tional institution of the
land, the trustees of education have prescribed books which, besides
suppressing whatever praiseworthy associations the race has had with
the history and literature of our common country, never call the words
of a Negro wise; nor his deeds noble. It is neither a sufficient nor
true answer to the question, to say that Negroes have contributed
nothing of educational or civic value to the literature or history of
this country. Manifestly, then, our young people come out of school
without confidence in the ability of their race to do what members of
other races can do. This, I take it, is the reason why we find
educated Negroes, as a rule, bestowing their patronage upon business
enterprises and professional men of other races rather than upon their
own representatives in the same vocation. This lack of confidence and
race pride, characteristic of the educated as well as of the
uneducated Negro, is the most destructive heritage bequeathed by
slavery days to any once enslaved race in the history of the world.
Hence, as a race, we need a thorough revision of our system of
education which shall encourage the production of Negro authorship, on
the one hand, and the confidence-and-pride-inspiring study of the
worthfulness of the Negro's enviable record, on the other.

The schools are, however, only one of the agencies of education in the
broadest acceptation of that term. Equally potent with scholastic
training, if not more so, is the cultivation of social sentiment in
the community. Sentiment is higher than law, and the endeavor of all
honest legislation should be to make laws expressive of the mandates
of the highest and best sentiment. Any given community can almost
always be trusted to act upon the impulse of sentiment, whether this
comports with the law or not. Whether expressed or unexpressed, the
social sentiment among Negroes--and it is seemingly often innate--is
not favorable to the support of their own enterprises and professional
men. Were it otherwise, we should now have prosperous wholesale and
retail merchants, successful factories, large real estate agencies,
considerable banks, solid insurance companies, better institutions of
learning, well-paid lawyers, physicians, dentists, etc., and the
reaction on the whole race would have been to change our status in the
nation from that of mendicant denizens, as at present, to that of
influential well-to-do citizens. This mutual helping of each oth