s wofully apparent. But men and
nations have been free without being learned, and there have been
educated slaves. Liberty has been known to languish where culture had
reached a very high development. Nations do not first become rich and
learned and then free, but the lesson of history has been that they
first become free and then rich and learned, and oftentimes fall back
into slavery again because of too great wealth, and the resulting luxury
and carelessness of civic virtues. The process of education has been
going on rapidly in the Southern States since the Civil War, and yet, if
we take superficial indications, the rights of the Negroes are at a
lower ebb than at any time during the thirty-five years of their
freedom, and the race prejudice more intense and uncompromising. It is
not apparent that educated Southerners are less rancorous than others in
their speech concerning the Negro, or less hostile in their attitude
toward his rights. It is their voice alone that we have heard in this
discussion; and if, as they state, they are liberal in their views as
compared with the more ignorant whites, then God save the Negro!

I was told, in so many words, two years ago, by the Superintendent of
Public Schools of a Southern city that "there was no place in the modern
world for the Negro, except under the ground." If gentlemen holding such
opinions are to instruct the white youth of the South, would it be at
all surprising if these, later on, should devote a portion of their
leisure to the improvement of civilization by putting under the ground
as many of this superfluous race as possible?

The sole excuse made in the South for the prevalent injustice to the
Negro is the difference in race, and the inequalities and antipathies
resulting therefrom. It has nowhere been declared as a part of the
Southern program that the Negro, when educated, is to be given a fair
representation in government or an equal opportunity in life; the
contrary has been strenuously asserted; education can never make of him
anything but a Negro, and, therefore, essentially inferior, and not to
be safely trusted with any degree of power. A system of education which
would tend to soften the asperities and lessen the inequalities between
the races would be of inestimable value. An education which by a rigid
separation of the races from the kindergarten to the university, fosters
this racial antipathy, and is directed toward emphasizing the
superiority