Institute, was located at Huntsville, Alabama, in the northern part of the State. It was founded in 1872 and rendered good service. It was moved in 1904 to Birmingham, a city with a colored population of more than seventy thousand, with the thought that this central location would help to extend its field of usefulness. It has developed more nearly into a family school than any other of the schools of the Board of Education for Negroes. The emphasis is upon secondary and normal training, and the more than two hundred pupils of the school have an opportunity to study under the most wholesome conditions and under teachers whose influence is inspiring and uplifting. In addition to the usual normal and secondary branches there are special departments giving instruction in music, domestic science, domestic art, and commercial subjects.

It was here at Central Alabama Institute that the Rev. Alexander P. Camphor was so long in charge, and it was from here that he was elected as Missionary Bishop for Africa in 1916. When he assumed his new responsibilities the Rev. J. B. F. Shaw was placed in charge of the school. The present principal is the Rev. R. N. Brooks, a graduate of Bennett College and of Gammon Theological Seminary. After a successful period in the pastorate he went to Northwestern University, where he earned his A.M. in the field of education. For two years he served at Washington, D. C., as the representative of the Board of Sunday Schools of

the Methodist Episcopal Church, from which position he was called to take charge of Haven Institute. In 1921 he was transferred to Central Alabama Institute, where he has a large field of usefulness. Mrs. Brooks is the daughter of Dr. W. H. Crogman of Clark University, and she is a graduate of that school.

CHAPTER IX

LOOKING TOWARD THE WEST

George R. Smith College and Philander Smith College FROM the standpoint of geographical distribution the Negro is more nearly a national phenomenon than ever before. The Northward and Westward trend of colored life has been greatly accentuated during the last decade. While in some Southern States the number of Negroes has not only relatively but actually decreased, the increase in certain Northern and Western communities has amounted in many cases to several hundred per cent. It is an interesting fact that all of the largest city centers of Negro life in the United States are to-day in the North and not in the South. Thus we have the phenomena of Negro parents residing in the North and sending their pupils South to be educated in the schools of the church. In a similar way the colored man has been discovering the West. Crowds have gone to Oklahoma, and others have settled in Kansas, Arizona, California, and other Western States. They

PRESIDENT

ROBERT B. HAYES

too look back to the church schools as the place where they can send their children to be educated and feel that they are safely cared for. It is fortunate that some of the schools of the Board are so located as to be able to minister effectively to portions of this more distant field as well as to their immediate neighborhoods. One of the schools so located is the George R. Smith College at Sedalia, Missouri.

GENERAL GEORGE R. SMITH

Although George R. Smith had nothing directly to do with the founding of the college, he was the founder of Sedalia, and his story is an interesting one. He was a Virginian by birth, although he

moved later with his father to Kentucky, and finally migrated with his father-in-law to Missouri. Here in this new country, by natural genius, will power, and hard work, he amassed a fortune and made a place for himself in the affairs of the State. Although a Southerner by birth and at certain times, by force of circumstances, an owner of slaves, he was unalterably opposed to the whole system. His father had owned about forty slaves, but had freed most of them before his death. In the debates just preceding the war George R. Smith took a very active part, and he stood uncompromisingly for the Union.

He was a big man in every way; he had a deep resonant voice, great courage, and high ideals; he was broad-minded, and, although sometimes severe in statement, he was kindly at heart. Little chil dren loved him.

STORY OF THE SCHOOL

After the death of General Smith his daughters, impressed by the work being done for Negroes by the Methodist Episcopal Church, although they were themselves members of another church, gave to the Freedmen's Aid Society twenty-eight acres of land at the edge of the city of Sedalia for the founding of a college for Negroes. The gift was made in 1888, but it was not until 1894 that a building was erected and the school opened. Fiftyseven students were enrolled the first year. The school was regularly chartered in 1903. Since its