Report of the Secretary-Treasurer.

The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Incorporated, Washington, D. C.

Gentlemen: I hereby submit to you a report of the amount of money received and expended by the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Incorporated, from September 30, 1919 to September 30, 1920, inclusive:

Receipts Expenditures
Subscriptions $ 778.32 Printing and Stationery $2,733.54
Memberships 160.00 Petty Cash Expenses 551.26
Contributions 3,331.00 Rent and Light 250.30
News Agents 69.47 Stenographic Service 901.80
Advertisements 264.05 Miscellaneous Expenses 269.98
Books 19.63 Total Expenditures $4,706.88
Rent 15.00 Balance September 30, 1920. 48.86
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Total Receipts, Sept. 30, $4,755.74
1919, to Sept. 30,
1920 $4,637.47
Balance Sept. 30, 1919 118.27
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$4,755.74

Respectfully submitted,

Alethe H. Smith
Assist. to the Secretary-Treasurer.

After a brief discussion these reports were accepted and approved. The Association then spent some time in discussing the advisability of holding annual meetings at strategic points and there prevailed a motion to the effect that the Executive Council be requested to hold the next annual meeting of the Association in Atlanta, Georgia. The meeting adjourned after electing the following as officers: Robert E. Park, President, Jesse E. Moorland, Secretary-Treasurer, Carter G. Woodson, Director of Research and Editor; who with Julius Rosenwald, George Foster Peabody, James H. Dillard, John R. Hawkins, Emmett J. Scott, William G. Willcox, Bishop John Hurst, Albert Bushnell Hart, Thomas Jesse Jones, A. L. Jackson, Moorfield Storey, and Bishop R. E. Jones, were made members of the Executive Council.

At the evening session at the John Wesley A. M. E. Z. Church, the Association was addressed by three men of distinction. The first speaker was Professor Kelly Miller of Howard University who briefly discussed the Limits of Philanthropy in Negro Education, endeavoring to show that helpful as has been the program of the whites to educate the Negroes, their work must be a failure, if it does not ultimately result in equipping the Negro to take over his own school systems that the direction, hitherto in the hands of whites, may be dispensed with.

Professor Robert T. Kerlin of the Virginia Military Institute, having misunderstood his place on the program appeared at this meeting and, as one of the persons scheduled to address the session did not present himself, he was permitted to speak. His discourse was an extensive discussion of the role played by poetry in the civilization of a people and how the Negro poet is rendering his race and the country service in singing of his woes and clamoring for a new opportunity.

The meeting was closed with an address by Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, the Editor of the Nation, discussing the subject, The Economic Bases of the Race Question. His discourse was a political and sociological treatise based upon facts of history and economics to show the hopelessness of a program to right the wrongs of the Negroes unless that program has its foundation in things economic, in as much as the present day situation offers no hope that politics will play any particular part in the solution. All three speakers made a very favorable impression upon the audience and so enlightened it by the masterful array of facts presenting their point of view as to make this one of the most interesting sessions ever held by the Association.

The first session of the second day consisted of a conference on the Negro in America. In the absence of Dr. R. E. Park, Dr. C. G. Woodson spent most of the time discussing the achievements in the writing of history of the Negro in America, especially in the United States. He discussed the various motives actuating persons to enter this field, showing that in most cases these were propagandists and for that reason a non-partisan and unbiased history of the Negro has not yet been written. He then discussed the possibility of producing interesting, comprehensive and valuable works by the proper use of the various materials. These materials, however, contended he, would have to be given scientific treatment that the whole truth might be extracted therefrom. He then showed the possibility of error in accepting as evidence the opinions of the proslavery element about the antislavery element, the opinions of the abolitionists about the colonizationists and vice versa. These will have to be scientifically examined and after all the actual facts of Negro history must be determined from such sources as letters, diaries, books of travel, and unconscious evidence in the current publications of the times.

At the conclusion of the address remarks were made by Mr. A. H. Grimke, Mr. T. C. Williams, Mr. G. C. Wilkinson, Mr. A. C. Newman, Professor A. H. Locke, Professor Walter Dyson, and Professor William L. Hansberry. Professor Hansberry discussed for a few minutes the value of the sources in African history making his talk very illuminating and instructive.

The afternoon was devoted to a meeting of the Executive Council to which the public was not invited but in the evening a large number of members and friends of the cause attended the session, at the John Wesley A. M. E. Z. Church. The speakers of the occasion were Mr. Charles E. Russell of Washington, D. C., and Professor Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard University. Mr. Russell discussed the Negro's Right to Justice taking the record of the Negro as a worthy one and the fallacy of discrimination against him in the midst of the struggle for democracy. The address was both illuminating and convincing. Then followed the address of Professor Hart on Free Men by Choice. He endeavored to show that no person is actually free. That all elements of the population and all classes are more or less restricted. This discussion was both legal and historical, presenting in its various ramifications the social order in the country and the legislation underlying the same. He finally brought out the important fact that although the institution of slavery imprisoned the body of the Negroes, it could not control their minds.