salaries of the teachers. On General Armstrong's recommendation, Mr. Washington, then a youth of some five and twenty years, was entrusted with the organization and management of the school; and the account of how, with practically no resources at all, he built up the great and beneficent institution which has now made the name of Tuskegee world-famous is indeed a remarkable story of indomitable courage and persistence. Mr. Washington felt that his personal failure would be reckoned a failure to his race. Out of the nettle, danger, he plucked the flower, safety, and Tuskegee now represents the greatest individual triumph his race has ever achieved." 1

Other books by Booker T. Washington are: The Story of the Negro, 1909; Frederick Douglass, 1907; My Larger Education, 1912; Character Building, 1903; Working with the Hands, 1904, etcetera.

He wrote articles for the leading magazines and was greatly in demand as a lecturer.

Following his untimely death an editorial in The World's Work paid him this tribute:

"Booker T. Washington had a superlative degree of common sense. That was his chief characteristic. He believed in the constant application of the homely doctrine of hard work. That was his solution of the so-called Negro problem. His doctrine could well have been applied to many white people, but he never applied it to them. His business was helping the Negro and he minded his business. That was another of his chief characteristics.

"He tried to teach the people of his race that if they lived decently and worked hard they would gradually overcome the handicaps under which they suffered. He warned them against the allurements of politics, of trying to gain enough political power to legislate themselves into positions which they could not hold. To those who demand equality he answered that when the best Negro society was as advanced as the best white society there would be no incentive to mix the two; and that until that time it was obviously impossible.

"His philosophy left every proper door of hope open to the Negro and yet asked for him no special favors. He did protest against unfair treatment, and his protests received more recognition than those of any other man of his race for the very reason that he asked that the Negro be given his due and did not ask for more than that. His philosophy did not spend itself so much upon the rights of the Negro as upon his duties and opportunities.

1 Archer, Through Afro-America, p. 49.

"The measure of the man's strength was that he could become the leader of his race upon so homely a programme as the doctrine of hard work and right living.

"He was not liked by those Negroes who wished to achieve progress by the short cuts of agitation and legislation. He was not liked by white people who have never admitted that the Negro and the white man are different. But to the great majority of the sensible men of both races his doctrine appealed. They aided his efforts and they deeply regret his loss."

After a tour of observation of Negro life in the South, Ray Stannard Baker said in reference to Booker T. Washington: "Wherever I found a prosperous Negro enterprise, a thriving business place, a good home, there I was almost sure to find Booker T. Washington's picture over the fireplace, or a little framed motto expressing his gospel of work and service."

The preeminent author among the Negroes of to-day is W. E. Burghardt DuBois, though it is difficult to know under what literary head to class him. His authorship covers the field of fiction, history, biography, economics, and sociology. Perhaps his proper classification is that of essayist.

Born at Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 1868, he was graduated from Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1888. From there he went to Harvard University, where in 1890 he received the degree of bachelor of arts; in 1891, the degree of master of arts; and in 1895, the degree of doctor of philosophy.

He taught for a while at Wilberforce University and from 1896 to 1910 was professor of history and economics at Atlanta University. He gave up his chair in order to take up work with the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People, and was elected editor of the organ of the association which appears monthly under the title of The Crisis.

DuBois's first publication was his doctor's thesis The Suppression of the Slave Trade, a scholarly, unbiased discussion of the movement for the suppression of the slave trade in the Colonial and later period of American history. In 1899, he published The Philadelphia Negro and in the years immediately following he wrote several articles dealing with the dark side of the color line, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, The World's Work, and other magazines. These articles are embodied in the volume, The Souls of Black Folk.

His Souls of Black Folk, his Darkwater, together with half a dozen short essays of like themes, may be considered distinct literary productions.

Besides his Suppression of the Slave Trade, his contribution to history consists of an article on John Brown for the American Crisis Biographies, and numerous magazine articles touching upon the economic, educational and religious history of the Negro.

Most of his writings in recent years, especially his editorials in The Crisis, have been in favor of securing for the Negro a full share in American culture by the complete ignoring of color.

Glenn Frank, in his article "The Clash of Color," Century Magazine, November, 1919, says of DuBois:

"DuBois, in the early days of his public career as a scholar and writer, wrote in a style of liquid beauty his protests against the color line in American life. His writings were touched with an appealing sadness. The poet in him spoke in those days. But in these later days hate has rusted upon his pen. He speaks more bluntly. He snarls as a wolf at bay. The poet has abdicated in favor of the propagandist. He tells the Negro soldier that he went to Europe as a fighting man and that he must return fighting, fighting, fighting for the unqualified rights of an American citizen."

One of the best books written by a Negro is the autobiography of James D. Corrothers published under the title In Spite of the Handicap.

The author is of Scotch-Irish, Indian, and Negro stock, the Caucasian element showing itself in his fine features and intellectual countenance. He was born in a Negro settlement of Cass County, Michigan; educated at Northwestern University and elsewhere; and has had a very eventful life in both North and South.

In his introduction to this book, Ray Stannard Baker says that it "gives us a striking picture of what race prejudice means in the North, and the difficulties which the Northern Negro is forced to meet. It also throws much light on conditions with which few writers. on the race question have dealt: I mean the problems which confront the abler and more intelligent Negroes, the leaders of the race, in their contact with their own people. And finally it is a book singularly without rancor: the book of a man who in spite of difficulties has maintained a cheerful and helpful outlook on life."

Mr. Corrothers' story of his life is comparable in interest and heroic

achievement to Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery. It begins with the career of a bootblack and leads up to that of a preacher of the Gospel and a writer who finds entrée to the leading magazines.

Mr. Corrothers is the author of a publication entitled The Black Cat Club, which contains character studies of Negro life in the great cities of the North, and includes several poems by the author in Negro dialect.

William H. Thomas, a Negro lawyer of Cincinnati, is the author of a book, The American Negro, which of all the books written by Negroes is perhaps the most unpopular. His point of view is that of the irrationally prejudiced white man. A casual reader of the book would never imagine that the author was a man of African descent.

None of the ancestors of Thomas were slaves. On his mother's side he was of German and English stock. His maternal grandfather was a son of a white indentured servant by a Negro man born in Pennsylvania in 1758. His maternal grandmother was a white German woman born in Maryland in 1770, and from that colony she emigrated to Ohio. His paternal grandparents were of mixed blood and were born in Virginia.

Thomas was born in Pickanay County, Ohio, in 1843. His parents were devout Christians and in their morning orisons and every prayer never omitted supplication for "those in bondage."

In his book he says: "As far back as I can remember, my parents' home was the rendezvous of escaping slaves from whose recital my childish heart drank in the miseries of human chattel."

A term in a county school and ten months' study in a college in Ohio was all of the schooling that Thomas had. He volunteered in the Civil War, and in an attack upon the defenses of Wilmington, North Carolina, he received a gunshot wound which cost him his right arm.

After the war he studied theology and worked on a religious newspaper. In 1871, he was sent to South Carolina to teach the freedmen, and a year later was licensed to practice law in that state. He was appointed justice of Newberry, and later was elected a member of the South Carolina legislature, in which he was instrumental in settling the presidential vote of South Carolina in 1876. He traveled all over the South and had a wide acquaintance with the colored population.

Thomas is very pessimistic as to the future of the Negro in America. His attitude toward the Negro problem is like that of the religious evangelist toward the unconverted. He believes that regeneration is

entirely a matter of will power of the individual. He, therefore, minimizes all efforts at regeneration through laws or other external means.

He says, "The Negro can be a man if he will. All human regeneration-moral, mental, physical—is an internal process begun and completed within the individual himself." 2

William Holtzclaw is the author of a very buoyant little volume, The Black Man's Burden. It is the story of his achievement in educational work and, at the same time, an inspiring account of the progress of his race in education. The author entered Tuskegee penniless and worked his way through. He is now principal of the Utica Normal and Industrial Institute of Mississippi.

In his introduction to the book Booker Washington says: "I do not know a single graduate of Tuskegee who has more completely carried out in his life the spirit which the school has sought to instill in its students, nor do I know one who is doing a more useful or more successful work for his race and for the community in which he lives."

Dr. Robert R. Moton, the successor to Washington as principal at Tuskegee, is the author of Finding a Way Out, An Autobiography, 1920. In this book, as also in his public lectures, he shows breadth of outlook and a fine spirit. He is interested in the constructive side of the Negro problem, and, like his predecessor, is trying to get the colored people to do the things needed to be done. He is a man of devotion to his race and his country and is winning his way as a great leader.

Kelly Miller, a professor in Howard University, is author of Race Adjustment, An Appeal to Conscience, Out of the House of Bondage, etcetera. His books are a plea for more righteousness in all of the white man's dealings with the Negro. He is an outstanding leader of Negro thought, and represents a class of educated Negroes who are earnestly striving for a rational adjustment of race relationships.

William Pickens, an ex-slave from South Carolina, has become known through his two books, The Hour of Slavery, an Autobiography, 1911; and The New Negro: His Political, Civil, and Mental Status and Related Essays, 1916. The author graduated at Yale University in 1904, and has since been a professor in Talladega College, Alabama. He is a man of mediocre ability, lacking in imagination, literary refinement, and balanced judgment. In his latter book he classes Alexander Hamilton as a Negro.

William A. Sinclair, author of The Aftermath of Slavery, sees only

Thomas, The American Negro, p. 365.