There sat under Rev. B—— every Sunday a fair share of the quality colored folk of Norfolk. “I am glad that you have come to me, because I can show you an up-to-date and proper church,” said the pastor. “There are nine or ten like this in Norfolk, but when a stranger asks to see a Negro church he’s usually taken to some out-of-the-way tabernacle of the Holy Folks or some queer sect where everyone is shouting Hallelujah, and it all seems very funny. But if you’ll come to me on Sunday morning you’ll hear a service which for dignity and spiritual comeliness will compare with any white man’s service in any part of the world. You mustn’t think of us as still cotton pickers and minstrels and nothing more. There is a great deal of Negro wealth and refinement in this city of Norfolk.” “How do you get on with white ministers?” I asked. “Do you work together?” “Oh, white ministers do not recognize black ones on the street,” said he. “My neighbor, for instance, knows me well enough at the Baptist Conference, and by his talk I see he knows all about my church. But here in the city he cannot afford to know me. Yet he has not half so many worshippers at his church, nor do they pay him half the salary which my people pay me. He dare not spend on his clothes what I spend; he has not such a well-appointed home. Yet if we meet on the street—he doesn’t know me.” This was evidently a sore point. We went to Brown’s Bank. Brown has gone to Philadelphia to start a second Negro bank. The first one has been in existence ten years. Brown is a financier, and something more than that. For he encourages the Negro theatres and is greatly helping his people along their way. We also visited the polite edifice of the Tidewater Bank and Trust Company, which has been built since the Armistice. “It was contracted for by Negroes and built by Negroes alone,” said the treasurer proudly—a blunt, bullet-headed, whimsical fellow, with an intense desire to push business and to hustle. All the clerks and stenographers were colored. Each teller sat in his steel cage for which he alone held the key. All the latest banking machinery was in operation, including the coin separator and counter and wrapper, and the adding machine. I worked an imaginary account under colored direction, using the adding machine, and gave assent to its infallibility. They showed me their strong room, and I peeped at their cash reserves. The treasurer and “Revrun” then took me up into a high mountain, namely, the Board Room, which was in a gallery overlooking the whole of the working part of the bank. “My motto,” said the treasurer, “is, ‘Folks who only work for us as long as they are paid will find they are only paid for what they have done.’ We work here till we are through, be it eleven or twelve o’clock at night. The man who isn’t hard is not for us.” We talked about the Negro.