e implied contention that the Negro should be given an education
of a different kind is not absolute. Most disputants on this
subject--so far as published statements go--allow that after a long
period of adaptation and modified training the American Negro may
reach a stage in his mental evolution that he may assimilate the same
kind of mental food that is admittedly suited to the Caucasian,
Mongolian and others. This view of the matter leaves out of the count
another great fact, viz., that the American Negro is more American
than anything else, that he is not an alien either by birth or blood.
Whatever exceptions might be alleged against Africa can no longer be
made a bar to him.

But let us recur again to the evolution theory, and I will not
undertake to consider this theory as Darwinian.

It is not generally advanced as a presumption that the Negro is not
yet a thoroughbred, but it is presented in certain catchy and specious
phrases such as suggest the necessity of beginning at the bottom
rather than at the top, the necessity of giving to the colored
American a kind of colored education, the necessity of making his
civilization earthbound and breadwinning rather than heavenbound and
soul-satisfying--the necessity of keeping him close to mother
earth--as he "is of the earth earthy."

In those assumptions it is forgotten that education is not a question
of mechanics; it is rather a question of ethics and immortality.
Education is primarily an effort to realize in man his possibilities
as a thinking and feeling being.

Man's inheritance is first from heaven, from above. That is the
respect in which education differs from all merely constructive
processes. The stimulating and quickening power is from above.
Historically this is eminently true.

Education has been a process from above. It is not my intention to
enter upon the discussion of the merits of any particular kind of
education. My contention is that because the Negro is a part of
humanity, because he is an American with an American consciousness and
with a demonstrated capacity to take on training after the manner of
an ordinary man he should not be treated as a monstrosity. Bishop
Haygood sets forth the only proper line of distinction in education in
the following sentence: "In further teaching and learning the methods
may vary, but variations will depend less on differences of race than
on peculiarities of the individual." The "peculiarities" here
indicat