needs,--needs it for the sake of her own white sons and
daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental
and moral development.

Today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the
blacks is not, as so many assume, in all cases the same; the
ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his
competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer,
some of the educated see a menace in his upward develop-
ment, while others--usually the sons of the masters--wish to
help him to rise. National opinion has enabled this last class
to maintain the Negro common schools, and to protect the
Negro partially in property, life, and limb. Through the pres-
sure of the money-makers, the Negro is in danger of being
reduced to semi-slavery, especially in the country districts;
the workingmen, and those of the educated who fear the
Negro, have united to disfranchise him, and some have urged
his deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are easily
aroused to lynch and abuse any black man. To praise this
intricate whirl of thought and prejudice is nonsense; to in-
veigh indiscriminately against "the South" is unjust; but to
use the same breath in praising Governor Aycock, exposing
Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and
denouncing Senator Ben Tillman, is not only sane, but the
imperative duty of thinking black men.

It would be unjust to Mr. Washington not to acknowledge
that in several instances he has opposed movements in the
South which were unjust to the Negro; he sent memorials to
the Louisiana and Alabama constitutional conventions, he has