Page:The Story of the Jubilee Singers (7th).djvu/24

 sometimes to obtain suitable food, shelter, or medical attendance, many of these brave women laid down their lives in the cause, as truly as a soldier who is buried on the field of battle. Even after the war they were shunned as lepers in Southern society, and more than one teacher was assassinated by the Ku Klux banditti for refusing to obey their anonymous warnings to give up the work and leave the State.

But their mission was not without its brighter side. God's Spirit was often present with converting power in the schools, and in the prayer-meetings that always went hand-in-hand with the schools. All their lives, the lash or the auction-block had been the swift penalty for slaves who were caught learning to read. Now that the fetters had fallen from mind as well as body there came an eagerness to learn that was like a consuming fire. The world never saw such a sight before as these schools presented.

Families pinched with hunger asked more eagerly for schools than for bread. Women of threescore and ten sometimes mastered the alphabet in a week. Old men bent over the same spelling-books with their grandchildren. Fathers would work all day to support their families, and walk every night to an evening school eight or ten miles away. Girls suspended from school privileges for a few days, for some wrong-doing, would plead instead for the penalty of a whipping. The children of a whole school would vote unanimously for a session of study in preference to the holiday offered to them.