arship and original ideas. Being
impressed with the idea that Negroes were the natural and
best teachers for the Negro youth, he left that institution
and entered Livingstone College at Salisbury, N. C., at the
head of which was the justly celebrated Dr. J. C. Price.
Here he received the degree of A. B. in 1886.
He was not contented with his academic attainment, but
completed the courses of law and theology, and has
constantly applied himself to the fulfillment of his high
ideal.
After graduating he spent his first year as instructor in
the State Normal at Montgomery, ten years as principal of
the public school, in which he received his training, and
two years as professor of Hebrew and Bible history at Morris
Brown College, Atlanta, Ga. Neither of these nor the minor
fields of usefulness satisfied his ideal, and it was not
until he entered the active ministry that he felt that
satisfaction that comes with fitness. He is now laboring
acceptably as a minister in the A. M. E. Church and is
recognized as one of its most scholarly divines.
The world needs men who will use all of their cultivated
powers to bless and to lift up their fellowmen, who will
dedicate themselves to their fullest energies and their
energies to their people. Such a man is the subject of our
sketch.
In this hour when the sun is just beginning to climb the horizon of a
new day in the life of the Negro race, there is an imperative need for
close observation and serious, earnest thought. We cannot content
ourselves with appearances. We cannot trust the decision reached
mainly through our emotional nature. We must bring the whole personal
conscious man into our meditation in order that we may see and
comprehend that hand of God laid in love upon the Negro of this
country.
All problems in a nation's life must be unraveled and solved by that
nation. It may take advantage of foreign influences and examples,
incorporate and utilize them, but the real work must be done by the
nation itself. The same principle obtains in problems affecting
individual life or the life of a race. To adjust the Negro in
harmonious relationship to American civilization is a question that
depends for solution not so much upon the nation as upon the thought
and life of the race itself. The Negro seen through the refractory
medium of fear and prejudice
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