above-mentioned school (the Prince Institute, coloured), and was held up by the teacher and begged to make a few remarks to the children. Very reluctantly I did so, not thinking that publicity would be given to it or that I was doing anything that would offend anyone. I wish to say here and now that I am heartily sorry for what I did, and I hope after this humble confession and expression of regret that all whom I have offended will forgive me.

[Pg 56]The sentiment indicated by this letter, while widely prevalent, is by no means universal. I have seen Southern white men address Negro schools and Negro gatherings many times since I have been down here. Some of the foremost men in the South have accepted Booker T. Washington’s invitations to speak at Tuskegee. And concerning the very letter that I reproduce above, the Charlotte Observer, a strong Southern newspaper, which copied it, said:

[Pg 56]

A man would better be dead than to thus abase himself. This man did right to address the pupils of a coloured school, but has spoiled all by apologising for it. Few people have conceived that race prejudice went so far, even in South Carolina, as is here indicated. Logically it is to be assumed that this jelly-fish was about to be put under the ban, and to secure exemption from this, published this abject card. To it was appended a certificate from certain citizens, saying they ‘are as anxious to see the coloured race elevated as any people, but by all means let it be done inside the colour line.’... The narrowness and malignity betrayed in this Orangeburg incident is exceedingly unworthy, and those guilty of it should be ashamed of themselves.

The Rev. H. S. Bradley, for a long time one of the leading clergymen of Atlanta, now of St. Louis, said in a sermon published in the Atlanta Constitution:

... We have not been wholly lacking in our effort to help. There are a few schools and churches supported by Southern whites for the Negroes. Here and there a man like George Williams Walker, of the aristocracy of South Carolina, and a woman like Miss Belle H. Bennett, of the blue blood of Kentucky, goes as teacher to the Negro youth, and seeks in a Christly spirit of fraternity to bring them to a higher plane of civil and moral manhood, but the number like them can almost be counted on fingers of both hands.

Our Southern churches have spent probably a hundred times as much money since the Civil War in an effort to evangelise the people of China, Japan, India, South America, Africa, 

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