Home Missions in ActionAllen, Edith H. (Edith Hedden)
History
Home Missions in Action
Allen, Edith H. (Edith Hedden)
Home missions
"It was a Negro girl from Boylan Home, Jacksonville, Florida, who
went back to her cabin home to find no floor but the earth, and nothing
to sit on but home-made stools. But she had the equipment for producing
better things, and was soon conducting quite a dressmaking business for
the neighborhood.
"A frequent sign of progress is the request of a girl to buy a broom
to take home to her mother. Neither mother nor girl had known in the
past anything better than a bundle of twigs wherewith to sweep the
rough wooden or earth floor of the cabin."
* * * * *
Spelman Seminary at Atlanta, Georgia, founded (1881) and
maintained by the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society,
has carried forward a varied and far-reaching service to Negroes.
One student referring to her own experience says--"I thought I was
going to Spelman to learn books, but I soon found that sewing, washing
and ironing, sweeping and dusting, cooking and all sorts of work are
included in getting an education here.
"While carrying on high school work I completed the three years'
course in cooking. Plain sewing had been thoroughly mastered.
Basketry, practical gardening and agriculture were a part of the
grade work. Now while I am completing the course in Normal training
I am taking bench work, more advanced agriculture and care and raising
of poultry. This knowledge will be needed as I seek to better the home
conditions of the pupils in the country schools under my care.
"I have also some knowledge of nursing gained at MacVicar Hospital,
which is connected with Spelman and which gives full nurse training
courses to some eighteen or twenty students each year."
One of the most telling features of Spelman's community service is
the sending out of a county supervisor of public schools to introduce
industrial training and better methods of school work.
During the last year of Normal work each student-teacher is sent
out to visit the county schools with the supervisor whom Spelman
employs for the rural work in Fulton County.
There are eight rural and seven suburban Negro schools in the
county. The school buildings range from an old house or a one-room
building, with almost nothing to work with, up to a good school
building fairly equipped.
The following is told by one of the Normal students of her work in
the country schools:
"Mothers' clubs were formed and fathers were interested so far as
possible in order to secure the sympathy and co-operation of the
parents in introducing industrial work.
"The tools were crude. In many instances jack-knives, stones and
glass were used if hammers, planes and saws could not be obtained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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