family and group life, the training of one's home, of one's
daily companions, of one's social class. Now the black boy of the South
moves in a black world--a world with its own leaders, its own thoughts,
its own ideals. His teachers here are the group leaders of the negro
people--the physicians, clergymen, the trained fathers and mothers, the
influential and forceful men about him of all kinds--here it is, if
anywhere, that the culture of the surrounding world trickles through,
and is handed on by the graduates of the higher schools. Can such
culture training of group leaders be neglected? Can we afford to ignore
it? Do you think that if the leaders of thought among negroes are not
trained and educated themselves, they will have no leaders? On the
contrary, a hundred half-trained demagogues will still hold the places
they so largely occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous busy-bodies will
multiply. We have no choice; either we must help furnish this race from
within its own ranks with thoughtful men, of trained leadership, or
suffer the consequences of a headless misguided rabble."

Turning now to the political status of the negro, it may be said that
the most pressing need will be substantially met if the South will carry
out in good faith the provisions of her statute-books. By some of those
statute-books, suffrage is still equal and universal. In others, the
negro in required to own $300 worth of property, or to be able to read
and write, or to understand the Constitution when read to him. That the
white man is practically exempt from these tests, by the "soldier" or
"grandfather" clause, whatever be its theoretic injustice or unwisdom,
would be no great practical grievance to the negro if only he were
fairly allowed to cast his own vote when he can meet the statutory
tests. At present, throughout the greater part of the South, the
practical attitude of the election officials, and the social sentiment
enforced in subtle, effectual ways, debars the negro vote almost as
thoroughly as if it were disallowed by law. That this should be so may
be satisfactory enough for those to whom the matter ends with "This is a
white man's country," or "Damn the niggers anyhow." But will the
intelligent, large-minded Southerners,--the men of light and
leading--always allow the theory of their own statute-books to be
nullified? Will they forever maintain a suffrage-test of race rather
than of property and intelligence?

It is said, no