Bishop B. W. Arnett, one of the most popular men who have hitherto risen in the African Methodist Church, served his people also in these two ways. When political opportunities were first offered the Negroes in the South he had already served as a teacher and had passed through the gradations of the ministry to a position of influence in his denomination in Ohio. The need was too urgent and the call too imperative for him not to participate in the affairs of his State and nation. Once in politics, he easily became a commanding figure even in Ohio, where because of the small black population a Negro could not secure the following easily obtained at that time in the Southern States. In 1885 he was elected to the Ohio Legislature from Greene County, thus securing the opportunity to fight for the repeal of the nefarious "Black Laws" which disgraced the statute books of Ohio prior to the Civil War. Arnett piloted through the lower house the bill to this effect and with Senator Ely supporting it in the Senate, the feat was triumphantly accomplished. Never did a Negro serve his people to better advantage. At the same time he was using his influence to correct national abuses and was earnestly laboring for the extension of his church, which he honorably served as financial secretary, statistician, and finally as bishop. [Illustration: BISHOP B. W. ARNETT] Bishop James W. Hood, of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, in his day one of the most influential men of color in the United States, found himself also in the political world. He began as a preacher in Nova Scotia in 1860, served later at Bridgeport, Connecticut, and then went to North Carolina, where his successful work exalted him to the bishopric in 1872. His very going to North Carolina, however, had a political setting. He went to Newbern as a missionary under General Butler's invitation to the churches to send missionaries, even while the place was under the fire of the Confederate forces. When the war in that area was cleared up and Reconstruction was undertaken Bishop Hood was among the first to participate therein. He was elected president of the convention of Negroes assembled at Raleigh in October, 1865, one of the first, if not the first, political convocation of this sort ever assembled in the South. On this occasion he so fearlessly advocated equal rights for the Negro that he was warned by the people around that his life would be in danger, if he did not desist therefrom. In 1867 he was elected as delegate to the constitutional convention of North Carolina, in which he took such an active part in framing the fundamental law, incorporating into it such liberal provisions for homesteads and public schools that it was spoken of by the reactionaries as Hood's constitution until it was amended in 1875. He served as a magistrate under the provisional government in North Carolina and later became a deputy Collector of Internal Revenue for the United States.