2. The six millions of colored people in the South are organized into distinct and separate churches, which are ministered to by persons of their own race. This is the result both of choice and necessity. The white churches are not open to them, and as a general thing they prefer to have their separate organizations. The influence and power of the minister among the colored people are exceedingly great. No people stand more in need of an intelligent, wise and educated ministry, and among no people can such a ministry do such a noble work for the proper training of the young men who are to constitute the religious teachers and guides of these six millions of colored American citizens just delivered from bondage, and now making trial before the world of freedom and citizenship. I urge the necessity of institutions for higher education. The public schools of the South for colored children are in general taught by colored teachers. This is usually demanded by the parents. In these public schools there are hundreds of positions such as are filled in white schools by men who have had their training in the best colleges and universities of the South, and why should not colored young men be given the same training for the same responsibilities and duties? The same principles and necessities hold in the departments of law and medicine. Is there any reason, in the nature of the case, why a young colored man does not need to have as good an education to fit him for these professions as a young white man does? In all enlightened countries, institutions of higher education are regarded as indispensible; they accomplish a work in the interests of society, the Church and the State, which cannot be left out with safety to any race or any country. But there are weighty reasons why the colored youth of the South need the advantages of a higher education. They have received less by inheritance. Education, discipline, culture, the habits and surroundings of life through generations, to some extent, at least, determine the inherited intellectual and moral qualities of individuals, families and races. The colored youth begins life without the inherited qualities which can come only through generations of civilization. Then, too, he has not had the advantages (and these are among the greatest children can possess) of a cultured home, refined and intellectual associations, a purified and stimulating social life, and the instruction of an educated ministry. These have largely been denied him in his earlier years. Thus, when young colored men or women set out to secure an education that shall put them on a high plane of intellectual life and give them a fair chance to work a career which shall entitle them to be honestly ranked among the educated and cultured of the white race in the higher departments of the world’s work, they find themselves at a great disadvantage.