of their race, but the soul of America.

And does it not seem odd that this greatest gift of the Negro has been the
most neglected of all he possesses? Money and effort have been expended
upon his development in every direction except this. This gift has been
regarded as a kind of side show, something for occasional exhibition;
wherein it is the touchstone, it is the magic thing, it is that by which
the Negro can bridge all chasms. No persons, however hostile, can listen
to Negroes singing this wonderful music without having their hostility
melted down.

This power of the Negro to suck up the national spirit from the soil and
create something artistic and original, which, at the same time, possesses
the note of universal appeal, is due to a remarkable racial gift of
adaptability; it is more than adaptability, it is a transfusive quality.
And the Negro has exercised this transfusive quality not only here in
America, where the race lives in large numbers, but in European countries,
where the number has been almost infinitesimal.

Is it not curious to know that the greatest poet of Russia is Alexander
Pushkin, a man of African descent; that the greatest romancer of France
is Alexander Dumas, a man of African descent; and that one of the greatest
musicians of England is Coleridge-Taylor, a man of African descent?

The fact is fairly well known that the father of Dumas was a Negro of
the French West Indies, and that the father of Coleridge-Taylor was a
native-born African; but the facts concerning Pushkin's African ancestry
are not so familiar.

When Peter the Great was Czar of Russia, some potentate presented him with