ecial programme of their music for half an hour on
one afternoon, when I made a brief address on our work as illustrated
by the singers and Fisk University. Our Northern friends have here
seen many side lights of Southern life and the colored people, such as
the "Jim Crow Car" and the "Separate Colored Waiting Rooms" at the
stations, etc. The colored delegates of the Pennsylvania and other
Northern delegations were sent into the "Jim Crow" car as soon as they
reached Southern soil. The Northern delegates also observed the
isolation of our missionaries. It is difficult for the Southern people
to understand why Northern friends are so much interested in colored
people and in their schools. Fisk University was, for example, the
Mecca of many Northern pilgrims. Not a few of them visited in our
home, and a number of delegates from New York and Massachusetts dined
with us, which would certainly have shocked their Southern hosts had
they known of it.

A Southern woman in commenting on the music of the Jubilee Singers,
remarked in the hearing of one of our teachers: "Those darkies are
very refined and sing well." A Southern woman inquired of me if I were
white. I replied: "I pass for a colored man." Then she asked: "How
much colored blood have you?" I replied: "It has never been
analyzed--perhaps one-eighth." "How strange," she said, "but that one
drop of Negro blood does make you belong to their side." I did not
find her reason for that conclusion--which has been reached without
reason--but I assured her that I was not ashamed to call them
_brethren_.

I think that our Northern friends saw much to convince them of the
necessity for our work in the South, and that even a war with
Spain--while it is doing much to bring our Southern brethren under the
old flag--does not and cannot at once change the habits, customs and
prejudices of the Southern people. We may as well realize that it will
take generations of hard, patient and self-sacrificing service on our
part and patient continuance of Northern influence, such as the
American Missionary Association is lovingly creating, to change their
traditions and the conditions of the colored people.

On the whole I think we had an excellent convention and believe that
the influence will be helpful for the colored people. A meeting at
Howard Congregational Church (colored) Sunday morning was of great
interest, when about two hundred Northern delegates were present. Rev.
Dr. Hill preach