lengthening out the school term from
one to two months every year.

The Negro teacher is also here and there founding institutions of
higher learning. He is getting a hold on the churches, the state,
benevolent societies, and individuals, and is causing them to
contribute money and goods to educational centers which are to prove
most potent levers in lifting the race to a higher level.

The fact that at present a large number of the states of the Union are
basing suffrage upon an educational qualification enhances the value
of the literary work to be done by the Negro teacher. In some states
in the South the educational qualification is avowedly adopted by the
whites to eliminate the Negro from the body politic. The Negro
teachers are not sleeping over the interests of their race in this
matter. They are working quietly, but earnestly. Most of them have the
resolution which I heard expressed during the past summer by a Negro
country school teacher, viz.: "I intend that all my pupils shall learn
to read, write, and have the qualifications for voting if nothing
more."

This, then, is what the Negro teacher is doing in the matter of
uplifting his race: he is giving to it literary training, teaching it
to skillfully use the hand, and encouraging it to accumulate property.
He is lengthening school terms and founding institutions of learning.
He is entering into the inner life of his people; and is implanting
ideas and ideals there which will make them strong and respected by
all the races of mankind.

FOURTH PAPER.

WHAT IS THE NEGRO TEACHER DOING IN THE MATTER OF UPLIFTING HIS RACE?

BY PROF. H. L. WALKER.

[Illustration: Prof. H. L. Walker]

PROF. H. L. WALKER, A. B.

Prof. H. L. Walker was born near the city of Augusta, Ga.,
in the year of 1859. His parents, Wesley and Adline Walker,
were the property of slave owners to whom they rendered
allegiance until 1864 and 1865, when Sherman took his
triumphal march through Georgia and the Carolinas. At the
fall of the Confederacy young Henry went with his parents to
Wilmington, N. C., where they spent about a year, during
which time young Henry for the first time saw the inside of
a school, taught by those pioneering teachers from the
North. At the close of this year the family left Wilmington
and went to Augusta, Ga., which city has been the scene of
our subject's boyhood and the bas