between the races in the South.

It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he
nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at
present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of
the storm as does the willow tree.

It is a struggle; for though the white man of the South may be too
proud to admit it, he is, nevertheless, using in the contest his best
energies; he is devoting to it the greater part of his thought and
much of his endeavor. The South today stands panting and almost
breathless from its exertions.

And how the scene of the struggle has shifted! The battle was first
waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with
a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master
even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over
his social recognition.

I said somewhere in the early part of this narrative that because the
colored man looked at everything through the prism of his relationship
to society as a _colored_ man, and because most of his mental efforts
ran through the narrow channel bounded by his rights and his wrongs,
it was to be wondered at that he has progressed so broadly as he has.
The same thing may be said of the white man of the South; most of his
mental efforts run through one narrow channel; his life as a man and
a citizen, many of his financial activities, and all of his political
activities are impassably limited by the ever present "Negro
question." I am sure it would be safe to wager that no group of
Southern white men could get together and talk for sixty minutes