crimes. Your charitable institutions of our poverty, but what do any of
you know of our best and most thoughtful men and women? When we write
how many of you ever read our books and papers or give yourselves any
trouble to come near us as friends and help us? Even some of your
professed Christians are trying to set us apart as if we were social
lepers."

"You draw a dark picture. I confess that I feel pained at the condition
of affairs in the South, but what can we do in the South?"

"Set the South a better example. But I am hindering you in your
business."

"Not at all. I want to see things from the same standpoint that you do."

"Put yourself then in my place. You start both North and South from the
premise that we are an inferior race and as such you have treated us.
Has not the consensus of public opinion said for ages, 'No valor redeems
our race, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the
ban which clings to us'; that our place is on the lowest round of the
social ladder; that at least, in part of the country we are too low for
the equal administrations of religion and the same dispensations of
charity and a fair chance in the race of life?"

"You bring a heavy verdict against us. I hardly think that it can be
sustained. Whatever our motives may have been, we have been able to
effect in a few years a wonderful change in the condition of the Negro.
He has freedom and enfranchisement and with these two great rights he
must work out his social redemption and political solution. If his means
of education have been limited, a better day is dawning upon him. Doors