Some of the Difficulties

The following editorial was written by Rev. James S. Griffing in 1881. In it, he asks for the church's support to help educate and elevate the freed blacks who had migrated from the South following Reconstruction.

Source: The Kansas Methodist, June 9, 1881

That the efforts of our Church to advance the religious interests of the freedmen here in Kansas should be free of difficulties could hardly be expected. Some would seem almost insurmountable, could we not hear the voice of the Master assuring, “As thy day is so shall thy strength be. My grace shall be sufficient for thee.” Prominent among [these difficulties] are: 1. Ignorance on the part of the freedmen. 2. Prejudice against color on the part of the whites. And these especially will continue to operate deleteriously until measures are employed which will succeed in overcoming them. Chattel slavery ever strengthened itself by keeping its victims just as ignorant as possible. As a consequence, so far as a knowledge of books is concerned, all efforts to advance most of the adults must commence with the alphabet, and the greatest amount of patience and perseverance is essential to insure any degree of success. Yet a very encouraging feature is an ardent desire on the part of many to learn.

In a conference the size of ours, competent instructors should abound, yet it is evident that the presiding elder having charge of this work finds it difficult to secure suitable helpers. One of the candidates appearing at the conference and expecting an appointment to ministerial work, having already been in the ministry for two or three years, was reported by the examining committee of the third year as hardly able to read the English language intelligibly, and was marked zero on a scale of ten, and yet undoubtedly this was the very best help he could secure. It was refreshing to find those among them who had enjoyed educational advantages were reported very favorably.

Our conference should take high Christian ground in this whole matter, and secure to them the very best advantages in our power, and not pursue a policy calculated to keep them long, weary years in ignorance and degradation. Just as the children are being placed on equal footing in our district schools, and each, without respect to nationality, obliged to stand on his own merits and obtain an education, so should it be in our Church. Let each, united to the same Church, and aiming to reach the same blessed home, possess so much of the spirit of the Master here, as will lead him to recognize in any human being the image of his Master, receive him as a brother, without any reference to the color of his skin, and cause the bonds of brotherhood to become so strengthened that heaven may commence on this side of the grave. If it does not, it may not on the other side.

To secure this end, that great barrier known as prejudice against color must in some way be removed. We think that the intermingling of the children in the schools will tend to remove [the prejudice] by degrees, yet the Church ought to take the lead in this matter, and in the very front should stand God’s commissioned ambassadors, ready to carry out in the fullness of the spirit with which it was spoken, “Go ye into all the world and preach thy gospel to every creature.”

Whilst our conference has so many that might be efficient and successful teachers and preachers among the freedmen, it seems a pity that there should be a necessity of employing the services of any hardly able to read, to instruct them. As their past life in slavery tended to obliterate every ennobling trait, let their future be characterized by the most judicious efforts to elevate and save them.

J. S. Griffing