setts, who was assisted by her sister Miss Sarah R. Smith. These two worthy ladies were succeeded by Miss Martha Briggs who is characterized by Dr. W. S. Montgomery in his Historical Sketch on Education for the Colored Race in the District of Columbia, 1807-1905, "as a born teacher whose work showed those qualities of head and heart that have made her name famous in the annals of education in the character of the graduates. The student teachers caught her missionary spirit and went forth from her presence stronger souls, full of sympathy to magnify the teacher's vocation and to inspire the learner. Many of the women who sat at her feet are laboring in the schools here now, filling the highest positions and in beauty and richness of character running like a thread of gold through the teaching corps.'

Miss Briggs was succeeded in 1883 by Dr. Lucy E. Moten, who after faithful and successful service for thirtyseven years, retired June 20, 1920. As principal of the Miner Normal School, Dr. Moten graduated the majority of the teachers now employed in the public schools of the District. She saw the Normal course lengthened from a one year course to that of a two year course, offering greater opportunity for broader professional equipment of the student teachers, the results of which are manifest in the Washington Public Schools today. This school, however, is destined in the near future to undergo other changes in the line of progress. It may be the extension of the course to three years or the development of a Teacher's college of four years which will offer courses leading to a degree. With an enthusiastic whole-hearted response of the teaching corps of Washington, D. C., to the slogan of the new Superintendent, Dr. Frank Washington Ballou"Hats off to the past and coats off to the future," The Miner Normal School will reach higher in its aim to serve and realize the ideals of its noble founder and benefactress whose struggles and sacrifices are sacred in the memory every teacher of color in the District of Columbia. G. SMITH WORMLEY.

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COMMUNICATIONS

During the last five years a number of valuable facts have come to the office of the editor in various communications from persons interested in the work which the Association has been promoting. While these communications do not as a whole bear upon any particular phase of Negro history, they will certainly be valuable to one making researches in the general field. Some of these follow.

CARTER G. WOODSON,

A SUGGESTION

WASHINGTON, D. C., Dec. 23, 1916.

My Dear Sir: I notice by the press your Connection with the "Douglass" celebration. It might interest you to receive the enclosed from a rank abolitionist of the John Brown School. After service in Kansas with the Brown element, then in open rebellion against the United States, as typified in men like Judge Taney, who decided that the black man had no rights the white man was bound to respect, I entered the Union army and served in it as a private in the 5th Wis. Infy and as Adjt. of the 7th Eastern Shore Md. Infy-3 years and 6 mos. . . . I wish some of your influential men would start a movement to erect a monument here for old John Brown, who gave his life to free the country from the great curse of slavery.

Absence from home has prevented my replying to your request

sooner.

The majority of masters in this section of the country were kind to their slaves. They gave them plenty of good wholesome

food, good clothes, (warm ones in winter) comfortable homes and attention from Doctors when sick. There were churches on nearly every plantation and ministers provided to preach to them. The only very cruel masters were Northern men who treated their slaves like beasts. For many years it was against the law to teach negroes to read or write because some of them would read things from the North that made them dissatisfied but our family owned such good negroes, who had principle like white people we did not think it could hurt them, and we taught them to read and write. There has always been a kind feeling between the whites and slaves in this country. The young ones were our playmates in childhood. The older ones our nurses and cooks who petted us and loved us as their own color. They were faithful during the War when our protectors were in the Army, and now altho' it is fifty years since they were freed, many of them are our best friends. -I do not know of anything else you wanted to know or I would gladly write you. In some sections of the South there may have been cruel treatment but it was generally from the overseers who were ignorant men and took advantage of their position to give license to their cruel natures.

James Childs and all of his family and many of his relatives belonged to my mother, and there still exists a kind feeling between us that will only be severed by Death. I would like to hear from him. I am nearly 75 years old and cannot be here much longer but want to do all the good I can before I am called.

Respectfully

(Signed) MRS. JAS. A. SMITH,
Marion

Alabama

23 DRYADS GREEN,

Nov. 7, 1916.

My dear Mr. Woodson:

Your letter in the interest of THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY is welcome. I will try to send you a subscriber or two.

Allow me to suggest a point. It may have been well covered already without my knowing of it. In Louisiana and, I think, in some other states, in Reconstruction days, the lieutenant-governnorship was conceded by the Republican party, regularly, to a man of color. These men were sometimes, to say no more, of high character and ability. Such a one in Louisiana was Oscar J.

Dunn, the first of them. He was of unmixt African origin. His signal ability and high integrity were acknowledged by his political enemies in the most rancorous days of his career, and his funeral was attended by Confederate generals.

I wish your enterprise the fullest measure of success.
Yours truly,

(Signed) GEO. W. CABLE.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

1443 R ST., N. W.,

Nov. 1-17.

MR. CARTER G. WOODSON,

1216 You St., N.W., Washington, D. C.

Dear Sir:

I recently received from you a letter followed soon by a volume of THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY edited by yourself which I have scanned and am much impressed with its merits and consider a valuable contribution to our historical literature.

It is somewhat unusual to find colored men in America of American birth who are individually conversant with all of the West Indies a part of South America and the western part of Europe.

My advent in life began at an epoch in the early history of Baltimore when incidents occurred that seem to have escaped the notice of the numerous writers of the history of our race which I shall briefly relate.

Owing to the rapid decadence of the sugar industries of the British West Indies on the Abolition of Slavery and the gravity anent the threatened ruin of the peasantry, some philanthropists and business men from England were sent to Baltimore to try to get free colored people to go to Trinidad. They spoke in many colored churches and succeeded in interesting them so that several shiploads were sent. My father and mother and three children. were of the number. I was an infant in arms.

I received an education there and after I grew up was variously employed as bookkeeper, clerking in dry goods stores, in the City Hall, overseer on sugar estate, coach and sign painter, was afterwards sent for by my father who was at the gold mines of Caratal in Venezuela and on my return to Trinidad visited several other islands of the West Indies.

I next returned to America my natal home the second year of Andrew Johnson's term.

I have not since led an idle life. For nearly 25 years I have been engaged as an itinerant private tutor teaching adult folks and I flatter myself that I was very successful among the hundreds of my pupils.

I found on my arrival in America that education was at a very low ebb amongst the members of my race perhaps not more than 15% of adult folks one would encounter in the streets could read and write.

When the Amendments were passed by Congress conferring citizenship upon colored people I threw myself into the political current and was the first vice president of the 11th ward of Baltimore city which a few years subsequently chose a colored councilman, Harry Cummins.

I became a merchant meanwhile experimenting in groceries, but after a year relinquished this for dry goods for which my early acquaintance therewith amply fitted me. I kept a dry goods store in Baltimore for seven years then went to Jacksonville, Fla. where I successfully continued the business for eighteen years.

While I was in Baltimore I twice passed the Civil Service examination with a handsome percentage this I did simply from curiosity. I kept strictly to merchandise and have never earned a dollar of Uncle Sam's money.

In 1909 and again in 1912 myself and wife, both of us having a knowledge of French and Spanish and I a little Italian made a tour of Western Europe viz, Gibralter Italy Switzerland France Germany Holland Belgium and England plodding on foot amongst the common people studying sociological conditions and comparing with our own people. I find the contrast of the humbler class of Europe also the colored races of the West Indies and South America with less opportunities possessed of more enterprise and ambition than the colored people of America.

It is a lamentable fact that the principal attraction of those who should be our strong men and leaders in enterprise those of high school and college training consists of Uncle Sam's bounty and in the absence of this to cling to some white man in private life. I have for many years been an ardent advocate of business amongst our people and to this end I have written contributions to the Commonwealth of Baltimore a paper once edited by John E. Bruce (Bruce Grit) the Colored American of Washington, and to other papers edited by our race.