e Negro has done more in these last
twenty-five years than any other people on whom money and time and labor
has been expended. The American Missionary Association found out long
ago what the Negro problem was. They established schools and sent
teachers among us, and when they came to us, they came at once,
assuming--not as Senator Eustis has done, that the Negroes have an
inherent sense of inferiority, and that they should take an assigned
place; not as Governor Lee has insisted, that the all-important thing
for the white man to do is to keep the Negro down; and not as Senator
Gibbs of Georgia, who a few weeks ago insisted that the white people are
in imminent peril, and even went so far as to bring a bill before the
Legislature as to whether the Negroes should be driven out of that
State. That is not the way these teachers have come down to us. They
have assumed that we are as capable as other people, that we have the
same needs; and because they have come to us with this assumption to
begin with, because they have received us in this way, we have made the
progress that we have.

Now, of all things that are most needed to be done for us, we need a
good theological seminary in the South, where the ministry can be
educated among us. It is only an elevated Christian citizenship that
will save us, and make us what other people are; and we must have a
theological seminary to aid us toward that end. You have given us
colleges, normal schools, industrial training schools, and schools of
common branches, and we have now young men and young women filling all
the schools through the South. We can get good teachers for our schools
in the remotest places, in Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi, or anywhere
else. So it is not a question as to what kind of teachers we will have.
But the churches have not in their pulpits ministers well prepared to
preach the gospel of Christ. They have not kept up with the young people
in the work done by the schools. In the North, one of the pleasant
things we find wherever we go, is that in all your churches there is
something for the young people to do. You have Christian Endeavor
Societies, and various organizations by which the young people may be
reached. Therefore, you gather them in from the beginning and have them
trained so that they can take your places as soon as you are ready to
step out of the work. It is not so with our churches. Our ministers have
not advanced to that degree where they