Excerpt from In Black and White: An Interpretation of Southern Life

Negroes who are not improving in their con ditions, but the figures of statistics are be yond contradicting the fact that the race as a whole is making forward strides away from gross illiteracy and dependent poverty. Shall the white people wish it to be so? It seems to me that they should wish it to be so. It seems to me that our material prosperity de pends upon the spread Oi intelligence and thrift among all the people, even the hum blest. It seems to me that our public health demands this, because filth and disease ex tend their evils high and low. And how dare we say that humanity and religion do not de mand it? If humanity and religion mean anything, they mean good will to man and the application of the eternal principles Of justice and righteousness now and always. It does not follow that any amount of good will and desire for righteous dealing does away with the fact of race. The Frenchman is not a German, nor the Jew a Gentile, and the difference of the Negro and the white is most Of all distinctly marked. The problem Of their living and working side by side in the same region is a problem, which no amount Of Optimism can deny. The problem is a problem which calls for neither a blind and hopeless pessimism nor a weak and wa.

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