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selves and to the institution from which they came. Four bishops in the various branches of Methodism were trained here, including Bishop I. B. Scott of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

ACCIDENTS

Possibly no school had a more encouraging development than Central Tennessee College (later changed to Walden University), the first school organized by the Freedmen's Aid Society. In recent years, however, a series of circumstances and accidents has tended to limit the work of the school. In 1900 President Braden died and the school was deprived of his capable leadership. Three years later, near midnight of December 18, 1903, a disastrous fire broke out in one of the buildings and twelve lives were lost. Self-seeking lawyers urged relatives of injured persons to bring suit against the school, with the result that suits were instituted to the amount of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. For years, while these suits were pending, it was deemed inadvisable to rebuild or to purchase new equipment. The school inevitably suffered and it has never regained the prestige and standing of its early days.

A NEW LOCATION

While Walden has decreased in the size and scope of its program, the Meharry Colleges, which started as departments of Walden, have grown remarkably and until their present buildings have become in

adequate. An arrangement has now been made whereby the Walden buildings adapted to the use of Meharry are to be turned over to that institution, and a new and more suitable location has been secured for the Walden School. In this new environment it is expected that this old and really great school will still have a long period of usefulness in the years ahead.

CHAPTER XII

WHAT OF THE FUTURE?

In order to appreciate the significance of what has been accomplished during the last half century in the education of the Negro it is necessary to think in terms of individuals. The imagination

must picture cabins-one-room cabins, two-room cabins, three-room cabins, and cabins of many sorts -cabins with little furniture, little lighting, no upstairs, and few or no conveniences. To these must be added vast stretches of cotton, corn, and cane, made possible by the labor of millions of colored men, women, and little children. And then there must be visualized the multitudes of untutored boys and girls who have come from these homes to the schools of the Board of Education for Negroes, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, there to learn how to use the simplest modern conveniences; to study reading, writing, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, music, the Bible, business, and many other arts and sciences. Nor is the picture complete until it includes a steady stream of teachers, mechanics, farmers, business men, musicians, preachers, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, and lawyers emerging from these schools to go out to minister to the people of their own race and to make their contri

bution to the total of the world's human achievement.

To look out upon the work which remains to be done is to face a task which is still enormous, but the remarkable progress of the past renews one's courage. A little more than half a century ago Negro education was prohibited by law; to-day some sort of an educational system for Negro children is supported by every State in which there are Negroes. There are multitudes of public schools, particularly in the rural sections, which are hardly worthy of the name of "school"; but a few years ago there were no schools at all. Even a poor school marks a beginning of something that can be improved, and a very bad school may be better than no school at all. Opposition to Negro education is largely a thing of the past, and cooperation has taken its place. There are, indeed, many grounds for encouragement, not the least of which is the change which has taken place in the Negro himself.

A NEW NEGRO

If there is one thing more than another which stands out in the present race situation in America, possibly it is that we have to-day a new Negro; a Negro who is very unlike the Negro of the past and whom it is very easy to misunderstand. Some deprecate the change and are inclined to attribute it to the Negro's participation in the World War. Doubtless the war taught the Negro many things,

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