While speaking of changes in public sentiment, I recall that about
ten years after the school at Tuskegee was established, I had an
experience that I shall never forget. Dr. Lyman Abbott, then the
pastor of Plymouth Church, and also editor of the _Outlook_ (then the
_Christian Union_), asked me to write a letter for his paper giving my
opinion of the exact condition, mental and moral, of the coloured
ministers in the South, as based upon my observations. I wrote the
letter, giving the exact facts as I conceived them to be. The picture
painted was a rather black one -- or, since I am black, shall I say
"white"? It could not be otherwise with a race but a few years out of
slavery, a race which had not had time or opportunity to produce a
competent ministry.
What I said soon reached every Negro minister in the country, I
think, and the letters of condemnation which I received from them were
not few. I think that for a year after the publication of this
article every association and every conference or religious body of
any kind, of my race, that met, did not fail before adjourning to pass
a resolution condemning me, or calling upon me to retract or modify
what I had said. Many of these organizations went so far in their
resolutions as to advise parents to cease sending their children to
Tuskegee.
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