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142    THE COLORED AMERICAN MAGAZINE 

of the freedmen's sacrifice and trial have never for a single instant failed him?  Briefly put, and aside from his own native ability - which is probably superior to that of any other people to bear the burden of heat of the day - they are these: the kindly philanthropy of the Northern people, the never-failing good will and ready assistance lent him by the better classes of the Southern white people, his own educated ministry, consecrated leadership from within, such as that of the eloquent Douglass, or the sagacious Washington, and last yet ^[[not least]] [[strikethrough]] perchance first [[/strikethrough]] a seldom hysterical, but ever fearless and conservative Negro press.

The Negro editor, born in poverty and schooled in adversity, has ever been hampered and hedged about with financial and other difficulties peculiarly his own.  Hard indeed has it been for him to secure merited financial support.  Cold and unsympathetic is the public, whom he has so generously served.  Yet despite all, he has held fast to the horns of the alter, as it were, and through the thick and thin of a grim and relentless opposition over which no courage but his could have prevailed has fought the battles of the race with such zeal and at times with such personal sacrifice and even suffering as is on his part ^[[ ( ]]although little to the credit of a large number of our people who have thoughtlessly withheld their support ^[[ ) ]] - a thing far more than praiseworthy.

Alarmingly few of our educated people know much about the difficulties with which the Negro press of this country has even at this late day to contend.  ^[[ Fewer still ( ]] Still ^[[( less can they^[[)]] conceive the almost unthinkable influence for good [[strikethrough]]it[[/strikethrough]] ^[[the Negro press]] has always exerted and is now ^[[(]]increasingly^[[)]] exerting in behalf of a constantly improving^[[-]] moral, social, economic and spiritual Negro life.

Important as are many other forces contributing to the race's progress, few if any of them could have been brought to bear with such telling effect as they have been if it had not been through the agency of race newspapers and magazines.  With the colored people as with the white people, the most effective if not the only practicable way of enlisting the attention and securing the support of the public in the furtherance of any good cause is^[[(]], in these times,^[[)]] almost exclusively through the press, and in the case of the Negro race, still more exclusively through its own press.

For, unfortunately for the black man, the white press of this country, unintentionally or not, rarely gives space for anything concerning him except an all too frequently overdrawn description of his bad qualities. His good traits, his increasing intelligence, his steady, persistent improvement along all lines that indicate that he is fast ^[[(]]and unavoidably^[[)]] appropriating the genius of American civilization, it leaves severely to the eloquent pen of the Negro editor, so that it has been and is yet well nigh impossible for any reader of current news to get even a faint idea of what ten millions of the Republic's citizens are driving at unless it be through the columns of our Negro press.
 
^[[(Thus ^[[) And so]]it ill becomes a great number of our educated men and women who yearly subscribe to probably three or four white newspapers and magazines without even reading, to say nothing of subscribing to 

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THE COLORED AMERICAN MAGAZINE  143
 
doing all in their power to encourage and support, colored papers and magazines.
 
Let us at once away with this wanton indifference to our own best interests, and let the teachers and preachers, the doctors and lawyers, the mechanics and farmers every Negro, the men and the women – all^[[)]] awake to the sense of a real and bounden duty we owe to a set of as loyal and fearless Negro editors as the sun ever shown upon; a duty to subscribe to and read and see that our children read the papers and magazines which these editors publish, and it is more frequently to our own well-being than to these editors own their personal gain.
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Lane College, of Jackson, Tenn.[[center justified]]

The real service that an institution has done the people for whose benefit it is operated, its ability to render service it is doing at the present time, are the measures of its worth as an educational factor. Judged by these standards, Lane College is one of the most important institutions to be found in the South for the education and training of the Negro.

Twenty-seven years ago the Colored M. E. Church organized this school, which is to-day the leading institution fostered by that great denomination.  The school has grown from a two-story frame building of ten rooms, with courses of study leading to the high school, and a valuation of about $2,500, into a plant made up of eight buildings (including three cottages), about 41 acres of land, including the campus, all valued at $72,000.  The courses of study have been improved from time to time as occasion has demanded so that the name of the school was necessarily changed from "High School" to "Institute," and then again to "College."

The primary department was retained until the money used for its maintenance was needed for the college department, where it has since been used.  There were never more than 150 students enrolled in the primary classes any year and never more than 450 in the entire school, so that few more than 300 have ever been enrolled in the grades above the primary department. The one who was acquainted with the history of the school, and who knows the efforts of the Colored Episcopal Church, and particularly the struggles of Bishop Lane, the founder and patron bishop of the school that bears his name, to sustain and improve the school in proportion to the demands of the day, and who remembers the loss of the two principal buildings by fire four years ago, the present condition of the school presents a bright lesson.  The two buildings have not only been replaced, but improved, and that chiefly through the efforts of Negroes of one diocese of this church.  This fact is a refutation of the oft-repeated charge that the Negro is satisfied with his present standing and is unwilling to make a sac-