ed Graded School, of Winston, N. C.
This position of responsibility he held, with increasing
success, for five years, when he gave it up, against the
protest of the Board of School Commissioners of Winston, to
become President of The Slater Industrial and State Normal
School. This Institution had already been projected by him
to meet a want among the colored people in the community
which he soon saw that the public school could not meet,
viz.: a deeper ethical culture and the training of the youth
of the community, not only in books, but also in some useful
handicraft which would the sooner furnish the basis for
strong personal character and sound home-life. His first
step in this direction had been the founding of the
settlement known as "Columbian Heights," to serve as a
background for the Institution, which would do this. The
settlement was founded in 1891, and the Institution
projected in 1892. Prof. Atkins, as the first settler on
Columbian Heights, and as the organizer and both Secretary
and agent of the Board of Trustees, pushed the work of The
Slater Industrial School, encouraged and supported by the
industrious efforts of the members of the Board, until in
1895 he was called to the Presidency of the Institution.
From that date to the present his labors have been an
inseparable part of the history of the school.

Hon. C. H. Mebane, Superintendent of Public Instruction for
North Carolina, says of him: "If I had fifty such men as
Prof. Atkins in North Carolina, I could make a complete
revolution in educational work in a short while, a complete
revolution as to moral uplift and general good of the negro
race."

In addition to his work as an educator, Prof. Atkins has
taken much interest in the work of the American Academy of
Social and Political Science, of which he is a member. He is
also a member of the American Statistical Association, and
has been twice elected Secretary of Education of the A. M.
E. Zion Church.

The esteem in which he is held by leading men of the nation
wherever he is known is fairly indicated in the following
statement of Hon. J. L. M. Curry, LL. D., ex-minister to
Spain and agent of the great Peabody and Slater Trusts for
educational purposes. Dr. Curry says: "I regard President
Atk