the summer of 1884, near Leesburg, Texas, a well-appointed Negro
school was burned by the whites of that community. The colored people,
seeing their hope of years in ashes, advertised their little holdings
for sale, and prepared to leave in a body. But the whites offered to
supplement the insurance on the former building and to re-build the
school, if the colored people would remain in the community. The terms
were accepted, and now _West Chapel_, which is the name of the school,
is excellently furnished and has a $200 bell upon it, and is the best
known school in Northeast Texas. Previous to the burning of West
Chapel, the whites were continually distracted by factional fights.
There was general apathy with regard to improvement in any way
whatever. Their teachers were always of the inferior class. But, when
they found that the colored people would have a school, they decided
to have one also. The colored people bought a bell. So did they. The
colored people had a foreign teacher. So must they have one, and they
paid $750 a year for him. One of the white citizens of the locality
summed the situation up thus:--"West Chapel is to the whites what a
coal of fire is on the back of a terrapin." This school was organized
by a Fisk student and has ever {131} since been taught by students of
Fisk. Thus is the A.M.A. lifting up the Negro directly and the whites
indirectly, and establishing friendly relations between the two.

But this is no isolated case. The story is the same wherever the
educated Negro comes in contact with the whites. At one time, our
school was so far in advance of the white school, that I was told by
my school director that "no high-learnt teacher was wanted to teach
'Nigger Schools,'" and I was actually driven from my school by threats
of violence.

The North can better understand the work of the American Missionary
Association, when it is fully understood that the presence of Fisk
University in Nashville brought about the existence of Vanderbilt
University. When Fisk began to send out her graduates as refined and
upright gentlemen, and the newspapers were enthusiastic in their
accounts of its literary and musical exhibitions, the white people
said; "We must have a university in Nashville also."

In the recent Prohibition campaign in Tennessee, the students of Fisk
were one of the chief factors. In the beginning of the movement, the
cry; "Where does Fisk stand on this question?" went up from the good
p