slept on the lap of Delilah, they were shorn of their political and civil locks, and awoke one bright morning to find that their strength was gone.

It was a rude awakening that they experienced in the summer of 1917, when the edict went forth that all American citizens, black as well as white men, were subject to the selective draft. It was a rude awakening that they experienced, when they discovered that their sons must cross the ocean and give their lives to bring a freedom to war-ridden Europe, which was denied their race in this country. It was a rude awakening that they experienced when they realized that they who only experienced partial citizenship in this country were called upon to make the same sacrifice in blood and treasure as their fairer-skinned brothers, who had experienced the full blessings of citizenship.

A Baptist preacher whom I met in St. Louis a year ago voiced the thought of the entire colored race when he said, “Ferris, what a mighty big price we have to pay for a little freedom.”

It was a rude awakening, when Hog Island was calling for riveters and the Remington Company at Eddystone for machinists, and yet would turn down colored men who were capable. It was a rude awakening, when colored men and women who passed the Civil Service in Washington, D. C., during war times and were certified, were turned down because of their color. It was a rude awakening, when colored soldiers could fight and die side by side with white soldiers in France, and yet couldn’t visit the same service camps in America. And it was a still ruder awakening, when the Y. M. C. A. carried color prejudice to France where it had never existed before and attempted to jim-crow and segregate the very colored soldiers who were fighting to save France and to make the world safe for democracy.

Such was the state of the American mind twenty-two years, when Dr. Alexander Crummell gathered his colored friends around him and formed the Academy. The same reason that led the American mind to discountenance the Negro’s higher aspirations and strivings and longings caused Dr. Crummell to encourage them. He realized that living in the same country with the American white man, facing the same problems and conditions, the Negro needed the same kind of education and training that the white man needed, or he would lag hopelessly behind in the race of life. General Armstrong once triumphantly told a class of colored students at Hampton, “Hampton will give you enough education to cope with any colored men you may meet.” But Dr. Alexander Crummell saw deeper. He saw that the Negro needed also an education that would enable him to cope on equal intellectual terms with any white men that he might meet. For that reason the Negro needed to dip into literature, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, sciences, anthropology and ethnology; needed in a word to be kept in touch with the trend of modern science and the tendencies of modern thought.

Dr. Crummell was right. If there ever was a time in the Negro’s history when he needed trained and well-equipped leadership, it is now, when the recent world war has brought about a new earth, when new problems affecting Europe, America and Africa are pressing for solution, and when a readjustment of social, political and industrial conditions will be made, not only in Europe and Africa but in America. If there was ever a time in the Negro’s history when he needed trained and well-equipped leadership, it is now when tens of thousands of black Africans and black Americans have demonstrated on scores of bloodstained battlefields in France that heroism can wear a sable hue and be clothed in ebony; when the American Negro proved his patriotism and loyalty by subscribing to the Liberty Loan, the War Chest, War Savings Stamps and by Red Cross service, and when by reason of his helping to lay low the Prussian menace to civilization, he has