Comparing them as a class
with my fellow students in New England and in Europe, I
cannot hesitate in saying that nowhere have I met men and
women with a broader spirit of helpfulness, with deeper
devotion to their life-work, or with more consecrated determi-
nation to succeed in the face of bitter difficulties than among
Negro college-bred men. They have, to be sure, their propor-
tion of ne'er-do-wells, their pedants and lettered fools, but
they have a surprisingly small proportion of them; they have
not that culture of manner which we instinctively associate
with university men, forgetting that in reality it is the heritage
from cultured homes, and that no people a generation re-
moved from slavery can escape a certain unpleasant rawness
and gaucherie, despite the best of training.
With all their larger vision and deeper sensibility, these
men have usually been conservative, careful leaders. They
have seldom been agitators, have withstood the temptation to
head the mob, and have worked steadily and faithfully in a
thousand communities in the South. As teachers, they have
given the South a commendable system of city schools and
large numbers of private normal-schools and academies.
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