HOWARD UNIVERSITY RECORD 
 
 Volume 11. DECEMBER 1917. Number 7. 
 
 Four Addresses 
 
 at 
 
 The Semi- Centennial 
 
 of 
 
 Howard University 
 
 March 7, 1917 
 
 Hon. Franklin K. Lane, The Secretary of the Interior 
 
 Carl Kelsey, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania 
 
 H. T. Kealing, D.D., President Western University 
 
 W. P. Thirkield, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 Bishop of M, E. Church 
 
 Howard University 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 HOWARD UNIVERSITY RECORD: Published by Howard University in January, March, 
 April, May, June, November and December. Subscription price, one year, twenty-five cents, 
 Entered at the Post Office at Washington, D. C, as second class mail matter. 
 
HOWARD UNIVERSITY 
 BOARD OF TRUSTEES 
 
 Ex-Chief Justice STANTON J. PEELLE, LL. D.. President of Board of Trustee* 
 STEPHEN M. NEWMAN, D. D.. President of the University 
 GEORGE Wm. COOK, LL. M., Secretary andBusiness Manager 
 EDWARD L. PARKS, D. D.. Treasurer and Registrar 
 
 Term expires 1918 
 
 Justice GEORGE W. ATKINSON, LL. D., Washington, D. C. 
 
 Rev. H. PAUL DOUGLASS, D. D., New York City. 
 
 ANDREW F. HILYER, LL.M., Washington, D. C. 
 
 Rev. STEPHEN M. NEWMAN, D. D., Washington, D. C. 
 
 Ex-Chief Justice STANTON J. PEELLE, LL. D., Washington, D. C 
 
 Rev. ULYSSES G. B. PIERCE, D. D., Washington, D. C. 
 
 Rev. CHARLES H. RICHARDS, D. D., New York City. 
 
 Term expires 1919 
 
 Justice JOB BARNARD. LL. D., Washington, D. C. 
 WILLIAM V. COX, A. M., Washington, D. C. 
 Rev. FRANCIS J. GRIMKE, D. D., Washington, D.C. 
 Bishop JOHN HURST, Baltimore. Md. 
 Hon. CUNO H. RUDOLPH, Washington, D. C. 
 WILLIAM A. SINCLAIR, M. D., Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Term expires 1920 
 
 Mr. JOHN T. EMLEN. Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 THOMAS JESSE JONES, Ph. D., Washington, D. C. 
 
 Rev. JESSE E. MOORLAND, D. D.. Washington, D. C. 
 
 Hon. JAMES C. NAPIER, LL. D., Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 CHARLES B. PURVIS, M. D., Boston, Mass. 
 
 Justice WENDELL PHILIPS STAFFORD, Washington, D. C. 
 
 JAMES H. N. WARING, M. D., Kings Park, L. I. 
 
 MARCUS F. WHEATLAND. M. D., Newport, R. I. 
 
 HONORARY MEMBERS 
 
 Mr. JOHN A. COLE, Chicago. 111. 
 
 Bishop BENJAMIN F. LEE, D. D., Wilberforce, Ohio. 
 
 Mr. HENRY E. PELLEW, Washington. D. C. 
 
 Hon. JOSEPH D. SAYERS, Austin, Texas. 
 
 Hon. WILLIAM H. TAFT, LL. D., New Haven, Conn. 
 
 Bishop BENJAMIN TUCKER TANNER, LL.D., Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Bishop WILBUR P. THIRKIELD, LL.D., New Orleans. La 
 
 Hon. GEORGE H. WHITE. Philadelphia. Pa. 
 
 PATRON EX-OFFICIO 
 
 Hon. FRANKLIN K.LANE. Secretary of the Interior 
 

 
 SEMI-CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 
 
 HT the Semi-Centennial Mass Meeting in Convention Hall 
 on the evening of Thursday, March 1, 1917, with Ex- 
 Chief Justice Staunton J. Peelle, LL.D., President of the Board 
 of Trustees, presiding, the following four addresses were given. 
 The general topic was: 
 
 The Significance of the Fifty Years of History of 
 Howard University, and of the Advance of the Colored 
 Race with which it is Connected. 
 
 From the Point of View of the Nation, 
 
 by Secretary Franklin K. Lane. 
 From the Educational and Sociological Point of View, 
 
 by Professor Carl Kelsey, Ph.D. 
 From the Point of View of the Negro, 
 
 by President H. T. Kealing, D.D. 
 From the Point of View of the Kingdom of God, 
 
 by Bishop W. P. Thirkield, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 I 
 Address by Secretary Lane 
 
 [When Justice Peelle introduced Secretary Lane the students instantly 
 gave him the greeting of the ''Howard Clap" which accounts for his 
 first words.] 
 
 That is the best welcome that one University man can give 
 to another. It carries me back many years and far away, to the 
 days when I was a student at Berkeley, in California, and we 
 welcomed in similar fashion those who came before us. We 
 did not have the advantage that you have of being in the heart 
 of things — at the very heart of the Nation, where history is being 
 
 3 
 
made day by day, and did not feel that thrill that you must feel 
 each day as you know what is transpiring in this, the capital of 
 the country. 
 
 I look upon Howard University as an institution that was 
 founded as a challenge to the Negro. It was started at a time 
 when men doubted the capacity of the colored man to rise to 
 any higher estate than that in which he had been held. 
 
 I am fifty-three years old. I was born when the Civil War 
 was coming to an end. I was born only a year or so after some of 
 the older men who are here were still in a state of slavery. That 
 seems today an impossibility; nevertheless, it is true. And then 
 three years after I was born this institution was started — a uni- 
 versity for a race that but three years before had been in a state 
 of slavery. That is one of the most glorious challenges ever 
 given by fate to mankind. I know of nothing like it in all his- 
 tory. It was not founded upon fact; it was not founded upon 
 what had been done; it was founded by men of large heart and 
 of great vision — upon what they believed was possible. It was 
 the outgrowth of a belief in the essential chivalry of the Negro, 
 and that is one element in him that I have heard too little spoken 
 of, for he is romantic and chivalrous, and chivalry I take to be the 
 acceptance — the prompt acceptance — of an appeal to his higher 
 nature. And so, when this University was founded it was found- 
 ed in the face of adversity, by men who said to you colored men — 
 "You believe you are capable of greater things; you say you 
 have aspirations to make your race self-sufficient; that you can 
 supply yourselves with ministers and doctors and lawyers and 
 chemists and teachers," — and I put the teachers last because 
 generally I believe that that is a mark of distinction — there is no 
 profession comparable with that of the teaching profession — 
 "you say you can do these things for your race; that you can 
 prove yourselves competent to lead your people, and so we estab- 
 lish Howard University as a challenge to you. Come and prove 
 whether you have the spirit of response and the capacity, or 
 not." And here I find myself in the presence of young men 
 who are graduates in law, practicing at the bar of the different 
 courts in many states; physicians, surgeons, some almost promi- 
 nent in their profession; teachers, — so you have risen in your 
 
spirit and accepted that challenge and justifiably have come 
 home to Howard to send up your cheer and to show the world 
 that you have made good. As a representative of this Gov- 
 ernment, as the head of all there is of the educational depart- 
 ment of the United States, and in particular as one of the super- 
 visors for your University, I extend to you my congratulations 
 on behalf of the Nation. 
 
 This University, too, is an evidence of an element in our 
 natures that is essential to progress; it is an evidence of discon- 
 tent. There can be no progress without it. You, in your fore- 
 fathers, lived more of a life of contentment than you live today. 
 Your grandfathers and your great-grandfathers were far more 
 contented than you are or than your children will be. Make up 
 your minds to that. You have left contentment behind. Con- 
 tentment is not to be your portion in the future, but there are 
 two kinds of discontent. There is a discontent of Heaven and a 
 discontent of Hell; there is a discontent that is Divine and there 
 is a discontent that is Satanic; there is a discontent that is con- 
 structive, and you represent in this University the Divine, the 
 constructive kind of discontent; the aspiration, the hungering 
 after something higher, which lifts man up out of the slime and 
 makes him like unto God. That flag is in itself an evidence 
 of discontent; its stars and its stripes were born in travail, in 
 struggle, out of the discontent of the human soul. We would 
 not glory in the names of those men who fought for our liberties 
 or in the names of those who fought for your liberties unless 
 they had within themselves the discontent with conditions that 
 existed and an inspiration for something that was better. But 
 with that aspiration must come will to work. Aspiration 
 reaches nowhere; aspiration is an idle phenomenon — a disease of 
 the soul, unless it can be crystalized into something that is tan- 
 gible; unless it is made into a crop of wheat, into a table, into a 
 building, into something that is useful to mankind. And so that 
 flag of ours would have been an idle, worthless thing — an aspi- 
 ration if you please — an idle, worthless longing, had it not been 
 that men were willing to sacrifice for it and have been loyal 
 to it. 
 
Let me say this word to you. No men in this Nation have 
 a better right to claim eminence in that great virtue of loyalty 
 than have you, as you have proved when you have been tried. 
 I reckon no higher proof of loyalty was ever given by your fa- 
 thers in the days of slavery when into your hands was entrusted 
 the care of the property of those men who were fighting against 
 your freedom. And no greater courage and no greater loyalty 
 have ever been shown by any of the troops of the United States 
 than was shown in Cuba when you had the chance, and but a 
 year ago at Carrizal, in Mexico. You have the courage. Your 
 courage no one questions, and in these days when we who have 
 to do with large affairs of state are counting up the assets of this 
 country and asking ourselves and asking each other/' Who is there 
 that can be counted upon; who is there that is sure; who is there 
 whose loyalty to that flag is unquestioned, no matter what 
 comes," we know that the Negro can be counted upon. No man 
 has any reason to say that the colored man in the United States 
 is not, first of all, a loyal American. 
 
 So I greet you gladly. I would that I could be here fifty 
 years from now to see the progress that your University and 
 your people have made, but there will be some here, sons of 
 liberty, free men, and they will rejoice with you in the estab- 
 lishment of this institution of higher education and the aspira- 
 tions that you have, and in the strength of character and the 
 good sense and loyalty that you have shown, because a Univer- 
 sity is not teachers, and it is not buildings, and it is not libraries, 
 but it is men who have ideals, and those you have. 
 
II 
 
 Address by Professor Kelsey 
 
 WHAT is this thing that we call education? For my 
 purpose to-night I am going to say it is learning how. 
 It is education when the child learns to walk. It is 
 education when the child learns to eat; when it learns to breathe; 
 when it learns to speak; when it learns to see things, and that is 
 the starting point of our education— the training of our physical 
 bodies to do the things that our bodies are called on to do. But 
 assume that we have gotten that ability, so that we may walk; 
 that we may speak and control ourselves. 
 
 Then there comes the next step in education. It is the 
 learning how to get a living — the most fundamental of all the arts 
 of man. by no means the easiest but of all the most important. I 
 care not in what language you speak or how many languages you 
 speak, if you know not how to get a living you are not of much 
 value on this earth, whatever you may be worth somewhere else, 
 by and by. 
 
 There was a day — how long ago I know not — when this 
 human race of ours was little better than animals. It had trained 
 its senses; it had learned to feed itself on the foods provided by 
 nature. Then came some great man, who invented the art of mak- 
 ing fire — a greater invention, Mr. President, than any recorded in 
 the Patent Office at Washington, in its influence on the human 
 race and on the possibility of developing civilization. Then came 
 another great man — I know not where or when — who invented 
 the bow and arrow, the most useful implement, perhaps, that man 
 has ever made on this earth, unless you except some very recent 
 discoveries. I mention two of the great inventions of the earth, 
 which revolutioned life for those who possessed those particular 
 tools. 
 
 These early discoveries mark the starting point of the long 
 process of learning how to control Nature for our purposes. I 
 can not even sketch the chapter headings of that great history. 
 I want to mention three parts of it. First, the control of the 
 mechanical forces — the physical units and elements which have 
 made possible all the great buildings of man and the great ma- 
 chinery of man; all the great commerce. All these depend upon 
 
 7 
 
our knowledge of the properties of wood and iron and steel and 
 a half dozen other things, that are common on this earth. It 
 took ages of study to find how to shape these things and use 
 them, and today in the field of physics about the only thing that 
 man can not make is life itself. 
 
 Second, long ages ago, before written records began, some 
 man or some woman began to cultivate certain plants ; to take care 
 of certain animals, and started the development of our stock and 
 of cultivated plants. Not a single important animal has been do- 
 mesticated within the memory of man; not a single important, 
 food plant has been cultivated first, within the memory of man; 
 not a single important food plant has been brought under cultiva- 
 tion within our knowledge. You and I live here in America to- 
 day and in America almost every animal on which we depend 
 for our civilization has been brought here by man, from other 
 countries; every important food plant, with the exception of corn, 
 has been brought into the United States from some other place 
 on earth. Corn was cultivated by the Indians in Mexico and 
 Central America and brought North long before the coming of 
 white Europeans. 
 
 The third great field is the control of those types of minute 
 life which cause the thing we call disease. One of the great de- 
 partments of your University is the Medical Department. Do 
 you realize that the whole science of medicine was at one time 
 nothing but magic, and that the valuable element in magic was 
 the fact that the magician believed he could do something to or 
 for other people; that he could get control of some of these 
 things in the world about him. He refused to be defeated; he 
 refused to say f 'No." He experimented with every crude non- 
 sensical thing he could think of, and out of that grew this science 
 of medicine. Do you realize that my white ancestors of Europe, 
 400 years ago, died at an average age of 20, and do you realize 
 that the average length of life today in the United States is ap- 
 proximately 45? In 400 years we have doubled the average life 
 span of the European and North American, and that doubling 
 of life has been brought about in a very large measure by the 
 work of the physician. 
 
One of the last and hardest things on earth to domesticate is 
 man himself. We have learned to control some of the inanimate 
 forces and things in nature. We have gotten our foodstuff and 
 our clothing supply from domestic plants and animals. We are 
 winning the fight against the dread diseases that kill us before 
 our time. The sole question for the future is, Can we win the 
 fight of domesticating man himself? I mean the development of 
 an ideal of civilization, of culture which is not a miscellaneous 
 mass of misinformation about unconnected and unrelated things, 
 but a culture that fits us to live in the world physically, in the 
 world socially; which helps us to respect the rights of other men, 
 to develop our own manhood by following ideals of conduct that 
 entitle us to the respect of others — that is the last and perhaps 
 the greatest achievement. 
 
 You represent, most of you here, people of a different racial 
 background from that which happens to be mine. I wonder if 
 you realize that we have a lot in common after all. I happen to 
 represent in the college life of today the subject called "Sociology," 
 which some people say does not exist, which other people say 
 ought to be killed, which other psople tolerate because they don't 
 know how to kill it, and which most of them are afraid of for some 
 mysterious reason that they don't understand themselves. Those 
 of us who ar? interested in great social problems of to-day are in 
 a sense having a fight to get recognition of the fact that man must 
 live as a social being and that therefore we must find out what things 
 may be modified for his betterment. You are having a great fight 
 with one of the most wonderful opportunities that has ever come 
 on earth to a relatively undeveloped people — the fight to prove to 
 the world again that there is no place for any man or any race except 
 that place which they fit themselves to fill and that the man or 
 the race that fits itself to fiH increasingly a higher position can 
 never be kept in the lower position. On the other hand, that no 
 power on this earth will ever lift an unwilling, incompetent, lazy, 
 shiftless group into a higher position amongst human races. That 
 is your job. Nobody can do it for you; nobody can tell which of 
 you will survive in the struggle, which of you will go down, but 
 coming to you as a msn from another group I say I know of no 
 reason under the sun why you should not follow the course of 
 
 9 
 
civilization that every other race has followed, provided you want 
 to, and there is the task of your educational institutions. You 
 have a wonderful chance, young men and young women. It is 
 in many ways easier for any of you to become the leaders of the 
 Negroes than it is for the young white youth to rise above the 
 average of the white group. 
 
 I have faith in our country; I have faith in you. Let us demon- 
 strate our faith and make our University, w T hether it is the Uni- 
 versity of Pennsylvania which I represent and w r hose greeting I 
 bring you tonight, or Howard University, one of the great vital 
 forces for the improvement of the human race. 
 
 I was born not long after How r ard University was founded. 
 At that time few dreamed of the wonderful educational develop- 
 ment soon to take place. Within my own lifetime, then, Ameri- 
 ca has come, not to believe in Negro education as a possibility, but 
 to recognize it as a necessity and welcome it as desirable. 
 Among the schools for Negroes Howard University has always 
 been prominent. The faith and devotion of trustees and teachers 
 have been rewarded in the successful lives of your graduates. I 
 trust the future will show even greater achievements. It seems 
 to me that the purpose of education is better summed up in the 
 word "service" then in the word "information." There is no 
 limit to the service that Howard University can give to the country. 
 
 10 
 
Ill 
 
 Address by President Kealing 
 
 THE makers of this program have boxed the compass 
 in looking at the significance of Howard University's 
 half century from the four cardinal view points an- 
 nounced. 
 
 It is well to note that none of these views is exclusive; the 
 nation includes the Negro and the Negro involves the nation; 
 the educational and sociological principles involved in the inter- 
 play of the two elements lift the whole question from the spo- 
 radic, the specific, the accidental and the casual, into the realm 
 of those human-divine verities and spiritual sequences which 
 terminate in the view point of the kingdom of God, Hence the 
 whole horizon of the subject is brought into view. 
 
 Here is an institution founded in days and upon circum- 
 stances which can never recur; founded in advance of any gen- 
 eral belief in the higher education of the Negro; a work of love 
 and faith even while the debris and embers of hate and suspicion 
 Were angrily smoking and charring throughout the nation; when 
 those who favored freedom on the score of humanity had no 
 tangible evidence of high soul fibre in the freedman; when those 
 who had enslaved him felt the travesty of prostituting learning 
 to his benumbed understanding; when, aside from the exceptions 
 of Banneker, Phylis Wheatley and Frederick Douglas (prodigies 
 and quite aside from the point, because not the products of col- 
 lege training) no instance of high capacity could be cited or pro- 
 duced in the history of the typical American Negro slave — these 
 were the days, and this their complexion, when the historic and 
 the Quixotic little group met in Washington November 20, 1866, 
 to plan a school for colored preachers. But the time was so ripe, 
 the zeal so high and God so nigh that the idea broadened by first 
 one addition and then another until normal and collegiate privi- 
 leges were included and all restrictions of race excluded. In 
 these final suggestions of enlargement two names blaze out — 
 General O. O. Howard and U. S. Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy 
 of Kansas. 
 
 It is almost poetic in its appropriateness that Senator Pome- 
 roy 's state, with its own (dramatic contribution to freedom, refuge 
 
 11 
 
and education for the Negro, should figure in this historic 
 occasion; and while I am conscious of the inadequacy of the 
 messenger sent to speak for Kansas, I am overwhelmed by the 
 personal honor and gratified that the race giving most significance 
 to this occasion is represented in the mouthpiece. 
 
 Senator Pomeroy's imbibition of the Kansas spirit was never 
 better shown than when all invidious restrictions were removed, 
 and that, coupled with the final suggestion of General O. O. 
 Howard that the institution have full university privileges, gave 
 us in the language of Dr. D. B. Nichols, "the full corn in the 
 ear" which we know as Howard University, "for the education 
 of the youth in the liberal arts and sciences." But how has the 
 great body of the Negro race, not numbered as students, been 
 affected by the fifty years of activity lived by this institution? 
 And how do they regard it? 
 
 When we consider the wonderful trinary junction of time, 
 person and tragic incident involved in this momentous event, we 
 are astounded at the great forces that projected this University. 
 Here was the capital of the nation, sitting in deep mourning for 
 a martyred President, while devising a method of recombining 
 the elements of a shattered and well nigh disrupted union; the 
 slave States were contiguous on all sides and the slave-holding 
 sentiment was native and predominant; the war was ended in the 
 battle field, but rife and bitter in the civic councils of congress and 
 reconstruction; it was found necessary to devise the Freedmen's 
 Bureau under military rule to protect the Negro's material inter- 
 ests and adjust his new relation to his former master. General 
 Howard, so stern for principle that he left a part of his body on 
 the battlefield of Fair Oaks as a hostage for his whole life, if de- 
 manded, and yet so tender and loving that a prayer meeting was 
 always more welcome than a war council, became the head of 
 the Bureau; the Negro was flocking to Washington in tattered 
 and childlike thousands, because it represented to him the be- 
 nevolence and local habitation of all that was loyal and Lincoln- 
 esque; the local necessity of food, work and clothing was very 
 pressing; seething masses and sodden statesmen were delving 
 with heads down to fine} a way out, — when suddenly, as a shaft 
 of light flashed into a coal mine, came a voice to the church, 
 
 12 
 
through Boynton and his clerical associates ; to the civic powers, 
 through Henry Wilson; to the great new West, through Pome- 
 roy, of Kansas; to the army, through General Howard, to pro- 
 vide for higher education for the Negro and all people. 
 
 Could any suggestion at such a time have been more incon- 
 gruous or puerile, according to prevalent opinion! But these men 
 were inspired. They, no less than Harvey, had discovered the 
 circulation of the blood, and believed that every inoculation of 
 keen discernment, high purpose and mental strength in the few 
 would, in due time, percolate and circulate until, not only Wash- 
 ington, but the remotest cane-brake of Louisiana, would feel the 
 touch and tingle of racial purification and uplift. 
 
 That a great university should spring out of the sequellae 
 of civil w r ar and that the United States should be committed, first, 
 quasi, and then fully and formally, to what must have seemed 
 the most chimerical project ever launched in the name of serious- 
 ness, amazes me even while I subconsciously see it as a logical 
 outcome of gigantic social forces. I can think of nothing to 
 square it with past experience save the springing of Minerva 
 from the brain of Jupiter; or, since even that is mythological, 
 honey taken from the carcass of Samson's dead lion. 
 
 How could we do without the Christian soldier in history? A 
 William of Orange here, a Cromwell there, a Joan of Arc yon- 
 der and a Howard in our land show that God participates in all 
 the wraths of men and makes them to praise Him. 
 
 From the Negro's view point, Howard University has given 
 tone as well as opportunity to the many thousands of our race in 
 Washington itself. Hundreds of clerks and government employ- 
 ees have been able to shift from the uneasy and swaying perch 
 of appointive position to the sure, safe and solid foundation of 
 business or professional life. 
 
 And by reflex action, it has induced and coaxed forward the 
 best educational facilities for colored boys and girls of any public 
 school system in the country. 
 
 It has been foremost in the refinement of social life, in lec- 
 tures, clinics and researches of rare value. 
 
 It has offered a constant and ever present object lesson to 
 doubters and haters who, without it, could point, locally at least, 
 to a Nazareth of Negatives as to Negro capability and schol- 
 arship. 
 
 13 
 
All this locally, but this is but a small part of the story. 
 Nationally, it has been :i great beacon to which all eyes might 
 turn with hope, and this has been as true for the boy and girl 
 who never could attend as for the actual matriculant. Thousands 
 of American citizens who have never seen the Statue of Liberty 
 on Bedloe Island have been enlightened and inspired by it as they 
 read of its significance and its bearing upon our ideals and their 
 own future. So the course of Howard University has meant 
 inspiration and orientation to the country lad who has never seen 
 and perhaps never will see it. The return of those to his com- 
 munity who have attended here with their new ideas and new 
 culture upon them, the visits of your professors and your deans 
 to remote and backward sections where they have opened up the 
 treasure trove of strange and high thought, the mention of news- 
 papers and books, the discussions in Congress, the local opinion and 
 discussion over all these things — these have brought to bear upon 
 the whole nation a realization and impulse that have made for col- 
 legiate training oftimes in some nearer or cheaper institution. 
 
 Again, your life has corrected for foreign, no less than for 
 native, people misconceptions concerning Negro idiosyncrasies 
 and capabilities that were well seated in their minds by reason 
 of the assertions of those who excused the enslavement of a hu- 
 man being on the ground that he was divinely intended for such 
 service and too animal for high comprehension. 
 
 Your founders attacked the whole citadel of stationary racial 
 inferiority, not by verbal argument, but by a concretion of fact 
 that brought into cooperative service the United States govern- 
 ment, the church and private enterprise. 
 
 -Howard is unique in that, aside from its war and naval 
 schools, the national government has never before committed 
 itself to the financial fostering of collegiate education for its citi- 
 zens. To my mind the very best returns have resulted. It has 
 in a measure been college extension as well as local sustentation, 
 for Howard has been the model for many a humble institution 
 in the back-woods and bottoms, thus educating secondarily 
 through its progeny. 
 
 Again, never before was it worked out so fully that Caucasian 
 and Negro association in a Faculty to teach students in fact, if not in 
 
 14 
 
theory, mainly colored, would not lead to the dire and dreaded 
 amalgamation and neurotic emotionalism that anti-educationalists 
 predicted. Men for the first time saw the possibility of diverse 
 peoples working in perfect unselfishness and racial loyalty to lift 
 the wronged and needy. 
 
 It is true that the American Missionary Association had in 
 some degree pointed the way to this possibility, but it was more 
 strictly a religious and missionary enterprise where until com- 
 paratively recently colored teachers weie not used in coordinate 
 relations. 
 
 No other school has dignified its Negro scholars with chairs 
 and deanships that call them into the calcium of respectful schol- 
 arly contemplation as has Howard. 
 
 To name some of them would be invidious, but my audi- 
 ence is well able to make its own inventory. 
 
 Literature, too, has been enriched by reason of Howard 
 scholarship. The best is yet to come, even from the same brains, 
 I believe. 
 
 Nor should it go unmentioned as a thing grateful and en- 
 couraging to the Negro of the nation that Howard did not hesi- 
 tate to invest one of the daik members of its teaching force with 
 the executive robe when the brilliant Langs ton manifested his 
 fitness, through his achievements in the Law School, to steer the 
 whole institution as acting President for a time. 
 
 It has ever been that men lack vision, or imagination. The 
 few who have it are the wealthy, the learned, the scientists, the 
 artists, the statesmen. 
 
 The power to give to airy nothings a local habitation and a 
 name is the power to mould things and move men. 
 
 The masses seldom have it, that is why they form the masses. 
 It is for the endowed few, many of them possessing the power 
 unconsciously until awakened by the kiss of study, to forsake the 
 old and formal views and dare a few flights in their own names 
 and rights. Let Howard dare in science, in experimentation, in 
 invention, in combination, in method until the highest pedestal of 
 its achievement shall be set up where pilgrims may come to 
 light their lamps. Nothing less will justify the dream the incor- 
 porating fathers had. 
 
 15 
 
God has sent light into the world unseparated, but the piism 
 separates it into the seven colors. Later men found that actinic 
 rays gave no light, but fixed for all time what the light rays 
 showed. 
 
 Later still they found that there was another ray that could 
 pierce so-called opaque substances. These are indications that 
 there are still other rays not found. May we not relegate them 
 to Howard's savants in the days ahead? 
 
 God sends the white unseparated light of truth into the 
 world and makes man's mind the prism that classifies this truth 
 into the various sciences. Mineral reaction is distinguished from 
 life manifestation; flower and plant life are recognized as differ- 
 ent from animal life; physics and chemistry are differentiated; 
 flexibility and certainty are worked out in the orbits of the plan- 
 ets and in meteorology. 
 
 Just as, by passing dispersed and separated light through a 
 lens, we can get the combined white light again, so let us, with 
 all the analytical acuteness that gives us Geology, Astronomy, 
 Botany, Physiology, Mathematics, Chemistry, and Physics, be 
 able to pass it all through the convergent lens of a reverent heart 
 and get the pure white light of truth as it comes from God and 
 speeding through our mental machinery, goes back to Him, both 
 Author and Finisher of the universe. 
 
 Here we have the balance wheel which has done more than 
 anything else to bring into proper view and adjustment the rela- 
 tion of knowing to doing, the cognate and complementary char- 
 acter of collegiate and industrial training. Here, too, we have 
 the most striking and successful instance of educational and direc- 
 tive cooperation in a Faculty composed of both races. Mutual 
 respect and admiration obtain and we have in one view the fra- 
 ternal and Christian activities of Caucasian scholarship united 
 with efficient and coordinate service by Negro professors, instill- 
 ing into and exhibiting before the Negro race the idea that no 
 pent up Utica contracts our powers; that students inspired by the 
 spectacle of their own kind in places of honor and responsibility, 
 may learn the lesson of leadership as well as that of complaisant 
 following. 
 
 Initiative is one of our greatest needs. We should do some- 
 thing different, enter new fields, forsake places of fixed salary for 
 
 16 
 
dividends and self-directed profits. A glance at the census re- 
 turns for the year 1910 shows how numerously we enter employ- 
 ments we have always been in and how rarely we break new 
 ground. 
 
 We need more of the pioneering spirit that takes us into un- 
 tamed lands and sections in advance of cities, railroads, electric 
 lights, trolley cars and movies, so that these increments shall come 
 bringing wealth and ease later. The city is no place for a man with 
 unskilled muscles and a mediocre brain. The farm beckons him 
 with extended hands full of fruits and sheaves and a home made 
 musical by an orchestra of his own bleating sheep, lowing cattle, 
 neighing horses and the staccato grunts of pigs. I know it is com- 
 monly supposed that such choices come, not from universities^ 
 but from industrial and agricultural institutions, but in my opinion, 
 not so. The whole question is one of proper ratio and a clear 
 discernment of wise relation of man to land, of opportunist to op- 
 portunity. This is a matter of acute and cultivated observation 
 and reflection and the college is bound to find and announce what 
 is best for all the people, especially those not endowed with bril- 
 liant or powerful intellects. 
 
 Dr. B. T. Washington, pathfinder of the common people 
 who heard him gladly, told us about the squalid one-room cabin 
 until it almost ceased to exist, but for most of our sons and daugh- 
 ters without means, jobs or prospects, the cabin beats the caba- 
 ret, and the wood lot surpasses the park; for these country 
 inconveniences are not finalities, as too often city pleasures are. 
 
 In speaking ot the advancement of our people, we cite proper- 
 ty, labor or educational statistics collected by experts in such data, 
 or we deduce conclusions from the analyses of sociologists and 
 logicians. I shall state no figures tonight; rather would I call 
 attention to the fact that the real advancement of the race is an 
 intangible thing which the census adding machine can not handle 
 or apprehend. Human bodies may count one when moral delin- 
 quencies mark a fraction or a zero. Our real progress is in scenes 
 like this and in the products of moral and mental training in our 
 great Christian colleges. They cannot be counted, they cannot be 
 seen; they are forces, not things; yet things will not move without 
 them. 
 
 17 
 
Look for what the race is or becoming by examining its pro- 
 ducts from school, church and home. You will find by this 
 process that there are not then ten millions of us, nor ninety mil- 
 lions of others. Moral enumeration rejects all on the right of the 
 decimal point. God says "Get on the whole side to be counted." 
 
 Let me say finally that Howard University has powerfully 
 affected the progress of the land by the active participancy of its 
 graduates and students in the life of the people where they are. 
 They do not hoard or hide their talents; they are no hermits. 
 Far behind have been left the lonely and selfish ideals of the mo- 
 nastic schools. Your ideals now are for connecting up with the 
 every day life of the people and bringing to them the better 
 way. 
 
 In closing these greetings and congratulations, I lay a bouquet 
 of appreciation for the Howard of fifty years and send up a pray- 
 er for such a widening of your borders and strengthening of your 
 endowment as shall presage a coming thousand years of character 
 building and national impress, so that at last niched together for 
 faith, foresight and high service, we shall see the men of 1867, 
 of 1917 and those whose assignment will be to celebrate the 
 full century, and shall know that the nation can take no hurt 
 from a black hand or a white hand that clasps it. 
 
 U 
 
IV 
 Address by Bishop Thirkield 
 
 THE Kingdom of God is the new individual and social 
 life inaugurated by Jesus in which men live as children 
 of God and brothers to their fellowmen. In other 
 words, it is the reign of God in human life, first of all, here on the 
 earth. Its fundamental and formative idea is that of the com- 
 mon fatherhood of God and brotherhood of all men. ff The 
 kingdom of God is human, social and universal in its scope. 
 "It is the true human society, it is a fellowship of justice, 
 equality and love." The Kingdom is much more comprehen- 
 sive than the chuich and its activities. The church is com- 
 posed of professed disciples of Jesus. But the Kingdom includes 
 the reign of God in all human life; the business, the home, the 
 social, the educational, the political as well as the church. 
 
 Founders of Howard, Men of the Kingdom 
 
 The founders of Howard University were men of the King- 
 dom. In their plan for this institution they anticipated funda- 
 mental ideals of the Kingdom as held today. The progress in 
 their enlarging plans is a fine exhibition of high idealism. The 
 institution was prophecy and hope for a race. It read into 
 the term Negro the word man, and made provision for manhood 
 development. The founders provided not for freedmen only 
 but for freemen. They saw a race coming into a new set of cir- 
 cumstances that would be swamped unless men of the race were 
 trained to insight into those circumstances and to mastery of cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 Consider the record of their progressive movements inspir- 
 ed by a humanitarian and prophetic spirit. They first saw a 
 people with large religious endowment. There must be pro- 
 vision for their spiritual life and growth. They must have re- 
 ligious leadership, trained ministry. Hence, a Theological In- 
 stitute was provided to train preachers and teachers of the word. 
 
 Then came the second stage: the race has evident powers, 
 of mind. If the mental life of a people is to be developed and 
 and guided, they must have teachers. Hence the next provision 
 we find is for a Theological and Normal Institute. 
 
 19 
 
But preachers and teachers must be men of vision, of under- 
 standing, of capacity, breadth, culture. Hence, a college, 
 a university. The university idea opened a window -through 
 which men saw for the first time the before unrealized possibili- 
 ties of a race. The very name lifted up a new ideal for a people. 
 At first the plan of the university provided only for colored young 
 men. At a later meeting, Senator Pomeroy "moved that its 
 doors be opened to both sexes, all races, colors and conditions 
 of men." One member responded: "We are doing what Ober- 
 lin did, only we begin at the other end, opening our doors wide 
 as the race of man." When the committee met to procure a 
 charter from Congress, General O. O. Howard "moved that 
 the charter asked be made to embrace university privileges" and 
 include also medical, collegiate, law, agricultural and preparatory 
 departments. To this there was unanimous agreement. 
 
 Think of the holy audacity of the undertaking! A univer- 
 sity for a race just emerging from bondage! And this at a time 
 when not merely a race was chained to a system, but when the 
 minds of men were chained by preconceived ideas; limited and 
 bound by an institution denying manhood nature and manhood 
 rights. Under the circumstances, and with the prevailing views 
 at that time of those even who had most to do with the colored 
 people, only men whose vision was widened by the truth of the 
 Kingdom of God would have conceived, much less entered up- 
 on, such an audacious undertaking. 
 
 What possession of the mind of the white race by the spir- 
 it of and movement of the Kingdom of God! How changed 
 the narrow ideal for the Negro through preconceived ideas inher- 
 ited from the slave system! The very name university struck a 
 new note in the history of a race; led men to think of the Negro 
 in new and larger terms of life. It was in itself a prophecy, an 
 assertion of faith in the manhood, the capacity, the possibilities 
 of a lowly and untested race. This university expressed in new 
 terms the great words of Paul, "God hath made of one blood 
 all nations of men." It gave fresh significance to the revealing 
 word of Peter "call thou no man common." It said to a race 
 just dropping off chains that had held it to the dust, "rise up, thou 
 also art a man." The old system meant the exploitation of man. 
 
 20 
 
This university meant the exaltation of man. And the "greatest 
 enterprise in the world for splendor and extent is the upbuilding 
 of a man." 
 
 The founders were men of prayer. The foundations of 
 this University were cemented in prayer. The inspiration of this 
 educational movement for a race was not political, not primarily 
 intellectual bur religious. Worth the canvas of the artist is the 
 picture of those three Christian generals, with prophetic spirit and 
 fine religious enthusiasm, standing together on the University 
 height and saying: "Here is the spot for our school." And with 
 the courage of faith they bought the site. The men boldly faced 
 that fundamental aim of the Kingdom to "individualize the down- 
 most man and make him count as one." They saw in the hum- 
 ble, unlettered black man something above all price. Spiritual 
 powers emerging destroyed old time market values and so, amidst 
 the derision of some, they opened university doors that said to 
 every aspiring man of a new race "the Kingdom of God has come 
 nigh unto thee." From this now classic height sounded out the 
 word to a prostrate race "rise up, thou also art a man." The 
 founders were in harmony with that Kingdom, based not on 
 race assumption or national prerogative, but whose methods and 
 ideals are shaped, and inspired by the needs, the capacities, the as- 
 pirations, the possibilities of man as man. Hence, this charter, 
 as broad as humanity, as universal as the needs of man. 
 
 While this institution was early subsidized by the govern- 
 ment and has in a measure been under the general direction and 
 control of the nation, yet the principles and ideals of the King- 
 dom have shaped its life and molded its spirit. 
 
 The methods of the state are too often mechanical. The 
 methods of the Kingdom are spiritual. The state, for example, 
 said "We shall make the Negro a man by making him a voter" — 
 an external artificial process — the enfranchisement of men en masse. 
 It failed. 
 
 However, let me say, incidentally, that while some men call 
 this a blunder it was one of strange blunders of Providence. 
 While it was inevitable that it should break down, and at great 
 cost to the Negro, yet it did not altogether fail. The ballot in 
 
 21 
 
the hand of the Negro for the first tirrie awakened the conscious- 
 ness of manhood. It is a dictum of Kant always to treat human- 
 ity Whether in yourself or another as a person, never as a thing. 
 The Negro had been classed with chattel and traded as a thing. 
 The ballot in his hands first gave him a name. No longer was 
 he Cicero or Pompey but Cicero Jones and Pompey Washing- 
 ton. The ballot individualized him. As he stood erect, his fore- 
 head bared to the stars, a ballot in his hand, he by that act was 
 lifted out of the herd and made for the first time to count as one. 
 The ballot did more to give to the Negro a sense of personality, 
 of human dignity and of personal right than all the schooling of 
 a race for a generation could have done. 
 
 Trained and efficient manhood in a democracy is the essen- 
 tial basis of participation; and the question of a loyal son of the 
 South, Edgar Gardner Murphy, must have ever increasing sig- 
 nificance: "Is the organization of democracy in the Southern 
 states never to include him ? Is he never as a factor of govern- 
 ment to be accepted as a participant in our civilization?" 
 
 The founders saw that the real method for redeeming a race 
 into the larger life was individual; that the education, the trans- 
 formation of each man meant a new center of abiding, transform- 
 ing influence on the physical, intellectual, social and religious 
 life of a people. The founders never dreamed of the awakening 
 made possible through Howard University, and kindred insti- 
 tutions. 
 
 It is one thing to wake up a body. It is another thing to 
 wake up a spirit. And you can't even wake up the body until 
 the spirjt within is startled to life. The hand is dumb until the 
 spirit wakes. 
 
 The story is told of a designer who brought to Jefferson 
 Davis, president of the Confederacy, a drawing for an official 
 seal. Very appropriately, a cotton bale with a Negro on top of 
 the bale, fast asleep. It is said that Mr. Davis viewed the de- 
 sign thoughtfully and then turning said: "that seems appropriate 
 and suggestive, but what shall we do when the Negro 
 wakes up.?" 
 
 Who could have dreamed of the awakening that was to 
 (;ome through this University! You don't make a man by working 
 
 22 
 
on the outside but by waking him up on the inside. Wake 
 up his brain and he will make books as well as boxes. Wake up 
 his imagination and he will be inventor among men. Wake up 
 his taste and he will paint pictures as Tanner has done, lifting by 
 one stroke the genius of a people to be forever signalized on the 
 walls of the Luxemburg. Wake up his conscience and he will 
 achieve reforms for the cleansing of a people. Wake up his 
 religious nature and he will bring in the Kingdom of God. 
 
 It is clear that in their visions and ideals the founders of 
 Howard saw beyond their time. Thus also did Thomas Jeffer- 
 son in founding the University of Virginia. It is significant that 
 the direction as to his epitaph included no reference to the fact 
 of his high honor as Governor, Secretary of State, or President of 
 the Nation; but did refer to the fact of his being the founder of 
 the University of Virginia, his authorship of the Declaration of 
 Independence and of the Virginia statute guaranteeing religious 
 liberty. Such also the distinction of the founders of Howard. 
 This University as it stands today, with its guarantee of genuine 
 university privileges, with its independence of thought and free- 
 dom from all the narrow religious discriminations, that is, intel- 
 lectual opportunity, civil independence and religious freedom, — 
 this is your heritage through the founders. 
 
 The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation. The 
 methods of Howard in behalf of a race were in harmony 
 with this principle. Slow and silent was its work, opened not in 
 great buildings but in an old store room. No trumpet, no force; 
 — just the quiet process of education developing, molding, 
 inspiring. Like the Kingdom, Howard has stood for emancipa- 
 tion into a new social order, — not by force, not by revolution, 
 but by the slow process of evolution. 
 
 The founders believed in the power of emancipated human 
 personality — in the reforming, uplifting influence of a mind set 
 free by God and energized through the spirit of a constructive 
 purpose. It was the kindling of a fire at which elect souls, 
 one by one, have lighted their torches. Thousands since have 
 taken their lights from the same altar and passed it on. 
 
 While others were standing in doubt and some in scorn 
 asking, "What about the Negro, any way? Has he manhood 
 
 23 
 
Capacities, pc\Vers, possibilities? What sort of an education shall 
 we give of suffer this freed slave, the founders divined what was 
 in him. They provided for the experimental method ; ''try him 
 and see." In answer to the question, "When will 'this boy' be- 
 come a man?' they with the prophetic eye and hope of a fa- 
 ther said, "Look into his eye, and see the man now^ 
 
 Amidst the surging, inert, dull-eyed mass of freedmen walk- 
 ing forth with shambling steps, and uncertain, they saw emerging 
 individuals who were slowly finding themselves and rising into a 
 grasp of personality. A fundamental principle of the Kingdom 
 is the sacredness and possibility of personality. History proves 
 that every race waits for the coming into its life and leadership of 
 the power of elect personalities. To adapt the word of Paul, 
 "The earnest expectation of the creation waited for the manifes- 
 tation of the Sons of God." And it is true that the earnest ex- 
 pectation of every race is for the manifestation, the coming forth, 
 of its genuine Sons of God — men of faith; men of vision; men 
 of developed capacity; men of power; men who lead; men who 
 dare; men who do. 
 
 Methods of Howard, the Methods 
 of the Kingdom 
 
 The methods of Howard are the methods of the Kingdom, 
 the redemption of a race through the picked, equipped, illumined, 
 inspired personalities of the race. The hope of the mass of any 
 race is not in men but in the master man. What a colossal prob- 
 lem the founders faced, — the redemption of a race that had not 
 found its soul; a race yet in the mass; still a part of the imper- 
 sonal herd. But they took as ever true that word: "The King- 
 dom of God is within you." They were right, for all perma- 
 nent redemption of any people is from within. A race waits 
 until leaders arise from its own body. And so Howard Univer- 
 sity stands for trained leadership. With Mrs. Browning it be- 
 lieves that "It takes a soul to move a body; it takes a high 
 souled man to move the masses even to a cleaner sty." 
 
 The Kingdom stands for humanity. We talk of our race 
 problems. The Kingdom sees in them all the human problem. 
 All men are human first, racial afterwards, When men would 
 
 24 
 
obscure the problem of race development, they throw dust in the 
 eyes by sputtering about social equality. Social equality is still 
 the cry of the demagogue. The principles of this institution 
 harmonize with those of the Kingdom in standing for a footing 
 of equality of opportunity for every man in the struggle, the busi- 
 ness, the achievement of life. He who would deny any human 
 being the god-ordained right to be, to realize himself, to achieve, 
 is in league with death and in covenant with the devil — the great 
 denier from the beginning; and a society that refuses to provide 
 the lowest man with the opportunity for self-development, and 
 turns him into a thing and a means to another's comfort or power 
 or plenty, is a compact with hell. 
 
 Place of Graduates in the Kingdom 
 
 It is fitting on this anniversary occasion that we should con- 
 sider the place of the graduates of this institution in the develop- 
 ment of the Kingdom. 
 
 And first, who can estimate the redeeming and uplifting 
 influence of the four hundred and twenty-three graduates from the 
 School of Theology, besides the nearly half thousand who have 
 been trained in the night school or through partial courses, who 
 have gone forth "preaching the gospel of the Kingdom" in this 
 and other lands. For a proper estimate of their work we 
 must realize that the church among colored people is still the 
 center of power. It has been the center of their intellectual, 
 moral, social and even political life. How sacred, how mo- 
 mentous the task of fitting these men for their work! Lead- 
 ers with the power co redeem and lift and cleanse the life must 
 come from among the people. A native ministry is required. 
 Lack of this has weakened Christian missions in more than one 
 field. Sweeping victories for example were won by early mis- 
 sionaries in the Hawaiian Islands. Later, the natives assumed 
 control. A fatal oversight was the neglect in training native 
 leaders and teachers. Soon the church lost in religious power 
 and efficiency. So it was also in the China Inland Mission. 
 
 Denominational strife and sectarian rivalry are apt to char- 
 acterize the church life of an untrained backward people. This 
 School of Theology by the breadth of its teaching and the lib- 
 erality of its spirit has through its hundreds of graduates done 
 
 25 
 
much to broaden and enrich the religious thought and life of a 
 people, and to lessen sectarian rivalry so hostile to the real prog- 
 ress of the Kingdom. 
 
 Again, who can estimate the influence of this school in 
 raising up men with the qualities of leadership able to meet the 
 civil, moral and social reforms among the people. To lead a 
 race out into the larger privileges and obligations of the Kingdom 
 requires a ministry that proves by its masterful grasp and its brave 
 treatment of all these questions its right to leadership. 
 
 Christian impulse and conviction have carried some of these 
 graduates to Africa and to the Islands of the seas. I regret that 
 more of them have not heard the call to the vast fields in the far 
 South *vhich are white unto harvest. 
 
 The Kingdom stands for the principle that every man is a 
 child of God; a person, not a thing; a human being with aspira- 
 tions, hopes, fears, not a machine; an end in himself, not a 
 means to an end. The far reaching readjustment which this 
 principle requires, it has been well said, may be more significant 
 than the abolition of slavery. This principle lies at the basis of 
 the work of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Teachers 
 College. 
 
 A genuinely Christian democracy may be the outcome of 
 the realization of this ideal. The assumption that any race shall 
 be permanently subordinated on account of the prejudices of men, 
 or for the larger ease and comforts of any class of men, is abhor- 
 rent to the Kingdom. So while the fabric of our national life 
 may be of many colors yet it should be a seamless robe covering 
 in its ample folds all races and classes of men. 
 
 The Kingdom has to do with the whole life of man. Thus 
 the College of Arts and Sciences takes its place in the plan of the 
 Kingdom, for it stands for the realization of the whole human 
 powers that God has given to man. This college stands for the 
 Christian conception of personality — the sacredness of personali- 
 ty, the equipment of personality, that is the education of the 
 whole man. Its ideal is manhood, virile, broad-minded, sun- 
 crowned manhood. It has exalted the spirit in man as worthy 
 of supreme emphasis. In harmony with this view are the strong 
 words of the Dean of the College who appeals for a method of 
 
 26 
 
education where the chief stress is laid upon the high spiritual 
 values "that will quickly arouse and quicken the slumbering 
 powers of a depressed and retarded people." "The missionaries 
 who came from the North," says he, "approached the Negro 
 problem on the heavenly side. The work which they ac- 
 complished for the Kingdom of God has perhaps not been 
 equalled by any Christian endeavor in modern times. We hear 
 much talk about efficiency; but efficiency without consecration, 
 like the letter without the spirit, is nugatory and dead." This 
 contains in substance my creed as to the value education of the 
 Negro race as a means of promoting the coming of the King- 
 dom of God. 
 
 Who can measure the ever broadening influence of the four 
 hundred sixty-eight graduates inspired by such ideals from this Col- 
 lege during the past half-century? Its high aims give illustration 
 and enforcement to that strong word by Henry Drummond. 
 "God is all for quality; man is for quantity. But the immediate 
 need of the world at this moment is not more of us, but if I may 
 use the expression, a better brand of us. To secure ten men of 
 an improved type would be better than if we had ten thousand 
 of the average Christians distributed over the world." 
 
 And so ten Negroes of an improved type can do more for 
 their race — and that means for humanity — than ten thousand av- 
 erage Negroes distributed over America. 
 
 For example, take the outcome of the life and work of a sin- 
 gle graduate who for a third of a century has been teacher, friend, 
 example, counselor to thousands of young men and women; who 
 as instructor and author, has moulded the thought and inspired 
 the ideals of multitudes of people over our land — the present effi- 
 cient Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. If all that 
 Howard University had done in fifty years was to make one such 
 life possible, — as example and teacher of youth, — lift it from 
 lowly conditions, quicken and sharpen such an intellect and di- 
 rect one such pen to noble and enduring expression, it would be 
 worth the investment as related to the unfolding Kingdom 
 through a race. 
 
 The equipment of teachers is of primary importance in the 
 progress of a race. The true teacher gives a man right attitude 
 towards truth, confirms him in his moral relation to things and 
 directs in his choice of the highest and best. The segregation of 
 
 27 
 
a race makes this teacher-training doubly imperative. Hence it 
 is beyond our power to properly evaluate the ever widening in- 
 fluence of the three hundred seventy-six graduates of the Teach- 
 ers College, in shaping the methods, and in determining the stand- 
 ards and ideals for hundreds of schools and thousands of teach- 
 ers in our land. The function of this Teachers College is to 
 reach the individual not merely for his own sake but the sake of 
 the untaught mass, giving him revelation of capacity, inspiration 
 and power of achievement, that he may pass it on in ever wid- 
 ening circles of influence. 
 
 When we recognize how large a part of the social ills of any 
 race proceed not from social opposition or mal-adjustment but 
 "from the fault of human beings themselves in their own interior 
 misdirected and redeemable lives," the work of the Teachers 
 College takes its proper place in any plan for the Kingdom. 
 
 The School of Manual Arts and Applied Sciences stands for 
 professional, technical and vocational, training under the conviction 
 that industrial training has not only a financial but intellectual 
 and moral value. It deplores the materialistic and narrowly utilita- 
 rian aim that would sacrifice the freedom and breadth of the larg- 
 er life. While training the hand, it would give such mental 
 and moral outlook as shall enable one to lift his task to the level 
 of the noblest ideal. It would teach men not to get out of work 
 but to get more out of their work. This school has trained 
 many hundreds in household economics and manual arts. Many 
 of them have gone forth as skilled teachers to train thousands. 
 From its recent engineering courses it already has two graduates 
 who are successful engineers in Porto Rico and one who has laid 
 out a large tract of land for the settlement by colored people in 
 Panama. It has thus helped a race to take a larger phce in the 
 Kingdom established by the Carpenter. 
 
 If to teach men to do justly, to love righteousness, to make 
 the spirit of legal justice prevail in the thought and moral sense 
 of a people is included in the work of the Kingdom, then the 
 School of Law with its 771 graduates has had its part in relating 
 the life of the race to the Kingdom. 
 
 It is significant that of the three chairs of instruction in the 
 original Theological school, one was designed "Anatomy and 
 
 28 
 
Physiology in their special relation to Hygiene." In harmony with 
 this is Christ's message for the Kingdom, "For Jesus went 
 about through the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues, 
 preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom arid healing of all manner of 
 diseases and all manner of sickness. 
 
 The Kingdom recognizes the solidarity of the human race 
 in contact, relation and interest. The millions are mixed through 
 inevitable contact. Disease draws no race lines. Consumption 
 is not hereditary but contagious. The percentage among Ne- 
 groes in New Orleans, St. Louis and Chicago is three times as 
 great as among the white people. The founders of Howard 
 were wise beyond their day and proved benefactors of a nation in 
 establishing the School of Medicine. In equipment and efficien- 
 cy it has won the confidence of the profession. That devotion 
 to the Kingdom is revealed in the continuity of service in nine 
 members of the faculty which aggregates over two hundred and 
 sixty years. And who can estimate the value to the nation of 
 the professional services of the one thousand physicians, three 
 hundred and twenty-four dentists, two hundred and fifty-four 
 pharmaceutical graduates who through a half century have min- 
 istered to have physical needs of millions of colored people! In 
 the study of diseases peculiar to the Negro, in the prevention 
 of epidemics, in strengthening its frightful mortality, they take 
 their place among the benefactors of all men and servants of the 
 Kingdom. 
 
 The Academy and Commercial College have been essen- 
 tial in the education of a people who have so few secondary and 
 business schools. They have given the needed educational foun- 
 dation for many hundreds who afterward took courses in the 
 College of Arts and Sciences, Teachers College or professional 
 schools. Others of their graduates and students have served the 
 world well in home, school or business. These departments 
 have thus made their unmeasured contribution to the larger life 
 which the Kingdom gives the world. 
 
 The Conservatory of Music has cultivated the soul in the 
 expression of the highest emotions in music. Surely to develop 
 self-realization and expression in a musically endowed race 
 is helping it to add to the harmonies of the Kingdom whose 
 
 29 
 
founder said f I am come that they may have life and may have 
 it more abundantly." 
 
 Not for Self, But for Their Sakes 
 
 Finally, the social law and inspiring motive of the Kingdom 
 is fulfilled in the saying of Jesus, " For their sakes I sanctify my- 
 self.' So also may every son of Howard say; "I educate my- 
 self, I equip myself, I develop myself in this University, I conse- 
 crate myself, not for pride of self-culture or for domination of my 
 fellows or for coveteous money-getting or earth-heaping, — but 
 "for their sakes.'" If we are to take our place in God's plan for 
 the Kingdom, we must follow in the steps of Him who came 
 "not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life 
 a ransom for many." 
 
 In harmony with this principle is the thought of Ruskin, 
 who sees the roots of honor for every profession in its capacity 
 of self-sacrifice for the good of all. "The duty of all men is on 
 occasion to die for it: the soldier rather than leave his post in 
 battle; the physician rather than leave his post in the plague; 
 the pastor rather than to teach falsehood; the lawyer rather than 
 countenance injustice; for truly the man who does not know 
 when to die does not know how to live." Sons of Howard, may 
 you prove worthy of your heritage through the founders. They 
 were sons of the Puritans not unused to hardships. So do thou 
 in self-discipline, heroism, self-sacrifice, endure hardships as a 
 good soldier of Jesus Christ. By example and word call the 
 race to a new puritanism spirit. 
 
 Be men of spiritual vision, men of moral conviction, men 
 with a prophet's senseof eternal values, men with the modern social 
 conciousness, men of high enthusiasms, men with a noble passion 
 for man, men with the heroism of sacrifice and service, men with 
 a passion for righteousness, standard-bearers of truth, consecrated 
 to service. For true is the word of a modern prophet, "hell yawns 
 beneath a society that is not absolutely in earnest with its own 
 social betterment." 
 
 Oriental civilization roots in the past. The Kingdom of 
 God looks to the future. It is a significant observation of Ben- 
 jamin Kidd that militarism roots itself in the present, ecclesiasti- 
 cism in the past; but the chief characteristic of Western civili- 
 zation is that it roots itself in the future. 
 
 30 
 
The short half century of this University spans the intellec- 
 tual, the historical life of the American Negro. While its roots 
 do not strike deep into the past, the eternal years beckon on with 
 their unmeasured opportunity. This calls for the attitude of 
 faith, the vision of the unseen; and it is this faith and vision that 
 give the larger environment, the wider sweep of power to any 
 people. 
 
 Therefore, face the future with firm heart and undaunted 
 courage. Look up and forward, not down or back. Let the 
 dead past with its outworn institutions bury its dead. With un- 
 dying hope and a persistence that falters not, nor yields, fix your 
 eye on the goal of the Kingdom — and fight for it. With a fresh 
 sense of consecration, on this Anniversary Day, kindle anew the 
 flame of your devotion on the altar of service. Then burn thou 
 and consume for God and man. Burn to the socket. 
 
 31 
 
Important Notice to Alumni 
 
 H The number of the HOWARD UNIVERSITY 
 RECORD for January 1918 will contain the impor- 
 tant portions of the proceedings of the Sociological 
 Conference which was held March first and second, 
 1917 in connection with our Semi-Centennial. 
 
 *\\ We request all alumni who have changed their 
 addresses since our last information to send us word.