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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