an illuminating discussion upon
the "Economic Condition of the Negro." Kelly Miller's paper upon "Labor
Conditions in the North" attracted some attention in the "Washington
Post." I do hope the scholars of the race will perpetuate the
organization, which was the dream of Crummell's life. I well remember the
Saturday in September, 1898, when I received a card from Walter B. Hayson,
Crummell's protege, announcing that Crummell was dying. I hurried to
Point Pleasant, N. J., but Crummell had breathed his last and his body was
carried to New York City. For two hours on Monday night I walked up and
down the beach at Asbury Park. I looked up at the stars shining so
silently in the immensity of space and heard the distant murmur of the
ocean as it rolled and broke upon the shore. In the silent midnight hour,
Nature's calmness and repose seemed to touch my soul and then from the
depth of my being came the cry, "Crummell is not dead, but he liveth; he
is now with his God and Maker."

No man is bigger than the idea that dominates him, and that he embodies in
his life. If his personality is grand and sublime, he will live on in the
moral world. But if his ideas are not progressive, he will not live long
in the thought world. Dr. Alexander Crummell believed that the Negro
belonged to the genus vir as well as to the genus homo, that he could be
included in the class aner as well as anthropos, that he had a soul to be
trained as well as a body to be clothed, sheltered and fed. In a word, he
believed that the Negro was made out of the same clay as the rest of
mankind, that he was worthy of the same education and training, and was
entitled to the same treatment, consideration, rights and privileges as
other men.

The question is, were the soaring ideals that inspired Dr. Crummell's
effort dreams of the imagination, or were they grounded in reality? Did
his perspective belong to the class of mirages in the desert, or did his
Weltauschanung belong to that class of visions, of which it was said in
Proverbs, "Where there is no vision, the people perish?"

We can only answer those questions by studying the state of the American
mind when the Academy was formed. In 1776, the high sounding and world
resounding Declaration of Independence was signed, which said that all men
were created free and equal and had an inalienable right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. And yet some of the signers of that
Declaration held slaves. Why wa