Very few of these industrial negroes, however, are skilled workers.
They toil rather as ordinary day laborers, porters, stevedores,
teamsters, and domestics. There has been a great deal written of the
decline of the negro artisan. Walter F. Willcox, the eminent
statistician, after a careful study of the facts concludes that
economically "the negro as a race is losing ground, is being confined
more and more to the inferior and less remunerative occupations, and
is not sharing proportionately to his numbers in the prosperity of the
country as a whole or of the section in which he mainly lives."

It appears, therefore, that the pathway of emancipation has not led
the negro out of the ranks of humble toil and into racial equality. In
order to equip him more effectively for a place in the world,
industrial schools have been established, among which the most noted
is the Tuskegee Institute. Its founder, Booker T. Washington, advised
his fellow negroes to yield quietly to the political and social
distinctions raised against them and to perfect themselves in
handicrafts and the mechanic arts, in the faith that civil rights
would ultimately follow economic power and recognized industrial
capacity. His teaching received the almost unanimous approval of both
North and South. But opinion among his own people was divided, and in
1905 the "Niagara Movement" was launched, followed five years later by
the organizing of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People. This organization advised a more aggressive attitude
towards race distinctions, outspokenly advocated race equality,
demanded the negro's rights, and maintained a restless propaganda.
These champions of the race possibilities of the negro point to the
material advance made since slavery; to the 500,000 houses and the
221,000 farms owned by them; their 22,000 small retail businesses and
their 40 banks; to the 40,000 churches with nearly 4,000,000 members;