But it is just this “contact” that is denied to the negro race both in America and South Africa. The races are really segregated as effectually as though they lived in separate reservations; they live in quite different cultural “climates.” The negro though no longer a chattel-slave yet constitutes a servile class; the duties assigned to him in the community are essentially of a menial kind. It is characteristic of his position in America that the higher ranks of military command are closed to him; and while a woman has made her way to Congress, there is as yet no negro congressman; the idea is still barely thinkable. Yet no community has thrived permanently which permitted a helot class to exist within itself; and the position of the negro—now that education is quickening his mind to the sense of class-disinheritance and race-consciousness—may become a grave menace to the inner harmony of the Republic. The logic of Lincoln’s proclamation has yet to be worked out in the minds of white Americans. To abolish slavery is not indeed to make a black man white; nor does it at once equip him for the responsibilities of freedom. But it does confer citizenship upon him; and the gift of citizenship should be validated by two things; first, by a frank and generous recognition of equality of standing, and second, by a thorough-going policy of education. Perhaps the former was more than could be justly expected. Just as the slave was ill-equipped for freedom, so the white man could hardly rise at once to the plane of regarding the negro as his free and equal brother. But it is a fair criticism of the public treatment of the negro that he has not been supplied with the opportunity of rising to his white brother’s plane of culture. There have been voluntary philanthropic efforts in this direction, but this work should not have been left to the precarious chances of charity. Just because negro emancipation was a public act, the full cultural education of the negro was a public responsibility. By reason of this failure on the part of the white man, the negro has not advanced to such a point as two generations of liberty would seemingly entitle us to expert. He has inevitably retained much of the mentality and many of the habits of his servitude; and these are effectual bars to that type of social contact which the negro’s growth requires. That there is no inherent impossibility in educating the negro up to the average plane of the Anglo-Saxon has been proved in a multitude of instances; and people who are devoid of race-prejudice find no difficulty in establishing frank and fruitful fellowship with educated coloured persons.