of this country who reside in the purview of these discriminating laws, who are denied the right of the ballot, despite the fact that more than 53 per cent of them pay taxes on property owned. Can these states consistently deny the rights of citizenship to 5,000,000 men, and then in time of crisis call upon them to support the government which has kept them down? Can Americans who believe in justice and equal opportunity to all afford to see these men deprived of their rights? These people have shown that they can successfully take part in the industrial life of the South. But what good will that do unless they can protect the fruits of their labor by means of the ballot—the ballot that elects the representatives who make the laws—the ballot which elects the judges who enforce them? We hear so much of ignorance and its attendant evils as a menace in the South, we would suppose that the funds for public education would be adequately and justly distributed. But such is not the case. Forty per cent of the children of school age in eleven states in the South are of the colored race, and yet they receive only fifteen per cent of the school fund. In the state of Georgia the population of the two races is almost equal and millions of dollars of the public fund are annually spent for high school education, but nowhere in this great state is there one public high school for members of my race. In the city of Atlanta, last year, 4,503 colored children applied for admission to the public school, and these came voluntarily, not forced by a compulsory education law. The seating capacity of the schools provided for their education was 2,951. Instead of increasing the seating capacity the board of education abolished the eighth grade, and even to this night the seventh grade measures the extent of public education for my race in the city of Atlanta.