e came to his notice. When he heard of rioting,
lynching, or serious trouble in any community he sent a message of
advice, encouragement, or warning to the leading Negroes of the
locality and sometimes to the whites whom he knew to be interested in
the welfare of the Negroes. When the trouble was sufficiently serious
to warrant it he went in person to the scene. When he heard of a Negro
winning a prize at a county fair, or being placed in some position of
unusual trust and distinction, he wrote him a letter of
congratulation and learned the circumstances so that he might cite
the incident by way of encouragement to others.

After the riots in Atlanta, Georgia, some years ago, when infuriated
white mobs foiled in their efforts to lynch a Negro murderer, burned,
killed, and laid waste right and left in the Negro section of the
town, Mr. Washington, who was in the North at the time, boarded the
first train for the city, arrived just after the bloody scenes,
gathered together his frightened people amid the smoking ruins of
their homes, soothed, calmed, and cheered them. He then went to the
leading city officials, secured from them a promise of succor for the
stricken people and protection against further attack. Next he went to
the Governor of the State, secured his sympathy and cooperation, and
with him organized a conference of leading State and city officials
and other representative men who there and then mapped out a program
tending to prevent the recurrence of such race riots--a program which
up to the present time has successfully fulfilled its purpose. It is
characteristic of Mr. Washington's methods that he turned this
disaster into an ultimate blessing for the very community that was
afflicted.

Mr. Washington was the kind of leader who kept very close to the plain
people. He knew their every-day lives, their weaknesses, their
temptations. To use a slang phrase, he knew exactly what they "were up
against" whether they lived in country or city. Within a comparatively
short period before his death he addressed two audiences as widely
separated by distance and environment as the farmers gathered
together for the first Negro Fair of southwestern Georgia at Albany,
Georgia, and five thousand Negro residents of New York City assembled
in the Harlem Casino. He told those Georgia farmers how much land they
owned and to what extent it was mortgaged, how much land they leased,
how much cotton they raised, and how much of