What is the true place of our women and girls? It is that place which is not circumscribed by the mere accident of birth and race, where she can rise just as high as she has the ability to reach and sustain. My five years' experience in Europe as a Jubilee Singer gave me a taste of the sweets of true womanhood, unfettered by caste-prejudice and by a low estimate of my position. There my complexion was not a target for insult and ostracism. Our needs are not only those common to other races, but are in a vast measure greater, because of the past and present difficulties. The masses furnish the most difficult problem to solve. How can we rescue them from poverty and illiteracy, and not pauperize them? How can we prevent crime, check immorality and decrease mortality? The answer lies in giving to them better home life, more elevating social surroundings, better educational advantages in school and industries, and a higher type of Christian life and worship. My first introduction into an intelligent idea of practical Christianity was at Fisk University. There, and at many similar institutions under the A.M.A., may be found the epitome of a Christian home. Such schools furnish potent object lessons; such are the factors of the problem in answer to the question of how to meet the needs of the colored women and girls, who are to preside over the homes of eight millions of people, who had no home twenty-three years ago. Washington, alone, has a population of eighty thousand colored people, and more than forty thousand of these are women and girls. It is said that the "hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world." It matters not whether that hand be black or white, but it does matter whether that hand be intelligent or ignorant. They not only need the education of the schools to develop their minds, and industrial training to prepare their hands for the practical duties of life, but Christian education, such as is given in the schools of the Association. More than three thousand women and thousands of men have gone out under the A.M.A., in school, home and church, for the uplifting, Christianizing and elevating of our people. Eternity alone will reveal the work that these Christian heroines and heroes have done in the Master's name. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews would need be extended to give to them their rightful place in the role of achievements of faith. We need not wait for eternity, we now see some of the grand results; their memory is already engraven upon the hearts, and their spirit infused into the life of thousands of educated colored young men and women, who have gone out among their people, carrying educated minds, trained hands and warm hearts, as an outgrowth of that labor which has not been in vain. This magnificent record of Christian endeavor and conquest has largely been made possible by the foresight, energy and fidelity of the many who have been and are at the head of the different departments of the A.M.A.