these same years the Negro has relearned the lost art of organization.
Slavery was the almost absolute denial of initiative and responsibility.
To-day Negroes have nearly 40,000 churches, with edifices worth at least
$75,000,000 and controlling nearly 4,000,000 members. They raise
themselves $7,500,000 a year for these churches.

There are 200 private schools and colleges managed and almost entirely
supported by Negroes, and these and other public and private Negro schools
have received in 40 years $45,000,000 of Negro money in taxes and
donations. Five millions a year are raised by Negro secret and beneficial
societies which hold at least $6,000,000 in real estate. Negroes support
wholly or in part over 100 old folks' homes and orphanages, 30 hospitals,
and 500 cemeteries. Their organized commercial life is extending rapidly
and includes over 22,000 small retail businesses and 40 banks.

Above and beyond this material growth has gone the spiritual uplift of a
great human race. From contempt and amusement they have passed to the
pity, perplexity, and fear on the part of their neighbors, while within
their own souls they have arisen from apathy and timid complaint to open
protest and more and more manly self-assertion. Where nine-tenths of them
could not read or write in 1860, to-day over two-thirds can; they have 300
papers and periodicals, and their voice and expression are compelling
attention. Already in poetry, literature, music, and painting the work of
Americans of Negro descent has gained notable recognition. Instead of
being led and defended by others, as in the past, American Negroes are
gaining their own leaders, their own voices, their own ideals.
Self-realization is thus coming slowly but surely to another of the
world's great races, and they are to-day girding themselves to fight in
the van of progress, not simply for their own rights as men, but for the
ideals of the greater world in which they live: the emancipation of women,
universal peace, democratic government, the socialization of wealth, and
human brotherhood.

FOOTNOTES:

[90]

The figures given by the census are as follows:
1850, mulattoes formed 11.2 per cent of the total Negro population.
1860, mulattoes formed 13.2 per cent of the total Negro population.
1870, mulattoes formed 12 per cent of the total Negro population.
1890, mulattoes formed 15.2 per cent of the total Negro population.
1910, mulattoes formed 20.9 per cent of the total Negr