Page:The Afro-American Press.djvu/509

Rh says: "We wish to see them all elevated and brought to a full realization of the duties of citizenship, and all enlightened as to society, to the state, and to the community in which they live and of which they form a part. Notwithstanding the white race has been the most progressive known in history, notwithstanding they have been entirely free since their original settlement in the wilderness of this new world, we find among our white people here in North Carolina much poverty, much illiteracy, much backwardness in the progressive ways of the world."

There are other Anglo-Saxon newspapers in the South which take a kindly and sympathetic view of the race as is done in the North. The most prominent are the following: The Knoxville (Tenn) Journal, The Petersburg (Va.) Index Appeal, The Memphis Commercial, The Charleston (S. C.) News and Courier, The Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution, The Charlotte (N. C.) Chronicle, The New Orleans (La.) Picayune, and The St. Louis Republican.

The progress of the race, however, has called forth louder and more friendly expressions from whites in the North and South, than from editors of newspapers. We can not fail to call attention to some of these views from our friends. At the suggestion of Ex-President Rutherford B. Hayes, Mr. A. K. Smiley, proprietor of the Mohonk Lake House, one of the New York summer resorts, invited a conference of leading men, North and South, recently, to assemble at his hotel for a discussion on the "race question." Addresses were made by distinguished white men of the country favorable to the Afro-American, prominent among whom were Gen. S. C. Armstrong of the H. M. and Agr. Inst., Dr. Allen of the Presbyterian Board of Missions, Dr. A. F. Beard of the American Missionary Society, President Gill of the Swarthmore College, Judge Tourgee, President Woodworth of Tougaloo University, and Andrew D. White.