American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'Street, Julian
General
American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'
Street, Julian
Southern States -- Description and travel; Southern States -- Social life and customs
As I have said elsewhere in this book, many colored people in Atlanta
are doing well in various ways. At Atlanta University I saw several
students whose fathers and mothers were graduates of the same
institution. Higher education for the negro has, thus, come into its
second generation. More prosperous negroes in Atlanta are doing social
settlement work among less fortunate members of their race, and have
started a free kindergarten for negro children. Many good people in
Atlanta are unaware of these facts, and I believe their judgment on the
entire negro question would be modified, at least in certain details,
were they merely to inform themselves upon various creditable negro
activities in the city. The northern stranger, attempting to ascertain
the truth about the negro and the negro problem, has to this extent the
advantage of the average Southerner: prejudice and indifference do not
prevent his going among the negroes to find out what they are doing for
themselves.
* * * * *
At various times in my life chance has thrown me into contact with
charities in great variety, and philanthropic work of many kinds. I have
seen theoretical charities, sentimental charities, silly charities,
pauperizing charities, wild-eyed charities, charities which did good,
and others which worked damage in the world; I have seen organized
charities splendidly run under difficult circumstances (as in the
Department of Charities under Commissioner Kingsbury, in New York City),
and I have seen other organized charities badly run at great expense; I
have seen charities conducted with the primary purpose of ministering to
the vanity of self-important individuals who like to say: "See all the
good that I am doing!" and I have seen other personal charities operated
(as in the case of the Rockefeller Foundation) with a perfectly
magnificent scope and effectiveness.
Nevertheless, of all the charities I have seen, of all the efforts I
have witnessed to improve the condition of humanity, none has taken a
firmer hold upon my heart than the Leonard Street Orphans' Home, for
negro girls, in Atlanta.
The home is a humble frame building which was used as a barracks by
northern troops stationed in Atlanta after the Civil War. In it reside
Miss Chadwick, her helpers, and about seventy little negro girls; and it
is an interesting fact that several of the helpers are young colored
women who, themselves brought up in the home and taught to be
self-supporting, have been drawn back to the place by homesickness. Was
ever before an orphan homesick for an orphans' home?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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