At the closing exercises of the Orange County Training School the other night in the Rock Baptist church, Bill McDade was assigned to the task of standing by the table and exhorting the assembled company to come forward and make contributions. This is something he has done often and well, and they always choose him for it. In opening his appeal he aroused loud applause by turning to the platform where Mr. Toy sat, along with several other white visitors, and declaring:
“I’m glad to see Professor Toy here, ‘cause he and me are ‘bout the oldest members of the faculty of the University of North Carolina.”
the ease and fluency of the members of the graduating class, when they made their speeches, amazed me but I was still more struck by the enunciation of these young men and women. Their speech was quite different from negro speech as celebrated in song and story—they pronounced their th’s and ing’s distinctly and exhibited little of the slurring and omission of syllables so familiar in dialect tales. The five seniors who spoke were Frederick Hargraves, Nora Edwards, Robert L. Battle, Arlena Riggsbee, and Frank W. Merritt. I never saw five cases of more flawless memory; they went through their talks smoothly from beginning to end.
Luther Hargraves, the father of one of the five, well known throughout the town as a carpenter, and among his own people as an undertaker, w as one of the most pleased persons I ever saw.
I asked him afterward what he though tof its son’s performance. “It’s the first time I ever heard him make a speech,’ he said. “I didn’t know he could do it.”
At these negro gatherings they always courteously escort the visiting white people to the platform. On this night there were present Dr. Charles s. Mangum, Mr. and Mrs. J.S. Holmes, and E.W. Knight. Dr. Mangum told of the plans for the new school building out at the end of Church street and said that it would be finished by next fall. In reviewing the efforts of the negroes in Chapel Hill to build up a school, he told a really remarkable tale of perseverance under extraordinary difficulties. The school house burned about three years ago, leaving the institution homeless. But the negroes set to work and kept the school going. They have been collecting money for it, not only by direct solicitation but by all sorts of entertainments. The teaching force and the attendance has grown steadily, and now this is one of three schools in Orange county with 11 grades, the other two being white schools of Hillsboro and Chapel Hill.
M.C.S. Noble, J.S. Holmes and Dr. Charles S. Mangum have been active in the committee which has carried through the project for the new school.
After Professor E.D. Mickle, principal of the negro school in Durham, had completed a commencement address, Mr. Toy declared it to be the best speech he had heard in a long time, and I know there is many a famous public speaker who would find it impossible to make a better one. It was packed with sound sense—an appeal for hard work and sobriety and good conduct. And it was delivered with genuine eloquence, its seriousness being relieved by two or three excellent stories.
Principal B.L. Bozeman was master of ceremonies. Before the speeches of the graduating class, he delivered an introductory talk in which he told abut the development and aims of the school and about the faithful work of the teachers. He voiced the general enthusiasm of the negroes in Chapel Hill over the prospect of getting into a real building of their own.
I would make a trip many times as far from home to the Rock Hill Baptist church to hear this school sing the song they sang the other night, “Live a Humble.” It seems to me this piece possesses the best qualities of negro religious music. The tune has a haunting melody, and through it all runs an undertone of mingled faith and pathos.
In the audience I saw many of the old-timers among the negroes—Johnse Merritt, Tony Strayhorn, Anthony Johnson, Rick Taylor, and others well known to many generations of University students. Rev. John Caldwell, who raises and sells delicious vegetables in the intervals of preaching, was on the platform.
From the front page of the Chapel Hill Weekly, Thursday, May 22, 1924
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