While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
"If any would not work, neither should he eat." Paul.
The unexpected disappointments
experienced in establishing the self-help
department are worthy of a brief mention.
They serve to illustrate some foolish
notions that prevailed among some of our
first patrons, and prepare the way for a
good suggestion.
The aim of this department is to enlarge the
scope of the training work of the
institution by the employment of students,
as far as possible, to do the necessary work
during vacations as well as the chores
during the school-terms; and by this means,
reducing the number of hired helpers, afford
lucrative employment to the greatest number
of students, as a means of self help.
In view of the needy and helpless condition
of the people in their new homes, and the
urgent prospective demand for more teachers,
one would naturally suppose every family
would be eager to take advantage of such an
opportunity. The scheme however was a new
one and it was regarded with suspicion and
disfavor. The effort to have leading
families, those that seemed to stand in the
nearest relation to it by having previously
enjoyed its privileges most freely,
co-operate in the establishment of this
plan, by permitting one of their children to
remain at the academy during the vacation
period or even do extra work a part of the
day during the term, and thereby be able to
continue and complete a course of study that
would fit them for teaching, proved a
complete disappointment. This disappointment
was the occasion of two earnest appeals
before two different meetings of the
Presbytery, but neither of them received
more than a respectful hearing, no favorable
response.
Some, whose children had been previously
carried from year to year gratuitously, no
doubt, regarded it as the innovation of a
stranger, who was adroitly depriving them of
their former rights and privileges; while
others seemed to view it as a discovery to
their neighbors that they were not able to
pay for the education of their children.
Some of the larger girls at the academy,
when requested to arrange to do some extra
work at the school declined, saying they had
homes of their own and did not have to work
for others away from home.
A Promising Girl
That this was not the sentiment, however, of
all the larger girls appears in the
following incident. A very promising girl of
sixteen came to the school of her own
accord. She was animated with the desire to
become a Christian teacher. About the middle
of the term, a younger brother called with
the request from her mother, that she return
home. No reason was assigned and she knew of
no good one. She sent her mother word that
she desired to remain, and resumed her
studies. Two weeks later an older brother
called with a preemptory demand that she
return home with him. The reason assigned by
her mother for this unexpected and arbitrary
request was, "Daughter can get along without
school as well as her mother." It seems
scarcely necessary to state that this
promising and aspiring young lady was not
permitted to return.
Thoughtless Boys
The first to acquiesce in the arrangement to
pay a part of their term expense by working
at the academy during the vacation were some
boys, who had not learned to work; and it
seemed impossible for them to conceal the
fact that they did not want to work. They
were not old enough or did not know enough
to appreciate the privileges accorded to
them; and as many as three of them ran away,
when most needed.
The work deserted by two of these boys was
undertaken by a third one, not then a
student. He was a willing worker and at the
end of the summer found that his job at the
academy was his best one during the season.
He illustrated the difference between the
worthy and the worthless. The worthy achieve
success where the worthless make a miserable
failure.
Thoughtful Young People
It was left for some thoughtful young people
living at a distance to come, take advantage
of the opportunities thus afforded and make
this self-help or industrial department a
real, visible and practical success. While
deriving a life-long benefit for themselves,
they have conferred a lasting benefit to the
institution by remaining long enough to
reach the higher grades. Their efficient
service in various lines of work has served
to show that the varied and thorough
training given during recent vacations has
been very valuable to them.
The vacation period has afforded the best
opportunity for instruction and practice on
the organ, for reading the many good books
in the library and for special training in
farming, carpentry and in the various kinds
of work, like canning fruit or the
manufacture of sorghum, that require
attention only during the summer months. It
has hitherto seemed to be the golden period
of the year when the personal responsibility
and general efficiency of the student has
been most rapidly developed, a fact no doubt
due to the freer daily association with the
superintendent and teachers. The full course
of training provided at the institution can
be fully enjoyed only by those who remain
during the summer months.
Vacation Workers
The vacation workers have always been
regarded as members of the Oak Hill family
and every personal want has been promptly
supplied. The habit of reading or learning
something every day, kept them prepared for
doing their best work on the first as well
as their last day of the term; while others
would take a week or month, perhaps before
they could settle down to good work in the
school room. They were allowed a reasonable
credit for every day they worked during the
vacation and were not requested to do any
extra work during the term, except in cases
of emergency. The self-help students, who
rendered extra service during the term,
dropped one study, and they also received a
reasonable allowance for all the extra work
they performed.
Jamestown College
Effective Christian work by students at home
during the summer vacation was admirably
illustrated by the young people attending
the Presbyterian college at Jamestown, North
Dakota, during the summer of 1913.
Every student at the close of the term had
formed the decision to lead a Christian
life. Under the inspiration of a resident
lawyer, John Knouff, a number of them became
members of the mission band that had for its
object the in gathering of new scholars into
their own Sabbath schools, and the college
they were attending.
The result was a very pleasant surprise
and a source of great profit to all of them.
They reported the organization of a score of
new Sunday schools in neglected communities,
and an enrollment of 1231 new scholars
through their instrumentality. An incidental
result was a greatly increased enrollment of
new students at the college they had so
worthily represented.
Support Of
Self-Supporting Students
Where does the money come from that is
necessary to meet the monthly allowances
placed to the credit of the self-help
students? This is a very practical question
and a few thoughts on it may be helpful.
When a farmer employs a man to help him on
his farm he expects to pay him from the
annual cash income, when the products of the
farm are sold. This would naturally be true
of the boys who do the farm work at Oak Hill
if there was a surplus to sell; but hitherto
it has not been sufficient to meet the
demands of the boarding department and
stock.
It would however not be true of the work of
the boys who build fence, clear new land or
erect and improve buildings. The product of
the labor of these students is a permanent
improvement, that increases the value of the
land to the owner, and it cannot be sold
annually for cash, like the products of the
farm.
But the superintendent has to pay cash for
the groceries consumed by these students the
same as for the others; and when their
monthly allowance for labor is transferred
to the enrollment or other account book, it
represents an item for which some one must
furnish him the cash. Where will he get his
money? Who will furnish it to him?
Manifestly he must look to the owner of the
property for it, and the owner in this
instance is the Board of Missions for
Freedmen. By using tools and implements the
student has been trained in their use and
the results of his work have become a
permanent possession of the Board.
In as much as most permanent improvements do
not ordinarily bring any direct annual
income to the Board, but serve rather to
increase the facilities of the school and
provide additional opportunities for
self-help, the question arises, "Where does
the Board get the money for the support of
the self-supporting students?"
The answer to this inquiry is, the Board has
to solicit and receive it from the friends
of Christian education.
This is a very important statement and it is
often not very clearly understood. When the
actual cost of carrying a student through a
seven months term is found to be about
$50.00 then that is the lowest amount that
will enable the superintendent to carry a
vacation worker, as a self-supporting
student, through the period of an entire
year.
How It Works
There are some features of this problem that
are quite interesting. The student that does
the most for the permanent improvement of
the institution that has educated him,
commonly called his "Alma Mater," or
fostering mother, finds at the time of
completing his course, that by that means he
has done most for himself, by advancing more
rapidly than others in the course of
training and study. He has also done
something in the way of increasing the
facilities for the education and uplift of
his race.
Whilst his employment was creating a demand
for a benevolent gift from some friend of
Christian education he was unconscious of
that fact, and is happy in the
consciousness, that he is earning his way
through school like a man;-one, who wants to
make most of himself. He goes forth to enter
upon the duties of active life as a true or
"good soldier" prepared to "endure
hardness," if necessary, and ready to lend a
helping hand to other worthy young people.
Enlargement And Permanent
Improvement
The zealous interest of the superintendent
in this self-help industrial department
appears in the broad foundation he had hoped
to lay for it in the purchase of so many
acres for the Oak Hill farm.
There were other good motives that prompted
the purchase of land, when the opportunity
was afforded to do so at it which price in
1908 such as provision for future supplies
of wood as a cheap fuel, about twenty-five
cords a year being needed, and ample
pastures for the herds of cattle and hogs,
that are easily and profitably raised and
greatly needed, but the most urgent motive
was the earnest desire to provide an
agricultural base large enough to enable the
self-help department of the academy to
become in time self-supporting.
"Enlargement" and "permanent improvement"
became the watchwords while laying the
foundation for this department.
The manifest need of it had been deeply and
indelibly impressed. The conviction also
prevailed that, when properly organized and
developed, so as to meet their most urgent
needs, the self-help department in an
educational institution works like a live
magnet in attracting the patronage of many
worthy young people.
Permanent improvement year after year by
self-supporting students, seeking training
is an arrangement that has in it the germ of
expansion that means enlargement and growth
with passing years. This was the ideal
towards which we were moving with might and
main. We wanted to plant the live magnet
that would make Oak Hill an attractive and
pre-eminently useful educational center for
all the Choctaw Freedmen.
There are no annual taxes on lands used for
public or mission school purposes, and all
the annual income tends to lessen to the
Board, the local expenses of the teachers
and students. The net income from the farm
is the surplus that remains after deducting
the cost of management from the gross
receipts.
Oak Hill In 1905.
Flower Gatherers For Decision Day.
February 22, 1910
Whenever this net income is
more than sufficient to cover the local
support of the teachers, it goes toward the
support of the self-supporting students;
whenever it is sufficient to cover all of
their monthly allowances, this self-help
department is self-supporting; and special
remittances from the Board will not then be
needed for the worthy, industrious and
ambitious young people, in that department.
The attainment of this object is worthy of
noble and constant endeavor.
It is also worthy of note, that good
agricultural lands, purchased at the
government price in a new section of the
country that is destined to be filled with
new settlers, is always a good investment.
The land rapidly increases in value where
the incoming of new settlers causes a rapid
increase in the population.
This annual increase in the value of new
land is known as its "unearned increment."
This unearned increment is now accruing to
the Board on every acre that has been
purchased. Those that were purchased first
have already doubled in value.
Every acre of land added to the Oak Hill
farm at its virgin price means now, by
reason of its annual income and gradual
increase in value, a live unit added to the
permanent endowment of the institution and
enlarges the scope of the self-help
department.
Lou K.
Early
Jo Lu
Woolcott
Mary I.
Weimer
Self-Support Means
Independence
The Negro needs to be taught to be
"self-dependent, self-reliant and
self-respecting."
Wherever public schools have
been established and supplied with good
teachers and text-books, they have rendered
efficient service in improving the condition
of the people. The lack of text-books has
caused many of the rural schools to prove
very inefficient, one textbook often having
to serve as many as three pupils. Then there
are yet large sections of some of the
southern states in which there are no public
schools for the colored people.
In proportion as the colored people attain a
general Christian education and become
progressive, industrial workers, do they
rise to their natural inheritance; an
inheritance that brings to them what America
now holds of freedom, justice, opportunity
and benevolence to the oppressed of other
lands, that are coming a million a year, to
locate in this land of civil and religious
freedom.
Among their essential needs to self-support
are a fair industrial opportunity,
distribution, education and equal protection
of the laws.
Whenever too many unskilled workers,
including women and children, crowd into
towns and cities, the number that have to
live in poverty-stricken hovels is greatly
increased. Their general health and good
morals are also endangered.
Every youth will do well to adopt the
thrilling watchwords of the early American
patriots, "Virtue, Liberty, and
Independence."
Park College
Rev. John A. McAfee, the eminent founder of
Park College, Parkville, near Kansas City,
Missouri, realizing the need of hardy and
energetic ministers during the pioneer days
of Missouri and Kansas, manifested a
commendable wisdom and foresight in the
planting of that institution, by making
special provision for the self-help of
those, who were candidates for the ministry
and those wishing to be missionary teachers.
The self-help department then established
has greatly promoted its growth, and
increased its usefulness. The visitor now
sees a beautiful campus of 20 acres occupied
by massive stone buildings erected largely
by student labor. They include a fine
administration building, chapel, library,
observatory, boarding and professors houses,
and a half dozen large dormitories. He will
also find an attendance of 420 students, and
a farm of 500 acres cultivated by them.
Its worthy representatives in the ministry
may now be found in nearly every state of
the Union and many, as foreign missionaries
and teachers, are doing a noble work in
other lands. A large proportion of its most
worthy representatives owe their present
position and usefulness to the opportunity
for self-help, provided in the agricultural
and mechanical departments, while pursuing
their studies at this classical institution.
It was founded in 1875 and
was named after Col. George S. Park, the
friend and helper of Rev. John A. McAfee. He
donated the original college building and
one hundred acres of land. At present the
college owns 1000 acres, 500 of which are in
the college farm. Both of its worthy
founders died about the year 1890, but the
good work of the institution they planted is
going forward with annually increasing
usefulness. Though established more recently
than many others, it is now very highly
prized as one of the most important of our
Presbyterian colleges, in maintaining the
supply of well trained ministers and
Christian teachers.
A Suggestion To Parents
Having stated the aims and advantages of the
self-help department the following
suggestion to parents seems appropriate.
If you have a bright son or daughter that
can be spared for a time at home, take your
child, as Hannah did Samuel, while he is
young enough to learn rapidly, to the
superintendent of the academy, and, if the
way be clear, enter into an agreement as
Hannah did, that he shall remain there, if
needed, until he has completed the course of
study provided at the institution, earning
his expenses, as far as possible, by his own
industry.
Regard your contract as a matter of honor
and refrain from calling him away when his
services have begun to be of some value to
the institution, merely because you need
some one to do a few day's work. Encourage
him to be true and faithful, that he may win
and hold the esteem and confidence of his
instructors.
If a number of parents will pursue this
policy, the academy will accomplish its
mission and prove a boon and blessing to you
as a people, one generation serving another.
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
Choctaw Freedmen and Oak Hill Industrial
Academy, 1914, Robert Elliott Flickinger
