instructive than the leadership of a group within a group?--
that curious double movement where real progress may be
negative and actual advance be relative retrogression. All this
is the social student's inspiration and despair.

Now in the past the American Negro has had instructive
experience in the choosing of group leaders, founding thus a
peculiar dynasty which in the light of present conditions is
worth while studying. When sticks and stones and beasts
form the sole environment of a people, their attitude is largely
one of determined opposition to and conquest of natural
forces. But when to earth and brute is added an environment
of men and ideas, then the attitude of the imprisoned group
may take three main forms,--a feeling of revolt and revenge;
an attempt to adjust all thought and action to the will of the
greater group; or, finally, a determined effort at self-realization
and self-development despite environing opinion. The influ-
ence of all of these attitudes at various times can be traced in
the history of the American Negro, and in the evolution of his
successive leaders.

Before 1750, while the fire of African freedom still burned
in the veins of the slaves, there was in all leadership or
attempted leadership but the one motive of revolt and revenge,
--typified in the terrible Maroons, the Danish blacks, and Cato
of Stono, and veiling all the Americas in fear of insurrection.
The liberalizing tendencies of the latter half of the eighteenth
century brought, along with kindlier relations between black
and white, thoughts of ultimate adjustment and assimilation.
Such aspiration was especially voiced in the earnest songs of