Old Colony Congregational Club at Brockton, Massachusetts, they invited
two Secretaries to speak upon this Southern problem, and listened with
patience to two long addresses. The discussion which followed indicated
that the churches represented in that large and intelligent club were
most earnestly pondering this Southern problem. In its importance, it
overtops every other consideration before the citizens and churches of
America to-day! Thoughtful people are coming more than ever to realize
this. The processes of thought through which they have passed already,
and the facts they have settled in their own minds, indicate a very
hopeful condition of things. In the first place, they are sure that this
is not a local or sectional question. It is a National question, and
will involve the whole country in anarchy and misrule, unless the
anarchy and misrule of the Southern whites are stopped. New England's
voice will be heard in solemn and earnest protest, unless there is a
radical change in the conduct of the dominant race of the South very
soon. Such outrages as those at Barnwell, S.C., and Jackson, Miss.,
which are only types of many such, must be stopped.

Another fact that has been settled in the minds of the people here, is
that the education and moral elevation of the Negroes is a matter of
painful exigency; that the forces employed by the American Missionary
Association in that field must be largely multiplied. The President of
the Old Colony Club summed up the discussion of the evening by saying
most earnestly that all this meant that the contributions to the
American Missionary Association must be largely increased among the
churches represented in that Club, if we would solve this terrible
Southern problem, and save our country from this threatened danger.

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