stworthy
history of the American Negro, and to-day stands as our first and
greatest historian--George W. Williams. In prefacing his second
volume, he says: "I have tracked my bleeding countrymen through widely
scattered documents of American history; I have listened to their
groans, their clanking chains, and melting prayers, until the woes of
a race and the agonies of centuries seem to crowd upon my soul as a
bitter reality. Many pages of this history have been blistered with my
tears; and although having lived but a little more than a generation
my mind feels as if it were cycles old.

"A short time ago the schools of the entire North were shut in his
face; and the few separate schools accorded him were given grudgingly.
They were usually held in the lecture room of some colored church or
thrust off to one side in a portion of the city or town toward which
aristocratic ambition would never turn. These schools were generally
poorly equipped; and the teachers were either colored persons whose
opportunities of securing an education had been poor, or white persons
whose mental qualifications would not encourage them to make an honest
living among their own race."

It will not be necessary to enumerate the various insults and
discouragements which faced the noble pioneers of our race who, seeing
their fellow men denied the opportunities and privileges of securing
an education, scorned by the press and pulpit, in public and private
gatherings for their ignorance, set about to lift the Negro from his
low social and mental condition.

The Negro turned his attention to the education of himself and his
children; schools were commenced, churches organized, and a new era of
self-culture and general improvement began.

In Boston we see Thomas Paul, Leonard A. Grimes, John T. Raymond,
Robert Morris and John V. DeGrasse.

In 1854 John V. DeGrasse was admitted to the Massachusetts Medical
Society, being the first instance of such an honor being conferred
upon a colored man in this country.

In New York we find Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, Dr. Charles B. Ray,
Charles L. Reason and Jacob Day doing what they could to elevate the
Negro and place him on a higher intellectual plane.

Philadelphia also added her quota to the list of noble men who were
striving to show to the world that the American Negro, although
enslaved, was a human being. We find such men as Robert Purvis,
William Still and Stephen Smith.

In Western Pennsylva