12019-03-12T23:57:26+00:00Stanford University Pressaf84c3e11fe030c51c61bbd190fa82a3a1a1282417plainpublished2019-11-04T22:59:01+00:00AnonymousOn July 17, 1909, the Baltimore Afro-Americanreported on a recent meeting of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools. “The president of the association is R. R. Wright, who is also the president of the Georgia State Industrial College at Savannah,” the paper noted. “Dr. Wright is one of the most distinguished Negroes in America. It was he who when a mere boy, shortly after the close of the civil war, gave that now famous answer to a request for a message to the north from General O. O. Howard, who was then at Atlanta, ‘Tell them we are rising.’”
Wright told the conference of educators, “Our teachers are a powerful force in developing character and bettering social conditions, but the relation between the teacher and the home of the child must somehow be made closer. The teacher must work not only with the pupil, but with the parent. A great responsibility rests upon the teachers. It is taken for granted that they see the need of organization, and that they understand the task that is set before them, and that they know that in this age of electricity and combination individual effort must be strengthened and made most effective by co-operation with others working in the same sphere.”
