Brawley Benjamin Griffith
Your Negro Neighbor
VI
A GREAT MISSIONARY: JOANNA P. MOORE
In the fall of 1862 a young woman who was destined to be a great missionary entered the Seminary at Rockford, Illinois. There was little to distinguish her from the other students except that she was exceedingly plainly dressed, and seemed forced to spend most of her spare time at work. Yes, there was one other difference. She was older than most of the girls – already thirty, and rich in experience. When not yet fifteen she had taught a country school in Pennsylvania. At twenty she was considered capable of managing an unusually turbulent crowd of boys and girls. When she was twenty-seven her father had died, leaving upon her very largely the care of her mother. At twenty-eight she already looked back upon a career of fourteen years as a teacher, of some work for Christ incidentally accomplished, but also upon a fading youth of wasted hopes and unfulfilled desires.
Then came a great decision – not the first, but one of the most important that marked her long career. Her education was by no means complete, and at whatever cost she was determined to go to school. That she had no money, that her clothes were shabby, that her mother needed her, made no difference; now or never she would realize her ambition. She would do anything, however menial, if it was honest and would give her food while she attended school. For one long day she walked the streets of Belvidere looking for a home. Could any one use a young woman who wanted to work for her board? Always the same reply. Nightfall brought her to a farmhouse in the suburbs of the town. She timidly knocked on the door. "No, we do not need any one," said the woman who greeted her, "but wait until I see my husband." The man of the house was very unwilling, but decided to give her shelter for the night. The next morning he thought differently about the matter; and a few days afterward the young woman entered school. The work was hard; fires were to be made, breakfasts on cold mornings had to be prepared, and sometimes the washing was heavy. In the midst of it all, the time for lessons was frequently cut short or extended far into the night. But the woman of the house was kind, and her daughter a helpful fellow-student.
The next summer came another season at school-teaching, and then the term at Rockford. 1862! a great year that in American history, one fraught with great events, and more famous for the defeat of the Union arms than for their success. But in September came Antietam, and the heart of the North took courage. Lincoln now issued a preliminary proclamation, "That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free."
The girls at Rockford, like the people everywhere, were interested in the great events shaking the nation. A new note of seriousness crept into their work. Embroidery was laid aside; instead, socks were knit and bandages prepared. On the night of January 1 a jubilee meeting was held in the town. At last the black man was free and everywhere throughout the North there were shouts of joy.
To Joanna P. Moore, however, the news bore a strange undertone of sadness. She was, as we have said, much more mature than her schoolmates, and to her, somehow, the problem of the spiritual and intellectual freedom of the bondsmen presented itself. Strange that she should be so possessed by this problem! She had of course thought of the possibility of working in China, or India, or Africa – but of this, never!
In February a man who had been on Island No. 10 came to the Seminary and told the girls of the hundreds of women and children there in distress. Cabins and tents were everywhere. As many as three families, with eight or ten children each, cooked their food in the same pot on the same fire. Sometimes the women were peevish or quarrelsome; always the children were ignorant and dirty. "What can a man do to help such a suffering mass of humanity?" asked the speaker. "Nothing. A woman is needed; nobody else will do." For the student listening so intently, the cheery schoolrooms with their sweet associations faded; the vision of foreign missions also vanished; and in their stead stood only a pitiful black woman with a baby in her arms.
She reached Island No. 10 in November. The outlook was dismal enough. The Sunday School at Belvidere of which she was a member pledged four dollars a month toward her support; and this was all the salary in sight. The Government had provided transportation and soldiers' rations. That was in 1863, more than fifty years ago; but every year since then, until 1916, in summer and winter, in sunshine and rain, in the home and the church, with teaching and praying, feeding and clothing, nursing and hoping and loving, Joanna P. Moore in one way or another ministered to the needs of the Negro people of the South.
In April, 1864, her whole colony was removed to Helena, Arkansas. The Home Farm was three miles from Helena. Here was gathered a great crowd of women and children and helpless old men, all under the guard of a company of soldiers in a fort near by. Thither went the missionary, alone, except for her faith in God. She made an arbor with some rude seats, nailed a blackboard to a tree, divided the people into four divisions, and began to teach school. In the twilight every evening a great crowd gathered around her cabin for prayers. A verse of the Bible was read and explained, prayers were offered, one of the sorrow-songs was chanted, and then the service was over.
Some Quaker workers were her friends in Helena, and in 1868 she went to Lauderdale, Mississippi, to help the Friends in an orphan asylum. Six weeks after her arrival the superintendent's daughter died, and the parents left to take their child back to their Indiana home to rest. Miss Moore was left in charge of the asylum. Cholera broke out. Eleven children died within one week. She stood by her post. Often, as she said, those who were well and happy when they retired, ere the daylight came were in the cold grave, for they were buried the same hour they died. Night after night the lone woman prayed to God in the dark, and at length the fury of the plague was abated.
From time to time the failing health of her mother called her home, and from 1870 to 1873 she once more taught school in the vicinity of Belvidere. The first winter the school was in the country. "You can never have a Sunday School in the winter," she was told. But she did; in spite of the snow the house was crowded every Sunday; whole families came in sleighs. Even at that the real work of the missionary was still with the Negroes of the South. In her prayers and in her public addresses they were always with her; and in 1873 friends in Chicago made it possible for her to return to the work of her choice. In 1877 the Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society honored itself by giving to her its first commission.
Nine years she spent in the vicinity of New Orleans. Near Leland University she found a small, one-room house. After buying a bed, a table, two chairs, and a few cooking utensils, she began housekeeping. Often she started out at six in the morning, not to return until dark. Most frequently she read the Bible to those who could not read. Sometimes she gave cheer to mothers busy over the washtub. Sometimes she would teach the children to read or to sew. Often she would write letters for those who had been separated from friends or kindred in the dark days. She wrote hundreds and hundreds of such letters; and once in a while, a very long while, came some response.
Most pitiful of all the objects she found in New Orleans were the old women worn out with years of slavery. They were usually ragpickers who ate at night old scraps for which they had begged during the day. There was in the city an Old Ladies' Home; but this was not for Negroes. A house was secured and the women taken in, Miss Moore and her associates moving into the second story. Sometimes, very often, there was real need; but sometimes, too, provisions came when it was not known who sent them; money or boxes came from Northern friends who had never seen the workers; and the little Negro children in the Sunday Schools in New Orleans gave their pennies.
In 1878 Miss Moore started on a journey of exploration. In Atlanta Dr. Robert at Atlanta Baptist Seminary (now Morehouse College) gave her cheer; so did President Ware at Atlanta University. At Benedict in Columbia she saw Dr. Goodspeed, President Tupper at Shaw in Raleigh, and Dr. Corey in Richmond. In May she appeared at the Baptist anniversaries, with fifteen years of missionary achievement already behind her.
But each year brought its own sorrows and disappointments. She wanted her Society to establish a training school for women; but the objection was raised to this on the score that such an institution would overlap the educational work of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Down in Louisiana of course it was not without danger that a white woman attended a Negro Baptist Association in 1877; and there were always sneers and jeers. At length, however, a training school for mothers was opened in Baton Rouge. All went well for two years; and then a notice with skull and crossbones was placed on the gate. The woman who had worked through the cholera still stood firm; but the students had gone. Sick at heart and worn out with waiting, she left Baton Rouge and the state in which so many of her best years had been spent.
Bible Band work was started in 1884, and Hope in 1885. Just how live the idea is to-day may be seen from the recent experience of one of the representative colleges for young men. With a crowded Sunday schedule, and with all the distraction of concerts, rhetoricals, and athletics, with Y.M.C.A. meetings and required chapel services, with church and Sunday School, thirty men voluntarily meet each week after the required Sunday evening service for the study of the lessons in Hope. This little paper, beginning with a circulation of five hundred, has now reached a monthly issue of more than eighteen thousand copies; and daily it brings its lesson of cheer to thousands of mothers and children in the South. In connection with it all has developed the Fireside School, than which few agencies have been more potent for the salvation and uplift of the humble Negro home.
What wisdom has been gathered from the passing of fourscore years! On almost every page of her tracts, her letters, her account of her life, one finds quotations that for proverbial pith may be equaled only by the words of Franklin or Lincoln or Booker Washington: —
The love of God gave me courage for myself and the rest of mankind; therefore I concluded to invest in human souls. They surely are worth more than anything else in the world.
Beloved friends, be hopeful, be courageous. God cannot use discouraged people.
I am very thankful to-day that there has always been some one weaker than myself along some line, some one that I could really help and comfort.
The good news spread, not by telling what we were going to do, but by praising God for what had been done.
So much singing in all our churches leaves too little time for the Bible lesson. Do not misunderstand me. I do love music that impresses the meaning of words. But no one climbs to heaven on musical scales.
I thoroughly believe that the only way to succeed with any vocation is to make it a part of your very self and weave it into your every thought and prayer.
You must love before you can comfort and help.
There is no place too lowly or dark for our feet to enter, and no place so high and bright but it needs the touch of the light that we carry from the Cross.
How shall we measure such a life? Who can weigh love and hope and service, and the joy of answered prayer? "An annual report of what?" she once asked the secretary of her organization. "Report of tears shed, prayers offered, smiles scattered, lessons taught, steps taken, cheering words, warning words – tender, patient words for the little ones, stern but loving tones for the wayward – songs of hope and songs of sorrow, wounded hearts healed, light and love poured into dark sad homes? Oh, Miss Burdette, you might as well ask me to gather up the raindrops of last year or the petals that fall from the flowers that bloomed. It is true I can send you a little stagnant water from the cistern, and a few dried flowers; but if you want to know the freshness, the sweetness, the glory, the grandeur, of our God-given work, then you must come and keep step with us from early morn to night for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year."
Until the very last she was on the roll of the active missionaries of the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society. In the fall of 1915 she decided that she must once more see the schools in the South that meant so much to her. In December she came again to her beloved Spelman. While in Atlanta she met with an accident that still further weakened her. After a few weeks, however, she went on to Jacksonville, and then to Selma. There she passed.
"When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory… Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
