In the first place, at the close of the war there were no schools for colored people; now you will find at least twelve hundred common schools for them in the Black Belt alone, besides a goodly number of select and higher schools of different denominations, while just up out of the Belt, in a most beautiful and healthful region, is Talladega College, well patronized by the people of the lower and less healthful parts of the State. These many schools could not fail to set in motion great changes affecting the homes, heads and hearts of the people. The ministers have powerfully felt their influence and in large numbers have been drawn into them or have been driven from the public leadership which they once had. The American Missionary Association schools and churches are at the foundation of all that has been accomplished. Others have patterned after these. Again, previous to the time when the Christian missionary work began in the South, I cannot learn that there was more than one regularly ordained colored minister in the region under consideration, or that there were any regularly organized churches among them. At the present time there are at least sixteen hundred such churches in the twenty counties, and probably nearly as many ordained ministers--not to mention the five thousand licensed preachers, many of whom are hoping for ordination. These ministers and churches are working out a great problem. It is true that much of the work is of a low grade, but it is equally true that much of it is intelligent, earnest and effective. There are only a few college and theological graduates among them--perhaps not more than half a dozen. There are many more who have had normal and theological training, and a still larger number who have had a partial course of Bible study and who can manage a church fairly well. Of the more than six thousand ministers and preachers of the Black Belt, perhaps it would be a generous estimate to say that one hundred are in a measure educated. These are the leaders of the unschooled thousands counted among the preachers of the gospel.