But such transformation calls for singular
wisdom and patience. If, while the healing of this vast sore is
progressing, the races are to live for many years side by side,
united in economic effort, obeying a common government,
sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet subtly and si-
lently separate in many matters of deeper human intimacy,--if
this unusual and dangerous development is to progress amid
peace and order, mutual respect and growing intelligence, it
will call for social surgery at once the delicatest and nicest in
modern history. It will demand broad-minded, upright men,
both white and black, and in its final accomplishment Ameri-
can civilization will triumph. So far as white men are con-
cerned, this fact is to-day being recognized in the South, and
a happy renaissance of university education seems imminent.
But the very voices that cry hail to this good work are,
strange to relate, largely silent or antagonistic to the higher
education of the Negro.
Strange to relate! for this is certain, no secure civilization
can be built in the South with the Negro as an ignorant,
turbulent proletariat.
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