ce of my race
was being used as a tool with which to help white men into office,
and that there was an element in the North which wanted to punish the
Southern white men by forcing the Negro into positions over the heads
of the Southern whites. I felt that the Negro would be the one to suffer
for this in the end. Besides, the general political agitation drew
the attention of our people away from the more fundamental matters of
perfecting themselves in the industries at their doors and in securing
property.

The temptations to enter political life were so alluring that I came
very near yielding to them at one time, but I was kept from doing so
by the feeling that I would be helping in a more substantial way by
assisting in the laying of the foundation of the race through a generous
education of the hand, head, and heart. I saw coloured men who were
members of the state legislatures, and county officers, who, in some
cases, could not read or write, and whose morals were as weak as their
education. Not long ago, when passing through the streets of a certain
city in the South, I heard some brick-masons calling out, from the
top of a two-story brick building on which they were working, for the
"Governor" to "hurry up and bring up some more bricks." Several times
I heard the command, "Hurry up, Governor!" "Hurry up, Governor!" My
curiosity was aroused to such an extent that I made inquiry as to who
the "Governor" was, and soon found that he was a coloured man who at one
time had held the position of Lieutenant-Governor of his state.

But not all the coloured people who were in office during Reconstruction
were unworthy of their positions, by any means. Some of them, like
the late Senator B.K. Bruce, Governor Pinchback, and many others, were
strong, upright, useful men. Neither were all the class designated as
carpetbaggers dishonourable men. Some of them, like ex-Governor Bullock,
of Georgia, were men of high character and usefulness.

Of course the coloured people, so largely without education, and wholly
without experience in government, made tremendous mistakes, just as many
people similarly situated would have done. Many of the Southern whites
have a feeling that, if the Negro is permitted to exercise his political
rights now to any degree, the mistakes of the Reconstruction period will
repeat themselves. I do not think this would be true, because the Negro
is a much stronger and wiser man than he was thirty-five years