The final refutation of defamation, however, is to be found in the actual achievement of members of the race themselves.  The progress in spite of handicaps continued to be amazing.  Said the New York Sun early in 1907 (copied by the Times) of “Negroes Who Have Made Good”:  “Junius C. Groves of Kansas produces 75,000 bushels of potatoes every year, the world’s record.  Alfred Smith received the blue ribbon at the World’s Fair and first prize in England for his Oklahoma-raised cotton.  Some of the thirty-five patented devices of Granville T. Woods, the electrician, form part of the systems of the New York elevated railways and the Bell Telephone Company.  W. Sidney Pittman drew the design of the Collis P. Huntington memorial building, the largest and finest at Tuskegee.  Daniel H. Williams, M.D., of Chicago, was the first surgeon to sew up and heal a wounded human heart.  Mary Church Terrell addressed in three languages at Berlin recently the International Association for the Advancement of Women.  Edward H. Morris won his suit between Cook County and the city of Chicago, and has a law practice worth $20,000 a year.”

In one department of effort, that of sport, the Negro was especially prominent.  In pugilism, a diversion that has always been noteworthy for its popular appeal, Peter Jackson was well known as a contemporary of John L. Sullivan.  George Dixon was, with the exception of one year, either bantamweight or featherweight champion for the whole of the period from 1890 to 1900; and Joe Gans was lightweight champion from 1902 to 1908.  Joe Walcott was welterweight champion from 1901 to 1904, and was succeeded by Dixie Kid, who held his place from 1904 to 1908.  In 1908, to the chagrin of thousands and with a victory that occasioned a score of racial conflicts throughout the South and West and that resulted in several deaths, Jack Johnson became the heavyweight champion of America, a position that he was destined to hold for seven years.  In professional baseball the Negro was proscribed, though occasionally a member of the race played on teams of the second group.  Of semi-professional teams the American Giants and the Leland Giants of Chicago, and the Lincoln Giants of New York, were popular favorites, and frequently numbered on their rolls players of the first order of ability.  In intercollegiate baseball W.C.  Matthews of Harvard was outstanding for several years about 1904.  In intercollegiate football Lewis at Harvard in the earlier nineties and Bullock at Dartmouth a decade later were unusually prominent, while Marshall of Minnesota in 1905 became an All-American end.  Pollard of Brown, a half-back, in 1916, and Robeson of Rutgers, an end, in 1918, also won All-American honors.  About the turn of the century Major Taylor was a champion bicycle rider, and John B. Taylor of Pennsylvania was an intercollegiate champion in track athletics.  Similarly fifteen years later Binga Dismond of Howard and Chicago, Sol Butler of Dubuque, and Howard P. Drew of Southern California were destined to win national and even international honors in track work.  Drew broke numerous records as a runner and Butler was the winner in the broad jump at the Inter-Allied Games in the Pershing Stadium in Paris.  In 1920 E. Gourdin of Harvard came prominently forward as one of the best track athletes that institution had ever had.