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Introduction

IN a recent public address the Reverend Bishop Charles B. Galloway, of Mississippi, made the following statement: "We must insist that the Negro have equal opportunity with every American citizen to fulfil in himself the highest purpose of an all-wise and beneficent Providence." This quotation indicates the spirit in which this book should be studied.

The Negro is greatly in evidence, through incidents of various sorts having small relation to the important questions concerning him that should command the earnest thought and intelligent action of every American. Prevailing indifference to the subject is very apparent and painfully abundant.

When the slavery issue was intense the Negro, as the subject of it, was interesting; but now that the dramatic conditions of a great political crisis and vast military operations have faded into distant perspective, and the sentimental and heroic situations are replaced by obligations of simple duty to a great mass of plain people; only the in-

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