There is no problem before the American people more vital
to democratic institutions than that of keeping the suffrage open to the
negro and at the same time preparing the negro to profit by the
suffrage.

Neither should the negro be excluded from the higher education.
Leadership is just as necessary in a democracy as in a tribe.
Self-government is not suppression of leaders but cooperation with them.
The true leader is one who knows his followers because he has suffered
with them, but who can point the way out and inspire them with
confidence. He feels what they feel, but can state what they cannot
express. He is their spokesman, defender, and organizer. Not a social
class nor a struggling race can reach equality with other classes and
races until its leaders can meet theirs on equal terms. It cannot depend
on others, but must raise up leaders from its own ranks. This is the
problem of higher education--not that scholastic education that ends in
itself, but that broad education that equips for higher usefulness. If
those individuals who are competent to become lawyers, physicians,
teachers, preachers, organizers, guides, innovators, experimenters, are
prevented from getting the right education, then there is little hope
for progress among the race as a whole, in the intelligence, manliness,
and cooperation needed for self-government.

=Growth of Negro Population.=--After the census of 1880 it was confidently
asserted that the negro population was increasing more rapidly than the
white population. But these assertions, since the census of 1890, have
disappeared. It then became apparent that the supposed increase from
1870 to 1880 was based on a defective count in 1870, the first census
after emancipation. In reality the negro element, including mulattoes,
during the one hundred and ten years of census taking, has steadily
declined in proportion to the white element. Although negroes in
absolute numbers have increased from 757,000 in 1790 to 4,442,000 in
1860, and 8,834,000 in 1900, yet in 1790 they were one-fifth of the
total population; in 1860 they were one-seventh and in 1900 only
one-ninth.

It is naturally suggested that this relative decrease in negro
population has been owing to the large immigration of whites, but the
inference is unwarranted. In the Southern states the foreign element has
increased less rapidly than the native white element, yet it is in the
Southern states that the negro is most clearly fal