Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/462

 high order, fluent speaker, terse writer, and popular with all classes. Oberlin College has not turned out a more praiseworthy scholar, nor a better specimen of a Christian gentleman, than Bishop Brown.

JOHN I. GAINES.

Mr. Gaines was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, November 6th, 1821. His early education was limited, as was generally the case with colored youth in that section, in those days. Forced into active life at an early age, he yet found time to make himself a fair English scholar, and laid the foundation of that power to be useful, which he afterwards exercised for the benefit of his people.

At the age of sixteen, he was found in attendance upon a convention, held in one of the interior towns of his native state. At that early age, he showed clearly his mental powers, and men, many years his senior listened with respect to the sage counsel which even then he was capable of giving. From that time to the very day of his death he mingled in the councils, and busied himself with the affairs of his people; and it is no derogation to the merits of others to say, that few have counselled more wisely, or acted more successfully than he.

The enterprise with which his name is the most permanently connected, is the movement which has given to Cincinnati her system of public schools for colored youth. When the law of 1849, granting school privi