I quote on this subject Gustavus J. Orr, one of the wisest and best of men, and lately elected, by spontaneous movement, president of the National Educational Association. He says: “The race question in the schools is already settled. We give the negroes equal advantages, but separate schools. This plan meets the reason and satisfies the instinct of both races. Under it we have spent over five million dollars in Georgia, and the system grows in strength constantly.” I asked if the negroes wanted mixed schools. His reply was prompt: “They do not. I have questioned them carefully on this point, and they make but one reply: “They want their children in their own schools and under their own teachers.” I asked what would be the effect of mixed schools. “I could not maintain the Georgia system one year. Both races would protest against it. My record as a public-school man is known. I have devoted my life to the work of education. But I am so sure of the evils that would come from mixed schools that, even if they were possible, I would see the whole educational system swept away before I would see them established. There is an instinct that gathers each race about itself. It is as strong in the blacks as in the whites, though it has not asserted itself so strongly. It is making itself manifest, since the blacks are organizing a social system of their own. It has long controlled them in their churches, and it is now doing so in their schools.” In churches, as in schools, the separation is perfect. The negroes, in all denominations in which their membership is an appreciable percentage of the whole, have their own churches, congregations, pastors, conferences, bishops, and their own missionaries. There is not the slightest antagonism between them and the white churches of the same denomination. On the contrary, there is sympathetic interest and the utmost friendliness. The separation is recognized as not only instinctive but wise. There is no disposition to disturb it, and least of all on the part of the negro. The church is with him the center of social life, and there he wants to find his own people and no others. Let me quote just here a few sentences from a speech delivered by a genuine black negro at the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (South), in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1880. He is himself a pastor of the African Methodist Church, and came as a fraternal delegate. This extract from a speech, largely extempore, is a fair specimen of negro eloquence, as it is a fair evidence of the feeling of that people toward their white neighbors. He said: