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Explore primary-source writing and historical reflections connected to Dr. Matilda A. Evans and her era.

Featured writings (1916)

Dr Matilda A. Evans On Education (Written In 1916)

One of the benefits conferred by education is enlightening the mind on the subject of one’s duty. Finding what is duty, the manner of discharging it will suggest itself to the alert, the active, and those of industrious and intelligent discernment. Perhaps forever hidden would remain the necessity for certain tasks were it not for the inspiration idealists receive from education. This education, if proper and well rounded, also forces all who embrace it into the line of work promising the accomplishment of the greatest achievements – achievements such as in leaving footprints on the sands of time which leave no mark of dishonor, but such as really and truly do give new heart and new hope and new courage to the weaker brother.

Matilda A Evans MD On The Aftermath Of The Civil War (Written In 1916)

The great Civil War predicted by Martha Schofield as inevitable in the settlement of the problem of slavery broke out in all its fury in 1860-1861 and was not only attended by the loss of hundreds of thousands of priceless lives, whose bodies filled the countless hospitals of pain, and made gory the prairies and furrows of old fields, as they on the side of the South as well as they on the side of the North, bled and died for the eternal right as each saw what was their duty: but the demoralization precipitated by this gigantic conflict, followed by the assassination of the President Lincoln, the idol of the whole free-civilized world, was even more staggering in its influence on the lives and fortunes of those left to solve the problems created by the great revolution.

Dr Matilda A. Evans On Historical Black Colleges And Universities (Written In 1916)

Much credit must be given to the practical success of Miss Schofield’s school work for the marvelous strides made by the education of the Negro at such celebrated institutions as Hampton in Virginia, with an enrollment annually of over 1500 students and in endowment of over $1 million. And at Tuskegee, with about an equal number of students and as a great or greater endowment fund.

Then there are other great institutions devoted entirely to the education of the colored race making quite a feature of the Industrial Department, such as Atlanta University in Atlanta, GA. Fisk University in Nashville TN, Hanes Institute in Augusta GA. And Spellman University, Atlanta, GA., Claflin and the Agricultural. Colored State College at Orangeburg, SC.

Also, Benedict College at Columbia and Voorhees Institute at Denmark (SC) all of which have grown into existence and attained a topmost rung of the ladder of fame since the coming to the South of Martha Schofield in 1865.

Dr Matilda A. Evans On The Great Progress Of The Negro In Post Civil War (Written In 1916)

If the Negroes were not discriminated against in the pursuit of their occupations in the cities: if they were encouraged to buy homes and beautify and improve them, instead of being discouraged by the many obstacles placed in their way, such for instance, as the agitation by some of the best white people and to rent a home built by Negro labor, and the probability of another riot such as that in Atlanta in 1906, it is entirely within his power to eclipse any race of men the Southern white people could possibly induce to come and make homes among them. In time they will do it in the morality of their lives, just as they now are outstripping the members of the race laying claim to the purest blood that ever flowed in Aryan veins, in the art of farming.

Dr Matilda A. Evans On A Separate Territory Given To The Negro (Written In 1916)

The whites of the South by a large and increasing majority make no pretense at the determination of that race to keep the Negro down politically, at least; they depend upon their ability to do this as the only means of continuing themselves in power. When the Negro demands a share in the affairs of the government as he inevitably will and most assuredly should do, then will come concrete examples which will not only justify the separation of the two peoples through some plan of segregation (separation) but make their segregation (separation) imperative.