At the closing exercises of the year yesterday, Tougaloo took another step forward. Instead of turning out a class of graduates, the management increased the course and raised the standard. An institution which does that is certainly progressive.

Two of the notable things on the programme were an essay by Lucy Jenkins, on "What Tougaloo Does for the Girls," and an oration by James Miller on "Industrial Education." Both of them were well considered, well written and well delivered. The essayist and the orator were black, not yellow. Their efforts would have done credit to Anglo-Saxons of corresponding age, North or South. As for the musical part of the programme—ah, there was melody indeed.

A negro boy named Scott, with all the features of the African strongly marked, executed a difficult solo with an artistic appreciation which would have brought enthusiastic plaudits from an audience of critics.

[pg 210]

A TRUE FRIEND OF THE RACE.

And then the Rev. Dr. William Hayne Leavell, of Meridian, arose to deliver the annual address. What a contrast! Dr. Leavell is a South Carolinian by birth and a relative of the great Nullifier Hayne. He comes of one of the proud old Southern families and has the highest social connections. He stands six feet high, a magnificent specimen of physical manhood, and as chock full of moral courage as he is of blue blood. This man left his home, declined an invitation to participate in the Confederate corner-stone ceremonies, and devoted his birthday anniversary to Tougaloo. Dr. Leavell is a son-in-law of United States Senator George, of Mississippi. He is the man who delivered an address before the Mississippi Legislature last winter, and denounced as cowards, men who go about with pistols in their hip pockets. And when the blank looks of amazement went round he rubbed his sentiments in on the Mississippians and their folly, of making themselves walking shooting galleries. Coming before the students of Tougaloo yesterday, Dr. Leavell said:

"My interest in you, in this whole work, grows out of a memory. Your fathers were the servants of my fathers. I remember that in 1861, when I was a very small boy, the sound of war went through this land. My father, kinsmen and friends went forth to battle to keep your fathers in servitude. I remember that not a few of your fathers knew what that war meant—that if my fathers succeeded, your fathers would be kept in servitude forever and my fathers would remain the master class. All the men that could protect the women and children were away. The fathers and brothers and friends were away fighting. We were in the power of your fathers and of some of you gray-headed people that I see. I remember that when they returned from that war your fathers gave back to mine the women and children without a hair of their heads having been harmed. I have remembered this with deep gratitude; and ever since that time I have felt a deep interest in you. It is therefore, that I have come in response to the call to be here to-day."

THE ONLY LOGICAL RESULT.

He proceeded at considerable length with such earnest advice as he might have given to the assembled students of a white university on commencement day. After a time he touched upon the special condition which his audience presented.

"I know," said he, "of no people who have ever lived with a more difficult problem before them. You have before you the duty of saving yourselves. Mark what I tell you, no man of another race ever saved a people. Some man of you, or of your race, has got to go with the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day, and, like Moses, lead you.

"God knows many a man of my race has given his life and service for [pg 211] yours. And not only these men who fought at the end of a gun to make you free have given their lives for you, but some of us from the South, who stood with breasts bared to the bayonets of those who were marching forward to the support of a great principle. We are anxious now to do all we can for your advancement. But we of the white race may do our best. After all we have done for you, it is as when a man goes with a friend to the brink of the grave; he can go no further. There is a limit beyond which we cannot go for you, no matter how great our interest in you. Some man with a skin darker than mine must take up the work and carry it on."

He said not a word about politics, but later in the day the question was put to him privately:

"Doctor, suppose these negroes to whom you talked awhile ago become what you urged them to be—useful, reliant, well-to-do citizens—what will be their status politically? Will the white people, with all this progress of the negro in education, in industry, in independence and in the acquisition of property, acknowledge his political rights?"

"They'll have to, sir," was the prompt and emphatic reply. "This present condition of affairs can't go on. We know that. As the negro becomes qualified we've got to admit him to full citizenship."

W.B.S.

WHICH WILL BE THE UNDER DOG IN THE FIGHT?

As a member of a Boston Raymond Excursion in January last, I spent three or four days in New Orleans. The President and a Trustee of Straight University visited our side-tracked train, and invited us to call at the University. Quite a number accepted the invitation, and in addition to being shown through the buildings, we were entertained by the students, under the supervision of the President and Professors, with hymns, songs and plantation music, with explanation by the President of the course of studies and progress of the students. At the close of the reception, it fell to my lot to acknowledge the civility shown us, which I did in the following words:

In behalf of visitors from the Raymond Excursion, it gives me great pleasure to express to the officers and students of Straight University our thanks for the interesting reception we have received at their hands. We have come from a long way off, for sight-seeing, and the study of the country, but here we find something more than the wild mountains, and desolate plains, and border towns, that are to make up so much of the interest of our journey. Through institutions like this, a problem suggested to me in one of your streets will find solution. I visited the Republican State Convention in session, to see ex-Governor Kellogg, whom I had known in his boyhood among the Green Mountains, and who was one of [pg 212] the officers of the convention. While there I listened to several speeches from colored men, which, for clearness of thought and pathos of oratory, would have done credit to any public speaker in the country. I have since learned, with great pleasure, that several of these gentlemen were graduates of this University. On leaving the convention, when scarcely a block away, I met a well-dressed gentleman, and naturally fell into conversation about the convention. The gentleman claimed to have inherited the blood of Boston, but had lived twenty years in New Orleans. With respect to the convention, he said: "I tell you, sir, the white people here will never consent to be governed by a lot of ignorant Negroes, like those in that convention!" I have thought on this statement, and coming here, I find its solution. Knowledge is power, whether its possessor be white or black, and unless the white people of the South make the education of their children more of a paramount interest than heretofore, they will find the learning and muscle, the precedents of wealth, combined in the colored race. The rural population will find that they need for themselves and their children a better knowledge than can be acquired from the court-house, saloon, or the village tavern.

It is an interesting thought, that these students will go from this institution back to their low-down homes on the borders of rice fields and