tioning them thus
briefly it is only our purpose to call attention to the great work now
being accomplished by the Negro teachers.

In closing these brief lines it might be well to consider several
charges made against the educated Negro. It is charged that education
teaches Negroes how to commit crime, etc. Because some educated
Negroes commit crime and do wrong that is no more of an argument
against the education of the Negro race than it would be an argument
against the education of the Caucasian race, because some educated
white men commit crime and do wrong. If a man has indigestion from
eating the wrong kind of food that ought not to be taken as an
argument against eating. Educated Negroes as a class are among our
best American citizens.

Again, there are still some "back numbers" belonging to the old school
of thought who still charge a lack of ability on the part of Negro
scholars to absorb and assimilate the same amount of intelligence that
the Caucasian race does.

In our humble school career in the state of Georgia we have sat on the
same seat with the boys and girls of the Caucasian race, and, often,
in the recitation room, under the same professor in the higher
classics and sciences, we have shared the same book with them, and yet
at the time of reckoning term standing we have seen those white
professors give the members of these mixed classes their class rating
in their various subjects, and the average percentage of Caucasian and
Negro pupils in all these subjects would be a matter of significant
comment.

In many instances like these, both in the North and South, the ability
of our Negro scholars is so forcibly demonstrated; and what the Negro
teachers may yet do for their race and for civilization will be left
as a rich inheritance for the enjoyment of an advancing civilization.
Of all teachers it may be said that he who shapes a soul and fits it
for an eternal habitation in the blissful Beyond has erected for
himself a monument that eclipses in grandeur and architectural beauty
all the conceptions of a Solomon, though Solomon was the wisest of
men.

TOPIC XXIII.

IS THE NEGRO NEWSPAPER AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE ELEVATION OF THE
NEGRO?

BY DR. D. W. ONLEY.

[Illustration: Dr. D. W. Onley]

DR. D. WATSON ONLEY.

Dr. D. Watson Onley, the eldest child of John E. and Mary J.
R. Onley (nee Wheele), was born in Newark, N. J. When but
two years old h