Viewing page 36 of 44

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

42

Our efforts for some time have been excited in endeavoring to secure school buildings for future use. While I have paid rent for quite a number of buildings, I have foreseen that ere long our ability to pay rent must cease, and I have endeavored, whenever practicable, to secure buildings which could be used by these people after our Bureau had ceased to exist; and until otherwise instructed shall continue this cause.

In a former monthly report I stated that I had in some cases induced parties to whom I paid rent, to use it in building other houses, &c in repairing buildings for the use of schools. This has certainly worked well, and thus a number of buildings are secured for future use, when the payment of rent is discontinued. We simply paid a reasonable rent for buildings used by [[?]], thus securing a school for the present and a school house for the future.

In a recent tour through several counties I was very much pleased with what I saw and learned. I find many more colored schools than I had any idea of. Only such report to me, as we in some manner aid, and not all of them; and consequently schools are everywhere to be found that I knew nothing of. These schools are not always of the highest order. Buildings have been bad, teachers imperfect, and funds to support them limited. But better buildings are every day being secured, teachers are becoming better qualified, and another year will furnish a more abundant fund for their support.

It appears to be the impression that our efforts ought to be directed chiefly to the Country in preference to towns and villages. My experience, and the information I have been able to obtain, does not fully justify this view. Heretofore we have established schools at the more important points, and from these I have insisted teachers would scatter over the Country. That they would go to places that with white teachers we could not reach, or where white teachers could not be supported. As an evidence of the correctness of this theory, in one country twenty four schools were reported to us in one month, and twenty of them were taught by Colored teachers educated at one of our schools. And there are many similar instances, though not to be the same extent. By another year we shall have had hundreds of Colored teachers capable of taking charge of Country schools. The gentleman in charge of one of our schools authorizes me to take charge of Country schools, he will by fall have

43 

twenty more ready for the same work.
Complaint has been made that if schools were established at the towns and not in the Country, the Colored people would leave the Country and go to the towne, for the sake of being within the reach of schools, and thus the farming interest would suffer Where I have been I have made special enquiry on this point and cannot find there is any real reason for making it. The Colored people are a good deal inclined to change localities. Not owning the soil, and having few local attachments, they are very apt to change. But so far as I can learn, the Country is less in want of assistance than the towne. The number of schools being small in comparison with those in towne, smaller buildings will accommodate them, and buildings of a much less expensive character. In the Country the people, with very little assistance, can put up a Building which will answer their purposes very well, which would not answer at all in a town. There is another reason why the Country can provide for itself better than locations could. Planters are anxious to secure the labor of the adults; and to do so they assist them in establishing schools and churches. This is not the case in the town where labor is in excess of the demand. In these counties lately visited by me I made special investigation as to the wants of the Country. In one of them the County Superintendent (a man devoted to his work.) said he knew but of three places in his county outside of the towns where assistance was needed, and there only small amounts. In another County the Superintendent assured me had already secured comfortable buildings in area half the township of his county. That he would be able without any outside assistance to provide by fall for all the remaining ones but two. In another County, the Superintendent had induced the County Court to levy a small tax which he said would be ample for all the requirements of the County. As buildings in towns would require to be larger and more expensive, they could not be fully provided for in the same way. These statements I have every reason to believe are true; for wherever I have had any doubt of the sincerity of the parties I have gone to the others in whom I had confidence for a verification or denial of each report. From such instances, and I could give many more, I conclude the towns need our special care quite as much as the