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diplomas. The more than five hundred, graduates of the school represent the largest number of ministerial graduates from any theological seminary for colored people in the United States.

A BROAD MINISTRY

While the seminary has been under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church, it has ministered to students of many denominations, including the Colored Methodist Episcopal, the African Methodist Episcopal, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion, the Congregational, the Presbyterian, the Episcopalian, the Baptist, and others. To-day there are bishops, editors, board secretaries, pastors, and other individuals holding important and responsible positions in these various colored denominations, who received their theological training at Gammon. Bishop Alexander P. Camphor, Bishop Robert E. Jones, and many other leaders in the Methodist Episcopal Church received their training here; also Bishop W. W. Beckett of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Bishop Stewart of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. By this broad ministry Gammon is helping to fulfill one of the ambitions of its founder that it might indeed be a school for a whole race.

THE STEWART MISSIONARY FOUNDATION

One of the outstanding features of the work at Gammon is the cooperation of the Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa, which was established

in connection with the school in 1894. It is a striking coincidence that the Rev. William Fletcher Stewart, who established the Foundation, was, like Mr. Gammon, a Methodist Episcopal minister. He began his savings while working as a boy for twenty-five cents a day, and he continued them when as a Methodist minister he received a salary of one hundred dollars per year. He turned down. the most alluring offers outside of the ministry, and stayed steadily by his job. In spite of that fact, however, he amassed a fortune through wisely investing his savings in real estate. One of his benefactions was the establishment of the Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa. The purpose of the Foundation is to relate the Negro in the United States to the task of evangelizing Africa. It maintains a Chair of Missions at Gammon Theological Seminary; it promotes the organization of the society known as the Friends of Africa; it gives prizes for missionary hymns, orations, and essays; it provides missionary libraries; and in various other ways undertakes to inform Negroes about Africa and to interest them in its evangelization. The work of the seminary is greatly enriched by its ministry.

SUMMER WORK

From all walks of life the students come up to Gammon, and, when the year's work is over, they scatter in many directions in order to get the means to return to school another year. The "North" is

the Mecca of many. Here they may be found working on sleeping cars, in diners, in hotels, on river boats, and in multitudes of other places. The quiet man who makes down berths, dusts coats, or serves meals may be more than an unimaginative servant; he may be a theological student preparing himself to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to his own 'people.

A REMARKABLE SCHOOL

On one occasion Bishop F. D. Leete wrote: "It is not often given to one man to build a lighthouse for a whole race. Elijah H. Gammon has this honor." Some one else recently described the school as "the only well-equipped, well-endowed, and well-manned theological seminary for the training of Negro preachers in the world." Up to date practically all that Gammon is from a material standpoint has been due to the generosity of Mr. Gammon. His money erected the buildings and provided the endowment, and it is still working. A new professor's home has recently been built and a home for the Professor of Missions and Secretary of the Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa and a new school building to give additional facilities are in immediate prospect. As time goes on the needs and opportunities of a school with the fine purpose of Gammon Theological Seminary are bound to create new demands, but in any plan for the future the foundation laid by the consecrated preacher, the clear-headed business man, and the

great-hearted Christian, Elijah H. Gammon, and by those who worked with him will abide.

And who shall measure the results of this enterprise? Every year approximately one hundred young colored men may be found at Gammon studying to prepare themselves to go out to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to their own people. It was a glimpse of the possibilities bound up in this leadership which Mr. Gammon saw when he builded so wisely and so securely. The Negro race, the Methodist Episcopal Church, and our nation are immeasurably indebted to his foresight and his generosity.

CHAPTER III

TEACHING THE NEGRO TO CARE FOR HIS

BODY

The Meharry Colleges and Flint-Goodridge Hospital and Nurse Training School

PRESIDENT EMERITUS GEORGE W. HUBBARD, M.D., AND PRESIDENT JOHN J. MULLOWNEY, M.D.

THE American Negro has paid an

[graphic]

enormous

price for his ignorance of
the laws of health and for
his inability to care for his
body. The slight knowl-
edge which
which he
he brought
with him from Africa was
of little or no value to him
in this connection, and
the conditions of slavery
were such as to place little
emphasis upon the care of
the body. Very little at-
tention was given to sani-
tation, hygiene, a balanced

diet, or even to medical treatment. Naturally the death rate was enormous, and it has continued to be all out of proportion to that of the white man down to the present. Either because of a natural predisposition, or because of habits and conditions of

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