II

  Oh, import deep as life is, deep as time! 
  There is a Something sacred and sublime
  Moving behind the worlds, beyond our ken,
  Weighing the stars, weighing the deeds of men.

  Take heart, O soul of sorrow, and be strong! 
  There is one greater than the whole world’s wrong. 
  Be hushed before the high Benignant Power
  That moves wool-shod through sepulcher and tower! 
  No truth so low but He will give it crown;
  No wrong so high but He will hurl it down. 
  O men that forge the fetter, it is vain;
  There is a Still Hand stronger than your chain. 
  ’Tis no avail to bargain, sneer, and nod,
  And shrug the shoulder for reply to God.

7.  The Dawn of a To-morrow

The bitter period that we have been considering was not wholly without its bright features, and with the new century new voices began to be articulate.  In May, 1900, there was in Montgomery a conference in which Southern men undertook as never before to make a study of their problems.  That some who came had yet no real conception of the task and its difficulties may be seen from the suggestion of one man that the Negroes be deported to the West or to the islands of the sea.  Several men advocated the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment.  The position outstanding for its statesmanship was that of ex-Governor William A. McCorkle of West Virginia, who asserted that the right of franchise was the vital and underlying principle of the life of the people of the United States and must not be violated, that the remedy for present conditions was an “honest and inflexible educational and property basis, administered fairly for black and white,” and finally that the Negro Problem was not a local problem but one to be settled by the hearty cooeperation of all of the people of the United States.

Meanwhile the Southern Educational Congress continued its sittings from year to year, and about 1901 there developed new and great interest in education, the Southern Education Board acting in close cooeperation with the General Education Board, the medium of the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller, and frequently also with the Peabody and Slater funds.[1] In 1907 came the announcement of the Jeanes Fund, established by Anna T. Jeanes, a Quaker of Philadelphia, for the education of the Negro in the rural districts of the South; and in 1911 that of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, established by Caroline Phelps-Stokes with emphasis on the education of the Negro in Africa and America.  More and more these agencies were to work in harmony and cooeperation with the officials in the different states concerned.  In 1900 J.L.M.  Curry, a Southern man of great breadth of culture, was still in charge of the Peabody and Slater funds, but he was soon to pass from the scene and in the work now to be done were prominent Robert C. Ogden, Hollis B. Frissell, Wallace Buttrick, George Foster Peabody, and James H. Dillard.