Nevertheless, it must be said that but for a handful of leaders the Negro population is more dull, more impassive, and ignorant than elsewhere. A black proletariat of a hundred thousand ought to be able to raise on its broad base a fine column of intelligence and business. There ought to be large and flourishing groups of doctors and lawyers and shopkeepers, but here, as at Birmingham, there is the usual Insurance Society’s building, which is all-in-all. And Negro insurance is little more than the organization of burying clubs, with the Negro undertakers as prime beneficiaries. The biggest Negro business throughout the South is connected with burying Negroes. It is sad, but it is characteristic of this era of their development. New Orleans has its “Pythian Building,” its temple of the Knights of Pythias, of which the debonair Mr. Green is Grand Master, not only for the State of Louisiana, but for the world. This is the civic center of the Negro’s life in New Orleans, and, like the Penny Bank Building of Birmingham, and its sister building at Jacksonville, houses many activities. The Pythian Temple of New Orleans is said to be the finest Negro building in the United States. It is a fine edifice, and in America business is judged much more by the building it inhabits than in Europe. An integral part of the temple is a very useful theatre, not a cinema hall, but a genuine stage for the “legitimate” drama. Here, no doubt, the Knights of Pythias appear in full regalia and parade to do the pseudo ritual of the society. But the theatre is used for all manner of purposes. I was present one Sunday afternoon at a local meeting of the National Association. The Southern White is opposed to the Association, and would do much to thwart it if he knew much about it. But the Southern Whites do not mix with Negro intellectuals, and are content to live in that paradise indicated by the mayor—_We get on all right with them down here_. When, however, a bad lynching takes place the local white population soon hears of the National Association. It sends its representatives down from New York to investigate the facts. In such cases facts are the last things the white community wish brought to light, and then the National Association is discovered and roundly abused. Its representatives are sometimes white, which makes them more dangerous from a Southern point of view. Attempts are made to “railroad” them—run them out of town.