of the Southern people. Still they know that the general public opinion
is not positive enough to condemn them in any question between the
negroes and the whites; hence they are not afraid to do what they will
with the negro. The great body of the Southern people are law-abiding,
with the single exception that they do not propose to respect the
Fifteenth Amendment. They are committed against this. They deprecate
lawlessness. They are personally kind to the negroes. They are busy in
the ordinary duties of life, but the lawless know that these good people
will never disturb them in their injustices to the negro. Then, there is
a relatively small element of the people who are prophets of a better
day. They themselves often feel the slavery of a public opinion which
puts odium upon them when they are too friendly in behalf of the
oppressed colored man. They cannot oppose many things which they feel to
be wrong without losing their influence. These seers of the future are
in hearty sympathy with our work and give it such personal encouragement
as they may under the tyrannical conditions of a public opinion not
friendly to equal rights on the part of the negro.

There is a great gain, also, in Southern public opinion as to the
capacity of the colored man and his possible future. This gain is seen
in the better provisions for the colored public schools, in towns and
cities. The schools of the A.M.A. are both object lessons and incentives
for the education of the white as well as the colored in the public
schools. The South is exceedingly sensitive as to the opinion of the
North. A trifle of published criticism, for example, goes through the
Southern papers with rebuttals enough to break down a national
constitution. An imperfect and incorrect report of an interview, which
lived just long enough to be printed, has been lately passionately
confuted in certain Southern newspapers with a profusion of epithets
which were out of all proportion to the harmless nonsense committed to