They became social outlaws in the South. The peculiar sensitiveness of the
southern white men for women, never shed its protecting influence about
them. No friendly word from their own race cheered them in their work; no
hospitable doors gave them the companionship like that from which they had
come. No chivalrous white man doffed his hat in honor or respect. They
were "Nigger teachers"--unpardonable offenders in the social ethics of the
South, and were insulted, persecuted and ostracised, not by Negroes, but
by the white manhood which boasts of its chivalry toward women.

And yet these northern women worked on, year after year, unselfishly, with
a heroism which amounted almost to martyrdom. Threading their way through
dense forests, working in schoolhouse, in the cabin and in the church,
thrown at all times and in all places among the unfortunate and lowly
Negroes, whom they had come to find and to serve, these northern women,
thousands and thousands of them, have spent more than a quarter of a
century in giving to the colored people their splendid lessons for home
and heart and soul. Without protection, save that which innocence gives to
every good woman, they went about their work, fearing no assault and
suffering none. Their chivalrous protectors were hundreds of miles away in
their northern homes, and yet they never feared any "great dark-faced
mobs," they dared night or day to "go beyond their own roof trees." They
never complained of assaults, and no mob was ever called into existence to
avenge crimes against them. Before the world adjudges the Negro a moral
monster, a vicious assailant of womanhood and a menace to the sacred
precincts of home, the colored people ask the consideration of the silent
record of gratitude, respect, protection and devotion of the millions of
the race in the South, to the thousands of northern white women who have
served as teachers and missionaries since the war.

The Negro may not have known what chivalry was, but he knew enough to