cuts but little figure now, for the Indian is nightly pitching his
moving tepee a day's march nearer the sunset shore, where one more
shove, and,

"Mad to life's history
Glad to death's mystery,"

the red race will go, to where the pale face will cease from
troubling, and the weary spirit will find its rest at last.

The Chinese question is of equal insignificance, since our doors are
closed and barred against the almond eyes of the Orient.

The Negro question seems to be the race riddle of our civilization and
it will take much tact, patience and wisdom to solve the problem. It
may be a revelation to some of you to know, that at the rate the negro
race has grown since the Civil War, when the twentieth century goes
out, there will be sixty millions of negroes in one black belt across
the Southland. I say across the Southland because, the main body of
the negro race will never leave the track of the southern sun. The
South held the negro in slavery, the North set him free. We supposed
at the close of the war, he would leave the South and go to live among
his liberators. But after half a century, he is still clinging to the
cotton and the cane, or sitting in his log house home, the "shadowed
livery of the burning sun" upon his brow, the plantation song still
lingering on his lips, the banjo tuned to memory's melodies on his
knee, a clump of kinky-headed pickaninnies playing in the sand about
his cabin door, and there he sits multiplying the Southland and
problemizing the century.