A distinguished educator lately said that he had been disappointed in
the intellectual ability and resources of the Negro. The race had not
shown itself to be hopeful. I reply, if in twenty-five years we have the
few remarkable instances of advancement and attainment which appear,
together with a very large general uplift in education and character,
may not these facts be the prophecies and pledges of a future that shall
not be inferior.

Even now the difference between the uneducated and the educated black
man is very striking. The crudeness and the unrefinement in feature are
not necessary accompaniments of color. Thick lips do not inherently
belong with a dark skin. Coarseness of feature belongs to white people,
long degraded, as well, and is to be eliminated in them also by the
evolution which takes place in schools and churches.

Here is a race from original heathenism which has come through two
hundred years of the darkness of slavery, set free in exceedingly
unhelpful conditions, and shut in for the most part to association with
illiteracy, bad manners, bad morals and bad habits. Only exceptionally
can colored people come near enough to those who are high and good to
get much good by seeing what goodness is and how it lives.

Yet, notwithstanding this, history reveals nothing more wonderful than
what we see in those who have come from homes which are not homes and
from previous degrading influences, as they pass through a term of years
in our schools.

When the generations to come from these shall have had for a century the
impartial blessings of an intelligent and pure Christianity, the
question as to the Negro's place among the races will be nearer