t down.
O men that forge the fetter, it is vain;
There is a Still Hand stronger than your chain.
'Tis no avail to bargain, sneer, and nod,
And shrug the shoulder for reply to God.

7. The Dawn of a To-morrow

The bitter period that we have been considering was not wholly without
its bright features, and with the new century new voices began to be
articulate. In May, 1900, there was in Montgomery a conference in
which Southern men undertook as never before to make a study of their
problems. That some who came had yet no real conception of the task and
its difficulties may be seen from the suggestion of one man that the
Negroes be deported to the West or to the islands of the sea. Several
men advocated the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment. The position
outstanding for its statesmanship was that of ex-Governor William A.
McCorkle of West Virginia, who asserted that the right of franchise was
the vital and underlying principle of the life of the people of the
United States and must not be violated, that the remedy for present
conditions was an "honest and inflexible educational and property basis,
administered fairly for black and white," and finally that the Negro
Problem was not a local problem but one to be settled by the hearty
cooeperation of all of the people of the United States.

Meanwhile the Southern Educational Congress continued its sittings from
year to year, and about 1901 there developed new and great interest in
education, the Southern Education Board acting in close cooeperation with
the General Education Board, the medium of the philanthropy of John D.
Rockefeller, and frequently also with the Peabody and Slater funds.[1]
In 1907 came the announcement of the Jeanes Fund, established by Anna T.
Jeanes, a Quaker of Philadelphia, for the education of the Negro in the
rural districts of the South; and in 1911 that of the Phelps-Stokes
Fund, established by Caroline Phelps-Stokes with emphasis on the
education of the Negro in Africa and America. More and more these
agencies were to work in harmony and cooeperation with the officials in
the different states concerned. In 1900 J.L.M. Curry, a Southern man of
great breadth of culture, was still in charge of the Peabody and Slater
funds, but he was soon to pass from the scene and in the work now to
be done were prominent Robert C. Ogden, Hollis B. Frissell, Wallace
Buttrick, George Foster Peabody, and James H. Dillard.

[Footnote 1: In 1867 George Pe