“The Negro race has produced men of great ability in all departments.”
Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, learned editor of the Crisis, appeared before the Congress as a Colored American scientist, versed in ethnology, and the needs and qualifications of the Colored race. After giving the number of Colored Americans as about ten millions, and mentioning the fact that “They live at the present time under a system of theoretical liberty, which is restricted in practice by certain legal dispositions, and by custom,” he adds: “Intellectual emancipation should proceed hand in hand with economic independence.”
ALL NATIONS AND TRIBES ONE GREAT FAMILY
This is indeed the keynote to the elevation of the Colored Americans to the high plane sought to be reached by all the nations of the earth, and toward which they are surely drifting, in an unconscious fulfillment of the designs of God to gather all nations and tribes together into one great family.
Professor N. R. d’Alfonso, of Italy, laid before the Congress the most profound thought that forms the basis of all progress and gives the key to beneficial government:
“Speculative psychology teaches that the man, to whatever race he may belong, has always the same psychological possibilities.
“Subject from childhood to certain conditions of climate, environment and education, he can reach the highest and most complex grades of civilization.
“It is the action and reaction of the external world on the internal world of the mind that issues in the creation of man.
“If there are psychological differences between races they are the outcome of the particular history of various peoples—a history that has entailed a different education.
“The psychological basis is the same in all men from whatever part of the world they may come, and they may evolve in the same way and attain the same psychic results.