Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner reminds us of the herculean labors of the bishops of the A.M.E. Church elected in 1888. He was the most learned man of the Big Four. While each of them was a jewel in himself, Bishop Tanner was a scholar of the quartette.
Bishops B.W. Arnett, Wesley J. Gaines and Abraham Grant, the other three members of the quartette, perhaps advanced their church as no other men of the last quarter of the 19th century. Bishop Grant was the lion of Texas and the southwest. Bishop Gaines was the strong man of Georgia. Bishop Arnett was the statesman bishop and was perhaps the most advanced up to his time.
In the death of Bishop Tanner, therefore, the Church and race sustains a great loss while it preserves to itself the activities of the great Seer in Israel. His sons, Henry O Tanner, of Artist fame, and Carl M. Tanner, now pastor of Bethel church, Chicago, will perhaps add lustre to the name made great by the life of Bishop Tanner.
“A prince and a great man has fallen in Israel.”
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Alice B. Dole
Miss Alice B. Dole, who died on January 1st at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, was one of the chief benefactors to the race in North Carolina. She was born in Indiana and educated at Berea College, Kentucky.
Her father was one of the staunch abolitionists of his day and was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was the maker practically of the Allen Industrial School at Asheville, having occupied the position of principal for well nigh 40 years.
The Allen school grew out of a parochial school which was started in Hopkins chapel A.M.E. Zion church, of which the now President of Livingstone College, Dr. D.C. Suggs, was the principal and Miss Lula Love and the late Mrs. Hester Lee were teachers.
When the school began it was at first supported by Mr. Pey, a wealthy northern man, who had taken up his abode at Asheville, and who built a school for white girls and was desirous of building this one for Negro girls. After the death of Mr. Pey both of his ventures went by the board. An effort was made to induce the A.M.E. Zion Church to take over the support of the colored school. Engrossed at t5hat time in the founding of Livingstone College, the Church turned the proposition own. The Methodist Episcopal Church then took a hole, establishing the school next door to the Zion church. The Methodist Episcopal congregation grew out of the establishment of this school.
Miss Dole was placed in charge of the school and always held a sort of directorship relation with the church.
Two years ago she resigned because of ill health. She lived to a good old age and left a name for righteousness. Her services for the race as Asheville were another of those outstanding instances of Christian altruism, and plodding patients.
This editor was a student in the grades under her principalship and learned first of the elements of English, industry and temperance in the well organized school under her benign influence. At that time the teachers were all white women from the north. Since that day they have made a number of teachers from among the graduate women of the institution.
The students who finished this school and were trained in other higher institutions whose homes were in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee have verily populated the mountains with teachers, housekeepers, and the boys have made good in many lines and are number one house-holders.
The boarding department only accommodates the girls, and the boys come as day students.
Miss Dole was able to secure the support of the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of her denomination which fosters the school until this day. She was a personal friend of Miss Frances E. Willard, world temperance reformer, and it was there that we saw Miss Willard and heard her the only time that we ever had that privilege.
God bless her memory, for she was one of His noble women.
From the editorial page of The Star of Zion, Charlotte, N.C., Feb. 8, 1923
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