Part 8 (2/2)

We do not confine woman's work to the home. Her sphere is anywhere that she can do good. As women are doing most of the teaching now, here is a vast field for her activity that should be well cultivated.

Next to the home the schoolroom is probably the greatest factor in character building. As Daniel Webster once said: ”If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon bra.s.s, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles, with a just fear of G.o.d, and love of our fellow-man, we engrave on those tablets something that will brighten to all eternity.” Teachers, be faithful. Dress neatly and well, if your income will allow. One can always be neat and clean, however. It is certainly a miserable mistake that makes the majority of our people think that they must dress so as to be conspicuous for blocks away, wearing hats that are veritable flower gardens. Tight lacing should be abandoned by all sensible women. The thinking, solid women of our race ought to take some steps to save the young girls of our race, especially that vast throng in the larger cities who have no gentle home influences; thousands are being dragged down to destruction every year. Raise the fallen, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Lillie E. Lovinggood, in Afro-American Encyclopedia.)

The time has come when physicians must be employed to prevent as well as to cure. If this is done, there will be less sickness, and epidemics will be a thing of the past. Then sanitary science, under strict hygienic observance, will reach perfection. The rude, careless, and gross habits of living will be corrected, and a system of perfect drainage and pure ventilation will be inaugurated. Pure air and a good water supply will be furnished to every public and private house. Then only pure and unadulterated foods will be allowed in our markets and grocery houses. Every hotel and private and public boarding house will furnish properly prepared foods, and universal cleanliness will be the law, and the death rate among our people will reach its minimum. (Dr.

R. F. Boyd.)

The one thing that should appeal most strongly to our hearts is the need of a better and purer home life among our people in many parts of the South. I scarcely need tell you that our most embarra.s.sing heritage from slavery was a homelessness and a lack of home ties. All the sanct.i.ties of marriage, the precious instincts of motherhood, the spirit of family alliance, and the upbuilding of home as an inst.i.tution of the human heart were all ruthlessly ignored and fiercely prohibited by the requirements of slavery. Colored people in bondage were only as men, women, and children, and not as fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. Family relations.h.i.+ps and home sentiments were thus no part of the preparation of colored people for freedom and citizens.h.i.+p. It is not agreeable to refer to these things, but they are mentioned merely to suggest to you how urgent and immensely important it is that we should be actively and helpfully interested in those poor women of the rural South, who in darkness and without guides are struggling to build homes and rear families. When we properly appreciate the fact that there can be no real advancement of the colored race without homes that are purified by all the influences of Christian virtues, it will seem strange that no large, earnest, direct, and organized effort has been made to teach men and women the blessed meaning of home. Preachers have been too busy with their churches and collections, and teachers too much hara.s.sed by lack of facilities, and politicians too much burdened with the affairs of state and the want of offices to think about the feminine consideration of good homes. Money, thought, prayer, and men and women are all freely and n.o.bly given in the upbuilding of schools and churches, but no expenditures to teach the lesson of home making.

Colored women can scarcely escape the conclusion that this work has been left for them, and its importance and their responsibilities should arouse and stir them as nothing else can do. Let us not be confused and embarra.s.sed by the thought that what needs to be done is too difficult or far away. There should be no limitations of time and s.p.a.ce when man needs the helping sympathy of man. If our hearts are strong for good works, ways and means will readily appear for the exercise of our talents, our love, and our heroism. (Mrs. Fannie B.

Williams.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: F. A. STEWART, M.D., NASHVILLE, TENN.]

THE COLORED PHYSICIAN IN THE SOUTH.

BY H. R. BUTLER.

When the civil war was over and the smoke of battle had cleared away, the field in the South was occupied by the red-eyed voodoo, who styled himself a ”doctor.” There were at that time possibly two or three exceptions to this rule, but only two or three.

Should you ask one of these voodoo doctors, better known among the illiterate as ”root workers,” what might be his business, the answer would quickly be given something like this: ”My trade? Dat am a doctor.”

”Is that so?”

”Yes, sar; I is a root doctor from way back; and when I gits done standin' at de forks ob de road at midnight pullin' up roots, twixt de hollowin' ob de owls, and gittin' a little fresh dirt frum de graveyard--honey, dar am su'thin' agwinter drop.”

The above is part of a conversation held with me by one of these ”herb kings” in South Carolina in 1890. Hence you can see that, like all other evils, these voodoo doctors do not die fast; and even to-day not a few still live.

This being with his weird stories went forth among a people who were rocked, as it were, in the cradle of superst.i.tion, and early became monarch of all he surveyed. He or she was known and feared throughout the country. They claimed to be able to cure anything from consumption to an unruly wife or husband, and furnis.h.i.+ng charms to make love matches and to keep the wife or husband at home was one of their specialties.

Every patient they called on they diagnosed the trouble thus: he or she was tricked; if pneumonia, they were tricked; if a fever, they were tricked; or if a case of consumption, they were tricked.

Their stock of medicines, if such we must call them, generally consisted of such things as small bags of graveyard soil, rusty nails, needles, pins, goose grease, rabbits' feet, snake skins, and many other such things.

I say that a little more than a generation ago this was the cla.s.s of so-called colored doctors that predominated in the South, and which for many years was a great stumbling-block to the educated physicians of our race, because it seemed to be understood that all colored doctors were and must be root doctors. But, thanks to Him who holds the destiny of races in his hands, in the flight of years and in this electric age of progress this voodoo doctor has almost--not entirely, but almost--pa.s.sed away; while his territory is being occupied by colored physicians whose qualifications in education, character, and honor are equal to similar qualifications in the physicians of any other race.

The colored physicians in the South to-day are men and women fully equipped in education, morals, and integrity for the high calling they have elected, as their n.o.ble work will show. In the United States to-day there are about one thousand colored physicians, men and women, and more than seven hundred of them are located in the Southern States. While they represent the homeopathic and eclectic schools, yet the regulars are largely in the majority.

The majority of the colored physicians now operating in the South took a college course of education before taking up the study of medicine.

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