, hearing his pupils recite, while he would be lying in the hammock. It was right in the public street, so it was not a thing done in a corner. I spent some weeks with his sister, Mrs. Marshall, almost opposite his house; so know whereof I affirm.

Then there were two other schools called government schools; one held in the Congregational Church, and another, said to be for natives, held in another part of town. This school was held about three times in a week, with an average attendance of five or six native boys, who lived in the families generally. The teacher was Mrs. Marshall's sister.

Of course the government had an inspector of schools; but you were a friend of the inspector, or if you had a friend who was a friend of the inspector, it had more to do with your keeping the school than any other qualification.

Then people say, "Well, but they have a college." Yes, they boast of a college. I often told them that it did not come up to a good high school in this country, not in any sense. I think there was a time when it was in a better condition than it was when I was there. Whatever that was, I don't know. I simply speak of what it was during the eight years of my stay. To call it a college, I think, is a misnomer; for it led the people to believe that we had graded schools, and every requisite preparatory to a college course. But that is really not so.

There was no standard school book in any of the schools. The children used any kind of books they could get—Sunday School books, story books, or any book. Everywhere I went I inquired about the schools, and found the same statement. I visited a school one day where I found a very nice lot of children, ranging from six to fourteen years of age. Many of them seemed to be very bright. They came to recite one at a time.

"Why don't you have them in classes?" I asked.

"Yes, that is what I would like to do," the teacher said. "But we haven't got the books. There are not four children in the school with books alike. Their parents send them with any kind of a book, and I am obliged to use it; and some of the children come and have no book at all; but they come."

"How do you manage?"

"I borrow a book from some of the other children, and hear the lesson."

"Then they can't study when they go home?"

"No," she said, "they just have to study in school."

"How long have you been teaching this school?"

"Two years," she said.

"Well, why don't you speak about it? Isn't this a government school?"

"Yes, but I have spoke, and have gone myself to Monrovia, and done all I could about it; but it does no good."

And that was about the way I would find it everywhere, unless there was a mission school.

As I was going to Liberia, in 1882, when we got to Sierra Leone, a Liberian young man, a very nice lad, I suppose about seventeen years of age, Mr. Eddie Lisles, from Bassa, got on the steamer. I saw he was a very nice, interesting looking lad, and one day as he was sitting smoking, I went up to him and had a talk with him. I asked him his name, and where he lived, and he told me. He said he had been away at school.

"Away at school?" I said; "where?"

"At Sierra Leone."

"Sierra Leone? Why they have a college at Monrovia, haven't they?"

"Yes," he said.

"Well," I said, "I'm surprised. I thought that the people would be sending their children from other places to Monrovia to the college."

He smiled as though he thought I was green. And I was, too. He said: "I have a sister that is going when I go home."

"Have they good schools in Sierra Leone?" I asked.

"Very good."

"And don't the people in Sierra Leone send their children to the college at Monrovia?"

"No," he said.

It was all a mystery to me. I could not understand it. I felt inclined to think he was not straight. But still I said nothing more. Of course I understood it after eight years' experience and observation.

The mission schools have done the most good, I think. The Presbyterian Mission, at Clay-Ashland, at one time had a flourishing school. They had a fine, large, brick house, and outbuildings. When I first went to Africa, these buildings were all in good condition, but were unoccupied. The school was held in the hall, on the opposite side of the river. Mr. Albert King was the teacher, and as his home was on the other side of the river, I presume that is why the school was changed over there.

However, the former house and buildings were all standing when I first went there. I have often passed it as I have gone up the river. What a pretty situation it was, and how nice everything seemed to be around it. But, like the Methodist Seminary at Monrovia, and the Ann Wilkins school at Millsburg, and the school up at White Plains, and the seminary at Cape Palmas, was once flourishing, but had gone down. And that is one of the good things that Bishop Taylor has done for the Liberians—restoring and manning their schools, and establishing schools among the natives, and supplying them with teachers, and so helping the government to fulfill their promise to them, which hitherto they had not been able to do.

I was told that that was one of the causes of the Gredebo war; that the government had promised to establish schools among the natives, and send them teachers, and they had waited, and they had not done it.

I was glad when the Bishop had got these schools at Monrovia and Cape Palmas started again. There was a great deal of unpleasant feeling among, the people at one time, because the Bishop began his work among the natives. They said that the Episcopal Mission had taught the Gredebos, and by educating them, they

had turned to be the enemies of the Liberians. They had never had any trouble, till after the Cavalla school. I forget the name of the white missionary that was in the Episcopal school at Cavalla.

The Gredebo people are very bright, clever people, and the missionary had a little company of the boys, students, organized, and was teaching them and training them in military tactics; and it was said that this military teaching and training was the cause of all their trouble with the natives afterwards.

Cavalla was the great school centre of the Episcopal work. Many of the Liberians, the older men, were educated at Cavalla; and it was a flourishing school. But, strange to say, whether the statement in regard to the natives giving them trouble because they were trained in military tactics at this school, is true or not, the fact is that all the war troubles that have threatened, and are threatening them, seem to be engendered at Cavalla; so much so, that just before I left Cape Palmas, that great mission station and school was broken up, and what pupils remained all came to Cape Palmas, and are there yet, I suppose. And the most of the trouble that Bishop Taylor's missionaries had, after they got to Cavalla, on their way up to their stations, came from the Episcopal Mission. It was a perfect mystery. We did not understand it. But that was a fact.

It was one of these mission stations that cost Bishop Taylor some three or four hundred dollars when they were trying to get up the river, after the Bishop had been up the river and made all his agreements with the kings and chiefs.

I was with him, sat in every council, and heard all the arrangements; Brother Pratt, his agent, was with him, also; and there was not a dissenting voice among the natives.

He didn't go to any town where the Episcopal missionaries had been; went to places altogether where there had been no missionaries at all, and was received kindly in all these places, and they begged him to come and send them a missionary to teach their people. They agreed to all the Bishop's propositions without a word; and the Bishop agreed to theirs. They agreed to give so many acres of land for a mission, cut and burn so much bush for a farm, and then plant it, and cut the timber and build a kitchen for the missionary. This was their part of the agreement.

Bishop Taylor's part was to send the missionary free of charge to them and give him all his outfit for six months.

BISHOP TAYLOR HOLDING A PALAVAR.

This was agreed to, without a word of dissent from anyone. The old women used to come and get down at Bishop Taylor's feet, and say:

"Oh! Daddy, you be fine. You be fine too much."

Mr. Pratt had told them a year before the Bishop came, that he was coming; and so they watched with eager hope; and when they saw the Bishop and Mr. Pratt, the old women would get down and take hold of the Bishop's feet, and then they would turn to Pratt, and say;

"Oh! Daddy, you mouth no lie this time. You mouth no lie. You got true mouth."

One town we went to, we had not been there two hours before they brought us two goats, as a present. Oh, how glad they were. My heart ached when I saw their kindness, and I wept. Poor things!

We came down the river. There was not a word. When Bishop Taylor's missionaries arrived at Cape Palmas, Mr. Pratt was a week in getting their things taken down to the mouth of the Cavalla river from Cape Palmas; then the natives from their stations were to come down in their canoes, and take the things up to the stations.

After he got the things all down, then he took the missionaries themselves. When they got down to Cavalla, as they were going up the river, nine in number, three men with their families, they were stopped by the natives, at one of the Episcopal Mission stations, and not allowed to proceed up the river. They had told the natives that it meant war; that these white missionaries were only coming to take the country away from them. That was the pretext.

In their contention and spirit they threw over a large box of tools in the river, that I think they never got; and if it had not been that the women were with them, they would have had a more serious time than they had. They were terribly hostile. They drove the natives back that had come down.

Strange to say, these people that live on the river, many of them, don't want the natives in the interior to be enlightened. So Bishop Taylor's parties were turned back, and did not get back for a week. Oh! it was terrible. Poor things, how much they suffered. Finally they all came back to Cape Palmas, and it was weeks before they got to their stations.

Mr. Pratt had to send them overland, and had to pay four dollars a load for carriers; and during that time, many of them had the fever, and some of them died.

The day that they came back across the bar, the bar was rough, and it rained, and most of them got soaking wet, which they should not have done, and that was the cause of so much of their fever and sickness so early. Two families that stopped for a week with Mr. Gibson, a member of the Episcopal Church, Mr. Pratt had to pay ninety-nine dollars for; one man had a wife and two children, and the other a wife and three children, all small children.

At the place where Miss McNeil and Miss Whitfield, and Miss Bowers stayed for a week, they were more reasonable; they only charged forty dollars. And where Miss Wallace and Miss Meeker stayed for a week, they charged, I think it was thirty-five dollars.

Oh! I never went through such a siege in all my life. Bishop Taylor was not there; but I was there through it all, and haven't borrowed a word. This was pioneer work. It is not so, now, I think, for Miss McNeil has nice headquarters at Cape Palmas, and there are several of the missionaries there, so that those who go now have a home till they can go up the river. It was very different at that time; and there's more to follow.

So one can see why the Liberians should feel that establishing schools among the natives by Bishop Taylor, was going to bring them the same trouble. But now since he has got the schools opened, and teachers for the Liberians, as well as natives, they will think differently, and, I trust, feel differently.

During the eight years I spent in Liberia, there were four emigrations to the republic. Three went to Brewerville, and the fourth to Cape Calmas. I went to the receptacle where they were quartered when they first landed, and saw them all, and talked with them; and then visited them at their stations after they were settled.

Some had gone to Cape Mount, and after they had been there a year, I visited several of the families there. I visited others at Brewerville, and at Mount Tubman, Cape Palmas, and at Philadelphia, about three miles from Mount Tubman. I never saw greater suffering and need in my life than there was among these poor new-comers. The only comfortable thing (and that was uncomfortable) was the warm climate; they didn't need much fire,

or warm clothing; but for every other necessary in life that you could mention, they were seriously in need.

At Philadelphia was a very pretty settlement, and it was thickly and well settled at one time; good land all round about, some very good houses, and things were going on pretty well. Mr. Allen Yancy, and his brother, who was killed in the Cape Palmas war, were the leading men who founded that settlement; and at one time it flourished; but was broken up at the time of the Gredebo war, and has never since been what it was before.

When people in Africa are routed by war, they do not settle down quickly to their old homesteads. Poor things! War is not elevating in any country; its effect, morally and socially, and religiously, is not helpful. I think, with the exception of about four out of forty odd, there could not have been found a more helpless and ignorant set of men, women and children, than these emigrants that came while I was there. There were several young men and boys, and girls, ranging in age, I suppose, from ten to eighteen years.

I was down with fever when they arrived, so didn't go to see them for three days. It was quite a little distance from where I was, to the receptacle where they were quartered until they would get their land given them. I had heard a great deal from one and another, for the people called to see them, of course, and talked with them, so as to cheer them, and make them feel at home as much as possible; and when I went, I took a lot of papers, and tracts, and cards, for the children; and, to my surprise, as I went from room to room, and in the hall, as I met young people, and asked them to have a tract or paper, they would say, "I can't read;" so also, the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters.

There were two old men among them that were preachers. I went into one room, and the old man was sitting on a stool, with the Bible on an old trunk reading aloud, evidently for me to hear; so I went up and stood by him and listened.

"Well, Pa," I said, in a familiar way, "you seem to be enjoying yourself reading the good book."

He looked up, kind of dignified, as though I had broken the charm that was upon him; then went on reading again.

"Sit down," a woman said.

"I have called to see you," I said, "you have had many calls, I suppose, but I have not been here before."

The old man read on. But of all the murdering of the king's English you ever heard, that old man was guilty of it. "Dat's my husband. He's a preacher," said the old lady, with a smile of comfort. "I can't read myself, but I likes to hear him when he reads."

Then I said to the old man, "Pa, how long have you been preaching?"

"I has been preaching de Gospel near 'bout forty years," said he, looking up.

"Yes," I said, "so long? Well, I just came in to see you a little while. I would like to sing a little song for you, and pray; then I must go."

So I began to sing, and a number of others came in; and I prayed, and went on to the next point.

After I had spent about two hours this way, I went home, crying all the way; knowing the need, as I did, both of the Liberians and the natives, I knew that this lot of people could not help any of them, but would certainly need help themselves; for I saw they knew but little about how to manage at home; and now what would they do in this strange country among strangers.

Of course, they would meet kindness; that goes so far; but that would not feed them, or clothe them; and those that were able to work, and willing, could not get the work to do, perhaps, the kind that they would do in this country; for men and women in this country can turn their hand to most anything, and there is almost everything to turn their hand to; but there, there is no driving, and trucking, and farming, like there is here; and making roads and building bridges, and harvesting, and hod carrying, nothing like there is in this country, that they had been used to; and the most of the work that is done there, is done by the natives, and native wages are paid, in trade—cloth, tobacco, fish, or rice. And there is not a black man at Cape Palmas, I mean a Liberian man, (without it is Bishop Ferguson, he might), who could have hired six of these new emigrants, and paid them fifty cents a day in good money, not Liberian currency, but good, American money, and fed them three meals a day for six months.

This may seem strange; but I don't fear the slightest contradiction from any real upright, honest, man or woman.

Now here were these poor men with their families. The Colonization Society gives them what they call "rations," for six

THE RECEPTACLE FOR EMIGRANTS, MONROVIA.

months. By that time they are supposed to have got started, and have their houses built, or shanties, for this is about all that would be built, and no matter for that, if they were only good shanties; but a good, native house is far more desirable.

Six months goes round very fast in Liberia, and in the huddled together manner in which they go on the vessel and the huddled together manner in which they are quartered in the receptacle where they are waiting to have their land assigned to them, many of them go down with fever. Besides, not being very valiant for bathing and making themselves clean, as the natives are, and, all considered, at the end of six months they worse off than ever. They have traded off their meat, or flour, or cloth, that they have brought, some for medicine, some for a fowl, or something to help them while they are sick; and some of the people with whom they dwell have learned the art of living on these new-comers, and greenhorns. But the government is not to blame for that, any more than this United States is to blame for a man's being what is called a "sharper."

Then there are large boys and girls who cannot read or spell; neither can their parents; so these boys and girls go to school, and the children laugh at them, being almost young men and women, and saying, a, b, c; then they are ashamed to go, and their parents do not insist on it. They simply say:

"Well, I got on without any l'arnin', and if I have got on without any l'arnin', you children can get on the same."

In the course of a year or two, these fourteen and fifteen-year-old boys are pretty well on to men; and in a little while they are into politics. They cannot read or write.

Then among the young girls; some of them are very nice looking, and they will be married, for they are bound to marry in any event. Now, if the Colonization Society would send a good teacher with them, with books, so they might have school on the voyage, and then teach them for six months or a year after they get there, they would be better prepared to go into the schools. For, poor as they are there, they are high-toned for people who have never been to school.

In that way they would help; for a government that does not seek in every way to educate and instruct and enlighten its people, has a poor hope of long existence. It cannot go on perpetuating ignorance, and succeed.

I have heard of the Colonization Society's sometimes sending books with the emigrants; but, as a general thing, they are of the higher grade, and the agents hold them at such a high figure that only a few are able to get them.

When I saw this need I would have gladly gone every day myself, or have hired some one, to teach these children during the six months they were at the receptacle. But then there was not a spelling book or a primer to be had anywhere. There are no book stores, or stationery shops, where anything of that kind can be obtained. And for the sick, no dispensaries, no doctors, no hospitals, and not even a county poorhouse, as there is in this country.

I have gone to see many of them when they were sick, and suffering from great sores caused by a little insect called the chigoe flea, and they have said if they had some salve that they used at home, and knew about, it would help them. But it was not to be had there. Then there were herbs they knew at home, that were good for fevers; but they did not know the herbs in Africa, and if they got them they must pay for them.

Now, at home, in their own land, if they were ever so poor, they could help themselves in these little things; but in Africa they were really helpless. I wept for them, because I knew it, and could not help them.

Last March, when I met an emigration in New York of some forty odd, who had sacrificed their little farms, and what little they did have together, and were going to Africa to get rich forthwith, I tried to tell them what to take with them. I told them (for they had a nice company of boys and girls with them): "See to it that you send your children to school, such as there are there. If you haven't got school books, be sure you take a good supply. Make your children go to school. If they won't go, flog them. If you do not take books from here, you will not be able to get them in Liberia."

I told them all this and tried to help them all I could. The white people were very kind to them.

We did all we could in the church to take care of them the two weeks before they got off. But they mistook my meaning, poor things, and when they got to Liberia, they told them I had run down the country, and said there was nobody in Liberia fit for them to associate with, and made a terrible time;

when what I had said to them was just the opposite; it was for them to get into a position to be what they expected to be as soon as they got there.

But spending eight years in Africa among the people, and being known as I was known, and knowing them as I did know them, some of them were prepared to judge about what I did say.

Only a little while ago, I heard that some of these very ones, all that could get back, had come back.

If there was a hospital where they could be cared for, if for only a short time, it would not be so bad. But, there is no such thing anywhere in the republic of Liberia, or was, not while I was there, or ever had been. There was one talked of at Monrovia for five years; and they went so far as getting a lot, and laying the foundation; some of the timbers had been gathered, and had lain on the ground during the rainy season, which damaged them greatly; so that if it was ever built, till the work that was done five years ago, would have to be done over again. How have they got on without these essentials all these years? Echo answers, "How?"

I do not know if the Colonization Society thinks so or not; but most of the white people think, and some colored people, too, I am afraid, especially those who go as emigrants, that all the Americo-Liberians are on perfect equality with each other in all their social relations; and that, because they are a colored republic and an independent colored government, that they are all as one. But they never made a greater mistake; for in that republic there is grade and caste among them almost equal to that that is found among the upper-ten colored folks in America. So that the ignorant emigrant does not strike the highest and best grade of society when he first gets there.

That class stands off, and waits to see what he is; and the intelligent an better class of natives, as well. So they do not find companionship readily, or any sooner than the Italian, Jew, German, or Irish find companionship or society with the native-born American, and it is all nonsense for white people, or black people, to think any such thing.

I never knew what real, black aristocracy was until I was in Lagos and Sierra Leone. In Lagos I have seen as fine a turnout as I have seen on Fifth Avenue, New York; coachman and footman dressed in English costume; black ladies and gentlemen riding

on horseback, and driving in buggies. Their houses are furnished in tiptop English style.

There were very many black merchants in Lagos and Sierra Leone; their sons and daughters, many of them, are educated in England, Germany and France.

I have heard it said that in Sierra Leone some of the ministers are better Greek and Hebrew scholars than some of their bishops that were over them.

There is one thing that the Methodist Church in America is ahead on, and that is, there is more of a spirit of real consecration for missionary work among the Christian women in America than I found in England. In Lagos, in different places where the Wesleyans have large, fine mission houses, beautiful grounds, fine churches, boys' high school, girls' high school, they have the ministers, but not their wives.

They say they cannot live there; so while the ministers are in Africa— the part where I was—their wives are in England. But the Episcopals have high schools for boys and for girls, and a white lady principal and teachers for the girls' school, as well as men for the boys' school. Conservatism and denominational distinctions are very prominent. But they were all kind to me at Lagos, God bless them.

Before I close this chapter I will give a very brief account of a black heroine, who deserves this notice for the work she has done, and is doing in Africa.

Miss Susan Collins, the only colored student who has ever entered the Chicago Training School, and one of the noblest ladies that has left that institution for the foreign field, went to Africa in 1887, where she is at present laboring in Bishop Taylor's work, in Angola.

She has charge of a little sub-station, supported by Pungo Andongo station, and has started an infant training school.

No more faithful and self-denying missionary can be found anywhere than dear Susan Collins. I want to give place to this very interesting item for my own people, and also that others may see that there are colored women who can cope with any of the opposite race for real stick-to-itiveness and self-sacrifice and endurance. She has never left her post since she went to Africa, and has stood the climate well. God has wonderfully preserved her in health and strength, and has made a great woman of her.

I met her first with the party that went down the Congo. I went with them as far as Old Calabar; and of all the party, of sixteen or more, I perceived in Susie Collins, timber that meant something. She was a woman who had been well raised and well trained; she had good, broad, common sense, and knew how to do a little of about everything; she was patient, and of a happy, genial disposition: of high moral character and sturdy piety.

These are the qualifications that will generally stand the heavy pull in Africa. May God bless her, and continue to make her a blessing.