Speeches & Writings File               

"Concerning Mr. Page's Article
on The Race Problem in
McClure's Magazine"

Concerning Mr. Page's Article on the Race Problem in McClure's Magazine.

One of the greatest obstacles to the solution of the race problem to day
is the attitude of some of the most intelligent and honest white men of 
the South.  Altho they believe they study colored people rationally,
estimate them justly and discuss them dispassionately, they seem mentally and spiritually incapacitated to do any of these things.  The white South
honestly believes that it understands and knows the Negro better than anybody 
else and will fight with powers and Principalities to the last ditch, if
need be, to establish that point.  Bold and brave indeed is that man who
dares suggest to the average white southerner that his views must be biased
and partisan from the very nature of the case, since it is difficult
for any human being to overcome his environment and defy traditions, no
matter how hard he may try.  In vain one cites specific instances to prove
that from the day the first slaver deposited its cargo of dark human beings
on the American shore till the present time, the white South has always
underestimated the black man's capacity.  First, it was stoutly maintained
that the Negro had no soul and by curious, subtle interpretations of
the  scriptures, together with various quotations from philosophers, this
was proved to the entire satisfaction of many an intelligent, humane 
slaveholder, whose conscience was greatly soothed by this view.  Then it was 
confidently asserted that the Negro had no brain and the great Calhoun
once declared "if I could find a Negro who could master the Greek syntax,
I would  believe that the Negro has a soul and is capable of receiving an
education."  One of the strongest arguments used by those who opposed
emancipation was the certainty that slaves, if freed, would die of starvation
and exposure, if they were obliged to compete with the white man in
earning their daily bread.  And so one might go on citing error after error
made by the white people of the South concerning the colored man's nature, 


And yet we have men like Thomas Nelson Page who pose as honest and intelligent citizens, and who pretend to use their pens for the public good trying to make the public believe that attacks upon white women in the South are responsible for
most of the lynchings in that section.  If the charges preferred against 
colored people by Thomas Nelson Page in a recent magazine article,
concerning their brutal passions, their lack of self control, their mental
inferiority, their belief that "social equality means the colored man's
right to stand with white women on precisely the same ground as that on
which white men stand with them," that they shield their criminals, if those
charges, I say, represent the sum total of Mr. Page's knowledge of colored 
people, he knows no more about their characteristics, their habits
and their hopes than an odontopteris toliapicus or a ramphorinchus
phylurius knew about the binomial theorem or the age of Ann.  When Mr. Page
declares that "no matter what the crime a negro commits against a white man
or woman, he is usually shielded and aided by his own people,"  if he really
knows as much about the race which he delights so to slander as he claims,
he knows that he is not telling the truth.  When Mr. Page states that 
the negro stands together sufficiently even to protect its criminals and 
shield them, he postulates a racial cohesion, and cooperation and loyalty, a unity of plan and purpose, which I would to God the negro possessed.  The country
has recently been regaled with many disquisitions on the conspiracy of
silence of which certain representatives of the race have been accused.  If the
negro were able to go about his diabolical deeds as silently and as effectively
as is alleged, many a man now living in that section of the country
whose crimes Mr. Page condones, who has helped light the torch
to burn an innocent negro to death or fired the shot which killed him would
be under the sod to day, instead of breathing the vital air and waiting
for another opportunity to satisfy his thirst for a colored man's blood. 
When Mr. Page admonishes the Colored man to observe the law, he knows that
the Klu Klux Klans, of a few years ago and the white caps and lynchers of
to day whose crimes constitute the most shameful page in the history of
the United States were not composed of colored men.  When I read such 
articles as the one just written by Mr. Page, in which he virtually suggests

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his capacity for civilization and his possibilities as a man.  
In recent times no better illustration of the alarming extent to which an 
intelligent Southerner may be blinded to the main facts involved in the 
race problem without even knowing that his eyes are holden so that he can 
not see could be cited than the statements made in an article to McClure's Magazine, contributed 
by Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, one of the ablest writers the South 
has even produced. 
The article opens with certain statements concerning the colored people 
of the United Sates which Mr. Page declares amount to truisms, and yet 
there is scarcely a single estimate of their capacity, a single opinion 
of their character and their conduct in relation to their white brothers 
which could be proved [as] a truism to the satisfaction of anybody who was 
open to conviction and had the courage to render the verdict according to 
the facts.  In the first place Mr. Page does not hesitate to place the 
responsibility for the existence of the race problem upon the shoulders of the North and the 
Negro, while the South is practically exonerated from all blame.  Thruout 
Mr. Page's article the sin of the North toward the white people of the 
South runs like an accusing refrain.  Nothing more unjust to the North 
could be written than the following charge preferred against the people 
of that section by Mr. Page.  "negros are kept in a state of excitement 
and tension", [says Mr. Page] by the belief that in all matters of difference 
between them and the whites of the South, they are sustained by the 
whites of the North" / And this is a sample of what that gentleman chooses 
to call a truism.  The colored people of the South do live in constant excitement 
and are under a continuous tension, a racking, nervous strain, 
it is true, but this condition is due to something far more tangible and 
terrible than an unfounded and ungrounded belief about the attitude of the 
North.  Verily, it is not a theory which confronts and confounds the colored 
people of the South, but a condition so cruel and hard that few Americans 
have any idea how heavy is the burden which the handicapped race is 


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forced to bear.  In what particular the colored people of this country are 
being sustained by the northern whites, which differences arise between them 
and their former masters, it is difficult to see.  There is scarcely a 
southern state, for instance, in which colored men are not disfranchised. 
If the North is putting forth any strenuous efforts in behalf of these 
disfranchised colored men, it is working very silently indeed.  
At the close of the War, if an abolitionist or union soldier had been told 
that in less than forty years much of the work which it cost millions of 
treasure and rivers of blood to accomplish would be practically undone in 
every state of the South without an earnest protest from the North, he 
would have dismissed such a prediction as too wild and idiotic to discuss.  
And yet that is precisely what has occurred.  With the exception of a 
faint and feeble protest heard once in a great while the North as a whole 
has quietly acquiesced in this violation of the fundamental law of the land although the disfranchisement acts have not only deprived colored men of rights and 
privileges guaranteed them by the constitution but haveworked a great hardship 
and injustice to northern men as well.  It is an indisputable fact that 
thru the disfranchisement of colored men in the South, the vote of one 
white man in that section counts as much in national affairs as the votes 
of 5 men in some northern states, of 7 men in others and as much as 10 men 
in some.  In spite of this flagrant injustice to themselves few northern 
men either care or dare to protest.  it is quite clear, therefore, that 
in the differences between the whites of the South and the colored men 
from whom the right of citizenship has been violently torn, colored people have 
been not only not sustained by the North, but, comparatively speaking, have 
received very little sympathy in that section and meager support if any in their 
effort to regain what they have lost . [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
At least two of the charges therefore preferred against the North by Mr. Page, to wit 
that one of the worst agencies in the engendering of race strife is the

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Negro's idea that he is sustained against the whites of the South by the 
whites of the North, and that the North has manifested so much sympathy 
toward the Negro that he relies upon it to give him practical aid in 
achieving what he has been taught by it to believe his political and social 
rights cannot be sustained by the facts.
In his severe, not to say bitten, arraignment of the North for its guilt 
is intensifying the race problem, Mr. Page goes so far as to declare that 
northern white people are to a great extent responsible for the assaults 
committed by colored men upon white women and consequently for the terrible lynchings which have often disgraced the South. Two years ago in an 
article on lynching which Mr. Page contributed to an American magazine he 
himself admitted that comparatively few of the lynchings in the South are 
due to assaults upon white women. He called attention to statistics which 
white men themselves have compiled and which show that out of every hundred 
colored men who are lynched from 75 to 85 are not even accused by the 
South of what is so falsely called the usual crime. And yet, in his recent 
article on the race problem Mr. Page repeatedly refers to these assaults 
as the chief cause of the lynching bees in the South.
"And still the assaults go on", says Mr. Page "Why?", And he then proceeds 
to answer his question by saying that his own judgement and that 
of most all well-informed Southerners, Negroes commit this particular crime 
because they believe public opinion of the North is with them.
"What would be thought?" he asks, "if some persons should say that residents 
of the North are indirectly but traceably responsible for much 
of the attacking of white women in the South? and as a corollary for much 
of the lynching of Negroes? Yet", adds Mr. Page, "this is just what many 
very thoughtful and serious-minded people think. They say and they say 
truly", continues Mr Page, "that the absence of repressive public opinion 
among Negroes themselves against such crimes is partly at least, due to 
the feeling that they are sustained all along the line by the white people 


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of the North." It is difficult to conceive of an accusation more monstrous 
and unjust than this which Mr. Page prefers against the North. It is safe 
to assert that during the last twenty years, at least nobody with African 
blood in his veins who had gray matter enough to evolve even a single 
thought has been so deluded as to believe that the North ever sustained in 
the slightest degree or has been willing to protect a Negro who ravished 
a white woman in the South or anywhere else. Nothing proves more clearly 
a man's inability to discuss the race problem sanely than such base 
slander of the North. 
It is an  open secret that for the last twenty years the interest once 
manifested in the [North] Negro by the [Negro] North has been growing beautifully less and 
some of fear it is reaching the vanishing point just as fast as it can. 
Those who were once the strongest of the handicapped race, [and] 
were considered its best friends and who publicly proclaimed that fact in 
season and out have almost nothing to say in its favor and to its credit 
now. Ask our former Northern friends why they concern themselves so little 
about the Colored man's present trials and tribulations, and if they are 
frank enough to state the reason, they will reply it is because of the Negro's 
brutal conduct toward the white women of the South. Th slanders 
uttered by Mr. Page and other distinguished southern gentlemen, whose 
words, unfortunately, carry great weight in the North, have borne abundant 
and bitter fruit. In congress, upon the lecture platform, in the pulpit 
even and in the press distinguished sons of the South who have tried to 
shield their section from the censure it so richly deserves on account of 
the frequent, shocking murder of colored people and in order to poison the 
mind of the North against them, have declared again and again that most 
of the lynchings in the South are due to the crimes committed against 
white women by colored men. As a result of the constant reiteration of 
this attack upon colored men, it is difficult to find a man or a woman in 
the North who does not accept the South's statement in this matter as the

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gospel truth. The rapidity with which the South has poisoned the mind 
of the North against the Negro and has succeeded in withdrawing from him 
its sympathy is a splendid tribute to the persuasiveness, plausibility, 
persistency and power of the South, while is resembles nothing so much 
as a skillful trick of legerdemain. Moreover, so continuously and belligerently 
does the South insist that it is the Negro's best friend, in spite 
of its disfranchisement acts, its Convict Lease System, its Jim Crow Car 
Laws, its Contract Labor System and various other proofs of its hostility, 
so threateningly does it assert that is understand him better than any 
other people on the face of the earth and will brook interference in its 
method of dealing with him from nobody, the North has either been persuaded 
or intimidated into bowing to this decree.  Considering how graciously
and uncomplainingly the North has yielded every point insisted upon by the
South in the policy to be pursued toward the Negro and how universally
the treatment accorded the Negro in the South in several particulars at least has
been copied by the North, it seems strange that a single intelligent southerner
in this country could find it in his heart to berate the North either
for lack of sympathy or disobedience.
The northern press also comes in for a considerable amount of criticism
from Mr. Page.  Editorials in the Northern press are continually lecturing
the South on its sins, he says.  "Unhappily", says Mr. Page, "the editorials
assailing the South, whenever a lynching or riot occurs and saying very
little about the causing crime," (here again assuming that lynchings generally
occur for the "usual" crime)" are copied into hundreds of Negro newspapers
and circulated among hundreds of thousands of Negro families at the
South with the result of stirring up race hatred and extending race strife.
According to Mr. Page's diagnosis, therefore, it is not the injustice, not
the brutality, not the cruel torture of the helpless and oftentimes innocent
victim of the southern mob, not the lawlessness which makes the riot
and the lynchings possible, that stirs up race hatred and extends race


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strife, but it is the comment made by the northern press protesting against
such subversion of law that embroils the two races in the South.  What an
amazing view this is for an intelligent man to take, who claimed to be honestly trying
to stamp out widespread lawlessness and promote the welfare of both
races at the same time.  If occasionally the Northern press in a commendable
effort to create a wholesome sentiment for the observance of law has
assailed the South, as Mr. Page alleges, that same Northern press itself
has frequently condoned fearful crimes committed upon defenceless, innocent
Negros by the South, because the editorial writers of these papers
have honestly believed they were justified in sanctioning lawlessness in 
the name of the outraged white womanhood of the South.  More than once
Northern newpapers have declared with a shameless bragedocia that if Negroes
committed the same crime in the North as that for which they are "usually
lynced" in the South, the North would pursue precisely the same
course.  In a variety of ways the Northern press has proved conclusively
th at it sympathizes deeply with the woes endured by the South on the Negro's
account.  The columns of nearly every large daily and magazine in the
North are open to the Southerner who wishes to give the public the benefit
of his opinion upon the vices and defects of the Negro and the only way in
which the race problem can be wisely solved, while it is almost impossible
for the victims of prejudice and oppression to induce the press of the North
to publish their side of the story to the world.  However greivously the
North as a whole may have offended the South, surely the press of the offending section
has sinned the least.  Everybody who has observed how rapidly in recent
years the North has been permeated through and through with the spirit
of the South in its general attitude toward colored people; how it is adopting
more and more, precisely the same methods in dealing with colored people
as those employed by the South, will wonder on what Mr. Page bases the
statement that on account of the great sympathy manifested by the North,

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the Negro believes the North will " give him his practical aid in achieving what
he has been taught by it to believe are his social and political  rights. "
It would also be interesting to know what particular thing the North is
doing to encourage the Negro to believe it is determined to aid him in establishing
 the proposition that he is "as good as any white man or woman,"
as Mr. Page alleges. It is safe to assert that there is not a single colored
 person in this country outside of an insane asylum who is so gullible
and guileless as to believe that the white North as a whole or even a considerable 
portion thereof has ever manifested a determination to prove 
that colored people are as good as "any white man or woman" . Colored people
who travel know that they have never been received with open arms at
Northern hotels. If they have never had the experience themselves, they
have heard from some friend or from a goodly number, perhaps, how they
have been turned away from Northern hotels by proprietors who cooly told 
them they were "full" and had no room. The following formula used by proprietors
who are too truthful to prevaricate and too "full" of prejudice
to accommodate colored people is familiar to every member of the race who
as traveled much in the North. "I myself have no objection whatever to
accommodating colored people, I assure you, I have inherited a fondness
for them, in fact. All my ancestors, as far back as I can trace, were
strong abolitionists. My grandfather conducted an Underground Railway in 
Ohio. I myself fought in the Civil War and lost a brother and several 
other relatives on the Union side - but we have Southern guests here, you know, and since
the presence of colored people is very objectionable to them, I am obliged
to close my hotel to your race."
But, while colored people are often excluded from hotels in the North
by proprietors who are almost overcome with grief, because they are forced
to pursue a course so shocking to their sense of justice, has anyone ever
heard of a southern proprietor's being so persuaded or intimidated by his
Northern patrons that he has opened his hotel to a single colored man or



9
woman anywhere in the South / Blind indeed would colored people be, if they
failed to contrast the North's respectful deference to the wishes of
the South concerning the treatment to be accorded colored people in hotels
and other public places with that tenacity of purpose which prevents the 
South from yielding a single point. More stupid than blind would they be, 
if they failed to understand the significance of the North's submission to
the South, in nearly everything relating to the status of the Negro. Nothing could be further from the fact, therefore than the
statement that much of the race hatred and strife and many of the most
heinous crimes committed by the colored people of this country may be attributed 
to teachings inculcated by the North and to the belief generally 
entertained by colored people that they will be sustained by the whole people
of the North, no matter what injury they inflict upon the white men
and women of the South.
It would be difficult to find a colored man or woman in this country intelligent 
enough to form and opinion and express it, who has never been
led into believing that the Northern whites would interfere and help "put
down the Southern whites", as Mr Page alleges "It was done fifty years 
ago", he exclaims tragically, "it is not strange that it should be though 
possible again". As a rule, even the most ignorant Negro understands that
while slavery was indirectly the cause of the Civil War, the real cause 
was the South's determination to secede and the North's desire to preserve 
the Union intact. No Negro whose thoughts are worth considering and discussing
at all believes that the white people of the North would join with
colored people in putting down the white people of the South no matter
what crimes ex masters and their descendants committed against their ex-slaves.
Why, pray, should even the silliest Negro be so deluded in spite
of the plain facts? All the crimes in this category have been committed
against the Negro by the white South. Innocent Negros, men, women and 
children, have been shot to death, flayed alive and burned at the stake,

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while the North, as a whole, has looked on in comparitive silence, scarcely 
raising a finger in protest or reproof. Even the Christian Church in th 
North seems utterly indifferent both to the fate of hundreds of colored Christians 
who have been shot to death and torn to pieces by the mob and to the 
future of the white youth who are being brutalized by beholding these savage 
exhibitions almost every day. Up to date, the Christian Church neither in the 
North nor in the South has tried to inaugurate a vigorous crusade against lynching, [whih]
altho there is no doubt whatever it might do much to create a wholesome sentiment against that widespread 
and unspeakable barbarity at home, which takes the life, blights 
the hearth, crushes the spirit and breaks the art of hundreds of dusky converts who have been gathered  in its folds. Reviewing, calmly and dispassionately the 
North's attitude toward the Negro, it is impossible to understand how any 
intelligent student of the situation can persuade himself to believe 
[Zy hysteria as to state] that the only barrier that stands between the 
whites of the North and the Negro race which has been trained to stand up 
against the whites (and presumptively trained by the North) is the white 
race of the South. Having worked himself up into such a frenzy over fancied 
injuries inflicted by the North upon the South, Mr. Page concludes 
this portion of his charge by wailing pathetically "to find our Northern 
friends lecturing us and giving encouragement to those who create this 
frightful situation almost makes us despair of the Republic."
The charges preferred by Mr. Page against colored people are as far 
removed from the facts as are those which are laid at the Northern white 
man's door. To those aquainted with the characters and customs of colored 
people much that Mr. Page calls truisms seems like conclusions reached by 
one who is either ignorant of them or who is deliberately misrepresenting 
the facts. Conspiracies among these perverted views are the assertions that 
Negroes always band together as a race, oppose the whites as whites, harbor 
as Negroes their criminals, because they are Negroes and almost universally 


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where crimes have been committed by Negroes against whites, fail to 
help execute the law. A more wanton, cold-blooded slander upon a heavily-handicapped race already bowed under burdens which seem greater than it 
can bear, it would be hard to imagine or cite. Coming from a man who claims 
to know as much about colored people as does Mr. Page, who is regarded by 
the public as an authority upon the subject, this slander has shocked and 
stunned the whole race. It has never been true that Colored people have 
been so loyal to each other that they have tried to shield and protect 
their criminals. During slavery masters felt no great apprehension of a 
general uprising among their slaves, because they had been taught to spy 
and betray each other and were rewarded when they did so. Suspicion and 
distrust of each other were daily lessons, the only ones the majority received, 
which were drilled into slaves by their masters and overseers. 
Having been taught to despise and distrust each other during slavery, 
after their emancipation Colored people did not recover from this feeling of contempt and scorn which they had already been taught to entertain for their 
own. Unfortunately, there is a large number of Colored people still living
who have not been cured of this bad habit yet. When a colored woman was bewailing
the cruel fate which had overtaken three compaines of colored soldiers,
recently dismissed without homor from the Army, to one of the most distinguished
men Massachusetts has produced, who was an officer of the First
South Carolina Volunteers, the first Colored company mustered into service
during the Civil War, he could not think of the misfortune and disgrace
which had come upon them for rejoicing in the fact that if they were [guil]
guilty and had really entered into a conspiracy of silence, as alleged, so
as to shield the guilty, at least Colored people "have at last learned to
stand together in something." During the Civil War, "he declared," I observed
that the habit of tattling on each other was general among colored people,
and this discouraged me more than some of their other defects." [of tatting
on each other]


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Instance after instance might be cited to prove the falsity ot the assertion 
made by Mr. Page that no matter what crime a Negro commits
against a white man or woman, he is usually shielded and aided by his own
people. In a recent magazine article Mr. Ray Stannard Baker cites two
cases in which Colored criminals were apprehended by information given by
a member of their own race. Nobody who has lived among Colored people any
length of time and has observed their characteristics will say that they
shield their own criminals or are given to conspiracies of silence.
When Mr. Page alleges that Negroes stand together sufficiently even to protect 
their criminals, he postulates a racial cohesion, a cooperation, a
unity of plan and purpose and a racial loyalty which they have never possessed. 
If the Negro were able to go about his diabolical deeds as silently 
and as effectively as alleged, many a crime would have been committed
to avenge the death of a loved one done to death by a mob, whereas practically 
no concerted effort has ever been made by the relatives of dusky victims of mob violence
to punish brutal murderers of ofttimes innocent men. [When Mr. Page admonishes
colored men to observe the law, he knows that the ku Klux Klan of a
few years ago, the white caps and lynchers of to day, whose crimes constitute
the most shameful page in the history of the United States were not
composed of Colored men.] When I read such articles as that recently written 
by Mr. Page, in which he virtually suggests to the handicapped and persecuted 
race, reprisals and methods of vengeance of which few, if any, colored 
people have every thought, [he] I cannot help wondering, if the writer knows
anything about the theory of suggestion. Men who have made a study of the
subject declare that after one or two suicides have been graphically described 
by the newspapers and have become the general topic of conversation, 
there is more than likely to be a large crop of suicides following
in the wake of the first. Under the influence of suggestion furnished by
the accounts of the first tragedy, people predisposed to take their own


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lives are lead to destroy themselves, too. When Mr. Page declares that
colored people shield their own criminals, no matter what crime they commit 
against white people, one wonders if he ever stops to think on what
dangerous ground he is treading and what incalculable harm he may do by
suggesting to hundred of victims of injustice and brutality a method of
getting even with their persecutors and of escaping the consequences of
their guilt.
It is the custom of Southerners to refer to the Reconstruction as
they would to the Spanish Inquisition, a period too full of horrors to recall 
without a shudder. Mr. Page is no exception to this rule. If it is
true, as Mr. Page claims, that during the Reconstruction colored men believed 
that what the white South wanted they must oppose, such an attitude
on the latter's part was practically forced upon them by the efforts exerted 
by the white South immediately after the war to re-enslave their
race. In his Twenty years in Congress,
Mr. James G. Blaine enumerates the various laws enacted by Southern legislatures, 
which if they had been executed would have reduced ex-slaves to a
bondage more cruel than that from which they had been emancipated a short
while before. One runs no risk or exaggerating or prevaricating, when he
states that if colored people opposed the whites during reconstruction,
they were obliged to do so in self defense. If the history of that period
is ever truthfully told the world will see that the South was not blameles
and that all the mistakes were not on the Negro's side. Some of thewisest
and most beneficent provisions enjoyed by the South to day were made by
the colored legislators during reconstruction. Not the slightest assistance
was given the colored men by the white people of the South, who sulked in
their tents and heaped anathemas upon their former slaves. One would suppose 
that an intelligent, patriotic interest in their section and State
would have lead the enlightened citizens of the South to offer their services

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vices during Reconstruction to the colored men who held the reins of power 
for the sake of those dependent upon them, if not for themselves- for 
their wives whom they had vowed to protect and for their children to whom 
it was their duty to leave the heritage of a good and stable government, 
if they could.
     If "little is known of the humiliation and debauchery of the 8 years 
of Negro rule", as Mr. Page declares, it is not because every Southerner 
who has addressed himself to the public, either thru literature or on the 
lecture platform has not tried to do justice to the subject in all its most horrible 
and shocking details over and over again. So far as concerns the 
awful humiliation which Mr. Page says the white people of the South endured 
during reconstruction, those who understand their attitude toward the 
most intelligent and cultured colored people in the United States know 
that this anguish of spirit was suffered, not because the white people of 
that section felt that the colored legislators were too ignorant to discharge 
their obligations, but because they had a certain amount of African 
blood in their veins- and some of these colored legislators thanks to the customs in vogue 
during the perpetuity of the peculiar institution, very little African 
blood indeed. If every colored man who sat in the legislature of the South 
during Reconstruction had equaled Socrates in wisdom and surpassed Demosthenes 
in oratory, the humiliation of the South would have been as keen- perhaps 
keener, than it was. If there was debauchery among the colored legislators 
during reconstruction, it simply proved that colored men acted like 
other human beings who have for nearly three centuries been oppressed and 
suddenly are freed from a heavy yoke, and it was probably no worse than 
has disgraced legislatures since then in which no black man had a seat.
     It will be hard to make anybody who knows the colored man's temperament 
well believe that many of the race boasted time and time again, as 
Mr. Page alleges, that they "would love to wade in white people's blood"



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And if such sanguinary sentiments were ever expressed by one or two colored men, smarting under some terrible wrong, while
their brains fairly reeled with recollections of the misery and cruelty
of slavery which they saw their former masters trying to force upon them
again, the best proof that this feeling was not generally entertained by
the majority of their race is that no effort was ever made by the masses to drink the white
man's blood. Indeed the only concerted effort which has ever been made in the
South to imbibe anybody's blood was that put forth by men of the dominant
race by whom the black man's blood has been poured forth in floods.
In discussing social equality, Mr. Page seriously misrepresents the
facts. "To the ignorant Negro and to many not ignorant", he says, "social
equality means the right to stand on the same footing with white women as 
that on which a white man stands with her". It is interesting to note in
this connection that in the North where Colored people come nearer mingling
on terms of social equality with white people than anywhere else in
the United States, there is comparitively little intermarriage between
white women and colored men. In the North assaults upon white women by colored
men rarely occur. If Mr. Page's diagnosis of the Negro(s social equality
fever were true, there would be a veritable cataclysm of intermarriage
between white women and colored men in the North, where no laws are
enacted against it and where conditions are comparitively favorable to it.
"Are we ready to make this a negroid nation?" excitedly asks Mr. [Page]
Page? If this question had come from a Northerner, as he beheld for the
first time the hundreds of mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons he met in
the South, who are sons and daughters of some of the best citizens of that
section, it would seem a very pertinent and natural query indeed. [But com-]
But being propounded by a gentleman living in that section in which for
nearly 300 years efforts were continually made by white masters of slave
women to mingle the blood of the two races, it seems strange and remarkable
indeed. If in the majority of cases the fathers of mulattoes were [north]
northerners, a Southerner might well ask if this is to become a negroid nation

16
nation in a Northern magazine. But, since amalgamation, the sin above all
others and the sum of all villainies according to Mr. Page, has always occurred 
and is still occurring more frequently in the South than anywhere
else, this query comes from a Southerner with very poor grace indeed.
to make this a negroid nation is the aspiration of the Negro," according to
Mr. Page "Not the old time Negro", he says, "for he was well brought up;
but of the new negro the Afro-American." If the aspiration to mingle the
blood of the races were not inspired in the breast of the old-time Negro,
it was because he was callous to the object lessons in amalgamation which
his masters gave him on every hand. If the "new negro" has aspirations in 
that direction, belonging to a imitative race, as he does, it may best
attributed to his desire to follow the example set by some of the best cit
izens in the South to day.
According to Mr. Page colored people fail to draw a distinction between
the man of probity and the miscreant. This charge misrepresents a large
class of colored people cruelly and will injure them seriously in the estimation 
of people who believe this accusation is founded on fact, No exception 
is made by Mr. Page who does not hesitate to place all colored people
in the same class. Among the illiterate of all nations without regard to race
color or previous condition, one does not expect to find high standards
of living. One of the most encouraging signs of the colored man's development 
however is the high moral standard which colored people who have had the advantage 
of education and training set for themselves and which they rigidly 
adhere. Among what is called the best class of colored people a scandal 
rarely occurs. In a social circle of such people, if a woman or a girl 
were guilty of immoral conduct, it would be practically impossible for her 
to retrieve her lost reputation or occupy the position in society which
she once held. If a man committed any serious infraction of the law which
justified the world in branding him as a miscreant, he would be banished


17
from what colored people call good society all over the United States.
In some of the highest social circles of the dominate race both in this
country and abroad there are women who have secured divorces from their husbands
for the express purpose of marrying other men, if the newspaper accounts
are true. There are men also who have been charged with perpetraring fraud
of various kinds upon the public, altho they seem to lose no prestige
whatever on that account. It seems strange therefore, that Mr. Page
should expect colored people to have loftier social ideals and succeed better in
attaining unto them than men and women who have had the advantage both of
superior heredity and a superior environment.
In order to arouse the North to a realization of the impending
danger which threatens it on account of the presence of the Negro, Mr.
Page calls attention to the fact that the race has double every decade
since the Revolution. Unless some unforseen condition occurs to prevent the
continuance of this rate of increase, he says, it is likely to count with
in the next three of four generations to the appalling number of 80,000,000.
"Should colored people continue to increase in the same ratio and the idea
of the Afro American prevail", says Mr. Page, "the rest of this country
may rue the day when it resisted the voluntary secession of that portion
of the Union." In other words, if colored people continue to follow the example 
set them by the best representatives of the dominate race- that is,
if they improve their minds, try with all their might and main to reach
the highest pinacle in every field of human endeavor it is possible for
them to attain and insist upon having all the rights, privileges and immunities 
of citizenship which people of other races enjoy, then those portions 
of the Union which fought to preserve it intact and perpetuate the
principles upon which it was built, will be sorry they did not permit the
South to disrupt it, so that colored people might still be held as slaves.
Nothing which Mr. Page has said shows more clearly how unreconstructed
and unregenerate he is on matters touching the lost cause than this prediction

18
prediction concerning the possible sentiments which may be entertained by the
North.  If for any reason whatsoever, the North should fall into such a
state of mind, should ever reach the point of actually regretting it did
not permit the South to secede without protest or molestation with its
4,000,000 slaves, it will show a lamentable retrogression in sentiment and
principle on the part of the people of that [North] section.  As many sins of omission
as have been committed by the North in its relation to colored people, how
ever unresistingly it has permitted the South to deprive the colored man
of his rights and denied him privileges itself which others are allowed to 
enjoy, it has done nothing so monstrous as to lead Mr. Page to suppose that
that if colored people continue to strive to rise from the depths of ignorance
and bestiality into which for nearly 300 years they were sunk, the 
people of that section will so far renounce the principles in which they
have always professed to believe and for which their fathers fought only
40 years ago, that they will be sorry the South was not permitted to secede 
with its 4,000,000 slaves.
              In several ways Mr. Page shows what his ideas of an ideal Negro
are, and how beneficial from his point of view was the admirable training
he received during the halcyon days of slavery.  After stating that it is 
the Negro's aspiration to make this a negroid nation Mr. Page notes this
important exception- "Not the old time Negro, perhaps, for he was well
brought up." If to be well brought up means that a human being should be 
allowed to grow up like an animal, his mental faculties dwarfed by disuse,
forbidden to learn to read anything, the Bible included, while his master
claimed to be a follower of Christ, if to be well brought up means that a
human being should have every particle of will broken and his spirit crushed, 
his natural affections trampled upon and family life denied,then truly
were the 4,000,000 slaves reared according to a model plan, and their
emancipators were blind to their best interests indeed.
           It is significant also that nobody with African blood in his veins


19
commands his admiration or appeals to him except 'the old family servants
and their successors".  When Mr. Page is cast down by consideration of the 
grave suspects of the race problem, and it must be grave indeed, if his 
ideal of what a well brought Negro should be is the one who was trained 
in slavery, he has "deliberately gone among the old Negroes for comfort
and consolation.  All Southerners who were rocked in a Negro mammy's arms
entertain the same feeling for the Negro", says Mr. Page. Of the amity
existing between the remnant of the old slave holders and the old slaves
Mr. pages always delights to talk.  He fairly chokes with pent up feeling,
when he records his affection for the hundreds and thousands of old family 
servants and their successors "who have done more the preserve the relations 
between the two races than all the politicians combined". It seems
never to occur to Mr. Page that there are hundreds and thousands of intelligent,
self respecting Colored people who have been born since the War
in this country who would rather die the death than endure the preservation 
of just that particular kind of relation between the two races upon
which he and other Southern gentlemen of his faith look with such fond regret.
The very fact that Mr. Page finds so much that was beneficial to 
the Negro and so much that was beautiful in the customs of slavery in this
enlightened day proves his inability to comprehend the free-born Negro and
to discuss the race problem with that breadth and justice which would 
justify the public in attacking any weight to his views.
                Altho Mr. Page "is far from believing that education is a specific
for the ills that exist among us", he gives a reluctant consent to the education 
of the Negro, not because it is especially good for him, but because 
"intelligence is more tractable than stupidity and enlightment less
dangerous than ignorance." Even in conceding the necessity for education
of the race, Mr. Page does so only because of the effect it will have on 
the Negro in his relation to the whites. He will be more tracticable and

20
less dangerous to them. Having bestowed such unstinted praise upon the
old family servants who in the process of being "well brought up" under the
peculiar institution were obliged to remain ignorant, Mr. Page's statement
that the time has long passed, when ignorance can be reckoned as an
asset comes to us like a shock, but inspires in us a great hope at the same
time. The thought that the negro is, after all, like other human beings,
will yield to the same treatment given to other human beings in practically
the same way, will be elevated or degraded like other human beings according
as he is afforded or denied opportunities to improve may be gradually
breaking upon Mr. Page's mind like a bright light.
Mr. Page even acknowledges that there is "a respectable class of educated
Negroes who in intelligence and character do honor to their race."
But he no sooner allows his reason and justice to get the best of his prejudice
than he feels obliged to say something to counteract the effect of
his compliment to the race which he so cruelly misrepresents. Suddenly
he sees a vision which makes each particular hair of his head stand like
quills upon a fretful porcupine and freezes the very marrow of his bone.
In his mind's eye he sees a horde of educated Negroes bearing down upon
the land and then bursts his noble heart. To make a bad matter worse he 
pictures a section in which the educated Negroes outnumber the whites.
"Superior intelligence will win", says Mr. Page, "whether we say so or not"
"If they are on the side of the Negro, the Negro must win", gasps Mr. Page.
"Are the American people prepared to accept that practically?" he shrieks,
pale with horror and rage. "Not in exceptional cases, but all the way
through?" Then with a brush dipped in brimstone, wormwood and gall, Mr.
Page proceeds to paint a picture upon which he cannot gaze for a single
consecutive second without a succession of fits. In an ecstacy of apprehension
and horror he sees Negroes in power everywhere, and this takes place,
of course, in direct opposition to the wishes of the dominant race.

21
To cap the climaz of the impending tragedy, which according to Mr. Page's
method of reasoning is nothing short of a second reduction of the Negro to 
slavery can avert, he sees "negroes in all hotels and all parlors full of
negroes." And then, metaphorically speaking, Mr. Page falls into a swoon.
Arousing himself as soon as might be [reasonably] expected Mr. Page
gives reasons for this terror-inspiring faith within him. "The new negro's 
aspiration is to mix with the whites", he says. "This means miscegenation,
the mongrelizing and at last the destruction of the American people.
"Northerners may say that social equality is a thing that every one can control
for himself and herself. But, is it", inquires Mr. Page with a frenzy
of doubt and despair? By propunding this inquiry Mr. Page has
unconsciously and unintentionally paid the colored people of this
country the greatest compliment they have ever received. The moment Mr.
Page claims that it is possible for 10,000,000 people belonging to a race
which was held for nearly 300 years in this country in the most degrading,
dehumanizing bondage the world has ever seen, and but 40 years out of
slavery at that, to mongrelize and destroy 70,000,000 people who alone hold
the reins of power, control the government, possess fabulous wealth and
who have had the advantages of centuries of education and culture over the
impudent intruders besides, he postulates in the race numerically, financially
and educationally weak, a strength which is as miraculous [and admirable]
as it must be considered admirable to the race itself and its friends.
At the same time, he attributes to his own race with its superior numbers,
wealth and strength a weakness which is as incredible as the assumption 
thereof, coming from such a source as it does, will surprise and shock
the world. In postulating that it is possible for "negroes to fill the
hotels and parlors" which white people own in direct opposition to the wishes
of their former masters, their descendants and sympathizers all over
the United States, Mr. Page attributes to his race a weakness did it really exist which would
be fatal to the maintanance of that superiority upon which he insists.

22

And yet, Mr. Page declares that he bases his hope for the future in the 
"superiority of the great white race over all races whatsoever." It is difficult 
to reconcile this statement with the one which credits 10,000,000 
of a newly emancipated race not only with power sufficient to fill all the 
hotels and parlors of 70,000,000 of people against their wish and 
will, but to mongrelize and destroy them besides. Again, if Mr. Page believes 
so implicitly that the white race is by nature and has always been 
by nature superior to all other races, it seems strange indeed, that he 
should give himself so much concern about maintaining a thing which is as 
truly sui generis and peculiar to his race as are its white face and hands. 

It is a work of superogation to place a protective tariff upon a superiority 
ordained by God, so that the naturally inferior race can never have 
a chance to compete with it on equal terms. Special privileges and advantages 
are usually given to the weak and not to the strong. 

In discussing the race problem Mr. Page seems utterly unable to adjust himself 
to new conditions, which accounts for many of his vagaries and mistakes. 
The old time negro- the slaves - with their enforced, but to Mt. 
Page, delectable ignorance, with their child-like nature, their rolicking 
humor, their banjo, their grin, their song and their jog. Ah, there was a 
negro as is a negro for Mr. Thomas Nelson Page. But deliver that gentleman, 
ye gods and little fishes, from an intelligent, perhaps college bred 
negro! Deliver him, above all, from a negro who dares assert his right to 
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the various privileges and 
immunities of citizenship which Mr. Page believes as a white man he is entitled 
to enjoy. And just this inability to reconcile himself to the fact 
that the victory of the Union forces metamorphosed the slave into a man is 
the rock on which not only Mr. Page but many other Southeners wreck. 
Mr. Page always waxes warm in speech and lachrymose about the eye, whenever 
he mentions the old-time negro, the former slave. He tells affecting 

23 

stories about the charity bestowed upon the ex-slaves all over the South. 
They are settled, he says, in homes which cost them nothing and can be fed 
for the asking. And this is the only type of Afro-American which Mr. Page 
seems genuinely to admire - a type which he regards as he would a horse that 
had rendered valuable service as a burden bearer all his life and which
should be fed and sheltered - not shot in its old age, for the good it had 
done. But the intelligent, self-respecting Negro has no ambition whatsoever
to ingratiate himself into Mr. Page's affection and good graces by 
voluntarily sustaining the relation toward him which his ancestors were 
forced to endure toward their masters. 

When Mr. Page states that the attacks and lynchings which shocks 
the sense of the civilized world are but a manifestation of the "fierce 
race feeling" that is growing up, he undoubtedly states a fact. When he 
states that this "fierce race feeling" is due to the Negro's desire to be 
"equal with the white man, as he (the negro) understands equality," he
states only a portion of a fact. The clause "as the negro understands 
equality" is inserted both to justify the South in denying the right of 
citizenship to the colored man and to poison the mind of those inclined 
to demand justice for him. The "fierce race feeling" in the South is due in 
great part to the hatred which the class called the poor whites (a term 
which is very objectionable to myself) feels toward educated, thrifty colored
people. This hatred is inspired to a great extent by the object lessons 
in thrift and prosperity which hundreds of colored people have given         
their white neighbors, some of whom are quite shiftless in the South. 
The wrath of an infuriated bull, before whose frenzied eyes a red rag 
is tauntingly waved, is a feeble attempt at temper, compared with the indignation 
and rage experienced by some southern white people (not the best 
class), when they behold a Negro, well educated, well dressed and well to 
do. There is only one way the Negro himself can prevent the growth of     

  

               

24 

"this fierce race feeling" among many of his white neighbors in the South, 
and that is to remain ignorant and shiftless and poverty-stricken and 
allow himself to be used as a floor mat by all who wish to trample upon 
his prostrate form. As a rule, the Negro himself is not afflicted by the 
"fierce race feeling" which causes him to hate white people as a race. 
the Negro can no more arrest the growth of the hatred engendered in other 
people's breast because of envy, or jealous or what some people call innate 
antipathy to him, he can, therefore, no more stop the attacks and 
lynchings which occur solely on account "this fierce race feeling" as Mr. 
Page himself admits, by any attitude of mind which he may assume or any 
course of conduct which he may pursue than a straw dam can check Niagara's 
flow. 

The great trouble with Mr. Page and a few others who discuss the 
race problem is that they try to shift the blame for the general lawlessness 
and disgraceful conditions which obtain in the South from their own 
guilty shoulders to those either of the North or upon the heavily-handicapped, 
fearfully-persecuted Negro himself. 

When one sees what a low estimate Mr. Page places upon the intellectual 
capacity of the Negro, he cannot help marvelling all the more, 
that he should concern himself so much about the ruin and destruction 
which such an inferior race may bring upon his own. Nothing shows more 
clearly either Mr. Page's ignorance of the high intellectual capacity 
possessed by the colored people of this country or his determination to 
underestimate it than the contempt he casts upon it. "The negro child 
learns quickly when very young, many things, sometimes outstrips a white 
child up to a certain age, then generally fails to continue his progress 
and exhibits what has been termed an arrested development." There are scores, 
yes hundreds of instructors in the best institutions of the North, East and 
West where colored youth have studied, who will cheerfully produce testimony 
from observation, investigation and actual experience first hand, 

25

which prove Mr. Page's estimate of the colored man's brain either deliberately 
or unintentionally false. There is scarcely a college or a university
of any repute in this country from which Colored students have not been 
graduated with honor. The most coveted prizes of Harvard University have  
been carried off by Colored boys. Among Colored youth who have attended 
institutions for the higher education, the proportion of those who have 
distinguished themselves and carried off prizes is very much larger, according 
to their number, than that of their white confreres. If one could 
ascertain just the exact number of colored youth who have attended institutions 
for the higher education and the number of those who have won honors 
of various kinds, he would have great difficulty in establishing Mr.
Page's theory of "arrested development." Some distinguished citizens who 
hail from Mr. Page's section are so far from putting much faith in this 
theory that they have written to implore the directors of the Rhodes Scholarship 
fund to not admit any more Colored boys to the examination for fear 
they will carry off too many prizes from the white boys of the United 
States, since a colored boy in Philadelphia won that honor. When Colored 
youth fail in the higher courses of study, it is due, as a rule, more to 
their poverty and the consequent lack of facilities with which to make   
proper preparation for their work, such as a comfortable room in which to 
prepare their lessons, a light and the time necessary to study, than it is 
to any mental limitation. Many of the boys and girls in the Colored High 
School at Washington are obliged to work both before and after school hours, 
so as to earn a little money for self support and are physically worn out 
at night - too tired to study. But in spite of this serious handicap and the 
various disadvantages under which they labor, the record made by the pupils 
in the High Schools for Colored youth has been quite as good as that made
by their more fortunate white brothers and sisters, whose circumstances in 
the majority of cases are so much better, whose environment is superior, 
whose prospects are so much brighter and whose incentive to effort is so  
  

  
   

 
      
   
   

26 

much greater than that of Colored boys and girls. And by the way, this 
lack of incentive to effort which hangs like a great pall over the whole 
race, may explain some of the alleged mental 
limitations, attributed by Mr. Page to "arrested development,"
to which he so joyously pins his faith. It is impossible for any white 
person in this country, no matter how deeply he sympathizes with his dusky 
brother, to put himself in the handicapped man's place. When I was a teacher   
in the Washington High School, again and again my heart bled for the 
youth of my race and I was puzzled, when trying to decide what was the 
wisest reply, when a bright, earnest boy or girl would come to me and say, 
"You are always urging us to acquire knowledge  - but why should Colored 
boys and girls secure a thorough education in this country? There are comparatively 
few occupations and professions which are open to them. We can 
not all be doctors and lawyers and teachers and preachers. After those
professions are mentioned, practically nothing but the menial pursuits are 
left for us and we do not need an education for those." There are 
more things which are forced into the Colored man's existence in the United 
States than are dreamt of in Mr. Page's contracted, cock-sure philosophy. 

The "trained mind" of Mr. Page has also discovered that the Negro is "less 
self controlled than not only the Caucasian, but some other peoples nearer 
to the savage than that race." In the southern section of the United 
States, if the test of the highest, best, civilization were a race's ability 
to control itself and abide by both the letter and the spirit of the law, 
the colored man would have no cause to hide his head in shame, when his record 
was compared with that of his white brother. The lack of self control 
among the high-spirited, hot-blooded southerners is proverbial. On the 
other hand, if the self control exercised by the colored people in the 
South, persecuted, handicapped and fearfully abused as they were, were not 

27 

miraculous, in those portions where they outnumber the whites - 3 and 4 and 
more Colored to 1 White, there would have been such uprisings and attempts 
at reprisals as would have shocked the world. One reads with a smile Mr. 
Page's statement that the Negro's liability to be inflamed by passions 
which in a more self-contained race are kept in check," is what renders him 
dangerous, if he quickly reviews even a few of the disgraceful uprisings 
and riots started by the race which possesses all the power and controls all 
the courts against a helpless, unarmed, ignorant people protected neither 
by public sentiment nor by law. When Mr. Page suggests that one way to 
solve the race problem is to teach the Negro to observe the law, nobody 
knows better than himself that the Ku Klux Klans of a few years ago, hte 
white caps and lynchers of the present day, whose crimes constitute the 
most shameful page in the history of the United States were not composed
of Colored men. When Mr. Page claims that no assault ever occurs in the 
South that the best elements in the county and State do not instantly move 
to prevent the lynching that is likely to follow, he evidently forgets 
that for years the press reports of lynchings sent from the South have 
laid great emphasis upon the fact that the victim of mob violence was shot 
or burnt to death "by the best citizens of the place." So frequently has 
that announcement been made that one takes it for granted these days that 
nobody but "the best citizens" ever plan and execute a lynching. When Mr. 
Page paints in such glowing colors the zeal usually displayed by the officials 
of the county in their effort to "save the life of the wretch," and 
declares that "the regiments of our Southern States are almost veterans, so 
often have they served protecting negroes," he forgets also that a company of 
soldiers who were called out to protect two Colored men in Georgia
a few years ago made such little resistance that the two men who had been 
convicted of murder were actually burned to death before their very eyes. 
It is an open secret also that if the jail officials had exercised such      
 
    
 

  


26 

precaution as they should have, many a poor innocent Negro who disappeared 
from earth in flame and smoke or whose body was riddled with bullets 
might have been alive to day on account of the opportunity afforded him 
to have his day in court. Having laid such stress upon the efforts made 
by the best people in the South to preserve the law, it is a bit inconsistent 
for Mr. Page to take such pleasure in stating that attacks made by negroes 
who assert their "right to equality with the whites" because of the ideas 
planted in their breast from without" are "always put down with a strong 
hand." 

The plea made by Mr. Page that the South should be allowed to settle its 
problems as best suits the people of that section is just what was demanded 
of the North, East and West, before slavery was abolished. Just as Mr. 
Page insists that the South should now deprive Colored men of the right of 
citizenship, throw them convict lease camps whose horrors no pen can       
portray, and perpetrate any injustice upon them it pleases, so his fathers 
insisted upon their right to perpetuate slavery fifty years ago. "The white 
race and the colored race get on together quite well, when left alone without 
outside interference," he declares. We have also heard that argument 
before. Slaves were the happiest human beings in the world, their masters 
declared. They enjoyed being worked to death without compensation and reveled 
in the thought that they might be sold from their loved ones at any 
time. The knowledge that they were reduced to the level of brutes and had    
no rights which other human beings enjoyed was also a delight and a joy
to them, of course. Just so now, the disenfranchisement acts in nearly all 
the Southern States, the Jim Crow Car laws, the Convict Lease System, the 
Contract Labor System, the Lynching Bees are calling forth no protest from
Colored people themselves, Mr. Page declares. It is only when they are reminded of the injustice 
perpetrated upon them and are enlightened upon their grievances and 
woes that they resent them. If Mr. Page really believes this and could 
talk to hundreds of intelligent Colored people on the South, their views 

29 

would be a great shock to his nerves and throw a flood of light upon their 
real feelings and hopes which would fairly blind him with its force. 
The country is asked by Mr. Page to believe that substantial justice will 
be done the Colored by the White. Reviewing the South's attitude toward 
colored people from the day they were enslaved till the present moment, 
how can any intelligent person with even a fair knowledge of human nature 
believe that people who feel toward human beings as even so enlightened 
a man as Mr. Page does toward Negroes who aspire to the same heights as 
do others and who insist upon the same rights, can possibly do them substantial 
justice, no matter how honest may be their intentions, no matter how good their  
will. 

There can be no solution of the race problem, of course, unless the Negro 
exerts himself to the utmost to work out his own salvation. As a rule, he 
is doing this all over the United States. In spite of opposition relentless 
and obstacles almost insurmountable, the Colored-American can present 
to day such a record of progress in education, industry, finance and trade 
as has never been made in the same length of time, under such discouraging 
circumstances, by any race of people since the world began. They are not 
perfect. Perfection can not be truthfully ascribed to any race and the 
Colored-American is no exception to a general rule. But the race problem 
can no more be solved by the Negro alone than harmony can be produced by 
a single note. The race problem can never be solve until the white people 
of this country - the majority of them at least - are thoroughly imbued 
with a fine, strong sense of justice, are determined to enforce the provisions 
and guarantees of the Constitution not in any single section or 
in a few States but all over the land. The race problem can never be solved
until the rights of the poorest and most ignorant Negro [in the South]
are respected as much in any part of the South as are those of the wealthiest 
and most intelligent white man in any section of the United States.     
 
Mary Church Terrell.
326 T St, N. W. 
Wash. D. C.

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.