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VOL UJIE TO UH
HU/L9T.H IWLNI'i-IH'RLL
INSPIRING OP THP "L. G. I.”
A Young 'Mountain Preacher Talks to Negro Man in i Education Pegins and a Great Institution is 'Born —Graham
Bargeron and Gray, a /rio of Heroic Workers,
WAY up among the hills of Chero
kee, about twenty years ago, a
young mountain preacher was
trudging along toward his appoint
ment, studying about the message
he was to deliver to the little coun
try church of which he was pastor.
Coming upon a negro man in the
road they fell into conversation
A
about places, churches, distances and the like,
and that conversation revealed the fact that
the negro was an educated man. His thoughts
were good and were smoothly, fluently ex
pressed. Suddenly he asked the young preach
er where he went to college and what “degree”
he had. This question at once startled and hu
miliated about six feet and two or three inches
of the awkward mountaineer, and having nei
ther college education nor the basis for any
sort of a degree, he began to look at himself
in the glass and realize afresh the handicap
under which he labored.
He had long felt his need of an education.
He had blindly seen that his horizon was pain
fully narrow and that the tools in his work
shop were blunt and few. But he was so situ
ated it seemed he could not go to school. He
had been married, he said, about “ever since
he could remember” —for, being large, “long
and tall” to his age, he believed he was about
as “grown” as he was ever going to be, so he
fell in love with the first pretty girl he saw,
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A VIEW OF THE CAM PUS-LOCUST GROVE INSTITUTE.
married her on the spot and began to be the
head of a home when he was sixteen years old!
By the time the above mentioned conversa
tion took place several “Young Americans”
had joined the young preacher’s Cherokee
ATLANTA, GA M JULY 29, 1909.
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PRESIDENT CLAUD GRAY.
tribe, and while happy in the love of his little
home circle, he found the imaginary distance
between him and a college education growing
wider and wider. But now that wayside con
versation with that educated negro had waked
him up again, and as he communed with him
self going on to try to preach he said to his
own heart: “If that negro can be an educated
man, then whatever my hardships and hin
drances I can be educated, too, and God help
ing me I will 1” And in that high and ardent
moment a mighty purpose was born, the young
preacher felt his brain begin to ring with the
prophecy of a brighter future, and the narrow
horizon which had bound him seemed to break
away into the glad morning of a new and
beautiful day.
And B. J. W. Graham, a graduate of Mercer
University, founder of Locust Grove Institute,
Junior Editor and Business Manager of The
Christian Index and a preacher of greatly en
larged usefulness was given to the world.
Graham Discovers Gray.
During the Summer vacation following Gra
ham’s second year at Mercer and while he was
preaching at Milner, Claude Gray, the son of a
small farmer up in Butts County, near Jackson,
Georgia, came to Milner on a visit. The two
mountain lads met. Graham was on fire with
enthusiasm for Mercer and began talking of
his plans and dreams to Gray. The result was
(Continued on Page 8.)
TWO VOL'.AUS A nAL
jive cznts a coin.
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