him less medical treatment? Then
why do you say, here is the ignorant Negro, therefore let us give him
less educational opportunities than we give the white man? If the white
man would be logical in this particular, he would say in the courts,
because he is ignorant let us make his punishment less severe; because
he is weak, let us protect him, because he is ignorant, let us give him
greater educational opportunities. But this has not been done. There has
not been one dollar increase in the Negro public school fund in the
rural districts in twenty years; if anything, it is less today than it
was twenty years ago.

Sometimes we hear it said that the white man of the South knows the
Negro better than anybody else, but the average white man of the South
only knows the ignorant, vicious and criminal class of Negroes better
than anybody else. He knows little of the best class of Negroes. I am
glad to say, however, that there are a few Southern white men who know
the better class and know them intimately and are doing what they can to
better the Negro's condition. I would to God that the number of these
few could be increased a hundred fold.

We used to deride the North for giving the Negro a chance to spend a
dollar while withholding from him the opportunity to make one. But in
the Providence of God all this has been changed by the great war in
Europe, which has created a labor scarcity in the North, East and West,
and the Negro is now being given a chance to make a dollar there as well
as spend one. The white man of the North is due no special credit for
this, the credit belongs to God. He is the Righteous Judge of all the
earth and in the end He will do right.

We will hear many tales of the sufferings of these people who go from
this section. Many will die and some will come back, but still some will
never return. You remember the fate of the Pilgrims, and the early
colonists who first came to this country. You also know the fate of the
men in the world war; many must die that some be saved. It behooves us
of the South who remain here, both white and black, to re-dedicate
ourselves to unselfish service and try more and more each day of our
lives to live up to the great principle laid down in the memorable
Atlanta speech by the immortal Booker T. Washington when he said: "In
all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers,
yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

C