Page:The Afro-American Press.djvu/221

Rh whose kindness can never be forgotten by him. The principal of these are the Rev. Dr. C. J. Bailey of The Biblical Recorder, Raleigh, N. C., Mr. Theodore Hobgood of The Asheville Advance, and Mr. R. M. Furman of The Asheville Citizen. These gentlemen, while fully according him the right to hold opinions different from their own, notably in politics, have nevertheless aided him in standing upon his feet, when, without the assistance of strong men, he could not have done so. Though holding a situation under a Democratic school board, his fair and conservative expressions of opinion have given him a right to declare himself upon the stump, as to his political preferences.

In his paper, The Gleaner, he made a manly fight for J. C. Matthews as Recorder of Deeds, whose appointment was made by President Cleveland, and was pending confirmation in a Republican Senate. His editorials upon the subject were read far and wide, and clipped by Washington papers. A republican, on reading one of his editorials, is said to have remarked: This is fair and manly, and should remind us that however good republicans the colored men may naturally be, no policy of political coercion can be applied to them with success."

Mr. Simpson was born March 15, 1842, in Philadelphia, Pa., his parents being Charles and Delphine Simpson. He is the Secret Society editor of The Monthly Echo. He was sent to the public schools of Philadelphia until the Friends opened a school called The Institute for Colored Youths, under the principalship of Prof. E. D. Bassett, where he was then placed. He here continued his studies with a view to