gious, political and civil rights, and limits our task to showing
the extent these rights have been conceded to him by the American
white man. In considering this, as well as other subjects that concern
the race, it is well to bear in mind the fact that men make conditions
and conditions also make men. The truth of this statement is
strikingly demonstrated in the reactionary influence which slavery had
upon the American white man. The chains that bound the Negro and made
him a chattel, also fettered the mind and soul of the white man and
caused him to become narrow and selfish. Lincoln's proclamation gave
freedom alike to slave and master, and now the progress made by each
along all lines of human development will depend upon the extent he
leaves behind slavery conditions and thinks on purer and higher
things. Living in the past, meditating upon the time when he was owner
of men and women, the white man must still be a slaveholder. If he can
not hold in subjugation human beings, he will arrogate unto himself
the rights of others and use them to further his own selfish ends. The
Negro also must get away from slavery conditions, if he hopes ever to
be a man in the truest sense of the word and have accorded him the
rights of a man. Time and growth are determining factors in what is
known as the Negro problem. The white man must grow out of, and above,
his prejudice, learn to measure men by their manly and Christian
virtues rather than by the color of their skin and the texture of
their hair. The Negro must devote himself to character-making,
wealth-getting, and to the faithful performance of all duties that
belong to him as a man and a citizen, for, he may only hope to receive
his rights to the extent that he impresses the white man that he is
worthy and deserving of them. We repeat, it will take time to
accomplish these things, but when they are accomplished, rights which
now the white man withholds, and which it seems he will never concede,
will, like Virgil's golden branch, follow of their own accord. Viewing
the subject in the light of the above stated facts, we believe that
much progress was made by the American white man in the nineteenth
century along the line of conceding to the Negro his religious,
political, and civil rights.

In fact, the progress made in this direction stands without a parallel
in the annals of history. It surpasses the most sanguine expectation
of the Negro's friends, and even of the Negro him