following press association item is an instance published recently in the leading white newspapers of the country, of a prominent Southern white man who rather than live in adultery with my aunt honorably and legally married her.

WED NEGRESS LEGALLY

Death of White Man Recalls Remarkable Case in North Carolina.

(Special to Washington Herald.)

Fayetteville, N. C., Sept 17.-G. Thornton, a prominent and wealthy Republican politician in reconstruction days and who, by military authority, married Elsie Hargrove, a Negro woman, in 1866, and has since lived as a member of his wife's race, died at his home here today.

The marriage of Thornton to a negress is the only case of miscegenation of record in North Carolina, so far as known. The marriage, after being allowed by military authority of the district, was legalized by the constitutional convention, which met two years later. Thornton, who was eighty-five years of age, is survived by his wife and five children. He will be buried from the leading Negro church in Fayetteville." Washington, D. C.

THE AFRO-AMERICAN, AS HE WAS, NOW IS AND WILL BE

How HE IS BLEACHING AND WILL BECOME SOCIALLY EQUAL

BY REV. J. W. WOOD, D. D.

Pastor of A. M. E. Zion (State St.) Church, Mobile, Ala.

(Contributed for this book)

1. My purpose is to discuss the Afro-American Negro as he was, as he is now, and as he will be in the future; his social relations to other races than his own, and the final end of the present-day "bickering."

During two hundred and seventy-five years the Negro was a slave to his white brother, and during this long period of severe hardship and oppression he was not allowed to read or write. This was the white man's law, and if a Negro was found with a book he was severely punished. The poor Negro was ignorant and was kept in ignorance for the sake of the institution of slavery. In those days of his sore affliction the Negro woman was seduced, assaulted and ravished by the white man. Negro women gave birth to mulatto children. This practice, on the part of the white man, continued throughout the shameful and disgraceful period of slavery.

Since the Civil War the intermixing of whites

and blacks has abated but little in some sections of the South, and the habit continues just as it did in the days of slavery. The relations of whites and blacks in this respect, in some communities of the South, are inseparable. There is no legislation or physical force that can keep them apart or entirely segregated.

The art of love-making is prevalent between the races, and it is puzzling to know when it will end.

2. To understand the situation more fully we shall now speak, secondly, of the Afro-American as he is now. At the close of the war the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment of the Constitution purported to give the Negro all rights as an American citizen. Freedom dawned upon the race at the time when it was entirely unprepared to appreciate its real worth and meaning, because of previous conditions and ignorance. Northern philanthropists just at this time were eager to lend a helping hand to the unfortunate blacks. They sent missionaries and teachers to the Southland for the purpose of educating the Negro and lifting him from the gutter of vice and immorality, to make him a clean and responsible citizen, to prepare him for the responsibilities of American citizenship, to teach him the worth of the ballot, to train him to handle the affairs of state and government, to

be legislators, governors, representatives, congressmen; to prepare him to meet every political issue intelligently and to install in him self-reliance, moral culture and that refinement so characteristic of the Anglo-American. For this and other purposes the northern white man has given millions of dollars.

Education has made the Negro a mighty unit in the present-day history of the American nation. His refinement and great depth of learning and high moral character has lifted him to the high standard of America's best citizens. Now, this being true, the Negro who is worthy should be accorded every right that belongs to him as a citizen. No civil, political or social rights should be denied him because of his color. If he has the ability and ambition to be a teacher, minister, lawyer, physician, legislator, congressman or President of these United States, his color should not stand in the way of his progress.

But the Anglo-American says he is inferior, and not even fit for American citizenship. And that he is wholly unprepared to cast a ballot, or to have a voice in the law-making bodies of the country. They tell us by the enactment of discriminating laws that we are not fit to ride in the same car with white men, unfit to ride in a sleeping car in the South, unfit to put up at the same hotel, unfit to dine at the same table, unfit to drink from the same fount, to sit together in