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new idea. All over the South we now find academies and high schools whose curriculums are abreast of the times. Many are especially designed for everyday business and professional usefulness, the walls of which are crowded with an army of colored girls thirsting for knowledge and anxious to undergo any honorable experience, to assume any burdensome responsibility, only to reach the highest attainments in the bounds of possible opportunity.

The Negro woman as a teacher in the common and higher schools of the South has proven a success. As a business woman she surprises the country. Many girls are now compounding medicine in drug stores run by Negroes, or are watching patients as trained nurses, and going on the rostrum as lecturers and organizers of clubs, etc., whose purpose it is to destroy the influence of error and establish the everlasting doctrine of the principles of truth. The education of the Negro woman along moral and intellectual lines has indeed been gratifying.

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She has had the saddest experience of any mortal in the world's history. She has passed through that dark, immoral, rapacious age, when virtue to her was a perfect stranger and morality sounded like a mockery. She was forced in some cases to be brutalized without the hope of redress

for the wrongs heaped upon her, thereby sowing the seeds of immorality and degeneracy, and committing (not at first by voluntary wishes) the unpardonable crime against law and society. But thank God her time has come; just beyond the hills of night we faintly see the daylight breaking. She will lift her voice and be heard, and demand her rights as an American woman.

Sooner or later, by renouncing the horrible practice of illicit mixing of the past, she will be respected, regardless of her color. There is already a decided concert of action on the part of Negro women everywhere, to remove the past with all its evil influences and illicit unions with white men of every class; and to regard any approach of white men as an unpardonable affront to any decent woman. Unless the laws are so reformed, she may demand a legal union in spite of them.

At the present rate of education and moral reformation she will some day reach the highest round in the ladder of womanly womanhood, virtue and intelligence.

Let us start a movement today that may revolutionize the laws of some of our un-American states; revolutionize public sentiment. "Ah," you say, "you are ahead of the times! That is a perilous task!" I admit that it is. Better a

perilous task to individuals than further degrade the manhood of the white race and the womanhood of the colored race. Somebody must take the lead. This horrible tide of immorality must be more successfully checked. THE COLORED WOMEN OF THIS COUNTRY MUST BE COMPLETELY EMANCIPATED FROM THE THRALLDOM OF THE PAST.

I may be criticised, yes, severely so, for the stand I have taken in this matter; not only by members of the white race but by my own as well. However, that is a small matter to me, for every man and woman who has ever advanced a new idea, or has advanced the interests of all the people, have always been severely criticised by friend and foe alike.

Just as William Lloyd Garrison was when he heralded to the world the great issue of freeing the slaves. He was told his was an impossible task; that the state of the country did not admit it; that he would find opposition everywhere, north, south, east and west. Did he give up in despair? No. What did he do? He buckled on the armor of manhood, truth and justice, went out on the battle field of injustice, hatred and oppression of a downtrodden race, and won the victory as did David of old, when he went forth and slew the giant, Goliath. The true and good

men and women of both races must go forth and slay the great Goliath of moral depravity between the races, and bring about a condition that will give justice to the colored woman, and protect her as the mother of a race and as a woman.

Before our great country can reach that broad plane of fairness and justice to all its citizens, without regard to race or color, the statesmanship of the nation must rise pre-eminent to the unholy and sordid ambitions of politicians; must rise above the pitiful weakness of human prejudice, into that bright haven of sunlight and righteousness, where men can look justice squarely in the face, and declare from hill-top and mountain peak that right is a principle as bright as the face of the sun, as everlasting as the throne of Jehovah.

Then will the colored woman shake off her mantle of semi-slavery and take her proper place in the world's society; contributing to the glory of Christian civilization, and expand all reforms until the influence of peace, happiness and complete freedom shall spread and cover this broad land as the waters cover the mighty deep.

Then, when the consumation of all time is near at hand, and the lion is ready to lay down with the lamb, God grant that I may look upon yonder deep blue sky and see in letters of gold— "ONE GOD, ONE FLAG, ONE PEOPLE.”

SOME THOUGHTS FOR BOTH RACES TO PONDER OVER

BY ANNA D. BORDEN

(Contributed for this book.)

It is strange and peculiarly interesting how some of our leading women claim they are ignorant of existing social conditions. If we are standing sure and steadfast; if we are so far removed from unpleasant social conditions that there need be no alarm sounded, "What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?" What meaneth then the many thousands of mulattoes annually born in the black race of the South? Even some of those who claim to be entirely ignorant of these conditions are mulattoes and quadroons themselves, and need to investigate why they are thus, and from whence came their foreign blood? I am sure they will find food for thought.

I have heard some of our leading men proudly state, "I am three-fourths white, only one-fourth black," or, "my father is white, therefore I am only one-half Negro." If that be true, please explain the conditions under which you became three-fourths or one-half white? In what attitude will that place the dearest person on earth

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