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 shares with Fisk, Atlanta and Wilberforce the proud tradition of over half a century of service in the liberal education of Negro youth. To-day, after years of painstaking advance, it shares with a dozen or more such Negro colleges the rank and standing of an institution of standard and certified collegiate grade. But just as surely as there is a need and place for each,—and for that matter more, of these institutions, just so certain is it that one of them must eventually become the conscious and recognized center of the higher life and cultural inspiration and aspiration of the race. Such by reason of its origin, location, constituency, maintenance and objective, Howard Unversity aspires to be. Largest, oldest as an avowed university in plan and pattern, national in scope and support, Howard University already has advantages that make plausible its claim to be “the Capstone of Negro Education.” But with the rapid development and maturing of the race life of the Negro to-day, and the almost floodlike surge of race consciousness and purpose, the competition for primacy among Negro institutions of learning is swift and will be to the swift. The title and prestige must eventually go to that institution that incorporates most readily the progressive spirit of the new generation, best focuses the racial mind, and becomes the center radiating the special influence of leadership and enlightenment which a culturally organized people needs.

The Negro in America constitutes a community far more separate and distinct in needs, aims, and aspirations than any other racial or sectarian element of our national life. The Catholic, Jewish and Protestant denominations develop their own local, and national institutions to foster the peculiar genius