hile 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.

Other evidences of progress in learning and piety are such as these:
All over the State, as well as in the Black Belt, the churches are
calling loudly for a more intelligent ministry. Not a few churches
have been rent asunder by this issue, the more progressive part going
out to organize a new church and secure a more acceptable minister.
Scarcely an important church can be found where the subject of a
competent ministry has not been agitated. There have also been erected
within the past ten years a surprising number of new and greatly
improved church edifices. Those whose "care of all the churches" has
led them up a