an conceive in a
civilized and Christian land, as shown by reports of legislative
committees.

If the negro can secure a fair and impartial trial in the courts, and can
be secure in his life and liberty and property, so as not to be deprived
of them except by due process of law, and can have a voice in the making
and administration of the laws, he shall have gone a great way in the
South. It is to be hoped that public opinion can be awakened to this
extent, and that it may assist him to attain that end.

_The Characteristics of the Negro People_

By H.T. KEALING

A frank statement of the virtues and failings of the race, indicating
very clearly the evils which must be overcome, and the good which must
be developed, if success is really to attend the effort to uplift them.

[Illustration: H.T. KEALING.]

The characteristics of the Negro are of two kinds--the inborn and the
inbred. As they reveal themselves to us, this distinction may not be seen,
but it exists. Inborn qualities are ineradicable; they belong to the
blood; they constitute individuality; they are independent, or nearly so,
of time and habitat. Inbred qualities are acquired, and are the result of
experience. They may be overcome by a reversal of the process which
created them. The fundamental, or inborn, characteristics of the Negro may
be found in the African, as well as the American, Negro; but the inbred
characteristics of the latter belong to the American life alone.

There is but one human nature, made up of constituent elements the same in
all men, and racial or national differences arise from the predominance
of one or another element in this or that race. It is a question of
proportion. The Negro is not a Caucasian, not a Chinese, not an Indian;
though no psychological quality in the one is absent from the other. The
same moral sense, called conscience; the same love of harmony in color or
in sound; the same pleasure in acquiring knowledge; the same love of truth
in word, or of fitness in relation; the same love of respect and
approbation; the same vengeful or benevolent feelings; the same appetites,
belong to all, but in varying proportions. They form the indicia to a
people's mission, and are our best guides to God's purpose in creating us.
They constitute the material to be worked on in educating a race, and
suggest in every case where the stress of civilization or education should
be applied in order to follow the lines of le