A History of Southland College: The Society of Friends and Black Education in Arkansas

5. Trials and Triumphs

Chapter 5 Trials and Triumphs – I. Guiding Hands Where did Southland stand in the wake of its twelfth anniversary celebration ? To begin, it was by then obvious that Calvin and Alida Clark had become inexorably melded to the institution and that what began as a missionary endeavor was continuing as a life’s work. For Indiana Quakers who knew of the Clarks’ labors and of black Arkansans who had benefited from their efforts, Calvin and Alida became Southland embodied. Both the school and the monthly meeting bore the indelible mark of Alida Clark’s strong hand and unwavering spirit. Her efforts in nurturing and promoting Southland’s dual mission were little short of amazing. Teacher, minister, temperance crusader, and mother-hen, she was also what in later days would be called the “director of development,” corresponding with Quaker journals as well as with prominent and wealthy Friends in a never-ending round of public-relations and moneyraising activities. In addition to the Clarks’ spiritual and pedagogical commitment to Southland, personal motivations and economic investments also helped to hold them in Arkansas. As previously noted, in partnership with their son-in-law Theodore Wright, they gradually acquired considerable land in the vicinity of the institution and, indeed, became planters and entrepreneurs on a considerable scale. From the early s, only Southland teachers received salaries from Indiana Yearly Meeting, and the Clarks worked on an entirely voluntary basis.1 In the circumstances , Calvin, assisted by Amasa Chace, Daniel Drew, and others, had  to give considerable time and effort to farming the family’s personal holdings and supervising their other enterprises. In addition, he directed farm work on land connected to the school as well as maintaining Southland’s physical plant and keeping its financial records. Viewed from the Quaker perspective, during the decade of the s both the school and the Friends’ meeting connected with it were remarkably successful ventures, growing in size and stature, widely known and greatly respected among the local and regional black population. However, as Radical Reconstruction in Arkansas faded and American Friends became engaged in divisive doctrinal disputes, an objective eye might already have seen the emergence of difficulties, both local and national, that would, in time, disturb this remote Quaker island of peace and tranquility. II. Matters of Faith: The Southland Meeting and the Changing Face of American Quakerism After the death of George Fox in , the evangelical fervor of seventeenthcentury Friends gradually receded, and their society turned inward seeking purity of worship rather than enlarged membership. Quakerism in both England and North America lapsed into generations of quietism during which Friends, dressing and speaking in peculiar and archaic ways, largely ceased to proselytize among the “world’s people.” At the same time, many Friends, benefiting from their society’s reputation for honesty and fair-dealing, became successful in the world of business, sometimes amassing considerable fortunes. As noted above (Chapter ), these wealthy Quakers tended to assume leadership positions in their local and yearly meetings if only because they had leisure time to deal with many of the practical problems facing a religious community that lacked regular clergy. The dominate position of the wealthy and weighty in local, monthly, and yearly meetings, sometimes created or exacerbated tensions that reflected social as well as theological differences among Friends.This circumstance was most clearly manifested in the case of the Hicksite Separation that began in Philadelphia in  and quickly spread to the very edge of the western frontier where Hicksite and Orthodox Friends sometimes divided local meetings down the middle amidst un-Quakerly bitterness and ill will.2 In response to the Hicksite insistence that adherence to Quaker tradition required Friends to recognize the primacy of  Trials and Triumphs the “Inward Light” as the chief guide to Quaker belief and practice, Indiana Yearly Meeting reiterated its separate version of orthodoxy by issuing a doctrinal statement emphasizing the divinity of Christ, the centrality of his atoning sacrifice, and the overweening authority of the Bible. Furthermore, in the decade following the Hicksite upheaval, Indiana Friends, inspired by the fire and vision evangelism of the charismatic English minister Joseph John Gurney, “moved significantly closer to the dominant evangelical religious culture of the United States.”3 Early in  the minutes of Southland Monthly Meeting recorded the reading of the London Yearly Meeting’s general epistle “setting before us the great doctrine of the atonement...