Evidence of things not seen

We had to clip this obituary from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week and add it to our "Role Models" file. It tells the story of a woman who dared to dream and stepped out on faith¹. Her life story embodies the following clip from Booker T. Washington's 1903 "Industrial Education for the Negro." And we quote:

"One farm bought, one house built, one home sweetly and intelligently kept, one man who is the largest tax payer or has the largest bank account, one school or church maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck garden profitably cultivated, one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well preached, one office well filled, one life cleanly lived — these will tell more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to plead our cause. Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through swamps, up through forests, up through the streams, the rocks, up through commerce, education and religion!" ²

Rest in peace Martha Grier Porter Bentley.


Footnotes:
¹King James Bible; Hebrews 11:1; "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
²Booker T. Washington, "Industrial Education for the Negro," September 1903; First chapter of The Negro Problem, a collection of articles by African Americans (New York: James Pott and Company, 1903).