Chapter IV: Part 4

A hard-surfaced road is in construction from Charlotte to Raleigh. The distance is nearly two hundred miles. It will probably pass through nine counties. It will open up a country of immense possibilities. A cement bridge connecting up this road is already in construction across the Yadkin River. This bridge will be nearly or quite 2,000 feet long. It would ornament the approach to any Northern city.

From Troy we went to Biscoe, Star and Ashboro in Randolph County. This is also an oak and hickory county. The roads took us through a very fine section of the country. The country looks very undeveloped. The roads were very fine. The rural homes appeared rather small. Many of the women along the roads were seen bottoming chairs. Chair-making seemed to be one of the main industries in that section. The frames of the chairs were made at the factories and sent out to the country women to have the bottoms put in them. These bottoms were made of white oak splits. The absence of colored people engaged in this business seemed very noticeable.

The town of Ashboro had all the appearances of being a hustling town. More than a half dozen buildings were going up. We saw no colored carpenters or bricklayers on the job anywhere. We were advised that no colored men were allowed to work at their trade in the town. We saw several colored mechanics with their kit of tools packed, leaving the town. Some of them we knew to be the equal of any mechanics in any other group of workers. Still their mechanical efficiency counted nothing. It was their unfortunate tradition, and their black faces which counted them out. Here my conscious mind came up again. We did not have the feeling that we had when we left Lee County. A man ought to be passed on his merits and not on his color. They wanted mechanics, but not black mechanics. These men would do well to migrate. Wherever they went I know they were in the frame of mind to swear vengeance against any community that would tolerate that sort of condition. That is what makes socialists, bolsheviks, and Catholics out of us.

We soon find ourselves in Guilford County. We arrive in High Point and remain long enough to see friends and inquire about the conditions of our farmers.

I think it true that there are more manufacturers of furniture in this county than in any other county in the state. The Brick School has bought furniture in New York only to await shipment from High Point. Later we have gone to High Point and seen this furniture in the making. These two cities are in the oak and hickory section of the state. I have seen its street cars in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Washington, Asheville, Atlanta, Ga., Birmingham, Ala. Of course a business of this size will give work of one sort or another to a great many of our colored laborers. There are 15,000 of our people in Guilford County. They own 3,000 homes and farms. They are paying taxes on 17,000 acres of land. The Negroes in Guilford County have the inspiration of one of the best state colleges for Negroes to be found in the South. The college ought to be the center of all the best influence for farming in a hundred miles about it. If they are found to be using poor farming methods they ought to be fined. Alamance, Orange and Durham counties are rather small counties, but they have some of the best farms and form some of the best farming and industrial communities to be found in the state. Durham is really the emporium for Negro enterprise and thrift. Tobacco, cotton and corn, and some wheat are the leading farm products in this section of the state. Gibsonville, Burlington, Graham and Hillsboro are thriving towns. They are centers of cotton and furniture manufacturing interests.

This study took us through about fifteen counties. We were not investigating the town and city conditions, but the farming interests. In counties where they had rural supervisors there was a marked difference in the attitude and progress of the farmers. Their outward appearance was different from what we saw several years ago. The farmers were better clad; their work animals were in better condition; their teams were not all dilapidated; many of them are using improved machinery; their barns and houses were more orderly built and better maintained; the houses in which they live are a decided improvement over the old houses we usually see along the railroad. They are giving more care to their wells and pumps. They are learning to screen their windows. The ancestral waste barrel in many cases are being removed from their kitchen windows. They are using more paint not only to save their houses, but because it adds beauty to their premises. They are planting flowers. They are putting out fruit trees and investing in thoroughbred chickens, hogs and cows. These are all good signs. They are really coming. Some have had to come from so far down the road that it may appear that they have not made any progress. They are coming nevertheless. At no place where we stopped did we have to confine our diet to sweet potatoes and boiled eggs in order to preserve our health by the osmosis process.

We saw in many places attempts made to improve the soil. We found alfalfa, red clover and crimson clover in the red clay sections. Peas were grown generally. The farm demonstration agents and the farmers’ conferences have been an inspiration to the farmers to grow legumes to help the land to bring forth its fruit. They are learning that they cannot use up the fertility of the soil and still have it. They are learning that an investment in legumes is one of the best they can make for crop productions.

The papers have been saying that one man in four in the American army is uneducated. If that is true it is a sad comment on the conditions of this country. There is no power in the world to equal that of education. We cannot exaggerate its power and its importance. A trained mind, a trained hand and a trained heart are indomitable. An unlettered man lives in isolation. He cannot appreciate the creation of nature. There is no progress in isolation and a static mind atrophies. Whatever be the proportion of illiteracy, those of us who move about among the masses know that notwithstanding our private schools and public schools, ignorance and superstition are simply appalling. It is not only appalling, but it is dangerous to any environment. It is a menace to the state and government.

BRICK SCHOOL IN PERSPECTIVE

Work began at the Brick School in 1895 under the auspices of the American Missionary Association. The “Estes Farm,” named after the owner, General Estes of the Civil War, came into the possession of Mrs. Julia E. Brewster Brick, of Brooklyn, New York, who found it a burden on her hands. Mrs. Brick had visited the community, and her heart had been made sad by the sights which greeted her on every side. The sad faces and depressed spirits in a large environment of Negro congestion appealed to her heart. She was responsive to this appeal. It was the voice of God which she did not mistake.

Her life and thoughts and heart had been attuned to this appeal, and so she sought how best she might help the situation. The advice of General Oliver O. Howard was sought. He introduced Secretary A. F. Beard and Mr. H. W. Hubbard, at the time Treasurer of the American Missionary Association. The result of this counsel was that a large farm of 1,129½ acres of land in North Carolina three miles from the town of Enfield was given to the American Missionary Association for Negro education. With the gift came also from the same source $5,000 for the first building.

There followed other gifts from Mrs. Brick and from the American Missionary Association, so that the farm was soon stocked with hogs, horses, mules, cows and farm implements. Houses of various sorts, including school buildings, dormitories, teachers’ cottages, tenant houses and barns have been put up, valued at several hundred thousand dollars. This beautiful munificence has been our saving grace during the last twenty-seven years of stress and strain in the financial world.

We began work with the modest number of five teachers. We now have about twenty teachers and a few less than 400 students. The students come from a dozen states and from nearly all the counties in North Carolina. The larger number of them comes from a radius of fifty miles.

The purpose of the institution is to teach the students to do the things the best way in the community where they may live. Being rurally situated, the first and greatest appeal must be made along the line of an agricultural education. The knowledge of how to extract from the soil the largest and best products which the community may need for its consumption is an asset in which any group of people may well take pride. Most town and city boys coming to us have an aversion to this form of education, and especially to the strenuousness necessary to an efficient application of the most vital principles of agriculture.

Horses have to be shod, and farmers have to have houses in which to live and under which to shelter their stock. So we have to teach the boys to work in iron and wood. Along with this goes some drawing and planning. Tools and wagons must be kept in repair. Boys going back to their communities ought to be later the real leaders in the community. In many instances they are the leaders.

While the boys are investing their time in the farm crafts and the shop crafts the girls are learning to do needlework and house cleaning, washing and sewing. They learn the home life by getting some of the conventionalities of it here in the classroom under teachers who get from Pratt and Columbia and other good schools the best they have to offer. These teachers are themselves largely the products of our American Missionary Association Schools. They have not been satisfied to “graduate and quit,” but they have continued to study. In addition to giving the boys work on the farm and in the shop, and the girls work in the kitchen, laundry, dining-room and sewing-room, and general house cleaning, all are offered a first-class high school course covering six years, preceded by six years of elementary education.

The writer of these notes is himself a product of Oberlin and Fisk University. He knows how to do a great many things, including typesetting, printing, farming, plumbing, some work in wood, poultry-raising and agriculture, stock husbandry. He lectures, preaches sometimes, and writes for newspapers. He counts himself a fair judge of artistic values wherever they are on exhibition. He knows how utterly impossible it is to try to do any one of the above things with any degree of efficiency or even ordinary skill without mental training. The mind is the master, and unless that has training and poise the hand fails. The academic course is to meet this condition. Many of the boys and girls stay to finish it, but the bulk never finish. Many of them do not stay for the full course—not that they do not have the money in many cases—but because education among the masses it not popular. They have had a propaganda for many years that a little learning is a dangerous thing. They have been advised that they belong to a subject group, and that they need only the rudimentary necessaries of life. A fine horse and buggy or a car and nice clothes make an appeal above any sacrifice for study. It is the appeal for the glitter and the glare. This false notion comes to the half grown youth because they got a bad start. They were neglected in the public schools—parents ignorant of the necessity of education on the one hand, and poorly prepared teachers on the other hand, and poorly furnished and constructed schoolhouses. The whole school environment has not been psychological. It has rather been repulsive.

Some who return to their homes are making good farmers, as evidenced by their better crops, better fertility of their soil, better kept work animals, better kept machinery, better homes, yards, and community life.

Many of those who finish the high school course attend other schools and later enter the ministry, dentistry, or become physicians, teachers, Y. M. C. A. or Y. W. C. A. workers, or instructors in agriculture either in our schools or as county farm demonstration agents. The best examples are Isaac Bunn, farmer, and owns his own farm of 250 acres bought and paid for in Halifax County; Benjamin Bullock, under the Smith-Lever Fund, in charge of agriculture in the colored state college in Texas; Rev. A. S. Croom, Baptist minister, Salisbury, N. C.; Dr. Joseph Harrison, physician, Kinston, N. C.; Dr. Willie Sessoms, dentist, Rocky Mount, N. C.; Dr. R. R. Robinson, physician, Los Angeles, Cal.; Miss Hattie Green, Miss Lucy Richmond McCoy, Miss Susie Adams, Young Women’s Christian Association work, New York; Miss Annie Rhodes, teacher in the city schools of Chicago; Miss Lula Bullock, teacher in city schools, Louisville, Ky.; George Bullock, manual training in city schools of Louisville, Ky.; Joseph Bullock, a captain in the army, and now a student of dentistry. More than a hundred have gone out as graduates, and all are a leavening in the community in which they live. The influence of the Brick School has counted in the community life of the masses more than any other agency in operation. We mean by “Community” the area of a circle of which the school is the center and whose radius is twenty-five miles. We have three counties virtually inside of this circle whose Negro population is more than 60,000. The circle cuts into six other counties whose combined population is more than 148,000 Negroes. The nearest institution under private auspices doing anything like high school work is exactly sixty-three miles away. We have a field all our own. The area in this circle is “our community.”

We have sought all these years to better the community life by reaching the farmers directly. To this end we have annually and semi-annually farmers’ meetings. They come and spend one or two days at our expense for entertainment, where they have contact with our teachers and with men and women sent by the State Department of Agriculture at Raleigh, who lecture on the best methods of farm and home life.

We must do more than talk. We must help them. We have here a local Federal Farm Loan Organization, and this organization in the last three years has put into Negro farms more than $130,000. This money is let by the United States government and on conditions that can be met without hardship to the borrower. Titles are investigated, deeds are properly made, and a new spirit is put into the farmers of the community. We are encouraging our colored men to buy small farms of twenty-five and fifty acres and build for themselves modest homes near their public schools as far as they can, and not too far from their local churches. We advise them to patronize these institutions freely and to build up their community life.

The vision has been a long ways off, like the rainbow, but they have begun to catch it. In these three counties they are paying taxes on more than 100,000 acres of land. Their homes are very much improved. Their churches are excellent for rural communities. They are contributing largely for the Rosenwald schools. In Halifax County they have twelve, and more are now in construction, the colored people paying one-third of the cost.

They have helped us generously to erect several teachers’ cottages here at Bricks, and $5,000 is now pledged for further improvements, which will be paid as soon as farming conditions and prices enable them to do so.

Righteous public sentiment is of slow growth, and one cannot expect to change traditions quickly whose roots have penetrated every strata of society. It takes sympathy, patience, years, work, and some money.

T. S. INBORDEN.

May 17, 18, 1922.

_The_ JOSEPH K. BRICK SCHOOL

BRICKS, N. C.

was organized twenty-seven years ago under the general supervision of the American Missionary Association. It offers a first-class High School Course, including Domestic Science, Domestic Art, Agriculture, Work in Iron and Steel, Mechanical Drawing, Instrumental and Vocal Music.

Board, lodging, light, heat, and laundering cost per calendar month, $14.00. Tuition $2.00 and $2.50. Poor boys over sixteen years of age may work out a part or all of this amount.

The School Farm contains 1,129½ acres.

There are 23 school buildings and cottages.

The postoffice handles four mails each day, giving money order, registered mail, parcel post service.

The telegraph and telephone connections are through Enfield, N. C.

Atlantic Coast Line Trains 33 and 34 stop at Bricks on signal.

Prepaid freight may be sent direct to Bricks, N. C. Express may be sent to Enfield, N. C.

The enrollment for last year was 385 students, under the leadership of 22 teachers and officers.

The students maintain religious, musical, and athletic organizations.

There is a student brass band to enliven outdoor sports.

For Catalogue and other information, write

T. S. INBORDEN, _Principal_

MITCHELL PRINTING CO., RALEIGH

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 3 Changed: Mojave Desert into Death Valley and to Sanfenando
To: Mojave Desert into Death Valley and to San Fernando

pg 3 Changed: Santa Barbarbara, Ventura, Gaudaloupe, San Lois Obispo
To: Santa Barbara, Ventura, Guadaloupe, San Luis Obispo

pg 6 Changed: Minnesota is the synonym for “Gold Metal”
To: Minnesota is the synonym for “Gold Medal”

pg 6 Changed: To the unitiated it might seem
To: To the uninitiated it might seem

pg 12 Changed: the towering snow-capped mountins
To: the towering snow-capped mountains

pg 14 Changed: try the water as it somes fresh
To: try the water as it comes fresh

pg 15 Changed: southern part of the valley, and also Bakerfield.
To: southern part of the valley, and also Bakersfield.

pg 16 Changed: largest ferry boat in the forld
To: largest ferry boat in the world

pg 16 Changed: We crossed the Sierra Madre over the Tehachepi
To: We crossed the Sierra Madre over the Tehachapi

pg 17 Changed: known as the Tehachepi Mountains
To: known as the Tehachapi Mountains

pg 17 Changed: fruits and nuts, hay and forage, dairy prducts
To: fruits and nuts, hay and forage, dairy products

pg 17 Changed: daily tours to many of the surburban towns
To: daily tours to many of the suburban towns

pg 18 Changed: When we were crossing the Techachepi Mountains
To: When we were crossing the Tehachapi Mountains

pg 19 Changed: Rodrigeez, Cabrillo, Don Gasper de protola
To: Rodriguez, Cabrillo, Don Gasper de Portola

pg 19 Changed: said to have four hundred squire miles
To: said to have four hundred square miles

pg 20 Changed: We also pass Stamford University.
To: We also pass Stanford University.

pg 21 Changed: public roads in Los Angeles and San Barnardino
To: public roads in Los Angeles and San Bernardino

pg 24 Changed: We are in Humbolt County
To: We are in Humboldt County

pg 24 Changed: several hundred miles through this tortious
To: several hundred miles through this tortuous

pg 26 Changed: The road is tortious,
To: The road is tortuous,

pg 27 Changed: Passing Council Bull in Iowa
To: Passing Council Bluffs in Iowa

pg 28 Changed: from Spokane to Seattle to San Barnardino
To: from Spokane to Seattle to San Bernardino

pg 30 Changed: Dr. Burton is a product of Taladega College
To: Dr. Burton is a product of Talladega College

pg 32 Changed: I never say anything finer.
To: I never saw anything finer.

pg 32 Changed: has lost one the greatest stars
To: has lost one of the greatest stars

pg 32 Changed: but whereever they have had the opportunity
To: but wherever they have had the opportunity

pg 33 Changed: After the world war he went to Tusla, Oklahoma
To: After the world war he went to Tulsa, Oklahoma

pg 35 Changed: average farmer to take into his parnership
To: average farmer to take into his partnership

pg 42 Changed: school poulation is around 10,000
To: school population is around 10,000

pg 43 Changed: the main thoroughfares ars so fine
To: the main thoroughfares are so fine

pg 48 Changed: there are more manfacturers of furniture
To: there are more manufacturers of furniture

pg 48 Changed: college ought to be the certer of all
To: college ought to be the center of all

pg 48 Changed: preserve our health by the osmos process
To: preserve our health by the osmosis process

pg 50 Changed: school buildings, domitories, teachers’ cottages
To: school buildings, dormitories, teachers’ cottages