nal disrespect and mockery, the
ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton
license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous
welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcate disdain
for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil,--before this there
rises a sickening despair that would disarm and discourage any nation
save that black host to whom "discouragement" is an unwritten word.

But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the
inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of ideals
which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of contempt
and hate. Whisperings and portents came home upon the four winds: Lo!
we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our
voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and
serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, saying:
Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher
culture for half-men? Away with the black man's ballot, by force or
fraud,--and behold the suicide of a race! Nevertheless, out of the
evil came something of good,--the more careful adjustment of education
to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes' social
responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of
progress.

So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and stress to-day rocks
our little boat on the mad waters of the world-sea; there is within and
without the sound of conflict, the burning of body and rending of soul;
inspiration strives with doubt, and faith with vain questionings. The
bright ideals of the past,--physical freedom, political power, the
training of brains and the training of hands,--all these in turn have
waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they
all wrong,--all false? No, not that, but each alone was over-simple
and incomplete,--the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond
imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to
know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and
welded into one. The training of the schools we need to-day more than
ever,--the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all
the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts.
The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defence,--else what shall
save us from a second slavery? Freedom, too, the long