The bulletin of Atlanta University, 1905 no. 159

              NUMBER  159                                     ATLANTA, GEORGIA                              DECEMBER, 1905 For statement of the work of Atlanta University see last page. "The Negro in the Cities of the North." This is a book of 100 pages, a duplicate of the October 7th issue of Charities, with advertising matter eliminated, and substantially bound. It is published by the Charity Organization Society of New York city. Among the contributions are: The Black Vote of Philadelphia,, by Prof. DuBois; The Negro of Today in Music, by James W. Johnson ('94) ; a,nd The Negro Press in America, by L. M. Hershaw ('96). These and many other contributions present the condition of the Negro in the North in a most interesting manner. "The Moon" The first number of this weekly appeared Dec. 2. It is published in Memphis, Tenn., by E. L. Simon & Co., 858 Beale St. The subscription price is .$2.00 a year. The business part of this new enterprise is managed by two of our college graduates, E. L. Simon ('00) and H. H. Pace ('03). Both of these young men worked in our printing office when students here, and both have taught printing and have had practical experience in city printing offices since their graduation. The editorial management is in the hands of our own Prof. DuBois. Prof. John Henry Adams of Morris Brown College is illustrator. We shall watch this publication with interest. Its management combines both technical and college training, and we wish for the Moon the best of success. An interesting pamphlet is No. 11 of the Occasional Papers of the American Negro Academy. It is entitled, The Negro and the Elective Franchise. The contributors are Archibald H. Grimke, Charles C. Cook, John Hope, John L. Love, Kelly Miller and Rev. Frank J. Grimke. What they write is well worth the reading, for their presentation of facts and arguments is excellent. Prof. Webster represented us at the Nashville meeting of the Southern Educational Association. He reports concerning the gathering elsewhere in our columns. The Hampton Negro Conference This was held July 12-14, and its proceedings have been published by the press of Hampton Institute. If. is an interesting report, and deals with educational, moral, vital and economic conditions. The longest of the papers printed in this report, and it is one of deep interest, is by W. T. B. Williams, school visitor for the General Education Board, upon the subject, Colored Public Schools in Southern Cities; ' He reports upon conditions in twenty-five cities. Occasionally his comments have a personal interest to us. For instance, he speaks of Chattanooga as probably not surpassed in the South in school buildings and equipment for colored schools. He then says: "I may as well add here also that there is no difference made in the pay of white and colored teachers, and that there is a colored man on the School Board in Chattanooga." His allusion is to Rev. Joseph E. Smith (76). Speaking of unsatisfactory furnishings in most of the cities, he says: "Indeed the simple, inexpensive decorations in Miss Judia Jackson's country school near Athens, Ga.,are mure effective and pleasing than those of any city schools I have seen in the South save perhaps a few rooms in Athens, Ga., in Selma, Ala., and in Lynchburg, Va." Miss Jackson is of the class of 1894. The advantage to a community of schools for advanced education, apart from their own intrinsic worth, appears in the following: "The cities having the largest percentage of their colored children to complete the grammar school course are usually those having public high schools or with private schools of at least high school grades. These serve as goals toward which the children work. This in part explains Atlanta's high percentage, 25 per cent., for there are several private colleges and seminaries with high school departments accessible to the children of Atlanta. The absence of such may account somewhat for the low percentage of graduates from graded schools in Natchez, Roanoke, and Portsmouth, with their 1, 2, and 3 percent., respectively." Not only the paper of Mr. Williams, but also others in the  report,  are  well worthy of the consideration of students of the Negro problem. "FROM SERVITUDE TO SERVICE" Six Superior Schools The volume which has recently appeared, From Servitude to Service, is one of unusual interest. We are having that part of it which describes the work of Atlanta University, by Dr. DuBois, reprinted in our printing office, and it will soon be ready for circulation. The editorial review of the book as a whole, in the Boston Herald of Nov. 19, is so good that we reprint it here: Last winter there were delivered in the Old South Meeting House, on Washington St., six lectures of an unusually valuable character. Each lecture was a presentation by one of its officers of the history and special characteristics of one of the leading southern institutions for the education of the Negro Race. These addresses were prepared with care and they are now published together by the American Unitarian Association, in a volume happily entitled, "From Servitude to Service." The race which scarcely more than forty years ago was held in involuntary servitude, is being prepared in these schools and other schools following their methods with more or less fidelity for the voluntary service which is the good citizen's duty and privilege. If we should say that there are no six educational institutions which, if destroyed, would make so damaging a hiatus in the progress of the land, or could not be more readily restored in their essential usefulness, it might be thought to be a preposterous judgment. But it is one that might be supported with much reasonable argument if not to the conviction of all minds. Is there any educational and patriotic work now more essential to the conservation of national peace, prosperity and hope than accumulating demonstration that the Negro is capable of acquiring and intelligently employing all the culture essential to the rigid development and guidance of his own race in the advancement from present poverty, ignorance and degradation to the level of independent and potential American citizenship? Blot out the six institutions of which this book treats, and there would follow, we fear, a baneful degeneracy and hopelessness threatening relapse into conditions of which Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation is supposed to have made an end. . At all events the progress of a race whose progress is as essential to national well-being as it is difficult and weary, Continued on page 4