When I received this letter from Mr. Roosevelt, asking me to meet him in Washington, I confess that it caused me some grave misgivings. I felt that I must consider seriously the question whether I should allow myself to be drawn into a kind of activity that I had definitely determined to keep away from. But here was a letter which, it seemed to me, I could not lightly put aside, no matter what my personal wishes or feelings might be. Shortly after Mr. Roosevelt became established in the White House I went there to see him and we spent the greater part of an evening in talk concerning the South. In this conversation he emphasized two points in particular: First, he said that wherever he appointed a white man to office in the South he wished him to be the very highest type of native Southern white man—one in whom the whole country had faith. He repeated and emphasized his determination to appoint such a type of man regardless of political influences or political consequences. Then he stated to me, quite frankly, that he did not propose to appoint a large number of coloured people to office in any part of the South, but that he did propose to do two things which had not been done before that time—at least not to the extent and with the definite purpose that he had in mind. Wherever he did appoint a coloured man to office in the South, he said that he wanted him to be not only a man of ability, but of character—a man who had the confidence of his white and coloured neighbours. He did not propose to appoint a coloured man to office simply for the purpose of temporary political expediency. He added that, while he proposed to appoint fewer coloured men to office in the South, he proposed to put a certain number of coloured men of high character and ability in office in the Northern states. He said that he had never been able to see any good reason why coloured men should be put in office in the Southern states and not in the North as well.