being as pioneer bishops, A. M. E. and A. M. E. Zion, strode through the Southland "to seek their brethren." Nor were other interests idle. Schools were established by charitable and religious organizations of the North and in their wake came Congregational, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches.

"The first State Convention of colored Baptists was organized in North Carolina in 1866; the second in Alabama and the third in Virginia in 1867; the fourth in Arkansas in 1868 and the fifth in Kentucky in 1869. To-day (1890) there are colored conventions in fifteen states."

As an illustration of the growth and development of the national organization among the Baptists under the condition of freedom, the American National Baptist Convention was organized August 25, 1866, the Baptist African Missionary Convention of the Western States and Territories organized January 15, 1873, the Baptist Foreign Missionary Convention of the United States, organized December, 1880; last but not least, the Baptist Educational Convention in 1892.

Under the fostering influences of these organizations, associations and conventions among the Baptists, conferences, annual and general, among the Methodists, presbyteries and synods among the Presbyterians, congresses of the colored Catholics and Episcopal churches, we have a showing as phenomenal as that of the growth of the American Negro in education and the accumulation of property.

XVII

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT

THE failure of the Republican Party in the administration of Benjamin Harrison to safeguard the exercise by the Negro of the right of franchise in the South, followed by the revision of the Constitution of Mississippi in 1890, was notice to the opponents of Negro citizenship especially in view of the adverse decisions of the United States Supreme Court, that they could have a free hand in dealing with the interpretation of the 14th and 15th Amendments and the legislation based thereon.

They did not as a rule openly avow a purpose to attack the amendments, but pretended that their sole object was to raise the standard of the electorate by rescuing it from the control of the vicious and the ignorant. Following the Mississippi plan other Southern States revised their constitutions until to-day the Fifteenth Amendment is a dead letter in the States South of the Potomac River. Laws establishing separate cars on the common carriers, popularly known as "Jim Crow" car laws, were enacted throughout the same section.

Inferior educational facilities in the schools for the Negro were still further curtailed, going even so far in the city of New Orleans, as to make no provision for colored youth beyond the fifth grade. The extent of the disparity between colored and white schools is difficult to prove by the record, because the absence of separate statistical reports of the costs of each race prevents a comparative showing of the per capita cost, salaries and equipment for colored and white education. The propaganda which has accomplished these results has included such

men as Thomas Dixon in private life, Benjamin Tillman, Hoke Smith and J. A. Vardaman in the political arena. The press of many metropolitan newspapers, through men of Southern birth, training and traditions and by means of bold headlines, exaggerating the weaknesses of the Negro and concealing and ignoring his commendable progress, except where it is absolutely impossible to do otherwise, is a most important factor.

voice raised in protest which Some organizations in which

For a long time there was no the Nation could or would hear. Southern whites have leadership have aimed to promote the educational interests of the race, but scarce a voice of protest was raised against the prevailing and popular tendencies when the second Mississippi plan was introduced.

Frequent lynchings, many of them by burning at the stake were chronicled in the newspapers of the country, and directly and by innuendo the charge of rape was held against the Negro. Public sentiment gradually became, from being sympathetic, hostile to the Negro; even the great Republican Party became indifferent and at times seemed to indorse the Southern reactionary plan. Finally President W. H. Taft announced in his inaugural address, March 4, 1909, a line of policy which was a complete surrender to the Southern view respecting the equal citizenship of the Negro. This was an avowed public policy in the centennial year of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipator.

This also illustrates how perplexing are the problems of the evolution of Negro citizenship at the close of the first decade of the 20th century. The era of safeguarding his rights and privileges by the agencies of constitutional amendments and statutory provisions, it has been cited, passed with the close of the nineteenth century, so far as there are present indications. But such constructive tendencies for the amelioration of his social, material, even his political condition, as the Business Men's League, the National Medical Association and Educational Con

ventions, and organized sociological movements, give a rift in the sky. Under the advancement of these movements there are more than a score of men-women too-destined to have as salutary an influence in the progress and advancement of the race as the men and women who became eminent before the Civil War and the Reconstruction period when there was a sympathetic body of white men and women that could be relied on to advance the growth and maintenance of a public sentiment that promoted freedom and enfranchisement.

In the profession of medicine and surgery, Dr. Daniel H. Williams of Chicago, Dr. Marcus F. Wheatland of Newport, R. I., Dr. Solomon C. Fuller of the Hospital for the Insane of Massachusetts and Dr. C. V. Roman of Nashville, Tenn., have more than a local recognition as experts in their chosen profession.

In law, Ashbie W. Hawkins of Baltimore, who has thus far demonstrated his capacity in the highest courts of Maryland; Edward H. Morris in the leading bar of the West, and William H. H. Hart of the District of Columbia and Josiah T. Settle of Memphis, Tenn., have demonstrated the ability of the Negro lawyer in the higher realms of the profession. As educational administrators with independent institutions, Dr. John Hope of Morehouse College, R. R. Wright of Georgia State College, Inman E. Page of Langston University, Bishop George W. Clinton, William A. Joiner of Wilberforce University, W. S. Scarborough, and Joshua H. Jones, now an A. M. E. Bishop, have demonstrated the executive ability of which successful college Presidents are made. Two women have displayed in this same field capabilities which spell academic success-Lucy Laney, who founded the Haines Institute at Augusta, Ga., and Nannie H. Burroughs, who created the Girls' National Training School at Lincoln Heights, almost within the shadow of the National Capitol and the axis of the great National Lincoln Monument.

In the business of publishing, R. H. Boyd of Nashville, Tenn. and Ira T. Bryant have achieved flattering success.

In pure

science, E. E. Just of Howard University has a distinction as a biologist in a field in which the lamented Prof. Earl Finch of Wilberforce University was winning international reputation. As a journalistic controversialist, John E. Bruce, President of the Negro Society for Historical Research, has a reputation that is conceded wherever the Negro race has a conscious influence.

The sermons of Rev. Francis J. Grimké on National topics are great headlights exhorting to higher living and rebuking national hypocrisy. In his brother, Archibald H. Grimkè, President of the American Negro Academy and Kelly Miller, of Howard University, the race has two masters of criticism and controversy, both of offense and defense, sterling champions of the integrity and destiny of the American Negro. In the field of letters there are Stanley G. Brathwaite, the poet, Charles W. Chesnutt, the novelist, and Dr. William E. Burghardt DuBois, sociologist and editor; R. R. Wright, Jr., and M. N. Work, sociologists and statisticians. In journalism, John Mitchell is unique-publisher and banker. As a business genius, Charles Banks amid the bayous of Mississippi, and W. R. Pettiford, of Birmingham, have solved the problem of industrial credits.

T. Thomas Fortune and William Monroe Trotter diametrical in methods and manners are both exemplifications of the power of Negro journalism.

But even the array of such a coterie of capable men and women seems futile in the face of the unanimity of the ruling classes of the South and the acquiescence of the North in the policy and program of the South. Fortunately, over and against the politicians of the South as represented by those who have infused the poison of their pernicious principles in the body politic, retarding, postponing the realization of the blessings of liberty to all regardless of race, there has been a quiet band of white Southern thinkers who have introduced the leaven of humane principles in accord with the Federal Constitution, the