He is, as he ought to be, the group leader, the man who sets the ideals of
the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social
movements. It need hardly be argued that the Negro people need social
leadership more than most groups; that they have no traditions to fall
back upon, no long established customs, no strong family ties, no well
defined social classes. All these things must be slowly and painfully
evolved. The preacher was, even before the war, the group leader of the
Negroes, and the church their greatest social institution. Naturally this
preacher was ignorant and often immoral, and the problem of replacing the
older type by better educated men has been a difficult one. Both by direct
work and by direct influence on other preachers, and on congregations, the
college-bred preacher has an opportunity for reformatory work and moral
inspiration, the value of which cannot be overestimated.

It has, however, been in the furnishing of teachers that the Negro college
has found its peculiar function. Few persons realize how vast a work, how
mighty a revolution has been thus accomplished. To furnish five millions
and more of ignorant people with teachers of their own race and blood, in
one generation, was not only a very difficult undertaking, but a very
important one, in that, it placed before the eyes of almost every Negro
child an attainable ideal. It brought the masses of the blacks in contact
with modern civilization, made black men the leaders of their communities
and trainers of the new generation. In this work college-bred Negroes were
first teachers, and then teachers of teachers. And here it is that the
broad culture of college work has been of peculiar value. Knowledge of
life and its wider meaning, has been the point of the Negro's deepest
ignorance, and the sending out of teachers whose training has not been
simply for bread winning, but also for human culture, has been of
inestimable value in the training of these men.