rom the direct oppression of the strong and partly from
thriftlessness which such oppression breeds; and, above all, its crime
would be the legitimate child of that lack of self-respect which caste
systems engender. Such a solution of the Negro problem is not one which
the saner sense of the nation for a moment contemplates; it is utterly
foreign to American institutions, and is unthinkable as a future for any
self-respecting race of men. The sound afterthought of the American
people must come to realize that the responsibility for dispelling
ignorance and poverty, and uprooting crime among Negroes cannot be put
upon their own shoulders unless they are given such independent
leadership in intelligence, skill, and morality as will inevitably lead
to an independent manhood which cannot and will not rest in bonds.

Let me illustrate my meaning particularly in the matter of educating
Negro youth.

The Negro problem, it has often been said, is largely a problem of
ignorance--not simply of illiteracy, but a deeper ignorance of the world
and its ways, of the thought and experience of men; an ignorance of self
and the possibilities of human souls. This can be gotten rid of only by
training; and primarily such training must take the form of that sort of
social leadership which we call education. To apply such leadership to
themselves and to profit by it, means that Negroes would have among
themselves men of careful training and broad culture, as teachers and
teachers of teachers. There are always periods of educational evolution
when it is deemed quite proper for pupils in the fourth reader to teach
those in the third. But such a method, wasteful and ineffective at all
times, is peculiarly dangerous when ignorance is widespread and when
there are few homes and public institutions to supplement the work of
the school. It is, therefore, of crying necessity among Negroes that the
heads of their educational system--the teachers in the normal schools,
the heads of high schools, the principals of public systems, should be
unusually well trained men; men trained not simply in common-school
branches, not simply in the technique of school management and normal
methods, but trained beyond this, broadly and carefully, into the
meaning of the age whose civilization it is their peculiar duty to
interpret to the youth of a new race, to the minds of untrained people.
Such educational leaders should be prepared by long and rigorous courses
of