[*Speeches and Writings File*] [*"The Progress and Problems of Colored Women," 1899-1920*] [*AN AMERICAN UNION NIÓN PANAMERICANA NIĀO PANAMERICANA SHINGTON 6, D. C. , U. S. A. Official Business Servicto Oficial Serviço Oficial*] [*PENALTY FOR PRIVATE USE, $300 EXENTO DE FRANQUEO POSTAL ISENTO DE FRANQUIA POSTAL*] The Progress of Colored Women Remarks at 49th Anniversary August 1945 First Address on Progress and Problems of Colored Women Delivered in Chicago in 1899- written long hand The Progress of Colored Women Let the future of colored women be judged by the past since their emancipation, and neither they nor their friends have any cause for anxiety. Though there are many things in the Negro's present status in this country to perplex and discourage him, he has some blessings for which to be thankful. Not the least of these is the progress of our women in everything that makes for the culture of the individual and the elevation of the race. Forty years ago the great masses of colored women bound under the yoke of slavery. Subjected to hardships which neither human nor divine law seemed able to soften, surrounded by influences which put a premium upon immorality and made chastity an impossibility,- When Ernestine Rose, Lucretia Mott, 2 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony began that agitation by which colleges were opened to women and the numerous reforms inaugurated for the amelioration of their condition along all lines, their sisters who groaned in bondage had little reason to hope that these blessings would ever brighten their [sad] crushed and blighted lives. For, During those days of oppression and despair, colored women were not only refused admittance to institutions of learning, but the law of the State in which the majority lived made it a crime to teach them to read. Not only could they possess no property, but even their bodies were not their own. Nothing, in short, that could degrade or brutalize the womanhood of the race was lacking in that system from which colored women then had little hope of escape. So gloomy were their prospects, so pernicious the customs, so fatal the laws only forty years ago. But from the day their 3 fetters were broken and their minds released from the darkness of ignorance to which for more than two hundred years they had been doomed; from the day they could stand erect in the dignity of woman hood, no longer bond but free, till to night, colored women have forged steadily ahead in the acquisition of knowledge and in the cultivation of those virtues which make for good. To use a thought of the illustrious Frederick Douglass, if judged by the depths from which they have come, rather than by the heights which those blessed with centuries of opportunities have attained, colored women need not hang their heads in shame- Consider, if you will, the almost insurmountable obstacles which have confronted colored women in their efforts to educate and cultivate themselves, - since their emancipation, and I dare assert, not boastfully, but with pardonable pride, I hope that the progress they have made and the work 4 they have accomplished will compare favorably, at least, with that of their more fortunate sisters, from whom the opportunity of acquiring knowledge and the means of self culture have never been entirely withheld. For, not only are colored women with ambition and aspiration handicapped on account of their sex, but they are everywhere baffled and mocked on account of their race. Desperately and continuously they are forced to fight that opposition, born of a cruel unreasonable prejudice which neither their merit nor their necessity - seems able to subdue. Not only because they are women, but because they are colored women, are discouragement and disappointment meeting them at every turn. Avocations opened and opportunities offered their more favored sisters have been and are tonight closed and barred against them. While those of the dominant race 5 have a variety of trades and pursuits from which they may choose, the woman through whose veins one drop of African blood is known to flow is limited to a pitiful. So overcrowded are the avocations in which colored women may engage and so poor the pay in consequence that only the barest livelihood can be eked out by the rank and file. And yet in spite of the opposition encountered and the obstacles opposed to their acquisition of knowledge and their accumulation of property, the progress made by colored women along these lines has never been surpassed by the [rarely equaled] many people in the history of the world. Though the slaves were liberated less than forty years, penniless and ignorant, with neither shelter nor food, so great was their thirst for knowledge and so herculean their efforts to secure it, that there are today hundreds of negroes, many of them women, who are graduates, some of them having 6 taken degrees from the best institutions in the land. From Oberlin, that friend of the oppressed, Oberlin, my dear alma mater whose name will always be loved and whose praise will ever be sung as the first institution in this country which was just, broad and benevolent enough to open the doors to negroes and to women on an equal footing with men; from Wellesly and Vassar, from Cornell and Ann Arbor, from the best high schools throughout the North, East and west colored girls have been graduated with honor and have thus forever settled the question of their capacity and worth! A few years ago [an examination was held] in Chicago, [in which] a large number of young men and women of the dominant race and only one colored girl competed for a scholarship entitling the successful competitor to an entire course through the Chicago University. As the result of the examination which was held the only colored girl among them stood first and thus captured this great prize. 7. and so wherever colored girls have studied, their instructors bear testimony to their intelligence, their diligence and their success. With this increase of wisdom, there has sprung up in the hearts of colored women an ardent desire to do good in the world. No sooner had the favored few availed themselves of such advantages as they could secure than they hastened to dispense these blessings to the less fortunate of their race. With tireless energy and eager zeal colored women have since their emancipation been continuously prosecuting the work of educating and elevating their race as though upon themselves alone devalued the accomplishment of this great task. Of the colored teachers engaged in instructing our youth it is perhaps no exaggeration to say that fully ninety percent are women. See the backwoods remote from the civilization and comforts of the city and town, on the plantations, reeking with ignorance and vice, colored women may be found battling with [such] evils which such conditions always entail. 8. Many a heroine of whom the world will never hear, has thus sacrificed her life to her race, amid surroundings and in the face of privations which [such conditions always entail] only martyrs have sufficient grace to bear. Shirking responsibility has never been a fault with which colored women might be truthfully charged. [*Indefatigably & conscientiously in public*] They have always been ambitious [*work of all kinds & to more will be accomplished in*] for their race. They have often struggled single handed [*the future we hope . Begin on urge with acting*] and alone to secure for their loved ones and themselves [*on the principle &*] that culture of the head and heart for which they hungered and thirsted so long in vain. But it dawned upon them finally that individuals working alone or scattered here and there in small companies might be never so honest in purpose, so indefatigable in labor, so conscientious about methods and so wise in projecting plans, they would nevertheless accomplish little compared with the possible achievement of many individuals all banded [strongly] firmly together throughout the entire land, with heads and hearts fixed on the same high purpose and hands joined in united strength. As the 8 Many a heroine of whom the world will never hear has thus sacrificed her life to her race amid surroundings and in the face of privations which only martyrs can bear. Shirking responsibility has never been a fault with which colored women may truthfully be charged. Indefatigably and conscientiously in public work of all kinds they engage that they may benefit and elevate their race. The result of this labor has been prodigious indeed. By banding themselves together in the interest of education and morality and by adopting the most practical means to this end colored women have in thirty short years become a great power for good. Through the National Association which was formed through the union of two large organizations in July 1896, and which is now the only national body among colored women, much good has been done in the past and more will be accomplished in the future let us hope. [*Page 10 the crying need*] [*In article for Revue des Deux Mondes I omitted this from here to page 11*] Acting upon the principle of concentration and union colored women of the United States have banded themselves together to fulfill a mission to which they feel peculiarly adapted and especially called. We have become national because from the Atlantic to the Pacific from 9 Maine to the Gulf we wish to set in motion influences which will stop the awful ravage made by practices that sap our strength and preclude the possibility of advancement which under other circumstances could easily be made. We call ourselves an Association to signify that we have joined hands one with the other to work together in a common cause to proclaim to the world that the women of our race have become partners in the [?] of progress and reform. We denominate ourselves colored, not because we are narrow and wish to lay special stress upon the color of the skin, for which no one is responsible, which in itself is proof neither of an individual's virtue nor of his vice, which is a stamp of neither of one's intelligence nor of his ignorance, but we refer to the fact that this is an association of colored women, because our peculiar status in this country serves to demand that we stand by ourselves in prosecuting the special work for which we organized. For this reason and for this reason alone it was thought best to invite the attention of the world to the fact that colored women, as a unit realize their responsibility and together have clasped hands to assume it. Special stress is laid upon the fact this association is composed of women, not 10 because we would willfully deprive our [poor, downtrodden] brothers of rights and privileges which we ourselves enjoy, in imitation of the example which they have set us for so many years, but because the work which we hope to accomplish can be done better, we believe, by the mothers, wives, daughters and sisters of the race than by the fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. The crying need of an organization of colored women is questioned by no one conversant with our peculiar trials and perplexities and acquainted with the various obstacles which block our path to those acquisitions, attainments and honors to which it should be the right of every member of every race to aspire. While we rejoice in the unprecedented advancement made by the Negro over his emancipation, and take pride in the steady march onward and upward to the highest and best things in life, we are nevertheless painfully mindful of his weaknesses and defects. Though we know the Negro is no worse than other races equally ignorant, equally poor and equally oppressed, we would nevertheless see him lay aside the sins that do so easily beset him and come forth clothed in all those attributes 11 of mind and graces of character that stamp the highest type of man. To compass this end through the simplest, swiftest, surest methods colored women have organized themselves into the Association whose power for good, let us hope, will be as enduring as it is unlimited. Believing that it is only through the home that a people may become really good and truly great the National Association of Colored Women has entered that sacred domain. Homes, more homes, better homes, purer homes is the text upon which our sermons have been and will be preached. As long as a people call that place home, in which the air is foul, the manners bad, and the morals worse, so long will this called home be a menace to health, [the] a breeder of [disease] vice and the abode of crime. Not alone upon the miracles of these hovels are the awful consequences of their filth and immorality rested, but upon the heads of those who sit calmly by and make no effort to stem the tide of disease and vice will vengeance as surely fall. [*Begin*] Through mother's meetings which are a special feature of the work planned by the Association, [much] useful information about everything pertaining to the home has been disseminated. We would have heart to heart talks with our women, that we may strike at the root of evils, many of which lie at the fireside. If the women of the dominant race with all the centuries of education, culture and refinement back of them, with all their wealth of opportunity ever present 12 with them, if these women feel the need of a Mother's Congress that they are enlightened as to the best methods of rearing their children [?] conducting their homes how much more do our women from whom shackles have just been stricken need information on the same vital subjects. And so throughout the country we are working vigorously and conscientiously to establish Mother's Congresses in every community in 12 By the Tuskegee Alabama Branch of the National Association The work of bringing the light of knowledge and the gospel of cleanliness to these women on the Alabama plantations has been conducted with signal success. Our efforts have thus far been confined to four estates comprising thousands of acres of land, on which live hundreds of colored people, yet in the darkness of ignorance and the grip of sin, miles away from churches and schools. Under the influence of plantation owners and through no fault of their own, the condition of colored colored people in certain sections is no better to day than it was at the close of the war. Feeling the great responsibility resting upon them, more favored colored women [who have been favored above their sisters], both in organizations under the National Association and in as individuals are working with might and main to afford their unfortunate sisters opportunities of civilization and education, which without them they would be unable to secure. By many of our clubs object lessons are given in the best way to sweep, dust, cook, wash and iron, together with other information 13 [*Page 10. How to Clothe Children*] [instruction] concerning household affairs. Talks on social purity are made for the benefit of those mothers, who in many instances fall short of their duty not because they are vicious and depraved but because they are ignorant and poor. [*Begin*] Against the one room cabins so common in the rural settlements we have inaugurated a vigorous crusade. Creating a healthful, wholesome public [community] sentiment in every community to which we can extend our influence is believed to be one of the greatest services we can render our race. The duty of setting a high moral standard and living up to it devolves upon us as colored women in a peculiar way. False accusations and malicious slanders are circulated against us every day, both in the press and by the direct descendants of those who in years past were responsible for the moral degradation of their female slaves. While these [calumnies are in] foul aspersions upon the character of colored women have in many instances [not] foundation many instances no foundation in fact, we know, they can do us a great deal of harm, if those who represent the intelligence and virtue 14 among us do not in both [our] public and private life avoid even the appearance of evil. [*Begin*] Against the one room cabin, so common [in the rural settlements] among our poor all over the land, we have inaugurated a vigorous crusade. Where families of eight or ten men, women and children are all huddled promiscuously together in a single apartment, [a] condition of things which obtains among our poor all over the land, there is little hope of inculcating morality and modesty. And yet, in spite of these environments which are so destructive of virtue, in spite of the fateful inheritance left us and though the safeguards usually by slavery, in spite of the manifold pitfalls and temptations to which our young girls are subjected, and though the safe guards usually thrown around maidenly youth and innocence are in some sections entirely withheld from colored girls, statistics compiled by men, not inclined to falsify in favor of my race show that immorality among colored women is not so great as among peasant women equally ignorant & poor in countries like Austria, Italy, Germany, Sweden and France. 15. Dotted all over the country are charitable organizations for the aged, orphaned and poor, which have been established by colored women; just how many it is difficult to state. Since there is such an imperative need of statistics, bearing on the progress, possessions and prowess of colored women, the National Association has undertaken to secure this data of such value and importance to the race. Among the charitable institutions, either founded, conducted or supported by colored women may be mentioned the Hale Infirmary of Montgomery, Alabama; the Carrie Steel Orphanage of Atlanta; the Reed Orphan Home of Covington, the Haines Industrial School of Augusta, in the State of Georgia; a Home for the Aged of both races at New Bedford and St. Monica's House of Boston in Massachusetts; Old Folks Home of Memphis, Tenn, Colored Orphans Home, Lexington, Ky, together with others of which lack of time forbids me to speak. Mt. Meigs Institute is an excellent example of a work originated and carried into successful execution by 16 a colored woman. The school was established for the benefit of colored people on the plantations in the black belt of Alabama, because of the 700000 Negroes living in that State, probably ninety-percent are outside of the cities; and Waugh was selected, because in the township of Mt. Muge, the population is practically all colored. Instructions given in this school is of the kind best suited to the need of these people for whom it was established. Along with their scholastic training, girls are taught everything pertaining to the management of a [school] home, while boys learn practical farming, carpentering, wheelwrighting, blacksmithing and have some military training. Having started with almost nothing at the end of eight years the trustees of the school owned nine acres of land and five buildings, in which two thousand pupils have received instruction, all through the courage, the industry and the sacrifice of one colored woman. 17 The Phyllis Wheatley Club of New Orleans La. an organization of colored women has succeeded in establishing a Sanatorium with a Training School for Nurses which has given abundant proof of its utility and necessity. The conditions which caused the colored women of New Orleans to choose this special field in which to operate are such as exist in many other sections of our land. From the city hospitals colored doctors are excluded altogether, not even being allowed to practice in the colored wards, and colored patients, no matter how wealthy they are, are not received at all, unless they are willing to go into the charity wards. Thus the establishment of a sanatorium answers a variety of purposes. It affords colored medical students an opportunity of gaining a practical knowledge of their profession and it furnishes a well equipped establishment for colored patients who do not care to go into the charity wards of the public hospitals. The daily clinics have been a great blessing to the colored poor. In the operating department supplied with all the modern appliances over two 18 When I received the last report, hundred operations had been performed, all of which have resulted successfully under the colored surgeon-in-chief. Of the eight nurses who [had] registered, when [I received the last report] the sanatorium was established, one had [already] passed a[n] successful examination before the State Medical Board of Louisiana at the end of the second year, and began now to practicing her profession. Surely then others have graduated and are being patronized by some of the best people of the city. During the yellow fever epidemic of New Orleans in the summer of 1896, Phyllis Wheatley nurses were in constant demand. By indefatigable energy and heroic sacrifice of money and time, [these] this small band of noble women raised nearly one thousand dollars with which to defray the expenses of the Sanatarium for the first eight months of its existence. Since then it has found itself to be become such a blessing to New Orleans, that the municipal government has voted it an annual appropriation of several hundred dollars, which we hope will soon be increased. In Augusta Georgia there is a coeducational school for colored youth founded by Lucy Laney, who has devoted 19 her entire life to the education of her race. [After struggling] Having struggled heroically against the obstacles which stood between her and an education, she graduated from the Atlanta University. After [earning every penny not actually] teaching for several years and saving every penny of her salary not actually needed to support herself, Miss Laney rented a two story plank house in Augusta in which she used as for a dormitory and converted an old barn on the premises into [a school room] recitation rooms Obliged to [hire] employ teachers to help her, she had no means of paying them, except as she could collect small sums of tuition from her pupils, most of whom were too poor to pay anything. [Determined to] The teachers complained loudly when their salaries were not forthcoming and the founder of the new school realized [?] than ever that she must shoulder the responsibility. Rather than [renounce] abandon the project of founding a school which she saw was so sorely needed, Miss Laney spent all the money she had previously earned [by teaching], in paying the teachers' salaries and trying to meet the various needs of the school. 20 In spite of the many difficulties under which if school labored its [grow] growth was from the first mavelously. Having begun with only a handful of boys & girls [pupils], there were seventy five pupils at the end of the first year, and 234 pupils at the end of the second - The progress of her work was so satisfactory, and [XXX] Laney so impressed all who saw her - with her superior character and her [?] spirit of self sacrifice, that when the General Assembly of the P[?] [?] Church which met in Minneapolis some years ago had the opportunity of placing ten thousand dollars in some particular Educational work of the South, the members of the Board decided unanimously to give the money to Miss Laney's. school. ThereAfter struggling so long against defeat [?] odds Miss Laney at length received financial assistance which enabled her to better equip her school and make it a greater power for good The Ha[??] Industrial and [?] School now owns buildings with nearly $20000 and has about 800 pupils - 21 the literary work includes well arranged courses of study from the Kingergarten to the college for [?]. millinery, laundering and general housework - Believing that a special effort should be made to [?] and [?] colored boys, Miss Laney is now trying to [establish] a manual training [school] department [?] The H[?] Industrial & Normal School which was founded and successfully mantained for years solely [?] the [?] maintained for so many years by this colored woman of this great, good colored woman is named for a i 22 Instead of denouncing as a vice the characteristic of the negro to imitate those who are intellectually and financially his superior, it should be accounted his crowning value. So long as an individual aspires to reach up to the level of those who represent what is best in mankind, just so long is there hope of his future. Races are composed of individuals and what in [?] particular is true of one is true of another And while the negro during this century can not hope to attain unto the [?] [already] which have been reached by the dominant race in this country all things are possible to him in the to [the] need never despair of the time to come, if he continues to be filled with his present desire to reach the lofty [?] heights already gained by those in whose footsteps he is trying to tread. 22 looked after, parents and teachers urged to cooperate with each other, rescue and reform work engaged in, in order to uplift unfortunate women and tempted girls, public institutions investigated, garments cut, made and distributed to the needy poor. Questions affecting our legal status as a race are also agitated by our women. Begun In Louisana and Tennessee, colored women have several times petitioned the legislatures of their respective States to repeal the obnoxious Jim Crow Car Laws, nor will any stone be left unturned, until this iniquitous and unjust enactment against respectable American citizens be forever wiped from the statutes of the South - Against the barbarous Convict Lease System, of which negroes and especially the female prisoners are the principal victims colored women are waging a ceaseless war. Nothing lies nearer the heart of our women than the children, many of whose lives so sad and dark we might brighten and bless. We feel keenly the 23 need of the Kindergarten and we are putting forth earnest efforts to honeycomb this country with them from one extremity [end] to another. Free Kindergartens in every city and hamlet of this broad land, we must have, if the children are to receive from us what it is our duty to give. Already during the past few years Kindergartens have been established and successfully maintained by several organizations of the National Association, from which most encouraging reports have come. May their worthy example be emulated till in no branch of our organization shall the children of the poor, at least, be deprived of the blessings the more unfavorable the environments of children, the more necessary is it that steps be taken to counteract baleful influences upon innocent victims. How imperative is it then that as colored women we inculcate correct principles and set good examples for our own youth, whose little feet will have so many thorny paths of prejudice temptation and in 24 justice to tread. The colored youth is vicious we are told and statistics showing the large number of our boys and girls who crowd the penitentiaries and fill the jails appal and dishearten us. But side by side with these facts and figures of crime I would have pictured and presented the miserable hovels from which these youthful criminals come. [*X Page 6 crowded into alleys*] Make a tour of the settlements of colored people, who in many cities are relegated to the most noisome sections permitted by the municipal government, and behold the miles of humanity who infest them. Here are our little ones, the future representatives of the race fairly drinking in the pernicious example set them by their elders, coming in contact with nothing but ignorance and vice till at the age of six evil habits are formed which no amount of civilizing or Christianizing can ever completely break. [We are listening to the cry] The more closely I study the relation of the colored women to the race the more clearly defined becomes their duty to the children -- the importance of engaging extensively 25 in this effort to uplift the [children] little ones grows upon our [more] thoughtful women more and more every day. They feel that every child which [gr??] Particularly do they feel a great responsibility for [the career of] the [?] & strays [our little] ones to whom the opportunity of learning by contact what is true and good and beautiful can come only through the efforts which they [ourselves] themselves exact The conviction is growing that through the kindergarten alone which teaches its lessons during the most impressionable years of childhood, shall [?] be able to save countless thousands of our little ones who are going to destruction before our very eyes. Believing in the caring grace of the kindergarten for our little ones, many of our women are urging the National Association to consider the establishment of kindergartens as the special mission it is called upon to fulfill. The lack of establishing involves kindergartens seems herculean indeed especially when [?] consider the straightened circumstances of the colored [many of our] women [ac?ly] engaged [interacted] in the work, [Pa??] of what [mo??] [but] we feel [?] [?] looking toward the regeneration of man - that we shall never [accomplish] the good it is in our 26 power to do accomplish, nor shall be discharge fully our obligation to the race, until we engage in this work in those sections at least, where it is most needed. In many cities and towns the kindergarten has already been incorporated [troduced] in to the public schools [system] which our children are permitted to attend. Here it is [will] not be necessary for us, either as organizations or as individuals to work. But, whenever the conditions are such that our children are deprived of the training which they can receive from the kindergarten alone, deprived of that training which from the very nature of the case they so sorely need, there our women have been establishing & will continue to [?] [are] attempting to establish these schools from which so much benefit to our little ones may accrue. Colored women are listening to the cry of their children. In imitation of the example set by the Great Teacher of men who could not offer himself as a sacrifice, until he had made an eternal plea for the innocence and helplessness of childhood; colored women are everywhere. 27 reaching out after the waifs and strays, who without their aid may be doomed to lives of evil and shame. So keenly alive is the National Association of Colored Women to the necessity of rescuing our little ones, whose noble qualities are deadened and dwarfed by the very atmosphere which they breathe, that the officers are now trying to [secure means] raise money with which to send out a Kindergarten organizer, whose duty it shall be both to arouse the conscience of our women and establish Kindergartens, wherever means therefor can be secured. Side by side in importance with the Kindergarten stands the day nursery a charity of which there is an imperative need among us and in which [many of] some our women are actively engaging. Thousands of our wage earning mothers with large families dependent upon them for support are obliged to leave their infants all day to be cared for either by young brothers and sisters who know nothing about it, or by some good natured neighbor who promises much but who 28 does little. Some of these infants are locked alone in a room from the time the mother leaves in the morning, until she returns at night. Their suffering is unspeakable. Not long ago, I read in a Southern newspaper that an infant thus locked alone in a room all day, while its mother went out to wash, had cried itself to death. Recently I have had under direct observation a day nursery, established for infants of working women, and I have been shocked at some of the miserable little specimens of humanity brought in by mothers, who had been obliged to board them out with either careless or heartless people. In one instance the hands and legs of a poor little mite of only fourteen months had been terribly drawn and twisted with rheumatism contracted by sleeping in a cold room with no fire during the winter, while the family with whom it boarded enjoyed comfortable quarters overhead. And so I might go on enumerating cases, showing how terrible is the suffering of infants of working women, who have no one with 31 unless some of their energy, or some of their brain or some of their money is used in the name and for the sake of the children, thereby establishing a day nursery, a kindergarten or forming a children's club, which last is possible to all - (Begin women?) who are banded together to do good, who have pledged themselves to work most vigorously and (conscientously upon that which will redound most to the progress and welfare of the race, we constantly recommend [to] the[m] children [??] plead to them for the children, for those who will soon represent us, for those through whom as a race we shall soon stand or fall in the estimation of the world, for those upon those in whom the hope of every [race] people must necessarily [?] be built We believe that in no way could our race be elevated more quickly be affected devote ourselves enthusiastically, conscienciously to the and more surely children, with their warm little hearts, their susceptible minds, their malleable, pliable characters through [begin?] the children of to day, we [must] believe we can build the foundation of the next generation upon such a rock of integrity, - morality and strength, both of body and mind, the the floods of proscription, prejudice and persecution may descent upon it in torrents and yet it will not be moved - We hear a great deal about the race problem and how to solve it. This theory, that and the other may be advance? 32 but the real solution of the race problem, both so far as we who are oppressed [are concerned] and those of who oppress us are concerned lies in the children. Let no one suppose that our those of use who are zealous for the progress of the race [would not be ??????] are slaves to [of] to one idea, with no thought, plan or purpose except that which centers about the children - Into the various channels of generousity and benevolence we are constantly deepening and broadening out, which indicates how broad is the scope of our endeavors and what a high state of civilization we have already reached - Homes for the orphan and aged must be established in the future - as they have been in the past; sanatoriums, hospitals and training schools for nurses founded; unfortunate women and tempted girls encircled by the loving arm of those who would woo them back to the path of rectitude and virtue; classes formed for cultivating the mind; schools of domestic science opened in every village and city in which our women and girls may be found - But in connection with such work we shall not neglect, we shall not forget the children, remembering that where we love and protect the little ones, we follow in the footsteps of Him, who when he wished to paint the most beautiful picture of Beulah land it is possible 33 possible for the human mind to conceive, pointed to the children and said: "Of such is the Kingdom of heaven". [Those] Certain representatives of [us] the race who have been blessed with advantages of education and moral training superior to those enjoyed by the masses [of the race], have some times been accused of holding [ourselves] themselves too much aloof from the less fortunate of their people. [Whether] If ever it was true in the fact that the more intelligent and influential colored people did not exert themselves as much as they should have to uplift those beneath them, it certainly can not be such indifference and dereliction of duty can not be charged against the more favored colored women of today. The National Association of Colored Women has taken as its motto, Lifting as we climb. In order to live up to this sentiment, we are determined to come into the [*Begin here in French article*] closest possible touch with the masses of our women, by whom, whether we will or not, the world will always judge the womanhood of the race. It is unfortunate that the dominant race in this country insists upon judging the Negro by the worst and lowest representatives instead of by the better classes, but it seems impossible to change the established order of things and we must guide [*shake*] our 34 steps [*course*] accordingly. The more favored and better [*Colored women of education educated, cultured,*] and culture know that even if they should shun the degraded women of the race, and hold themselves entirely aloof from them they cannot escape the consequences of their acts [and are] They Intelligent colored women know full well that even if [the call of duty] they should turn a deaf ear to the call were disregarded altogether, policy and self preservation would demand that they go down among the lowly, [and] illiterate and even the vicious, to whom they are bound by ties of race and sex and put forth every possible effort to uplift and reclaim them. [*End in French article*] Colored women who have studied the problem carefully know that it is useless to talk about elevating the race, if they do not come into closer touch with the masses of women, through whom they may correct many of the evils which militate so seriously against them and inaugurate the reforms, without which, as a race, we can not hope to succeed. In putting into execution some of our plans for the uplift of our less favored sisters we find that it is often difficult to persuade people who need help most to avail themselves of the assistance offered. This fault is not peculiar to our women alone, but is common to the whole human race. Difficult though it be to extend a helping hand to some of these women many of whose practises both in their own homes and in the service of their 35 employers wise like a great barrier to our progress, we relent to work increasingly to this end, until we win their confidence so that they will accept our aid. [*Page*] The attention of our working women is being called to the alarming rapidity with which they are losing ground in the world of labor - a fact patent to all who observe and read the signs of the times. So many families are supported entirely by our women, that if this movement to withhold employment from them continues to grow, we shall soon be confronted by a condition of things serious and disastrous indeed - The National Association, which is the only organized body of colored women in the country has announced that it intends to study the labor question not only as it affects the women but also as it affects the [wo]men. When those who formerly employed colored women as domestics, but who refuse to do so now, are asked why they have established what is equivalent to a boycott against us, they invariably tell us that colored women servants are now neither skilled in the trades nor reliable or working women. While we know that in the majority of cases 36 colored women are not employed because of the cruel, unreasonable prejudice which ranges so violently against them, rather than because of lack of skill, there is just enough truth in the change of poor workmanship to make us wince, when it is preferred . to stem this tide of popular disfavor against us is the desire of every colored woman in the country who has the interest of her race at heart - At the last count many of our [??????] thoughtful women are pointing out to their sisters how fatal it will be to their highest best interest, and to the highest best interests of their children, if they do not build up a reputation for reliability and proficiency We are preaching in season & out that it sh'd be a part of the religion of every colored woman - The National Association of Colored Women is urging the state organizations to establish Page 3 in every way possible we are seeing to it that the youth of the race schools of domestic science whenever it is possible to do the officers believe that It is believed that by establishing so [for] we [sh]would probably do more to solve the labor schools - in which colored women would be trained to be question so far as it affects the women of the race skilled domestics we could do more to solve by training them to be skilled domestics than by we consider it the part of wisdom ? Page 17 Our women are using any other means it is in their power to employ. urging the establishment of - Page 14 Explain the situation as we may, the fact remains That trades and avocations which formerly belonged almost exclusively to colored people by common consent are gradually slipping from their grasp - [We consi] Whom does such a condition of affairs affect more directly and disastrously than 37 the women of the race? As parents, teachers and guardians we teach our children to be honest and industrious, to cultivate their minds, to become skilled workmen, to be energetic and then to be hopeful. It is easy enough to impress upon them the necessity of cultivating their minds and of becoming skilled workmen, of being energetic, honest and industrious, but how difficult it is for colored women to inspire their children with hope, or offer them an incentive for their best endeavor under the existing conditions of things in this country. As a mother of the dominant race looks into the innocent sweet face of her babe her heart thrills not only with happiness in the present, but also with joyful anticipation of the future. For well she knows that honor, wealth, fame and greatness in any vocation he may choose, are all his, if he but possess the ability and the determination to secure them. She knows that if it is in him to be great, all the exterior circumstances which can help him to the goal of his ambition such as the laws of his country, the public opinion of his countrymen and manifold opportunities are all without the asking. From his birth he 38 in his own right and is no suppliant for justice. But how better is the contrast between the feeling of joy and hope which thrill the heart of the white mother and those which stir the soul of her colored sister. As a mother of the [dominant] weaker race clasps to her bosom the babe which she loves with an affection as tender and as deep as that the white mother bears her child, she can not thrill with joyful anticipation of the future. Before her babe she sees the thorny path of prejudice and proscription his little feet must tread. She knows that no matter how great his ability or how lofty his ambition, there are comparatively few trades and avocations in which any one of his race may hope to succeed. She knows that no matter how skillful his hand, how honest his heart, or how great his need, trades unions will close their doors in his face and make his struggle for existence desperate indeed. So rough does the way of her infant appear to many a poor colored mother, when she thinks of the hardships and humiliation to which he will be subjected in the effort to earn his daily bread that instead of thrilling with joy and hope she trembles with apprehension and despair. This picture 39 though forbidding to look upon is not overdrawn, as those who have studied the labor question can testify. The [colored] women of the race are not sitting supinely by, with folded hands, drooping heads and weeping eyes, but they are up and doing determined to smooth out the rough roads of labor over which tiny feet that now falter in play will now stumble and fall. To our own youth to our own tradesmen we preach efficiency, reliability, thorough preparation for any work in which they choose to engage. We are appealing also to the large-hearted, broad minded women of the dominant race, and we are laying our case clearly before them. In conversing with many of them privately I have discovered that our side of the labor question has never been made a living, breathing, terrible reality to them. In a vague way they know that difficulties do confront colored men and women in their effort to secure employment, but they do not know how almost insurmountable are the obstacles which lie in the path of the rank and file who try to earn an honest living. We are asking our sisters of the dominant race both to follow themselves, and teach their children the lofty principles of humanity and justice 40 justice which is right to observe. We are asking that they train their children to be just and broad enough to judge men and women by their intrinsic merit rather than by the adventitious circumstances of race or color or creed. The colored women of this country are asking their white sisters to teach their children that when they grow to be men and women, if they deliberately prevent their fellow creatures from earning their daily bread by closing the doors of trade against them, the father of all men will hold them responsible for the crimes which are result of their injustice and for the human wrecks which the ruthless crushing of hope and ambition always makes. In the name of our children we are asking that our sisters of the dominant race do all in their power to secure for our youth opportunities of earning a living and of attaining into the full stature of manhood and womanhood which they desire for their own. In the name of the innocence of childhood, black childhood as well as white childhood, we are appealing to the white mothers of this country to do all in their power to make the future of our boys and girls as bright and as promising as should be that of every child born on this free American soil. 41 [Quot?] in French article It is the women of the country who mould public opinion, and when they say that trades and vocations shall not be closed against men and women on account of race or color, then the day of proscription and prejudice will darken to dawn no more. As individuals colored women have presented their case again and again. They are now trying the efficacy of organized effort. In this they build great hope. Organization is one of the most potent forces in the world today, and the good it is possible for the National Association to accomplish has not yet been approximated even by those most sanguine of its success. [*End*] The health of the race is a matter of deep concern to many of our women, who are alarmed by statistics, showing how great is the death rate among us as compared with that of the Whites. There are many reasons why this proportion is so great among us, chief of which are poverty and ignorance of the laws of health. Our children are sent to school illy clad [to school] through inclement weather, for instance for instance. Girls just budding into womanhood are allowed to sit all day in wet boots and damp skirts in both the high and graded schools which they attend. Thus it happens that some of our most promising 42 and gifted young women succumb to diseases, which are the result of carelessness and neglect on the part of both parents and teachers. The attention of our mothers is being called to this fact and School officials are being urged to protect the health of our children as far as possible by wise legislation and thus stop the awful ravages made by diseases which a little care and precaution might prevent. The cause of temperance has been eloquently espoused for many years among us by two lecturers, each of whom under the Woman's Christian Temperance Union have been National Superintendent of work among colored people.In business colored women have had signal success. There is in Alabama a large milling and cotton business belonging to and controlled by a colored woman who has sometimes as many as seventy-five men in her employ. In Halifax, Nova Scotia the principal ice plant of the city is owned and managed by one of our able women. In the professions we have dentists and doctors whose practice is lucrative and large. Ever since there was published in 1773 a book, entitled Poems on Various Subjects 43 Religious and Moral by Phyllis Wheatley, negro servant of Mr. John Wheatley of Boston, colored have from time to time given abundant evidence of literary ability. In sculpture we are represented by a woman upon whose chisel Italy has set her seal of approval, in painting, by Bougerau's pupil, whose work was exhibited in a recent Paris Salon, and in Music by young women who hold diplomas from the first conservatories in the land. [*Omit in French article.*] Improving the mental & moral tone of the home is our first consideration & care. If I were called upon to state in a word where I thought colored women could do their most effective work, I should answer unhesitatingly in the home. The purification of the house to the purification of the social atmosphere we are [*Page 11 - death Page 16 -*] [?] more and more every day, must be our first consideration and care. Strengthening the home where woman wields her most telling influence, that the principles which we wish to promulgate can be most widely circulated and deeply impressed. In the mind and heart of every good and conscientious woman the first place is occupied by home. Our women who are working to uplift their race remember in connection with this fact, however, that it is not the narrow minded, selfish woman who thinks of naught save her family and herself, who has no time to work 44 for neglected children, the helpless and the needy poor, it is not such a woman, we observe who exists in her house the most powerful influence for good. [*Page 17*] To the purification of the social atmosphere we are trying in every way to avoid the sorrow Colored women who are working for the organization of their race are showing both by word and by deed that they intend to be up and doing, whenever a word may be spoken for principle or a hand lifted to aid. Carefully and conscientiously they are studying the questions which affect their race most deeply and directly. Against lynching, the Convict Lease system, the Jim Crow car laws and all other abuses which degrade and dishearten them, they intend & agitate with such force of logic and intensity of soul, that those who [transgress the] oppress them will either be converted to principles of justice or be ashamed to openly violate them. As I have already said, if we are to judge the future by the past, as dark as that past has sometimes been, there is no reason why we should it with despair. Over almost insurmountable obstacles as a race, we have forged ahead, until today there is hardly a trade [or] a profession or an art in which we have not at least one worthy representative. I challenge any other race to show such wonder 45 ful progress along all lines in so short a time or that made by the exslave of the United States of America. And though at times some of us are cast down by the awful barbarities inflicted upon some of our unfortunate race in the South, who have been shot and burned to death by mobs which took no pains to establish the guilt of their victims, many of whom have afterward been found innocent of the crime charged against them, yet we console ourselves with the reflection that the darkest hour is just before the dawn. By discharging our duty to the children, by studying the labor question in its relation to our race, by coming into closer touch with the masses of our women, by urging parents and teachers to protect the health of our boys and girls, by creating a wholesome, healthful public sentiment in every community in which we are represented, by setting a high moral standard and living up to it, and by purifying the home colored women all over the country are rendering the race service whose magnitude and importance it is not in my power to express. Page 7 If you tell me to [?] our [matra?ral] [?ation] which we [ha?] in being cherished with such loyalty and zeal that we believe it will wax strong and great, and soon become the bulwark of strength and source of inspiration to our women that it is destined to be. [? ] lifting as we climb, onward and upward [?go], struggling and striving that the [?] [?d] blossoms of our desires will burst with [?orious] fruition ere long. With courage born of [?ess] achieved in the past, with a [?] [?sibillity] which we shall continue to [?] [?] look forward to a future large with promise and hope. 30 [* Omit in French Article*] In no other way could the investment of the same amount of money bring such large and blessed returns.*] to their race. When absolute lack of means prevents the women of a community from establishing a day nursery or a Kindergarten, they are urged by their leaders to discharge a part of their obligation to the children by establishing children's clubs, through which we believe a vast amount of good can be accomplished. Lessons may be taught and rules of conduct impressed while the children of a neighborhood are gathered together in amusement and play as in no other way. Both by telling and by reading stories, teaching kindness to animals, politeness to elders and pity for the unfortunate and weak, seeds may be sown in youthful minds, which in after years will spring up and bear fruit, some an hundred fold. What a revolution we should work, for instance, by the time the next generation stands at the helm, if the children of to day were taught that they are responsible for their thoughts that they can learn to control them, that an impure life is the result of impure thoughts, that crime is conceived in thought before it is executed in deed. Colored women who are putting forth the most strenuous efforts for the elevation of their race feel that other individual organizations of women each working toward this should [but] be entirely satisfied with their work The Progress and the Problem of the Colored Woman. If the future of the colored women be judged by the past, since their emancipation, neither they nor their friends have any cause for alarm. Though there are many things in the Colored-American's status to discourage him, he has some blessing for which to be thankful, not the least of these is the progress of our women in everything which makes for the culture of the individual and the elevation of the race. To use a thought of the illustrious Frederick Douglass, if judged from the depths from which they have come, rather than by the heights to which those blessed with centuries of opportunities have attained, Colored women, need not hang their heads in shame. So insatiable has the Colored women's thirst for knowledge and so herculean have been her efforts to secure it, that there are in this country at the present time hundreds of Colored women who are graduates, and some have taken degrees from the best universities in the land. With the increase of knowledge there sprang up in the hearts of Colored women an ardent desire to do good in the world. No sooner had the favored few availed themselves of such educational advantages as they could secure than they hastened to dispense these blessings to the less fortunate of their race. With tireless energy and eager zeal Colored women have been continuously prosecuting the work of educating and elevating their race as tho upon themselves alone devolved the accomplishment of that great task. Of the Colored teachers engaged in instructing our youth it is no exaggeration to say that fully 80% are women. Indefatigably and conscientiously in public work of all kinds they engage that they may benefit and elevate their race. By banding themselves together in the interest of education and morality and by adopting the most practical means to this end during the last thirty years, Colored women have become a great power for good. Believing that it is 2 only through the home that a people can become really good and truly great, the various organizations of Colored women, religious and secular, are doing everything in their power to elevate the standards and purify the atmosphere of the home. They know that so long as any people call that place home in which the manners are bad, the air is foul and the morals worse, just so long will this so-called home be a menace to health, the breeder of vice and the abode of crime. But they know also that not only on to the inmates of these wretched hovels will the awful consequences of their immorality and filth be visited, but upon the heads of those who sit calmly by and make no effort to stem this tide of disease and vice will vengeance as surely fall. For this reason Colored women who have had exceptional advantages are trying to have heart to heart talks with their sisters, that they may strike at the root of evils, many of which lie, alas, at the fireside. For years the work of bringing the light of knowledge and the gospel of cleanliness to the women who live on the plantations in the South have been conducted with signal success. Those who have engaged in this work have directed their efforts to plantations, comprising thousands of acres of land, on which live hundreds of Colored people, yet in the darkness of ignorance and the grip of sin, miles away from churches and school. Dotted all over the country are institutions of various, charitable, educational and others which have been established and are being maintained by Colored women, just how many it is difficult to state. Among the institutions founded or maintained by Colored women may be mentioned te Hale Infirmary of Montgomery Ala., the Carrie Steel Orphanage of Atlanta, the Reed Orphan Home of Covington, both in the state of Georgia, an Old Folks Home for both races in New Bedford and St. Monicas Home in Boston, Mass., and Old Folks Home in Memphis, Tenn. and one in Pittsburgh, Pa., a Colored Orphan's Home in Louisville, Ky., and others equally 3 useful and creditable to the women who established them. Several Schools have been established by Colored women who are playing an important part in the education of the race, notably Mt. Meigs Institute in Waugh, Ala., and the Haines Industrial and Normal School in Augusta, Ga. Nothing lies nearer the heart of Colored women than their children, and they are ministering to their needs in every way they can. Kindergartens have been established and Day Nurseries for the infants of working women are being maintained. Colored women are beginning more and more to feel that no individual or organization, working for the elevation of the race should be entirely satisfied with its efforts, onless some of its energy, or some of its money is used in the name and for the sake of the children. Colored women are trying to impress upon their children the necessity of becoming thoroughly proficient in whatever trade or profession they intend to engage. They are preaching the dignity of labor in season and out, In spite of many obstacles and lack of capital as well, Colored women in many instances have achieved remarkable success in business. Some of the most flourishing business enterprises of which the race can boast are owned or controlled by women. In the professions we have dentists and doctors whose practice is lucrative and large. Ever since a book was published in 1773, entitled Poems on Various Subjects, by Phyllis Wheatley, Negro Servant of Mr. John Wheatley of Boston, Colored women have given abundant evidence of literary ability from time to time. In sculpture they are represented by at least two women upon whose chisel both Italy and France have set their seal of approval, In painting by young women who have studied under the foremost masters of Europe and whose pictures have hung in the best salons. In music by women who hold diplomas from the best conservatories in the land. In a variety 4 In a variety of ways Colored women have given indisputable evidence that they intend to put forth earnest efforts in behalf of their race. Intelligently and conscientiously some of them are studying the questions which affect the race most deeply and directly, hoping to find ways and means of reaching a just and reasonable solution of some of the vexatious problems which confront them. Against lynching, the Jim Crow Car Laws, the Convict Lease System, cruel discriminations in the field of labor and the professions they intend to agit ate with such force of logic and intensity of soul that those who oppress them may either be converted to righteousness or be ashamed openly to violate the golden rule and flout the very principles upon which this government was built. Lifting as they climb onward and upward they go, struggling, and striving and hoping that the door of opportunity will be opened wider unto them ere long. Seeking no favors on account of race or color, begging for nothing which they do not deserve they knock at the door of justice and ask for an equal chance. [*Written by Mary Church Terrell*] [*326 T St. N. W. Washington D.C.*] The Progress of Colored Women. [*1904*] If any one had had the courage to predict forty years ago that woman with African blood in her veins would journey from the United States to Berlin Germany to address the International Congress of Women in the year of our Lord 1904, he would either have been laughed to scorn, or he would have been confined in an asylum for the insane. If it had not been for the War of the Rebellion which resolved in victory for the Union forces, instead of addressing the International Congress of Women as a free woman, in all human probability, the colored speaker who represented the women of her race on that occasion would have been on some plantation in one of the southern states of her country manacled body and soul in the fetters of a slave. Her presence in that illustrious gathering attracted attention, therefore for two reasons. In the first place, she was the only woman participating in the exercises who represented a race which had been free for so short a time as forty years. In the second place, she was the only woman who spoke at that meeting who had African blood in her veins. It wasprobably because several German editors were especially impressed by these facts that they referred to this Colored woman as a rare, rare bird. As she arose to report the progress of the Colored women of the United States, it is easy to see that the cause of the spokesman's happiness was twofold, rejoicing as she did, not only in the emancipation of her race, but in the almost universal elevation of her sex. In the days of their oppression and despair Colored women were not only refused admission to institutions of learning, but the laws of all but two of the states in which the majority lived made it a crime to teach them to read. Not only could they possess no property, but even their bodies were not their own. Nothing, in short, which could degrade or brutalize the womanhood of their race was lacking in that system from which they had no hope of escape. So gloomy were their prospects, so pernicious the customs, so fatal the laws only fifty years ago. But from the 2 day their fetters were broken and their minds released from the darkness of ignorance in which they had been shrouded for nearly 300 years, from the day they could stand erect in the dignity of womanhood, no longer bond, but free till the present time, Colored women have forged steadily ahead in the acquisition of knowledge and in the cultivation of those graces of character which make for good. To use a thought of the illustrious Frederick Douglass, if judged by the depths from which they have come, rather than by the heights to which those blessed with centuries of opportunities have attained, Colored women need not hang their heads in shame. Not only are they handicapped on account of their sex, but they are almost everywhere baffled and mocked on account of their race. Desperately and continually they are forced to fight an opposition born of a cruel unreasonable prejudice which neither their necessity nor their merit seems able to remove. But in spite of the almost insurmountable obstacles which block their path, the progress made by Colored women along all lines is a veritable miracle of modern times. Mentally, morally and financially they are advancing at a rapid rate. From the most renowned universities, as well as from the best high schools and colleges throughout the United States, Colored girls have graduated with honor and have thus forever settled the question of their capacity and worth. A few years ago a large number of young men and women of the dominant race and only one Colored girl competed for a scholarship entitling the successful competitor to an entire course through the Chicago University. As a result of the examination which was held, the only Colored girl among them stood first and thus captured this great prize. Wherever Colored girls have studied, their instructors bear testimony to their intelligence, their diligence and their success. Of the Colored teachers engaged in instructing the youth, about 80% are women. Ever since a book was published in 1773, entitled "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phyllis Wheatley, Negro Servant of Mr. [*3*] John Wheatley of Boston, Colored women have given abundant evidence of literary ability from time to time. In sculpture we are represented by a woman upon whose chisel Italy has set her seal of approval; in painting by one of Bougereau's pupils, whose work was exhibited a few years ago in a Paris salon and in music by young women holding diplomas from the best conservatories in the land. In the professions we have several lawyers together with a goodly number of dentists and doctors, whose practice is lucrative and large. In business Colored women have achieved signal success. A few years ago the largest ice plant in the city of Halifax Nova Scotia was owned by a Colored woman, who sold it recently for a large amount. In the state of Alabama there is a large milling and cotton business belonging to and controlled by a Colored woman who has had no trouble to make it pay. Although conditions prevailing in that part of the United States in which the Afro American was formerly held as a slave are not always conducive to the moral elevation of Colored women; although safeguards usually thrown around maidenly youth and innocence are frequently withheld from Colored girls who are protected in this section neither by public sentiment nor by law, nevertheless, according to statistics compiled by men who would not falsify in favor of the despised race, immorality among Colored women of the United States is not so great as among women with similar environment and temptation in certain foreign lands. Indefatigably in public work of all kinds Colored women engage, in order to improve their own condition as well as elevate their race. By banding themselves together in the interest of education and morality and by adopting the most practical means to this end, during the past thirty years Colored women have exerted a powerful influence for good. Through various organizations both in the Church and out and through the instrumentality of the National Association of Colored Women which has [*4*] at least 10,000 members at the present time and of which it is the writer's privilege to be Honorary President, kindergartens have been established and successfully maintained; day nurseries for the infants of working women have been opened; object lessons in the best way to sweep, dust, cook, wash and iron have been formed; efforts have been made to establish rescue homes and retreats for fallen women and tempted girls and charity of all kinds has been dispensed. In short, what their hands have found to do, Colored women have done with all their might. [*Insert pages 5, 6, 7, 8*] In their earnest endeavor to work out their own salvation Colored women have been generously aided and encouraged by their more fortunate sisters of the dominant race, many of whom are broad intheir views on the race problem, just and kind in their treatment of their sisters of a darker hue and strong in their determination to render them any assistance in their power. Without the sympathy and hearty cooperation of such women, the lot of Colored women would be sad and hard indeed. Industrially Colored women are heavily handicapped in the United States. There are comparatively few avocations and trades in which they are permitted to engage. So overcrowded are the pursuits in which it is ppossible for them to secure employment and so poor is they pay in consequence that only the barest livelihood can be eked out by the rank and file. Generally speaking Colored women are school teachers, dressmakers, nurses for children and invalids, laundresses, chambermaids and cooks. Beyond these pursuits it is difficult for them to secure anything to do. So far as domestic service is concerned, the virtues and vices ascribed to the maids of other nationalities who ply their trade in the United States may be safely imputed to their colaborers of a darker hue. No matter whether they hail from Greenland's icy mountains or India's coral strands, no matter whether they call themselves German, Dane, Irish, English or Swede, no matter whether they be as fair as Solomon's lily or as ebony as Carter's [*5*] Dotted all over the country are charitable organizations for the aged, orphaned and poor which have been established by Colored women- just how many it is impossible to state. It is difficult to secure statistics bearing on the progress, possessions and prowess of Colored women, because very few and imperfect records have been kept of the work they have done. Among the charitable institutions, either founded, conducted or supported by Colored women may be mentioned the Hale Infirmary of Montgomery Alabama; the Carrie Steel Orphanage of Atlanta; the Reed Orphan Home of Covington, both in the state of Georgia; a Home for the Aged of both races at New Bedford and St. Monica's Home of Boston in Massachusetts and the Colored Orphan's Home of Lexington Kentucky together with others whose work is as good as those just named. Mt. Meigs Institute is an excellent example of a work originated and carried into successful execution by a Colored woman. The school was established for the benefit of Colored people on the plantations in the black belt of Alabama. Of the 825,000 Colored people living in that State probably 90% are outside of the cities. The little town of Waugh was selected, because in the township of Mt. Meigs the population is practically all Colored. Instruction given in this school is the kind best suited to the needs of those people for whom it was established. Along with their scholastic training, girls are taught everything pertaining to the management of a home, while boys learn practical farming, carpentering, wheelwrighting, blacksmithing and have some military training. The little woman who established this school started with nothing but her desire to uplift and enlightened the ignorant people among whom she lived. Eight years after the work was begun, the trustees owned nine acres of land and five buildings, in which several thousand pupils had received instruction, all through the courage, the industry, the energy and the sacrifice of one Colored woman. One of the most remarkable and useful institutions established by [*6*] Colored women is the Sanitarium with a Training School for Nurses founded by the Phyllis Wheatley Club of New Orleans, Louisiana. By indefatigable energy and heroic sacrifice of money and time, a small band of Colored women raised enough to start the Sanatarium and Training School and defray its expenses for the first eight months. It proved to be such a blessing to New Orleans as a whole, however that the municipal government of that southern city voted it an annual appropriation of several hundred dollars. The conditions which caused the Colored women of New Orleans to choose this special field in which to operate are such as exist in other cities of that section of our land. From the city hospitals Colored doctors are excluded altogether, not even being allowed to practice in the Colored wards, and Colored patients, no matter how wealthy they are, are not received at all, unless they are willing to go into the charity wards. Thus the establishment of a Sanatarium answers a variety of purposes. It furnishes a well-equipped establishment for Colored patients who do not care to go into the charity wards of the public hospitals and it affords Colored medical students an opportunity of gaining a practical knowledge of their profession which they could not otherwise secure. The daily clinics have been a great blessing to the Colored poor. In the operating department supplied with all the modern appliances, several hundred operations had been performed, when the last report was received, all of which had resulted successfully under the Colored surgeon-in-chief. The first class of nurses from the Training School went to Florida during the yellow fever epidemic and they did faithful service there. During the yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans in 1896 Phyllis Wheatley nurses were in great demand. The second class went to Cuba during the Spanish-American war and tenderly, skillfully nursed many a sick soldier back to health. A member of that class now holds a position in one of the government hospitals. This institution which was founded by a club of Colored women no longer bears its name, but is now known as the Sarah [*7*] Goodridge Hospital and Training School, because a daughter donated $15,000 to its fund in memory of her mother. In Augusta, Georgia there is a co-educational school for Colored youth founded by a Colored woman, Lucy Laney, who has devoted her entire life to the elevation of her race. After struggling heroically against obstacles which stood between her and an education, she graduated from the Atlanta University of GA. Miss Laney taught for several years and saved every penny of her salary not needed to support herself. With a small sum thus saved, she rented a two story frame house in Augusta which was used as a dormitory while an old barn on the premises was converted into recitation rooms. It was necessary to employ teachers for the new school, but the young founder had no money with which to pay them except as she could collect small sums from her pupils, most of whom were too poor to pay anything. In spite of the many difficulties under which the [ ] school labored, its growth was phenomenal from the start. Having begun with a handful of pupils, there were 70 boys and girls in attendance at the end of the first year and 234 at the end of the second. Miss Laney so impressed all who saw her with her superior character and her rare self-sacrifice that when the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church which met in Minneapolis some years ago had the opportunity of placing $10,000 in some particular educational work of the South, the members of the Board decided unanimously to give the money to Miss Laney's school. After struggling for years against desperate odds this heroic woman finally received the financial assistance which enabled her better to equip her school and thus make it a greater power for good. The buildings owned by the school are worth $20,000 and 800 pupils are enrolled. The literary work includes well arranged courses from the kindergarten to the college preparatory. The industries taught are cooking, sewing, printing, millinery, laundering and general housework. Efforts are making to establish a manual training department for boys. Although Miss [*8*] Laney founded and successfully maintained this school without assistance from others for years, it does not bear her name, but is known as the Haines Industrial and Normal School. The founder was so impressed with the earnest, Christian character of one of her white friends, Mrs. F. E. Haines, that she decided to name the school in the latter's honor. An effort is being made, however, to amend the charter, so that the school may henceforth bear the name of its founder and be known as the Lucy Laney Institute. The Progress of Colored Women [*1914*] Let the future of Colored women be judged by their past since their emancipation and neither they nor their friends have any cause for alarm. There are many things in the Colored-American's status to discourage and dishearten him, he has some blessings for which to be thankful. Not the least of these is the progress of our women in everything which makes for the culture of the individual and the elevation of the race. When that small but noble band of women began that agitation about sixty years ago by which colleges were open to women and the numerous reforms inaugurated for the amelioration of their condition along all lines, their sisters who groaned in bondage had little reason to hope that these blessings would ever brighten had little reason to hop that these blessings would ever brighten their crushed and blighted lives. For during these days of oppression and despair, Colored women were not only refused admittance to institutes of learning, but the law of the States in which the majority lived, made it a crime to teach them to read. Not only could they possess no property, but they did not even own themselves. Nothing, in short, which could degrade or brutalize the womanhood of the race, was lacking in that system from which Colored women then had little hope of escape. So gloomy were their prospects, so pernicious the customs, so fatal the laws only forty years ago. But, from the day their fetters were broken and their minds released from the darkness of ignorance in which they had been held for more than three hundred years, from the day they could stand erect in the dignity of womanhood, no longer bond, out free, till tonight, Colored women have forged steadily ahead in the acquisition of knowledge and in the cultivation of those graces of character of knowledge which make for good. To use a thought of the illustrious Frederick Douglass, if judged by the depths from which they have come, rather than the heights to which those blessed with centuries of opportunities had attained, Colored [*2*] women need not hang their heads in shame. Consider, please, the almost insurmountable obstacles which have confronted Colored women in their effort to educate and cultivate themselves, and I dare assert, not boastfully at all, but with pardonable pride, I hope, that the work they have accomplished and the progress they have made will bear favorable comparison, at least, with their more fortunate sisters, from whom the opportunity of acquiring knowledge and the means of self culture have never been entirely withheld. For not only are aspiring Colored women handicapped on account of their sex, and just now, it is evident that women all over the world consider the handicap of sex very heavy and serious indeed-but not only are aspiring Colored women handicapped on account of sex, but they are everywhere baffled and mocked on account of their race. Not only because they are women, but because they are Colored women, are discouragement and disappointment meeting them at every turn. but in spite of the oppression encountered and the obstacles opposed, the progress made by Colored women along various lines of human endeavor has never been surpassed by the women of any race since the world began. The slaves were liberated only fifty years ago penniless and ignorant with no place to lay their heads, so insatiable has been their thirst for knowledge and so herculean have been their efforts to secure it that there are today hundreds of Colored people who are graduates, many of them women, some of whom have taken degrees from the best institutions of learning in the land. From Wellesley, Ann Arbor, Cornell, Oberlin, yes, even from Vassar, from the best High Schools and colleges in the North, East and West, Colored girls have been graduated with honor and have thus forever settled the question of their capacity and worth. Some years ago a large number of young men and women of the dominant race and only one Colored person, a Colored girl, competed for a scholarship, entitling the successful competitor to an entire course through the Chicago University. As a result of the examination which was [*3*] held, the only Colored girl among them stood first and thus captured this great prize. In public school No. 3 Brooklyn N.Y. last Feb. 1914 a Colored girl completed the course in six and one half years, a thing which had not been done, since the founding of the school 250 years ago and took the bronze medal in the spelling bee. In the same school Marion Allen took the silver medal for proficiency in German at the midyear promotion. There were 108 pupils in the class and eighteen of them were of German descent. The German medal was the highest honor and was given by the German-American National Bund. The German gentleman who presented the medal nearly lost his breath, when he saw the little Colored girl of 14 years who took it. These were the only prizes offered and they were taken by the only two Colored pupils in the class. The audience of 5000 roared in applause. Some years ago in Cleveland Ohio public School children from all over the country competed for a prize in a spelling contest. The prize was won by a little Colored girl. I am personally acquainted with several Colored girls who wear Phi Beta Kappa pins from the best universities in the United States. Wherever Colored girls have studied their teachers bear cheerful testimony of their intelligence, their industry and their success. It is a great thing to want to acquire knowledge for its cultural effects, but it is a still greater thing to want to acquire it, so as to benefit one's fellow man. And that is precisely what Colored women have done. No sooner had the favored few availed themselves of such educational advantages as they could secure than they hastened to dispense these blessings to the less fortunate of their race. With the increased wisdom there sprang up in the hearts of Colored women an ardent desire to do good in the world. With tireless energy and eager zeal they have been continuously prosecuting the work and educating and elevating their race, as upon themselves as alone devolved the accomplishment of that great task. Of the Colored teachers engaged in instructing our youth, it [*4*] is no exaggeration to say that fully 80% are women. In the backwoods remote from the civilization and comforts of the city and town, on the plantations reeking with ignorance and vice, Colored women may be found battling with these evils which such conditions always entail. Many a dusky heroine of whom the world will never hear has thus sacrificed her lift to her race amid surroundings and in the face of privations which only martyrs can bear. Shirking responsibility has never been a fault with which Colored women might truthfully be charged. Indefatigably and conscientiously in public work of all kinds they engage for the benefit of their race. By banding themselves together in the interest of education and morality and by adopting the most practical means to this end during the last thirty years Colored women have become a great power for good. Believing that it is only through them that a people can become really good and truly great, the various organizations of Colored women religious and secular, in the church are doing everything in their power to raise the standard and purify the atmosphere of the home. We know so long as any people call that place home in which the air is foul, the manners bad and the morals worse, just so long will this so-called home be a menace to health, the breeder of vice and the abode of crime. But we know also that not only upon the inmates of these miserable hovels will the awful consequences of their immorality and filth be visited, but upon the heads of those of us who sit calmly by and make no effort to stem this tide of disease and vice will vengeance as certainly fall. For this reason Colored women who have had exceptional advantages are trying to have heart to heart talks with their women that they may strike at the root of evils, may of which lie, alas at the fireside. If the women of the dominant race with all the centuries of education, culture and refinement back of them, with all the wealth of opportunity ever present with them feel the need of a Mother's Congress [*5*] that they may be enlightened concerning the best methods of rearing their children and conducting their homes, how much more do our women from whom the shackles of slavery have but yesterday fallen need information on these same vital matters. In various parts of the country our women are trying to establish Mother's Congresses on a small scale, wherever it can be done. For years the work of bringing the light of knowledge and the gospel of cleanliness to the women who live on some of the plantations of the South has been conducted with signal success. The women who have managed in this work here directed their efforts to plantations comprising thousands of acres of land on which live hundreds of Colored people yet in the darkness of ignorance and the grip of sin, miles away from churches and schools. Under the evil influences of certain plantation owners who believe it is more profitable to keep their "hands" as near the brute creation as possible than it is to permit them to be human, and through no fault of their own, the condition of Colored people in some sections of this country is no better than it was at the close of the War. These who work in behalf of these plantation women give them object lessons in the best way to sweep, dust, cook, wash and iron, show them how to make their huts more comfortable by converting boxes into bureaus, or tables or washstands, also how to make and use screens, to inculcate lessons of modesty. They teach them also how to clothe and feed their children properly, what food is the most nutritious for the money and give them other useful information pertaining to household affairs. Talks on social purity are also made for the benefit of these mothers who in many instances fall short of their duty, not because they are vicious and depraved, as is so frequently affirmed, but because they are ignorant and poor. Dotted all over the country are institutions of various kinds, charitable, educational and others which have been established or are being [*6*] maintained by Colored women, just how many it is difficult to state. There is imperative need of statistics, bearing on the progress, the possessions and the prowess of Colored people, since not only are white Americans ignorant of the work along various lines which their dark-skinned brothers and sisters are doing, but it is difficult for Colored people themselves to secure information and data of great value and importance to the race. Among the institutions founded by Colored women may be mentioned the Hale Infirmary of Montgomery Alabama, the Carrie Steel Orphanage of Atlanta, the Reed Orphan Home of Covington, both in the State of GA, and Old Folks Home for both races in New Bedford, and St. Monica's Home in Boston, Mass; and Old Folks Home in Memphis Tenn., a Colored Orphan's Home in Louisville Ky., and others equally useful and creditable to the women who established them. Some years ago the Phyllis Wheatley Club, an organization of Colored women in New Orleans, La., established a Sanatorium with a Training School for nurses which has given abundant evidence of its utility and success. The conditions which caused the Colored women of New Orleans to choose this special field in which to operate are such as obtain in other cities and towns of that section. From the City hospitals Colored doctors are excluded altogether, not even being allowed to practice in the Colored wards. Colored patients, no matter how ill or how wealth they were, were not received into the City Hospitals at all, unless they were willing to go into the charity wards. The establishment of this Sanatorium, therefore, answered a variety of purposes. It furnished an up to date hospital in which Colored medical students might gain a practical knowledge of their profession, and it provided also a well-equipped institution to which Colored patients might go, who did not care to be treated in the charity ward of the city hospital. In the surgical department which is supplied with all the modern appliances, hundreds of operations have been performed, nearly all of which have resulted [ ] [*7*] have been performed, nearly all of which have resulted successfully under the Colored surgeon in chief. Among the best peoples of New Orleans there is great demand for Phyllis Wheatley nurses. In short, this Sanatarium with its training School for nurses, established by a few energetic, public spirited Colored women of New Orleans has proved such a blessing to the city as a whole without regard to color, that the municipal government has voted it an annual appropriation to help defray its expenses. Mt. Meigs Institute is an excellent example of a work originated and carried into successful execution by a Colored woman. The school was established for the benefit of Colored people on the plantations in the Black Belt of Ala., because of the 700,000 Colored people living in the State at that time, probably ninety percent were outside of the cities. Waugh was selected, because in the township of Mt. Meigs, the population is practically all Colored. Instruction given in this school is the kind best suited to the needs of the people for whom it was established. Along with their scholastic training girls are taught everything pertaining to the management of a home, while boys learn practical farming, carpentering, wheelwrighting, blacksmithing and have some military training. Having started with almost nothing at the end of eight years the trustees of the school owned nine acres of land and five buildings in which several thousand pupils had received instruction, who would in all probability have remained in the densest ignorance, all through the industry, energy and the sacrifice of one Colored woman. In Augusta, GA there is a coeducational school for Colored youth founded by Lucy Laney who has devoted her entire life to the elevation of her race. Having struggled heroically against desperate odds, Miss Laney finally graduated from Atlanta University. After teaching several years and saving every penny of her salary not actually needed for self support, Miss Laney rented a two-story frame house in Augusta GA., which she used as a dormitory and converted an old barn on the premises into recitation rooms. After struggling for years against desperate odds, 8 recitation rooms. For yearw Miss Laney struggled against desperate odds, frequently having no money with which to pay the teachers, who naturally complained loudly, but she shouldered the responsibility with a determination and a tenacity which mocked defeat. Today the Haines Industrial and Normal School owns substantial buildings worth many thousand dollars and has in attendance more than a thousand pupils from all parts of the South. When Ex-President Taft visited Miss Laney's school a few years ago he was deeply impressed with the prodigious amount of work she had done. The National Association of Colored Women which was organized in 1896 and now has a membership of at least 50,000 has been a powerful influence for good. In twenty eight states there are State Federations and in fourteen there are organized clubs not federated, but affiliated with the national organization. Magnificent service has been rendered thru some of these State Federations. Thru their instrumentality schools have been visited, truant children looked after, parents and teachers urged to cooperate with each other rescue and reform work engaged in so as to uplift unfortunate women and tempted girls, garments cut, made and distributed to the needy poor. By the Alabama State Federation of Colored women's clubs a reformatory for their youth has been built, so that Colored boys and girls need no longer be put upon the chain gang, sent to jail or to the convict camps with hardened criminals for their first infraction of the law, as has been the case heretofore. By some of their leaders the attention of Colored women is being called to the alarming rapidity with which they are losing ground in the world of labor, a condition which is clear to all who observe and read the signs of the times. If this movement to withhold employment from Colored women continues to grow, we shall soon be confronted with a condition of things disastrous and serious indeed. When those who formerly employed Colored help, but who refused to do so now are asked why they had established what is equivalent to a boycott against us, they usually reply that Colored people are no longer either reliable or skilled. [*9*] While those who have studied the labor question in its relation to the Colored American know that in the majority of cases Colored people are unable to secure employment because of the cruel, unreasonable prejudice against them, rather than on account of their lack of skill, there is just enough true in the charge of unreliability and lack of skill to make us wince, when it is preferred. And so we are urging our youth to make them as thoroughly proficient in whatever occupation or profession they choose to engage. If there were sufficient time, however, I could cite case after case which has come under my own personal observation to prove that in this ever-increasing prejudices against Colored people, skill frequently avails them nothing at all. I am personally acquainted with young Colored men and young women whose infusion of the fatal African admixture is so slight as not to be noticed, who have for that reason secured good positions, which their employers admitted were very acceptably filled. That is they admitted this before they knew with what race they were identified. And yet when these same employers discovered that a single drop of African blood was lurking somewhere in their anatomy, they have promptly discharged their Colored employees, for no reason whatsoever except they were Colored. To be sure this does not always happen, but it does happen, much more frequently than the American public seems to be aware. A beautiful young Colored women had secured a position as clerk in the cloak department in one of the large stores in Washington and had given entire satisfaction. She had served an apprenticeship in New York and was highly recommended by her employer there. Since her family lived in Washington, however, it was quite natural for her to want to secure employment at home. Armed with letters of splendid recommendations she succeeded in securing a position in one of our best stores. One day she came to ask me to intercede with her employer in her behalf. She had been discharged, she stated, because her employer had discovered she was [*10*] Colored. When I went to ask for employment she told me, "I simply showed my New York references, and said nothing whatever about my race, knowing I could get no consideration whatsoever, if I did, and hoping that if I gave satisfaction, Mr. L. would retain me, when he discovered I was Colored, as I knew he soon would do." When I went to intercede in this beautiful young women's behalf, I felt certain that her employer would tell me that the young woman had failed to give satisfaction. It has been my observation and experience that this is the reason usually assigned, when a Colored person is discharged on account of prejudice against his race. But the proprietor of the store was perfectly honest and frank. By a strange irony of fate the proprietor himself belongs to a race which has suffered for centuries and is still suffering today from the cruel, unreasonable prejudice of other races. "I did not discharge Miss B, because I wanted to", he said, but because I was forced to do so. She was the best saleswoman in the cloak department I have ever had and I wish I could have kept her. She had been in the store but a few days, however, when some one told me she was Colored. I could not believe it and denied it for there was nothing about her appearance of her manner to indicate it. A few days after that, however, a dozen clerks came to me loaded with evidence to prove that she was Colored and demanded that I discharge Miss B. I refused to do so. They threatened to leave. "All right", said I, "you may all leave, it will be easy to fill your places. Shortly after that several delegations of my best customers came in, demanded that I discharge Miss B. immediately and threatened to boycott my store, if I did not. Then", said he" it became a question of bread and butter with me, and I just had to let the young woman go." When I taught in the High School for Colored youth at Washington, it was my custom to urge the pupils to secure as thorough an education they possibly could, arguing that it would not only make them stronger [*11*] mentally, but ti would increase their efficiency and enhance their value, so that they would stand a much better chance of getting good positions. More than once my heart was saddened, when some young women or young man would say to me, why do you urge us to educate ourselves thoroughly. It will do us no good, it will not help us to secure good, paying positions in the United States. We cant all be doctors, lawyers, preachers and teah teachers, and there is nothing we can do except hold menial positions. This lack of incentive to put forth their best effort, because the future seems so dark and threatening before them has such a depressing effect upon hundreds of Colored youth as it is not in my power to describe and is impossible for the average white American to comprehend. With the trades unions increasingly hostile to them the outlook of Colored me is threatening and gloomy indeed. But to Colored women who are obliged to earn their own living, this cruel, unreasonable prejudice which excludes them from most of the gainful occupations and limits them to an unlucrative few, means in many cases misery and despair. There is no doubt whatever that the inability to secure employment has caused many a well intentioned, virtue-loving girl to lead a life of shame. With the exception of teaching, sewing, nursing and a few menial pursuits, there is practically nothing that a Colored girl can get to do in the United States, no matter how intelligent or skillful, or prepossessing she may be, nor how great her need. While the women of other races have a variety of pursuits from which they may choose, the woman through whose veins one drop of African blood is known to flow is limited to a pitiful few. So crowded are the occupations in which Colored women may engage and so poor is the pay in consequence that only the barest livelihood can be eked out by the rank and file. The report submitted by the Vice Commission of Chicago states quite frankly that, owing to prejudice against them on account of their color, many Colored girls are forced to accept positions as maids in houses of [*12*] ill fame. Employment agents do not hesitate to send Colored girls to these houses", the Vice commission declares. "They make the astounding statement that the law does not allow them to send white girls to these immoral places, but they can furnish Colored help. It is an appalling fact", continues the report, "that practically all of the male and female servants connected with disreputable houses are Colored. "A few years ago Miss Frances Kellor, who was then General Director of the Inter-Municipal Committee on Household Research made a thorough investigation of the conditions under which domestics live in the United States. And after carefully informing herself she declared that Colored domestics are more friendless and are subjected to dangers greater than those besetting any other women except the most ignorant of immigrants. This flagrant discrimination against Colored youth, particularly against the girls must be abhorrent to all fair-minded people, No matter how great their prejudice against Colored people may be, surely every mother and father of the dominant race will be willing to afford Colored children the same moral protection that white children receive. Surely there is not a white mother in the United States who does not deplore that prejudice against Colored girls which makes it impossible in many cases for them to earn an honest living, and which finally drives them to secure employment in houses of ill fame. Therefore those who are interested in the moral welfare of Colored women and girls can not consistently ignore the industrial boycott by which they are so seriously handicapped in the struggle for existence and which not infrequently leads to their ruin. Those who are interested in the moral welfare of this nation as a whole should do everything in their power to create a healthful, wholesome public sentiment in the Colored girl's behalf, so that she may have the same chance to earn a decent living by honest toil. So long as the womanhood of any race in the United States is sacrificed with impunity [*13*] on the altar of race prejudices, passion and lust, just so long will the womanhood of the race be absolutely secure. And yet in spite of these conditions, so conducive to immorality, in spite of the fateful heritage of slavery, and the safeguards usually thrown around maidenly youth and innocence, are in a large section practically withheld from Colored girls. Statistics compiled by men who would certainly not falsify in favor of my race, show that the immorality among Colored women in the United States is not so great as among women similarly situated in at least five foreign lands. In fact, one of the most encouraging and convincing signs of the Colored American's development is the high moral standard in which thousands who have been blessed with educational and moral training religiously believe and to which in their daily life they rigidly adhere. Nothing lies nearer the heart of Colored women than the children, many of whose lives so sad and dark, they are trying to brighten and bless. The more unfavorable the environment of children, the more necessary it is that steps be taken to counteract baleful influences upon innocent victims. How imperative is it then, that, as colored women we inculcate correct principles and set good examples for our own youth, whose little feet will have so many thorny paths of prejudice, temptation and injustice to tread. The Colored youth is vicious, we are told, and statistics showing the large number of our boys and girls who crowd the penitentiaries and fill the jails appall and dishearten us. But, side by side with those facts and figures of crime I would have pictured and presented the miserable hovels from which these youthful criminals come. Crowded into alleys, many of them the haunts of vice, few, if any in a proper sanitary condition, most of them fatal to mental or moral growth and destructive of healthful physical development as well, thousands of our children have a wretched heritage indeed. Make a tour of the settlements of Colored people, who in most of our cities are relegated to the [*14*] most noisome sections permitted by municipal government and beheld the mites of humanity who infest them. Here are our little ones, the future representatives of the race, fairly drinking in the pernicious example of their elders, coming in contact with nothing but ignorance and vice, til at the age of six evil habits are formed which no amount of civilizing or Christianizing can ever completely break. And so in various ways Colored women are listening to the cry of their children. In imitation of the Great Teacher of men who could not offer himself as a sacrifice, until he had made an eternal plea for the innocence and helplessness of childhood. Colored women are reaching out after the ways and strays who without their aid and influence may be deemed to lives of evil and shame. They are establishing and maintaining kindergartens, wherever and whenever they can. The are also establishing Day Nurseries, of which there is an imperative need. Thousands of our wage-earning mothers are obliged to leave their children all day, while they go out to work. These babies are entrusted to some good-natured neighbor who promises much, but does little, or they placed in the care of their young brothers and sisters who know nothing whatever about caring for them properly. Many of these babies are locked alone in a room from the time the mother leaves in the morning til she returns at night. When one thinks of the slaughter of the innocence which is occurring with pitiless persistency every day, when one thinks of the thousands who are maimed or deformed or rendered imbeciles for life on account of neglect during their infancy--neglect too for their mothers are frequently not responsible. It is evident that by establishing Day Nurseries Colored women are rendering one of the greatest services possible for humanity and the race. Colored women are beginning more and more to feel that the individual or organization working for the elevation of the race should be entirely satisfied with their efforts, unless some of their energy or some of [*15*] their brain or some of their money is used in the name and for the sake of the children, either by establishing a kindergarten, a Day Nursery or forming a Children's Club, which is possible to all. In no way could we solve what is called the race problem more quickly and more surely than by devoting ourselves earnestly and conscientiously to the children with their warm little hearts, their susceptible minds, their malleable pliable characters. Through the children of today, we believe we can build the foundation of the next generation upon such a rock of integrity, morality and strength that the floods of proscription, prejudice and persecution may descend upon it in torrents, and yet it will not be saved. We hear a great deal about this race problem and how to solve it. This theory, that and the other may be advanced, but the real solution of the race problem, both so far as who are oppressed and those who oppress us are concerned lies in the children. Colored women are sometimes accused of willfully neglecting their children, but this charge like many others is not founded on facts. A large majority of our mothers are wage earners, who wash and iron and cook. Consequently they can not give their children personal attention during the day. But there are no mothers in the world who have made more prodigious sacrifices in behalf of their children than have Colored women our enemies and traducers to the contrary, notwithstanding. As parents, teachers and guardians, we teach our children, to cultivate their minds, to become proficient in whatever work they engage, to be honest, industrious and hopeful. It is easy enough to impress upon our children the necessity of cultivating their minds, and of becoming skilled in their trades, or professions but, how difficult a thing it is for a Colored mother to teach her children to be hopeful under the existing conditions of things in the United States. As a mother of the dominant race looks into the innocent, sweet [*16*] face of her baby, her heart thrills not only with happiness in the present, but also with joyful anticipations of the future. For well she knows that honor, wealth, fame and greatness in any vocation he may choose, are all his if he but possess the ability and the determination to secure them. She knows that if it is in him to be great, all the exterior circumstances which can help him to the goal of his ambition, such as the laws of his country, the public opinion of his countrymen and manifold opportunities are all his without the asking. From his birth he is a king in his own right and is no suppliant for justice. But how bitter is the contrast between the feelings of joy and hope which thrill the heart of the white mother and those which stir the soul of her Colored sister. As a mother of the weaker race clasps to her bosom the baby which she loves with an affection as tender and as deep as that the white mother bears her child, her heart can not thrill with joyful anticipations of the future. Before her baby she sees the thorny path of prejudice and proscription which his little feet must tread. She knows that no matter how great his ability or how lofty his ambition, there are comparatively few trades and pursuits in which any one of his race may hope to succeed. She knows that no matter how skillful his hand, how honest his heart, or how great his need trades unions in some sections will close their doors in his face and make his struggle for existence desperate indeed. So rough does the way of her infant appear to many a poor Colored mother, when she thinks of the hardships and humiliations to which he will be subjected in his effort to earn his daily bread that instead of thrilling with joy and hope, she trembles with apprehension and despair. This picture, the forbidding to look upon is not overdrawn as those who have studied the labor question can testify. But, let me assure you that Colored women are not sitting supinely by with folded hands, drooping hands and weeping eyes, but some of them are up and doing, trying to smooth out the rough roads of labor over which [*17*] tiny feet which not patter and play may soon stumble and fall. To our own youth, our own tradesmen we are constantly preaching, reliability, efficiency, thorough preparation for the work in which they are to engage. We are also appealing to our large hearted, broadminded sisters of the dominant race, of whom there are so many, and are asking them both to observe themselves and to teach their children to observe, so far as they can, the lofty principles of justice, equality of opportunity and equality before the law, upon which this country was founded and in which theoretically at least all American citizens are supposed to believe. We Colored women are asking our white sisters to try to teach their children to judge men and women by their intrinsic merit, rather than by the adventitious circumstances of race, or color, or creed. Colored women are imploring the white parents of the United States to teach their children that when they grow to be men and women, if they deliberately prevent their brothers and sisters of a darker hue from earning an honest living, the Father of All men will hold them responsible for the crimes which are the result of their injustice and for the human wrecks which the ruthless crushing of hope and ambition always takes. In the name of our children we are asking our sisters of the dominant race to do all in their power to secure for our youth opportunities of earning a living and of attaining unto full manhood and womanhood which they desire for their own. In the name of the innocence of childhood, black childhood as well as white, we are appealing to the white parents of this country to make the future of our boys and girls as bright and as promising as should be that of every child born in a country which owes its very existence to the love of liberty in the human heart. In spite of obstacles and in spite of capital as well Colored women have achieved remarkable success in business. Some of the most flourishing enterprises of which the race can boast are owned or are conducted by women. In the professions there are doctors and dentists whose practice [*18*] is lucrative and large. Ever since a book was published in 1773, entitled "Poems on Various Subjects by Phyllis Wheatley, Negro Servant of John Wheatley of Boston Colored women have given abundant evidence of literary abillity from time to time. In painting we are represented by young women who have studied under the best masters abroad and whose works have hung in the best salons. In sculpture they are represented by at least two women, upon whose chisel both Italy and France have set their seal of approval and in music by women who held diplomas from the leading conservatories in the United States. In a variety of ways Colored women have given indisputable evidence that they intend to put forth earnest efforts in behalf of their race. Intelligently and conscientiously those who have been blessed with superior advantages are studying the questions which affect the race most deeply and directly, hoping to find ways and means of reaching a just and reasonable solution of some of the vexatious problems which confront them. Against lynching, the Jim Crow Car Laws, the Convict Lease System, discrimination in the field of labor and the trades they intend to agitate with such force of logic and intensity of soul that those who continue to handicap and oppress them will either be converted to righteousness and justice or ashamed openly to violate the Golden Rule and flout the very principles upon which this government was built. Many feel, no doubt, that Colored women can not do much to solve the problem themselves, because they are ostracized in the various communities in which they live on account of their race and heavily handicapped in addition on account of their sex. But every woman, no matter what her complexion or what her condition in life may be has an influence which she can exert for good. A great deal is said about personal influence, but if actions speak louder than words there is reason to fear that many good people fail to realize what a potent factor it may become. There is a great philosophical truth in the little stanza which most of us learned 19 when we were young. It is really the little drops of water and the little grains of sand which after a while make the mighty ocean and the beauteous land. In estimating the work it is possible for intelligent, earnest resourceful Colored women to do, let us remember that it is not by the power of death-dealing armies, nor by the expenditure of vast sums of money that the most enduring reforms have been inaugurated and the greatest revolutions wrought. It is by the silent, the powerful forces of individual influence exerted on the side of right. If the future of Colored women may be judged by the past, as dark as that past has sometimes been, there is no reason why we should look forward to it with alarm. Over almost insurmountable obstacles Colored women have forged steadily ahead, so that today there is scarcely a trade or a profession in which they are allowed to engage in which they have at least one worthy representative. In a variety of ways Colored women are rendering their race a service whose magnitude and importance it is difficult to estimate or express. Lifting, as they climb, onward and upward they go, struggling and striving and hoping that the door of opportunity will be opened wider unto them ere long. With courage born of success achieved in the past, and with a keen sense of responsibility which they will continue to assume they look forward to the future large with promise and hope. Seeking no favors because of their color, begging for nothing which they do not deserve, they knock at the door of justice and ask for an equal chance. The Progress and the Problem of the Colored Women. [*1914*] Let the future of Colored women be judged by the past since their emancipation, and neither they nor their friends have any cause for alarm. Though there are many things in the Colored American's status to discourage and dishearten him, he has some blessings for which to be thankful. Not the least of these is the progress of our women in everything which makes for the culture of the individual and the elevation of the race. When, about sixty years ago that small, but noble band of women began the agitation by which colleges were opened to women and the numerous reforms inaugurated for the amelioration of their condition along all lines their sisters who groaned in bondage had little reason to hope that these blessings would ever brighten their crushed and blighted lives. For, during those days of oppression and despair, Colored women were not only refused admittance to institutes of learning, but the laws of the States in which the majority lived, made it a crime to teach them to read. Not only could they possess no property, but they did not even own themselves. Nothing, in short which could degrade or brutalize the womanhood of the race was lacking in that system from which Colored women then had little hope of escape. So gloomy were the prospects, so pernicious the customs, so fatal the laws only fifty years ago. But, from the day their fetters were broken and their minds released from the darkness of ignorance in which they had been held nearly three hundred years, from the day they could stand erect in the dignity of womanhood, no longer bond, but free, till today, Colored women have forged steadily ahead in the acquisition of knowledge and in the cultivation of those graces of character which make for good. To use a thought of the illustrious Frederick Douglass, if judged by the depths from which they have come, farther than by the heights to which those blessed with centuries of opportunity have attained, Colored 2 women need not hand their heads in shame. Consider, please, the almost insurmountable obstacles which have confronted Colored women in their effort to educate and cultivate themselves, and I dare assert, not boastfully at all, but with pardonable pride, I hope that the work they have accomplished and the progress they have made will bear favorable comparison, at least, with that of their more fortunate sisters, from whom the opportunity of acquiring knowledge and the means of self culture have never been entirely withheld. For, not only are aspiring Colored women handicapped on account of their sex, and just now, it is evident that women all over the world consider the handicap of sex very heavy and serious indeed not only are aspiring Colored women handicapped on account of sex, but they are everywhere baffled and mocked on account of their race. Not only because they are women, but because they are colored women, are discouragement and disappointment meeting them at every turn. But, in spite of the opposition encountered and the obstacles opposed, the progress made by Colored women along various lines of human endeavor has never been surpassed by that of any women since the world began. The slaves were liberated only fifty years ago, penniless and ignorant with no place to lay their heads, so insatiable has been their thirst for knowledge and as herculean have been their efforts to secure it that there are today hundreds of Colored people who are graduates. Many of them are women and some of them have taken degrees from the best institutions of learning in the land. From Wellesley, Ann Arbor, Cornell, Oberlin, yes, even from Vassar, from the best High Schools and colleges in the North, East, and West, Colored girls have been graduated with honor and have thus forever settles the question of their capacity and worth. Some years ago a large number of young men and women of the dominant race and only one Colored person, a Colored girl, competed for a scholarship, entitling the successful competitor to an entire course thru the Chicago University. As a result of the examination which [*3*] held, the only Colored girl among them stood first and thus captured this great prize. In public school No. 3 Brooklyn N.Y. last Feb 1914 a Colored girl completed the course in six and one half years, a thing which had not been done since the founding of the school 250 years ago, and took the bronze medal in the spelling bee. In the same school Marion Allen took the silver medal for proficiency in German at the midyear promotion. there were 108 pupils in the class and eighteen of them were of German descent. The German medal was the highest honor and was given by the German-American National Bund. The German gentleman who presented the medal nearly lost his breath, when he saw the little Colored girl of 14 years who took it. These were the only prizes offered and they were taken by the only two colored pupils in the class. The audience of 5000 roared in applause. Some years ago in Cleveland Ohio, public School children from all over the country competed for a prize in a speaking contest. The prize was won by a little Colored girl. I am personally acquainted with several Colored girls who wear Phi Beta Kappa pins from the best universities in the United States. Wherever Colored girls have studies their teachers bear cheerful testimony to their intelligence, their industry and their success. It is a great thing to want to acquire knowledge for its cultural effects, but it is still greater thing to want to acquire it, so as to benefit one's fellow man. And that is precisely what Colored women have done. No sooner had the favored few availed themselves of such educational advantages as they could secure than they hasten to dispense these blessings to the less fortunate of their race. With the increase of wisdom there sprang up in the hearts of colored women an ardent desire to do good in the world. With tireless energy and eager zeal they have been continuously prosecuting the work of educating and elevating their race, as upon themselves alone devolved the accomplishment of that great task. Of the colored teachers engaged in instructing our youth, it [*4*] is no exaggeration to say that fully 80% are women. In the backwoods remote from the civilization and comforts of the city and town, on the plantations reeking with ignorance and vice, Colored women may be found battling with these evils which such conditions always entail. Many a dusky heroine of whom the world will never hear has thus sacrificed her life to her race amid surroundings and in the face of privations which only martyrs can bear. Shirking responsibility has never been a fault with which Colored women might truthfully be charged. Indefatigably and conscientiously in public work of all kinds they engage for the benefit of their race. By banding themselves together in the interest of education and morality and by adopting the most practical means to this end, during the last thirty years Colored women have become a great power for good. Believing that it is only through the home that a people can become really good and truly great, the various organizations of Colored women, religious and secular, in the church and out, are doing everything in their power to raise the standard and purify the atmosphere of the home. We know so long as any people call that place home in which the air is foul, the manners bad and the morals worse, just so long will this so-called home be a menace to health, the breeder of vice and the abode of crime. But we know, also, that not only upon the inmates of those miserable hovels will be the awful consequences of their immorality and filth be visited, but upon the heads of those of us who sit calmly by and make no effort to stem his tide of disease and vice will vengeance as certainly fall. For this reason Colored women who have had exceptional advantages are trying to have heart to heart talks with their women that they may strike at the root of evils, many of which lie, alas, at the fireside. If the women of the dominant race with all the centuries of education, culture and refinement back of them, with all the wealth of opportunity ever present with them feel the need of a Mother's Congress. [*5*] that they may be enlightened concerning the best methods of rearing their children and conducting their homes, how much more do our women from whom the shackles of slavery have but yesterday fallen need information on these same vital matters. In various parts of the country our women are trying to establish Mother's Congresses on a small scale, wherever it can be done. For years the work of bringing the light of knowledge and the gospel of cleanliness to the women who live on some of he plantations in the South has been conducted with signal success. The women who have engaged in this work have directed their efforts to plantations comprising thousands of acres of land on which live hundreds of Colored people, yet in the darkness of ignorance and the grip of sin, miles away from churches and schools. Under the evil influences of certain plantation owners who believe it is more profitable to keep their "hands" as near the brute creation as possible than it is to permit them to be human, and thru no fault of their own, the condition of Colored people in some sections of this country is no better today than it was at the close of the War. Those who work in behalf of these plantation women give them object lessons in the best way to sweep, dust, cook, wash and iron, show them how to make their huts more comfortable by converting boxes into bureaus, or tables or washstands, also how to make and use screens as to inculcate lessons of modesty. They teach them also how to clothe and feed their children properly, what food is the most nutritious for the money and give them other useful information pertaining to household affairs. Talks on social purity are also made for the benefit of those mothers who in many instances fall short of their duty, not because they are vicious and depraved, as is so frequently affirmed, but because they are ignorant and poor. Dotted all over the country are institutions of various kinds, charitable, educational and others which have been established or are being [*6*] maintained by Colored women, just how many it is difficult to state. There is imperative need of statistics, bearing on the progress, the possessions and the prowess of Colored people, since not only are white Americans ignorant of the work along various lines which their dark-skinned brothers and sisters are doing, but it is difficult for Colored people themselves to secure information and data of great value and importance to the race. Among the institutions founded by Colored women may be mentioned the Hale Infirmary of Montgomery Alabama, the Carrie Steel Orphanage of Atlanta, the Reed Orphan Home of Covington, both in the State of Ga., an Old Folks Home for both races in New Bedford, and St. Monica's Home in Boston, Mass; an Old Folks Home in Memphis, Tenn., a Colored Orphan's Home in Louisville Ky., and others equally useful and creditable to the women who established them. Some years ago the Phyllis Wheatley Club, an organization of Colored women in New Orleans, La., established a Sanatarium with a Training School for Nurses which has given abundant evidence of its utility and success. The conditions which caused the Colored women of New Orleans to choose this special field in which to operate are such as obtain in other cities and towns of that section. From the City hospitals Colored doctors are excluded altogether, not even being allowed to practice in the Colored wards. Colored patients, no matter how ill or how wealthy they were, were not received into the City Hospitals at all, unless they were willing to go into the charity wards. The establishment of this Sanatorium, therefore, answered a variety of purposes. It furnished an up to date hospital in which Colored medical students might gain a practical knowledge of their profession, and it provided also a well-equipped institution to which Colored patients might go, who did not care to be treated in the charity ward of the city hospital. In the surgical department which is supplied with all the modern appliances, hundreds of operations [*7*] have been performed, nearly all of which have resulted successfully under the Colored surgeon in chief. Among the best people of New Orleans there is great demand for Phyllis Wheatley nurses. In short, this Sanatarium with its training School for nurses, established by a few energetic, public-spirited Colored women of New Orleans has proved such a blessing to the city as a whole without regard to color, that the municipal government has voted it an annual appropriation to help defray its expenses. Mt. Meigs Institute is an excellent example of a work originated and carried into successful execution by a Colored woman. The school was established for the benefit of Colored people on the plantations in the Black Belt of Ala., because of the 700,000 Colored people living in the State at that time, probably ninety percent were outside of the cities. Waugh was selected, because in the township of Mt. Meigs, the population is practically all Colored. Instruction given in this school is the kind best suited to the needs of the people for whom it was established. Along with their scholastic training girls are taught everything pertaining to the management of a home, while boys learn practical farming, carpentering, wheelwrighting, blacksmithing and have some military training. Having started with almost nothing at the end of eight years the trustees of the school owned nine acres of land and five buildings in which several thousand pupils had received instruction, who would in all probability have remained in the densest ignorance all thru the industry, energy and the sacrifice of one Colored woman. In Augusta Ga. there is a coeducational school for Colored youth founded by Lucy Laney who has devoted her entire life to the elevation of her race. Having struggles heroically against desperate odds, Miss Laney finally graduated from Atlanta University. After teaching several years and saving every penny of her salary not actually needed for self support, Miss Laney rented a two-story frame house in Augusta Ga., which she used as a dormitory and converted an old barn on the premises into [*8*] recitation rooms. For yearw Miss Laney struggled against desperate odds, frequently having no money with which to pay the teachers, who naturally complained loudly. But she shouldered the responsibility with a determination and a tenacity which mocked defeat. To day the Haines Industrial and Normal School owns substantial buildings worth many thousand dollars and has in attendance more than a thousand pupils from all parts of the South. When Ex-President Taft visited Miss Laney's school a few years ago he addressed the pupils was deeply impressed with the prodigious amount of work she had done. The National Association of Colored women which was organized in 1896 and now has a membership of at least 50,000 has been a powerful influence for good. In twenty eight states there are State Federations and in fourteen there are organized clubs, not federated, but affiliated with the national organization. Magnificent service has been rendered by some of these State Federations. Thru their instrumentality schools have been visited, truant children looked after, parents and teachers urged to cooperate with each other, rescue and reform work engaged in so as to uplift unfortunate women and tempted girls, garments cut, made and distributed to the needy poor. By the Alabama State Federation of Colored women's clubs a reformatory for their youth has been built, so that Colored boys and girls need no longer be put upon the chain gang, sent to jail or to the convict camps with hardened criminals for their first infraction of the law, as has been the case heretofore. By some of their leaders the attention of Colored women is being called to the alarming rapidity with which they are losing ground in the world of labor, a condition which is clear to all who observe and read the signs of the times. If this movement to withhold employment from Colored women continues to grow, we shall soon be confronted with a condition of things disastrous and serious indeed. When those who formerly employed Colored help, but who refused to do so now are asked why they have established what is equivalent to a boycott against us, they usually reply that Colored people are no longer either reliable or skilled. [*9*] While those who have studied the labor question in its relation to the Colored American know that in the majority of cases Colored people are unable to secure employment because of the cruel, unreasonable prejudice against them, rather than on account of their lack of skill there is just enough true in the charge of unreliability and lack of skill to make us wince, when it is preferred. And so we are urging our youth to make themselves as thoroughly proficient in whatever occupation or profession they choose to engage. If there were sufficient time, however, I could cite case after case which has come under my own personal observation to prove that in this ever-increasing prejudice against Colored people, skill frequently avails them nothing at all. I am personally acquainted with young Colored men and women whose infusion of the fatal African admixture is so slight as not to be noticed, who have for that reason secured good positions, which their employers admitted were very acceptably filled. That is, they admitted this, before they knew with what race they were identified. And yet, when these same employers discovered that a single drop of African blood was lurking somewhere in their anatomy, they have promptly discharged their Colored employees, for no reason whatsoever except they were Colored. To be sure this does not always happen, but it does happen much more frequently than the American public seems to be aware. A beautiful young Colored woman had secured a position as clerk in the cloak department in of one of the large stores in Washington and had given entire satisfaction. She had served an apprenticeship in New York and was highly recommended by her employer there. Since her family lived in Washington, however, it was quite natural for her to want to secure employment at home. Armed with letters of splendid recommendations she succeeded in securing a position in one of our best stores. One day she came to ask me to intercede with her employer in her behalf. She had been discharged, she stated, because her employer had discovered she was [*10*] Colored. "When I went to ask for employment" she told me, "I simply showed my New York references, and said nothing whatever about my race, knowing I could get no consideration whatsoever, if I did, and hoping that if I gave satisfaction, Mr. L. would retain me, when he discovered I was Colored, as I knew he soon would do." When I went to intercede in this beautiful young woman's behalf, I felt certain that her employer would tell me that she had failed to give satisfaction. It has been my observation and experience that this is the reason usually assigned, when a Colored person is discharged on account of prejudice against his race. But the proprietor of the store was perfectly honest and frank. By a strange irony of fate the proprietor himself belongs to a race which has suffered for centuries and is still suffering to day from the cruel, unreasonable prejudice of other races. "I did not discharge Miss B, because I wanted to", he said, "but because I was forced to do so. She was the best sales woman in the cloak department I have ever had, and I wish I could have kept her. She had been in the store but a few days, however, when some one told me she was Colored. I could not believe it and denied it, for there was nothing about her appearance or her manner to indicated it. A few days after that, however, a dozen clerks came to me loaded with evidence to prove that she was Colored and demanded that I discharge Miss B. I refused to do so. They threatened to leave. "All right", said I, "you may all leave, it will be easy to fill your places. Shortly after that several delegations composed of my best customers came in, demanded that I discharge Miss B. immediately and threatened to boycott my store, if I did not. Then", said he "it became a question of bread and butter with me, and I just had to let the young woman go." When I taught in the High School for Colored youth at Washington, it was my custom to urge the pupils to secure as thorough an education as they possibly could, arguing that it would not only make them stronger [*11*] mentally, but it would increase their efficiency and enhance their value, so that they would stand a much better chance of getting good positions. More than once my heart was saddened, when some young woman or young man would say to me, why do you urge us to educate ourselves thoroughly. It will do us no good, it will not help us to secure good, paying positions in the United States. We cant all be doctors, lawyers, preachers and teachers, and there is nothing we can do except hold menial positions. We do not need a good education for that. This lack of incentive to put forth their best effort, because the future looms so dark and threatening before them has such a depressing effect upon hundreds of Colored youth as it is not in my power to describe and is impossible for the the average white American to comprehend. With the trades unions increasingly hostile to them, the outlook of Colored men is threatening and gloomy indeed. But to Colored women who are obliged to earn their own living, this cruel, unreasonable prejudice which excludes them from most of the gainful occupations and limits them to an unlucrative few, means in many cases misery and despair. There is no doubt whatever that the inability to secure employment has caused many a well intentioned, virtue-loving girl to lead a life of shame. With the exception of teaching, sewing nursing and a few menial pursuits, there is practically nothing that a Colored girl can get to do in the United States, no matter how intelligent or skillful, or prepossessing she may be, nor how great her need. While the women of other races have a variety of pursuits from which they may choose, the woman thru whose veins one drop of African blood is known to flow is limited to a pitiful few. So crowded are the occupations in which Colored women may engage and so poor is the pay in consequence that only the barest livelihood can be eked out by the rank and file. The report submitted by the Vice Commission of Chicago states quite frankly that, owing to prejudice against them on account of their color, many Colored girls are forced to accept positions as maids in houses of [*12*] ill fame. "Employment agents do not hesitate to send Colored girls to these houses", the Vice Commission declares. "They make the astounding statement that the law does not allow them to send white girls to these immoral places, but they can furnish Colored help. It is an appalling fact", continues the report, "that practically all of the male and female servants connected with disreputable houses are Colored." A few years ago Miss Frances Kellor, who was then the General Director of the Inter-Municipal Committee on Household Research made a thorough investigation of the conditions under which domestics live in the United States. And after carefully informing herself she declared that Colored domestics are more friendless than any other racial and are subjected to dangers greater than those besetting any other woman, except the most ignorant of immigrants. [*To here Then page 18*] This flagrant discrimination against Colored youth, particularly against the girls must be abhorrent to all fair-minded people, No matter how great their prejudice against Colored people may be, surely every mother and father of the dominant race will be willing to afford Colored children the same moral protection that white children receive. Surely there is not a white mother in the United States who does not deplore that prejudice against Colored, girls which makes it impossible in many cases for them to earn an honest living, and which finally drives them to secure employment in houses of ill fame. Therefore, those who are interested in the moral welfare of Colored women and girls can not consistently ignore the industrial boycott by which they are so seriously handicapped in the struggle for existence and which not infrequently leads to their ruin. Those who are interested in the moral welfare of this nation as a whole, should do everything in their power to create a healthful, wholesome public sentiment in the Colored girl's behalf, so that she may have the same chance to earn a decent living by honest toil as do girls of other races. So long as the womanhood of any race in the United States is sacrificed with impunity [*13*] on the altar of race prejudice, passion and lust, just so long will the womanhood of no race be absolutely secure. And yet, in spite of these conditions, so conducive to immorality, in spite of the fateful heritage of slavery, and the safeguards usually thrown around maidenly youth and innocence, are in a large section practically withheld from Colored girls, statistics compiled by men who would certainly not falsify in favor of my race, show that the immorality among Colored women in the United States is not so great as among women similarly situated in at least five foreign lands. In fact, one of the most encouraging and convicing signs of the Colored American's development is the high moral standard in which thousands who have been blessed with educational and moral training religiously believe and to which in their daily life they rigidly adhere. Nothing lies nearer the heart of Colored women than the children, many of whose lives so sad and dark, they are trying to brighten and bless. The more unfavorable the environment of children, the more necessary it is that steps be taken to counteract baleful influences upon innocent victims. How imperative is it then, that, as Colored women we inculcate correct principles and set good examples for our own youth, whose little feet will have so many thorny paths of prejudice, temptation and injustice to tread. The Colored youth is vicious, we are told, and statistics showing the large number of our boys and girls who crowd the penitentiaries and fill the jails appal and dishearten us. But, side by side with these facts and figures of crime justice demands I would have pictured and presented the miserable hovels from which these youthful criminals come. Crowded into alleys, many of them the haunts of vice, few, if any in a proper sanitary condition, most of them fatal to mental or moral growth and destructive of healthful physical development as well, thousands of our colored children have a wretched heritage indeed. Make a tour of the settlements of Colored people, who in most of our cities are relegated to the [*14*] most noisome sections permitted by the municipal government and behold the mites of humanity who infest them. Here are our little ones, the future representatives of the race, fairly drinking in the pernicious example of their elders, coming in contact with nothing but ignorance and vice, till at the age of six evil habits are formed which no amount of civilizing or Christianizing can ever completely break. And so, in various ways Colored women are listening to the cry of their children. In imitation of the Great Teacher of men who could not offer himself as a sacrifice, until he had made an eternal plea for the innocence and helplessness of childhood, Colored women are reaching out after the waifs and strays who without their aid and influence may be doomed to lives of evil and shame. They are establishing and maintaining kindergartens, wherever and whenever they can. They are also establishing Day [*The poor*] Nurseries, of which there is an imperative need. Over thousands of our wage-earning mothers are obliged to leave their children all day, while they go out to work. These babies are entrusted to some good-natured neighbor who promises much, but does little, or they are placed in the care of their young brothers and sisters who know nothing whatever about caring for them properly. Many of these babies are locked alone in a room from the time the mother leaves in the morning till she returns at night. When one thinks of the slaughter of the innocence which is occurring with pitiless persistency every day, when one thinks of the thousands who are maimed, or deformed, or rendered imbecils for life on account of neglect during their infancy--neglect, too, for which their mothers are frequently not responsible, it is evident that by establishing Day Nurseries Colored women are rendering one of the greatest services possible to humanity and the race. Colored women are beginning more and more to feel that no individual or organization, working for the elevation of the race, should be entirely satisfied with their efforts, unless some of their energy, or some of [*15*] their brain or some of their money is used in the name and for the sake of the children, either by establishing a kindergarten, a Day Nursery or forming a Children's Club, which is possible to all. In no way could we solve what is called the race problem more quickly and more surely than by devoting ourselves earnestly and conscientiously to the children with their warm little hearts, their susceptible minds, their maleable, pliable characters. Thru the children of today it is believed we believe we can build the foundation of the next generation upon such a rock of integrity, morality and strength that the floods of proscription, prejudice and persecution may descend upon it in torrents, and yet it will not be moved. We hear a great deal bout this race problem and how to solve it. This theory, that and the other may be advanced, but the real solution of the race problem, both so far as who are oppressed and those who oppress us are concerned lies in the children. [*the oppressor & the oppressed*] Colored women are sometimes accused of wilfully neglecting their children, but this charge like many others is not founded on facts. A large majority of our mothers are wage earners, who wash and iron and cook. Consequently they can not give their children personal attention during the day. But there are no mothers in the world who have made more prodigious sacrifices in behalf of their children than have Colored women--our enemies and truducers to the contrary, notwithstanding. As parents, teachers and guardians, we teach our children to cultivate their minds, to become proficient in what ever work they engage, to be honest, industrious and hopeful. It is easy enough to impress upon our children the necessity of cultivating their minds, and of becoming skilled in their trades, or professions but, how difficult a thing it is for a Colored mother to teach her children to be hopeful under the existin condition of things in the United States. As a mother of the dominant race looks into the innocent, sweet [*16*] face of her baby, her heart thrills not only with happiness in the present, but also with joyful anticipations of the future. For well she knows that honor, wealth, fame and greatness in any vocation he may choose, are all his, if he but possess the ability and the determination to secure them. She knows that if it is in him to be great, all the exterior circumstances which can help him to the goal of his ambition, such as the laws of his country, the public opinion of his countrymen and manifold opportunities are all his, without the asking, from his birth he is a king in his own right and is no suppliant for justice. But how bitter is the contrast between the feelings of joy and hope which thrill the heart of the white mother and those which stir the soul of her Colored sister. As a mother of the weaker race clasps to her bosom the baby which she loves with an affection as tender and as deep as that the white mother bears her child, her heart can not thrill with joyful anticipations of the future. Before her baby she sees the thorny path of prejudice and proscription which his little feet must tread. She knows that no matter how great his ability or how lofty his ambition, there are comparatively few trades and pursuits in which any one of his race may hope to succeed. She knows that no matter how skillful his hand, how honest his heart, or how great his need, trades unions in some sections will close their doors in his face and make his struggle for existence desperate indeed. So rough does the way of her infant appear to many a poor Colored mother, when she thinks of the hardships and humiliations to which he will be subjected in his effort to earn his daily bread that instead of thrilling with joy and hope, she trembles with apprehension and despair. This picture, the forbidding to look upon is not overdrawn, as those who have studied the labor question can testify. But, let me assure you that Colored women are not sitting supinely by with folded hands, drooping heads and weeping eyes, but some of them are up and doing, trying to smooth out the rough roads of labor over which The proportion of wage earners among Colored women is greater than that among women of any other racial group in the U.S. [*17*] tiny feet that now patter in play may soon stumble and fall. To our own youth, to our own tradesmen we are constantly preaching, reliability, efficiency, thorough preparation for the work in which they are to engage. We are also appealing to our large hearted, broadminded sisters of the dominant race, of whom there are so many, and are asking them both to observe themselves and to teach their children to observe, so far as they can, the lofty principles of justice, equality of opportunity and equality before the law, upon which this country was founded and in which, theoretically, at least all American citizens are supposed to believe. We Colored women are asking our white sisters to try to teach their children to judge men and women by their intrinsic merit, rather than by the adventitious circumstances of race, or color, or creed. Colored women are imploring the white parents of the United States to teach their children that when they grow to be men and women, if they deliberately prevent their brothers and sisters of a darker hue from earning an honest living, the Father of All men will hold them responsible for the crimes which are the result of their injustice and for the human wrecks which the ruthless crushing of hope and ambition always makes. In the name of our children we are asking our sisters of the dominant race to do all in their power to secure for our youth opportunities of earning a living and of attaining unto full manhood and womanhood which they desire for their own. In the name of the innocence of childhood, black childhood as well as white, we are appealing to the white parents of this country to make the future of our boys and girls as bright and as promising as should be that of every child born in a country which owes its very existence to the love of liberty in the human heart. In spite of obstacles and in spite of little capital as well Colored women have achieved remarkable success in business. Some of the most flourishing enterprises of which the race can boast are owned or are conducted by women. In the professions there are doctors and dentists whose practice [*18*] practice is lucrative and large. Ever since a book was published in 1773, entitled "Poems on Various Subjects by Phyllis Wheatley, Negro Servant of John Wheatley of Bosotn Colored women have given abundant evidence of literary ability from time to time. In painting we are represented by young women who have studied under the foremost masters abroad and whose works have hung in the best salons. In sculpture we are represented by at least two women, upon whose chisel both Italy and France have set their seal of approval and in music, by women who hold diplomas from the leading conservatories in the United States. In a variety of ways Colored women have given indisputable evidence that they intend to put forth earnest efforts in behalf of their race. Intelligently and conscientiously those who have been blessed with superior advantages are studying the questions which affect the race most deeply and directly, hoping to find ways and means of reaching a just and reasonable solution of some of the vexatious problems which confront them. Against lynching, the Jim Crow Car Laws, the Convict Lease System, cruel discrimination in the field of labor and the trades they intend to agitate with such force of logic and intensity of soul that those who continue to handicap and oppress them will either be converted to righteousness and justice or ashamed openly to violate the Golden Rule and flout the very principles upon which this government was built. Many feel, no doubt, that Colored women can not do much to solve the problem themselves, because they are ostracized in the various communities in which they live on account of their race and heavily handicapped in addition on account of their sex. But, every woman, no matter what her complexion or what condition in life may be has an influence which she can exert for good. A great deal is said about personal influence, but if actions speak louder than words there is reason to fear that many good people fail to realize what a potent factor it amy become. There is a great philosophical truth however in the little stanza which most of us learned [*19*] when we were young. It is really the little drops of water and the little grains of sand which after a while make the mighty ocean and the beauteous land. In estimating the work it is possible for intelligent, earnest, resourceful Colored women to do, let us remember that it is not by the power of death-dealing armies, nor by the expenditure of vast sums of money that the most enduring reforms have been inaugurated and the greatest revolutions wrought. It is by the silent, the powerful force of individual influence exerted on the side of right. If the future of Colored women may be judged by the past, as dark as that past has sometimes been, there is no reason why we should look forward to it with alarm. Over almost insurmountable obstacles Colored women have forged steadily ahead, so that to day there is scarcely a trade or a professions in which they are allowed to engage in which they have not at least one worthy representative. In a variety of ways Colored women are rendering their race a service whose magnitude and importance it is difficult to estimate or express. Lifting, as they climb, onward and upward they go, struggling and striving and hoping that the door of opportunity will be opened wider unto them ere long. With courage born of success achieved in the past, and with a keen sense of responsibility which they will continue to assume they look forward to the future large with promise and hope. Seeking no favors because of their color, begging for nothing which they do not deserve, they knock at the door of justice and ask for an equal chance. [*Mary Church Terrell - 1826-13th St. N.W. Washington, D.C.*] The Progress and the Problems of Colored Women. [*Jan. 11, 1920*] If and one should ask what special phase of the Colored-American's development makes me most hopeful of his ultimate triumph over present obstacles, I should answer unhesitatingly, it is the magnificent work the women are doing to regenerate and uplift their race. Though there are many things in the Colored-American's status to discourage him, he has some blessings for which to be thankful. Not the least of these is the progress of the women in everything which makes for the culture of the individual and the elevation of the race. From the moment colored women's fetters were broken, and their minds released from the darkness of ignorance in which they had been held for nearly three hundred years; from the moment they could stand erect in the dignity of womanhood, no longer bond, but free, till to day, colored women have forged steadily ahead in the acquisition of knowledge and in the cultivation of those graces of character which make for good. To use a thought of the illustrious Frederick Douglass, if judged by the depths from which they have come, rather than by the heights to which those blessed with centuries of opportunity have attained, colored women need not hang their heads in shame. If one considers the almost insurmountable obstacles which colored women have been obliged to surmount in their effort to forge ahead, he must admit that the work they have accomplished and the progress they have made will at least bear favorable comparison with that of their more fortunate sisters, from whom the opportunity of acquiring knowledge and the means of self-culture have never been entirely withheld. Indeed it is impossible to place a just estimate upon the progress made by colored women, unless one remembers that they have not only been handicapped on account of sex, but they 2 have been baffled and mocked practically everywhere on account of their race. Desperately and continuously they have been forced to fight a relentless prejudice which neither their merit nor their necessity seems able to remove. Not only because they are women, but because they are colored women are discouragement and disappointment meeting them at every turn. In a very striking manner women of the dominant race have recently shown the world how bitterly they resent the injustices and how keenly they feel the disabilities imposed upon them on account of their sex. When one recalls the discriminations which white women claim have so seriously handicapped them and the humiliations to which they say they have been subjected solely on account of their sex, it is not difficult to imagine how stupendous would be the obstacles and how heavy would be the burdens borne by a group of human beings "double-crossed", so to speak, by both sex and race. But, in spite of the opposition encountered and the obstacles opposed to their acquisition of knowledge and to their accumulation of property, the progress made by colored women along these and other lines has never been surpassed by that of any women under similar conditions, since the world began. Densely ignorant at the close of the Civil War, so insatiable has been the colored woman's thirst for knowledge and, so herculean have been her efforts to secure it that there are to day in the United States hundreds of them who have graduated from first class academies and excellent schools of various kinds, while many hold diplomas from the best universities and colleges in the land. From Wellesley, Ann Arbor. Oberlin, Cornell, Vassar and Smith, from the best High and Normal Schools throughout the North, East and West, colored girls have been graduated with honor and have forever settled the question of their capacity and worth. [*3*] Some years ago in Chicago a large number of young men and women of the dominant race and only one colored person, a colored girl, competed for a scholarship which entitles the successful competitor to an entire course through the Chicago University. As a result of the examination which was held, the only colored person among them stood first and thus captured this great prize. A goodly number of young colored women are wearing Phi Beta Kappa pins which they have won by superior scholarship in the best universities, where they have been allowed to measure arms with their brothers and sisters of the dominant race. In a Spelling Bee held in Cleveland Ohio in which pupils from all over the country participated, a little colored girl took the first prize as being the best speller in the public schools of the United States. A San Francisco newspaper offered a prize to the individual who would suggest the best name for the Panama Exposition. A colored girl only eleven years old sent in the name "Jewel City" and won it. About five years ago in a Brooklyn Public School a colored girl completed the course of study in six and a half years, the fist time this feat had been performed, since the school was founded more than two hundred fifty years ago. This record-breaking colored girl also won a bronze medal in a Spelling Bee. In that same Brooklyn School another colored girl took the silver medal for proficiency in German at the mid-year promotion. There were 108 pupils in the class and 18 of them were of German descent. The German medal was the highest honor and was given by the German-American National Bund. When the German gentleman who was presenting the medal saw a small, fourteen-year old, brown-skinned girl walking toward him to receive it, he nearly lost his breath, but the large audience enjoyed the incident and roared with applause. These were the only two [*4*] prizes offered in that school and they were both taken by the only two colored pupils in the class. As a rule, wherever colored girls have studied their instructors bear cheerful testimony to their intelligence, their diligence and their success. Ever since a book was published in 1773, entitled Poems on Various Subjects by Phyllis Wheatley, Negro Servant of Mr. John Wheatley of Boston, colored women have given indisputable evidence of literary ability from time to time. It would be difficult to find a more remarkable record in the history of literature than that made by this young slave girl, the first woman with African blood in her veins to win distinction as a writer in the United States and perhaps the first in the world. At seven years of age she was packed like a sardine in a slave ship sailing from Africa and was taken to Boston. A Mrs. Wheatley, who was looking for a young girl to replace an old servant who could no longer do the work, bought her out of sheer compassion, when she saw the wretched, little, black girl shivering with cold, wrapped only in a small piece of carpet, as she was being exhibited for sale one cold bleak day in Boston. Nine years after she had landed in America, ignorant of the language, unable to read and write, Phyllis was writing verses filled with references to mythology and showing she had a thorough knowledge of Geography, Astronomy and History. Phyllis wrote a poem to George Washington in which she sang his praises rapturously. The Commander in Chief of the American Army and the future President of the United States acknowledged receipt of this poem and replied as follows: Miss Phillis: Your favor of the 28th of October did not reach my hands until the middle of December; time enough you will say, to have given answer ere this. Granted. But a variety of important occurrences, continuously imposing to distract the mind and withdraw the attention, I hope will apologize for [*5*] the delay and plead my excuse for the seeming neglect. I thank you most sincerely for your polite notice in the elegant lines you enclosed; and, however undeserving I may be of such enconium and panegyric, the style and manner exhibit a striking proof of your poetical talent; in honor of which and as a tribute justly due you, I would have published the poem, had I not been apprehensive that while I only meant to give the world this new instance of your genius, I might have incurred the imputation of vanity. This and nothing else determined me not to give it place in public print. If you should ever come to Cambridge, or near headquarters, I shall be happy to see a person so favored by the muses and to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficent in her dispensation. I am with great respect, your obedient, humble servant, (Signed) George Washington. In Sculpture colored women are represented by one upon whom Italy has set her seal of approval. At the Centennial in Philadelphia in 1876 one of the works of art most admired was a statue of Cleopatra which had been carved by Edmonia Lewis, a colored woman. Believing that prejudice against her race in the United States would preclude the possibility of success as a sculptor, if she remained here, Miss Lewis went to Italy to study, then decided to live there and achieved considerable fame. The Marquis of Bute, known far and wide as a connoisseur of art, considered Edmonia Lewis's Madonna one of the finest pieces of sculpture he possessed. There is living in Massachusetts to day another colored woman who has achieved success as a sculptor. After graduating from the Philadelphia School of Art Meta Vaux Warrick, as she was then known, went abroad and studied with some of the best teachers in Paris. Some of Miss Warrick's pieces attracted the attention of the great sculptor, Rodin and he became so interested in them, that at her request he appointed a [*6*] day to examine them. When he came to the figure in "Silent Sorrow", he paused, examined it critically then said with conviction and enthusiasm, "Mademoiselle, you are a sculptor. You have the sense of form." One of Miss Warrick's best pieces was exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1903. In commenting upon some of her sketches in the Art Nouveau a well-known critic of the Figaro declared that they proved beyond doubt that the young woman who moulded them was really a great artist. In May 1917 Mrs. Meta Warrick-Fuller took second prize in a competition under the auspices of the Massachusetts Branch of the Woman's Peace Party- her subject being Peace Halting the Ruthlessness of War. In Painting the race is represented by a colored woman who was one of Bougoureau's pupils and her work also was exhibited in a Paris Salon. On several occasions colored women have won prizes in this country which entitled them to a course of instruction in art, but they have not always been allowed to avail themselves of it, when it was discovered with what race they were identified. A very talented colored woman submitted some drawings on which she was admitted to a school of art in the National Capital some years ago. A ticket of admission was sent to her and an easel actually assigned her. But, when she presented herself to take the course she had won by her drawing, she was told she would not be admitted, because she was colored. In Music colored women hold diplomas from the best conservatories in the country and they have established several institutions for the study of music themselves. One of them is located in Washington, DC. In the professions there are dentists and doctors whose practice is lucrative and large. In business colored women have achieved signal success, in spite of lack of experience and lack of capital as well. A few months ago there died in New York City a colored woman reputed to be worth a million dollars. At the time of [7] her death she was living in a palatial residence on Riverside Drive which is the last word in modern architecture and was designed by a colored architect who graduated from Cornell. This colored woman's history reads like a page in fiction- the thrilling kind at that. Only fifteen years before she moved into her beautiful residence on Riverside Drive, she was a washerwoman. But, just as white people have made fortunes by discovering ways and means of injecting curls and generating frizzes into locks that hang as straight as a poker from the feminine head, so Mme. Walker laid up riches galore for herself by discovering a method which would iron the curl out of refractory hair. In St. Louis, Mo. there is another large business enterprise, the success of which is largely due to a woman, Mrs. Aaron Malone. The Poro College, as this Hair Emporium is called, carries on its extensive operations in a building which it owns and which is worth at least $250,000. It affords employment to a large number of the race in its branches all over the United States. In Alabama there is a large milling and cotton business owned and controlled by a colored woman. A few years ago the principal ice plant in Halifax was managed by a colored woman. Some of the finest modistes and milliners in the country are colored women, who run mammoth establishments in the largest cities. They are very successful undertakers and several are conceded to be as expert embalmers as can be found in the United States. In Richmond, Va. there lives a colored woman, Mrs. Maggie Walker, who, for many years has been president of a flourishing bank. She has the reputation of being as safe, sane and successful a financier as can be found anywhere in the State. When panics have caused other banks to totter, if they did not actually fall, the one over which this colored woman presides has always stood firm. Mrs. Walker is also president of the Order of St. Lukes, a large beneficial 8 organization which has hundreds of colored people in its employ. Under the head of [the] financial efforts [made by colored women] a commendable work done by the National Association of Colored Women may be mentioned. Under its president Mrs. Mary Talbert, a mortgage was removed from Cedar Hill the home of Frederick Douglass in Anacostia, Va. where he lived for many years. Cedar Hill will be converted into a suitable Memorial to this great man whose native ability and remarkable attainments did so much to cause the world to place the race he so brilliantly represented upon a higher plane. Thousands of dollars are raised by colored women every year through their societies in the various churches and through their clubs and this money is used not only for the support of the church but for the upkeep of the schools, hospitals and charitable organizations which colored people maintain. The colored woman is devoted to her church and will spend the last dollar for its support. Although colored women deserve great credit for applying themselves so assiduously to their studies and cultivating their minds, they deserve still greater credit for the use to which this knowledge has been put. No sooner had the favored few availed themselves of such advantages as they could secure than they hastened to enlighten the less fortunate of their race. With the increase of wisdom there sprang up in the hearts of colored women an ardent desire to do good. With tireless energy and eager zeal they have been continuously prosecuting the work of educating and elevating their race, as though upon themselves alone devolved the accomplishment of this great task. Of the colored teachers engaged in instructing the youth, it is no exaggeration to say that at least 70% are women. In the backwoods remote from the civilization and comforts of the city and town, on the plantations reeking with ignorance and vice, colored women may be found battling with those evils which such conditions [*9*] always entail. Many a dusky heroine of whom the world will never hear has thus sacrificed her life to her race amid surroundings and in the face of privations which only martyrs can bear. When the venerable Dr. Mayo was Commissioner of Education some years ago, he declared that colored women had no superiors as teachers and very few equals. He explained this statement by saying that for nearly 300 years slave women had been nurses, had crooned over and cared for the children of their masters, so that the mother instinct had been developed and cultivated in them to a high degree. There are thousands of southern white people to day who will testify cheerfully to the tender care and affection lavished upon them by their colored nurses, both before and after the Civil War. This ability to minister affectionately and carefully to children has been transmitted from the slave women to their descendants who are the school teachers of to day. Indefatigably and conscientiously in public work of all kinds colored women engage for the benefit of their race. Shirking responsibility in this respect is a fault with which they cannot be truthfully charged. By banding themselves together in the interest of education and morality and, by adopting the most practical and useful means to this end, during the last forty years these women have been a tremendous power for good. One of the most useful and successful organizations among them is the National Association of Colored Women which was formed in 1896 and now has a membership of more than 100,000. In 39 States there are State Federations. Where there are no State Federations, there are organized clubs affiliated with the national organization. Magnificent service has been rendered by some of these State Federations. Through their instrumentality unsatisfactory schools have been improved, truant children looked after in those 10 communities which make no provision for this service, parents and teachers urged to cooperate with each other, rescue and reform work engaged in, so as to uplift unfortunate women and tempted girls, garments, cut, made and distributed to the poor. By the Alabama Federation of Colored Women's Clubs a Reformatory for their youth has been built, so that colored boys of tender years need no longer be placed upon the chain gangs to work with hardened criminals or be sent to jail or to the convict lease camps for their first infraction of the law, as has been the case heretofore. For years the work of bringing the light of knowledge and the gospel of cleanliness to the benighted women on some of the plantations of the South has been conducted with signal success. Those who have rendered this great service have directed their efforts to plantations comprising thousands of acres of land, on which live hundreds of colored people still in the darkness of ignorance and the grip of vice, miles away from churches and schools. Under the evil influence of certain plantation owners who believe it is more profitable to keep their "hands" as near the brute creation as possible, and through no fault of their own, the condition of colored women in some sections of this country is not much better now than it was at the close of the Civil War. Those who work in behalf of these plantation women give them object lessons in the proper way to sweep, dust, cook, wash and iron, show them how to make their huts more habitable and comfortable by converting boxes into bureaus or washstands or tables, also how to make screens, so as to inculcate lessons of modesty. These ignorant plantation women are taught how to clothe and feed their children properly according to their means, what food is the most nutritious and are given other useful information pertaining to household affairs. Talks on Social Purity are also made for the benefit of 11 those mothers who sometimes fall short of their duty to their children, not because they are vicious and depraved, as is so frequently asserted by those who either do not know the facts or deliberately distort them, but because they are ignorant and poor. Dotted all over the country are institutions of various kinds, charitable and otherwise which have either been established or are being maintained by colored women- just how many it is difficult to state. There is imperative need of reliable statistics bearing on the progress, the possessions and the prowess of colored women, since not only are white Americans ignorant of the work of all kinds which their dark-skinned sisters are doing, but it is difficult for colored people themselves to secure information and data of great value and importance to the race. Among institutions founded by colored women may be mentioned the Hale Infirmary of Montgomery Alabama, the Carrie Steele Orphanage of Atlanta, the Reed Orphan Home of Covington, both in the State of Georgia, the Old Folks Home in Memphis Tenn., a Home for Aged Colored Women in Pittsburg, a Colored Orphans Home in Louisville, Ky., and other equally creditable to the women who have either founded or are maintaining them. Some years ago the Phyllis Wheatley Club, an organization of colored women in New Orleans established a Sanatarium with a Training School for nurses which has given abundant proof of its utility and success. The conditions which caused the colored women of New Orleans to choose this special field in which to operate were such as obtained in other cities and towns. From the city hospitals colored doctors were excluded altogether, not even being allowed to practice in the colored wards. Colored patients, no matter how ill or how wealthy, were not received into the City Hospital at all, unless they were willing to go into the charity 12 wards. The establishment of this Sanatarium, therefore, answered a variety of purposes. It provided a well-equipped institution to which colored patients might go who did not care to be treated in the charity ward of the City Hospital and it afforded colored medical students an excellent opportunity of gaining a practical knowledge of their profession. In the surgical department, which is supplied with all the modern appliances, hundreds of operations have been performed, nearly all of which have resulted successfully under the colored surgeon in chief. During an epidemic of yellow fever in New Orleans some years ago Phyllis Wheatley nurses rendered such excellent service that they have been employed by the best people of that city ever since. This Sanatarium with its training school for nurses which was established by a few energetic, public-spirited colored women of New Orleans has proved to be such a blessing to the city as a whole, without regard to race or color, that the municipal government has voted an annual appropriation of several hundred dollars with which to help defray the current expense. Mt. Meigs Institute is an excellent example of a work originated and carried into successful execution by a colored woman. The school was established for the benefit of colored people in the black belt of Alabama, because of the 700,000 colored people living in the State at that time, probably 90% were outside of the cities. Waugh was selected. because in the township of Mt. Meigs, the population is practically all colored. Instruction given in this school is the kind best suited to the needs of the people for whom it was established. Along with their scholastic training girls are taught everything pertaining to the management of the home, while boys learn practical farming, wheelwrighting, 13 blacksmithing and have some military training. Having started with nothing, the trustees of the school now own many acres of land and well-constructed buildings in which several thousand pupils have received instruction, who would in all probability have remained densely ignorant, had it not been for the industry, the energy and the sacrifice of one colored woman. In Augusta Ga. there is a coeducational school for colored youth founded by Miss Lucy Laney who has devoted her entire life to the elevation of her race. Having struggled heroically against desperate odds, Miss Laney finally graduated from Atlanta University. After teaching several years and saving every penny of her small salary not actually needed for self support, Miss Laney rented a two-story frame house in Augusta, which she used as a dormitory and converted an old barn on the premises into recitation rooms. For years Miss Laney toiled under the most depressing conditions and frequently had no money with which to pay her teachers who depended entirely upon their salary for support. But, she had shouldered this responsibility with a determination and a tenacity which simply mocked defeat. Instead of being named for its founder this institution is known as the Haines Industrial and Normal School in honor of a friend who greatly assisted Miss Laney in time of need. The school owns substantial buildings worth many thousands of dollars and has in attendance more than a thousand pupils from all parts of the South. Ex-President Taft delivered an address at Miss Laney's school a few years ago and the newspapers which reported it quoted him as saying he was deeply impressed with the prodigious amount of work this colored woman had done. In Daytona Florida there is the Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro Girls established by one of the brightest 14 women the race has produced. On Oct. 3rd 1904 Mary Mcleod Bethune started her work with one dollar and a half. By dint of perseverance, tireless energy and burning zeal she stands to day at the head of an institution worth not less than $100,000 and she is making plans for greatly enlarging her work. But, the value in dollars and cents is nothing compared with the influence for good this school exerts upon the colored youth of the State. In Lincoln Heights, D.C., a suburb of the National Capital, there is a National Training School for Women and Girls founded by Miss Nannie Burroughs who raised the funds for purchasing the beautiful grounds and erecting the substantial, well-appointed buildings of this educational plant, which is worth $85,000 at least. But, so far as the schools established by colored women are concerned, these are only a few bright and shining lights with innumerable lesser rays twinkling and burning all over the South. The number of schools established by colored women is literally legion. So inadequate are the educational facilities for colored children in many cities and towns of a large section of this country, that thousands of them would remain in the densest ignorance, if it were not for these private schools established by the women of the race. A great variety of work is done by colored women through the medium of their clubs. By some of them Day Nurseries have been established-a charity of which there is imperative need. The proportion of wage earners among colored women is greater than that among women of any other racial group in the United States. Thousands of wage-earning mothers with large families dependent almost entirely, if not wholly, upon them for support are obliged to leave their children all day, entrusted either to the care of small brothers and sisters who do not know how to look after them properly 15 or to some good-natured neighbor who promises much, but who does little. Some of the infants are locked alone in the room, from the time the mother leaves in the morning till she returns at night. It is painful to think of the suffering these babies endure. When one thinks of the slaughter of the innocents which is occurring with pitiless persistency every day and reflects upon the multitudes who are maimed for life or are rendered imbecile by the treatment received during their helpless infancy, treatment for which their mothers are frequently not responsible, it is evident that by establishing Day Nurseries colored women will render one of the greatest services possible to humanity and to the race. By some of the clubs kindergartens have been established and are being successfully maintained. For, nothing lies nearer the hearts of colored women than the children and they are trying to promote the welfare of their little ones in every possible way. They know that the more unfavorable the environment of children, the more necessary it is that steps be taken to counteract baleful influences upon innocent victims. They realize increasingly how imperative it is that colored women inculcate correct principles and set good examples for their own youth whose condition in life is exceedingly hard, from the nature of the case, whose opportunities are comparatively few and whose temptations are very great. Special efforts are being made by some of the leaders to reach out after the waifs and strays whose evil natures alone are encouraged to develop and whose better qualities are deadened and dwarfed by the very atmosphere which they breathe. At the second convention of the National Association of Colored Women held in Chicago in 1899 the first president started a "Kindergarten 16 Fund". She hoped to raise a sufficient sum to send out a Kindergarten Organizer, whose duty it should be to arouse the conscience of the women to the necessity of saving children and to establish kindergartens wherever means therefor could be secured. One of the most serious obstacles to the equitable adjustment of racial conditions is the attitude of the children of the two races toward each other. Seeing the treatment accorded colored people by their elders and the various ways in which colored people are circumscribed and set aside white children, without being conscious of it, early learn to look upon their dark-skinned brothers and sisters with scorn and contempt. On the other hand, colored children who feel the sting and smart from the wounds inflicted by race prejudice early learn to look upon white people as innately hostile to them and unkind. Every now and then one hears and reads the opinions of those who tell us "How to Solve the Race Problem". This theory, that and the other may be suggested. But the real solution of the race problem, both so far as those who handicap and those who are handicapped are concerned lies in the children. So long as the children of the two races are allowed to grow up misunderstanding and hating each other, the problem can never be solved. Believing that it is only through the home that any people can become really good and truly great, colored women who have the interests of their race at heart are exerting themselves strenuously to raise the standards and purify the atmosphere of the home. Homes, more homes, better homes, purer homes is the text upon which sermons have been and will be preached. There have been determined efforts to have heart to heart talks with the women, so that they may learn to strike at the root of evils, many of which lie at their firesides. If the women of the dominant race [*17*] with all the centuries of education, culture and refinement back of them, with all the wealth of opportunity ever present with them feel the need of a "Mothers' Congress", so that they may be enlightened concerning the best methods of rearing their children and conducting their homes, how much more do colored women from whom the shackles of slavery have but yesterday been stricken need information on the same vital subjects. Efforts are being made, therefore, to establish "Mothers' Congresses" on a small scale, wherever colored women may be reached. Questions affecting their legal status as a race have been sometimes agitated by colored women. In Tennessee and Louisiana colored women have several times petitioned the legislatures of their respective States to repeal the obnoxious "Jim Crow Car" laws. They are also calling attention to the barbarity of the Convict Lease System, of which colored people and especially the female prisoners are the principal victims, with the hope that the conscience of the country may be touched and this stain upon its escutcheon be forever wiped away. Against the one-room cabin some of the leaders have inaugurated a vigorous campaign. When families of eight or ten men, women and children are all huddled promiscuously together in a single room- a condition common among the poor all over one large section- there is little hope of inculcating morality or modesty. It is easy to give many other illustrations of the fact that colored women who have had the advantages of education and training are keenly alive to the needs of their race and are trying to meet them the best they can. One of the most serious problems confronting colored women is their inability to secure employment in pursuits in which they are fitted by native ability, education and training successfully to engage. Temporarily, the colored woman's industrial status [*18*] status was suddenly changed for the better by labor conditions brought on by the great World War. Pursuits were then opened to colored people which had previously been closed against them hard and fast. But, in many instances, the opportunities for employment which colored women enjoyed during the World War are being speedily withdrawn and denied them to day. For instance, during the War colored girls operated the elevators in the largest and best department stores in the National Capital. But they have been dismissed and these jobs have been given to white girls. Colored girls were also used as bundle wrappers in these stores but they too have lost their jobs. The arch enemy, race-prejudice, is rapidly training his deadly machine guns on them and is driving them back from the strongholds they thought they could keep. With the exception of teaching, sewing, nursing there is practically nothing that a colored girl can get to do in the United States, no matter how well-educated, or skillful or prepossessing she may be, and no matter how great her need, unless she is willing to engage in one of the menial pursuits. While the women of the dominant race have a variety of occupations from which they may choose, the woman through whose veins one single drop of African blood is known to flow is limited to a pitiful few. Previous to the World War, so overcrowded were the pursuits in which colored women were allowed to engage and so poor was the pay in consequence that only the barest livelihood could be eked out by the rank and file. The fact that colored women are already being removed from places given them during the World War seems to indicate that history is repeating itself in this respect now. To colored women who are obliged to earn their living race-prejudice which excludes them from most of the gainful occupations and limits them to an unlucrative few means in many cases [*19*] misery and despair. The printed report submitted a few years ago by the Vice Commission of Chicago throws a flood of light upon this phase of the colored woman's life in the United States. This report states that owing to prejudice against them on account of their race colored girls are frequently forced to accept positions as maids in houses of ill fame. "Employment agents do not hesitate to send colored girls to these houses," the Vice Commission reports. "They make the astounding statement that the law does not allow them to send white girls to these immoral places, but they can furnish colored help. It is an appalling fact", reads the printed report, "that practically all of the male and female servants connected with disreputable houses are colored." A few years ago Miss Frances Kellor, then Director General of the Intermunicipal Committee on Household Research, made a thorough investigation of conditions under which domestics lived in the United States. After carefully informing herself she declared that colored domestics are more friendless than any other racial group in the North and are subjected to greater dangers than those besetting any other women in this country except perhaps the most ignorant of immigrants. Owing to this flagrant discrimination against colored girls who seek employment and, in many instances, owing to the lack of protection afforded them by the law, colored mothers who have high ideals for their daughters find the task of properly rearing them increased an hundred fold. Colored women are hoping that after a while those who are interested, not especially in the moral welfare of the colored girl, but in the moral welfare of the nation as a whole, will realize the necessity of doing everything in their power to create a healthful, wholesome public sentiment in the colored girl's behalf, so that she may have the same [*20*] chance of earning an honest living as girls of other races enjoy. So long as the womanhood of any race is sacrificed with impunity upon the altar of prejudice, prescription or passion, so long will the womanhood of no race be absolutely secure. And yet, in spite of these conditions so conducive to immorality, in spite of the fateful heritage of slavery, though the safeguards usually thrown around maidenly youth and innocence are in large sections of this country practically withheld from colored girls. statistics compiled by white men who would certainly not falsify in favor of the race show that immorality among colored women in the United States is not so great as among women similarly situated in at least five foreign lands. Owing to conditions abroad brought on by the World War there is no doubt whatever that statistics comparing the immorality of the colored women in the United States with that of those unfortunate women in certain foreign lands would be decidedly to the advantage of the former. In fact, one of the most encouraging and convincing signs of the Colored-American's development is the high moral standard in which thousands who have been blessed with educational and moral training religiously believe and to which in their daily lives they rigidly adhere. Another serious problem confronting colored women is the difficulty experienced both in the home and in the public schools in helping their children preserve their self respect and in encouraging them to set their standards high. This is particularly true in those sections where race prejudice manifests itself most fiercely. As soon as a colored child begins to use his eyes and his ears, as soon as he begins to think for himself, the slogan "Thus Far Shalt Thou Go and No Farther, Because You Are Not White", confronts him like the handwriting on the wall. wherever he turns. As a teacher in the Washington High School for colored youth it was my custom to urge the pupils to secure as thorough an education as they possibly could, [*21*] arguing that it would not only make them stronger mentally, but it would greatly increase their general efficiency and enhance their value, so that they would stand a much better chance of getting a good position. But, more than once my heart was saddened, when some pupil would say, "Why do you urge us to educate ourselves thoroughly? It will do us no good. It will not help us secure good paying positions, No matter what colored people know, no matter how competent they are, there are only a few things they can get to do. We cant all be doctors, lawyers, preachers or teachers. There are more teachers now than can get a living wage. We haven't money enough to start in business for ourselves. There is nothing for colored people to do except hold menial positions and we dont need a good education for that." This lack of incentive to put forth their best effort, because the future looms so forbidding and threatening before them, has such a depressing effect upon thousands of colored youth in this country as no human being can describe and no white American can possibly comprehend. The average white American really believes that if colored people are unable to secure positions commensurate with their ability and attainments, it is because in some way they do not measure up to the [positions] jobs they seek, and, if they do by some unusual good luck secure them then they lose them, it is because they are inefficient and slack. It would be possible to cite case after case showing that this opinion is not based upon the facts. There are many young colored men and women whose infusion of the fatal African admixture is so slight as not to be noticed, who have for that reason secured positions which they would otherwise have been unable to obtain. Their employers have cheerfully admitted that they gave entire satisfaction before their racial identity was known. But, when it was discovered that a single drop of African blood was lurking somewhere in [*22*] their anatomies, these same employers have suddenly discovered that [they] the colored people were not making good and discharged them. This does not always happen, to be sure, for all the justice-loving white people are not dead yet, but it does happen much more frequently than the average white American is aware. To stem this tide of popular disfavor against her race in the field of labor is the desire of every colored woman who understands the situation and wants to serve her race. By their leaders wage-earning colored women are being shown how fatal it will be to their highest, best interests and to the future welfare of their children, if, as a race, they do not build up a reputation for reliability and proficiency. They are preaching the dignity of labor in season and out and are urging their youth to make themselves thoroughly proficient and absolutely reliable in whatever pursuit they engage. Nobody is more directly and disastrously affected by this industrial boycott against colored people than the is the colored woman herself. As parents, teachers and guardians colored women instill into their children the necessity of being honest and industrious, of cultivating their minds, of becoming skilled workmen, of being energetic and then they try to make them hopeful. It is comparatively easy to impress upon colored children the necessity of cultivating their minds, becoming skilled workmen, being honest, energetic and industrious, but, how difficult a thing it is for colored women to inspire their children with hope and offer them an incentive for their best endeavor under the existing conditions in the United States. As a mother of the dominant race looks into the innocent face of her baby, her heart may thrill, not only with happiness in the present, but also with joyful anticipations of the future. 23 For well she knows, no matter how poor she may be, that honor wealth fame and greatness in any vocation he may choose are all his, if he but possess the ability and the determination to secure them. She knows that if it is in her baby to be great, all the exterior circumstances which can help him to the goal of this ambition, such as the laws of his country, the public opinion of his countrymen and manifold opportunities are his without the asking. From his birth he is a king in his own right and is no suppliant for justice. But, how striking is the contract between the feelings of joy and hope which thrill the heart of the white mother and the emotions which stir the soul of her colored sister. As a mother of the weaker race clasps to her bosom the baby which she loves with an affection as tender and deep as that the white mother bears her child, her heart dare not thrill with joyful anticipation of the future. She knows that no matter how skillful his hand, how honest his heart-or how dire his need, pursuits of many kinds will be closed against him and that his struggle for existence may be desperate indeed. So rough does the way of her infant appear to many an intelligent, colored mother, when she thinks of the hardships and humiliations to which he will be subjected in his effort to earn his daily bread, that, instead of thrilling with joy and hope, she trembles with apprehension and despair. This picture, though forbidding to look upon, is not overdrawn, as those who have studied the labor question in its relation to the Colored-American can abundantly testify. Depressing though the situation may be colored women are not sitting supinely by with drooping heads, weeping eyes and folded hands. Many of them are doing everything in their power to smooth out the rough roads of labor over which tiny feet that now patter in play may soon stumble and fall. They are urging the members of 24 their own race to make themselves thoroughly fit. They are also trying to lay their case fairly and squarely before their white sisters, whenever they get the chance. One of the difficulties under which colored women labor is their inability to inform white women about conditions which confront them, so that few of the latter know the facts. And it is not at all strange that white women should know little about either the progress or the problems of their colored sisters. Those who arrange lectures for the women's clubs will not have any subject relating to colored women discussed, as a rule. They say the members are not interested in the race problem. Managers of lecture bureaus usually say the same thing. If a writer presents the Colored-American's side of the race problem, editors of newspapers and magazines usually return his manuscript to him so quick it makes his head swim. It is not astonishing, therefore, that altho the average white American thinks he knows a great deal about conditions confronting colored people, he really knows very little indeed. For that reason certain prominent colored women are trying to interest their white sisters in their cause. They are appealing to their large-hearted, broad-minded sisters of the dominant race, of whom there are so many, both to observe themselves and to teach their children to observe, so far as they can, the lofty principles of justice, equality of opportunity and equality before the law, upon which this government was founded and in which, theoretically, at least, all loyal American citizens believe. Colored women beseech their white sisters to try to teach their children to judge men and women by their intrinsic merit, rather than by the adventitious circumstances of race, or color, or creed, Colored mothers are imploring the white parents of the United States to teach their children that, when they grow to be men and women, if they deliberately 25 prevent their brothers and sisters of a darker hue from earning an honest living, the Father of All Men will hold them responsible for the crimes which are the result of their injustice and for the human wrecks which the ruthless crushing of hope and ambition always makes. In the name of the helplessness and innocence of childhood-- black childhood as well as white--colored women are appealing to the white parents of the United States to make the future of their boys and girls as promising and as bright as should be that of every child born in a country which owes its very existence to the love of freedom in the human heart. In a variety of ways colored women have given indisputable evidence that they intend to put forth earnest efforts in behalf of their race. Intelligently and conscientiously those who have been blessed with superior advantages are studying the questions which affect their race most deeply and directly, hoping to find ways and means of reaching a just and reasonable solution for some of the vexatious problems which confront them. Against lynching, the Jim Crow Car Laws, the Convict Lease System, cruel discriminations in the various pursuits and trades they intend to agitate with such force of logic and intensity of soul that those who continue to handicap them will either be converted to righteousness and justice or be ashamed openly to violate the Golden Rule and flout the very principles upon which this government was built. If the future of colored women may be judged by the past since their emancipation, as dark as that past has sometimes been, there is no reason why they or their friends should look forward to it with alarm. Over almost insurmountable obstacles colored women have forged steadily ahead, so that to day there is scarcely a trade or a profession in which they are allowed to engage in which they have not at least one worthy representative. In a variety of ways colored 26 women are rendering their race a service whose magnitude and importance it is difficult to estimate or express. Lifting as they climb, onward and upward they go, struggling and striving and hoping that the door of opportunity will be opened wider unto them ere long. With courage born of the success they have achieved in the past and with a keen sense of responsibility which they will continue to assume, they look forward to the future large with promise and hope. Seeking no favor because of their color, begging for nothing they do not deserve, they knock at the door of justice and ask for an equal chance. Mary Church Terrell 1323 T St. N.W. Wash. D.C. Jan 11 1920 Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.