til recently there was no contagious-disease
hospital to which negroes could be taken, and there is not now a
reformatory for colored girls in the State of Georgia. Neither is there
any provision whatsoever in the State for the care of feeble-minded
colored children. And there is one thing even worse to be said. Shameful
as are Georgia's frequent lynchings, shameful as is the State's
indifference to negro welfare, blacker yet is the law upon her statute
books making the "age of consent" _ten years_! Various women's
organizations, and individual women, have, for decades, worked to change
this law, but without success. The term "southern chivalry" must ring
mocking and derisive in the ears of Georgia legislators until this
disgrace is wiped out. Standing as it does, it means but one thing: that
in order to protect some white males in their depravity, the voters of
Georgia are satisfied to leave little girls, ten, eleven, twelve years
of age, and upward, white as well as colored, utterly unprotected by the
law in this regard.

I have heard more than one woman in Georgia intimate that she would be
well pleased with a little less exterior "chivalry" and a little more
plain justice. Aside from their efforts to change the "age of consent"
law, leading women in the State have been working for compulsory
education, for the opening of the State University to women, for factory
inspection and decent child-labor laws. The question of child labor has
now been taken in hand by the National Government--as, of course, the
"age of consent" should also be--but in other respects but little
progress has been made in Georgia.

From such cheerless items I turn gladly to a happier theme.

As I have said elsewhere in this book, many colored people in Atlanta
are doing well in various ways. At Atlanta University I saw several
students whose fathers and mothers were graduates of the same
institution. Higher education for the negro has, thus, come into its
second generation. More prosperous negroes in Atlanta are doing social
settlement work among less fortunate members of their race, and have
started a free kindergarten for negro children. Many good people in
Atlanta are unaware of these facts, and I believe their judgment on the
entire negro question would be modified, at least in certain details,
were they merely to inform themselves upon various creditable negro
activities in the city. The northern stranger, attempting to ascertain
the tru