Whether the faults named were strictly hereditary or resulted rather from the long-continued ill education and environment of the race, none could certainly tell. As a matter of fact, however, few even among friendly critics longer regarded these faults as entirely eliminable. A well qualified and wholly unbiased judge of negro character gave it as emphatically his opinion that any autonomous community of colored people, no matter how highly educated or civilized, would relapse into barbarism in the course of two generations. This view was not rendered absurd by the existence of fairly well administered municipalities here and there with negro mayors. Many negroes were extremely bright and apt in imitation, also in all memoriter and linguistic work. The New Orleans Cotton Centennial and the Nashville Exposition each had its negro department. But it was distinctive of the Atlanta Fair that one of its buildings was entirely devoted to exhibits of negro handicraft. At once in range and in the quality of the objects which it embraced, the display was creditable to the race. Here and there, moreover, the race had produced a grand character. The most notable of the opening addresses at the Atlanta Fair was made by the colored educator, Booker T. Washington, President of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for negro youth. [Illustration: Portrait.] Booker T. Washington. His oration on this occasion directed attention to Mr. Washington not only as a remarkable negro, but as a remarkable man. Born poor as could be and fighting his way to an education against every conceivable obstacle, he had at the age of forty distinguished himself as a business organizer, as an educator, as a writer, and as, a public speaker. His modesty, discretion, and industry were phenomenal, at once constituting him a leader of his race and rendering his leadership valuable. He eschewed politics, avoided in everything the demagogue's ways, and never spoke ill of the whites, not even of Southern whites. But, unfortunately, a great negro such as Washington stood like a mountain in a marsh, sporadic and solitary. [Illustration: People walking in front of a large columned building.] The Atlanta Exposition. Entrance to the Art Building.