The age-herald., 1900-05-11
RENDERED AN OVATION
Closing Session Was the Most
 Largely Attended.
OTHER NOTABLE SPEECHES MADE
Prof Wilcox, Government Statistician Argued That the Negro Race Would Gradually Disappear as
 Has the American Indian

l l Montgomery, Ala, May 10.-The closing
 session of the conference was more largely attended than any other
 | The first speaker Dr. Barriner, chan l celor of the University of Virginia who ! ccntended that the result of the emancipa- | tion of the negroes in the south will be that | of ultimate extinction of the race. He of- | fered many statistics of the leading states or the south in support of this view.
 Hon. Bourke Cochran scored the most brilliant success of the entire conference in his closing oration this evening" He l boldly advocated the repeal of the fifteenth
 amendment to the federal constitution. He | argued that it was a dead limb on the tree; l that it had been nullified by the states that l it had been lynched, so to speak, by the | people of the south. He declared that the | reconciliation of the theoretical status of the
 negro under the constitution would be reconciled with his actual status in the pub lie opinion of the country. He maintained that this repeal was best | for the negro as well as for the white man, i since both races had to live together, to
 prosper together and go down together. | Every source of irritation between the two | should be removed, and the fifteenth | amendment was the greatest. l He asserted that the path of the negro | to political and social rights lay through | the medium of the unit, the individual, and
 that the only means was by industrial edu- l cation. He lauded the generosity of the south for spending in thirty-nve years after it's devastation, and out of its poverty over 500, 100000 for negro education, and pointed haf wa he 6utv of he cd ernment to assist in preparing it's wards for the duties of citizenship. He said it would be far more defensible for the country to spend ten or twenty millions year in help ing uplift the black men of the south in- stead of S10O, 0,O00 in putting down the brown man of the east.
 The Tuskegee school | He believed that the establishment of Tuskegee school in every county in the
 south and the multiplication of Booker l Washingtons was the duty of the national government His oration received | with the most marked favor from the tre- 1 mendous audience, and frequently applaud
 ed by the large section of intelligent ne-
 groes in the gallery, as by the superb audi ence of whites on the floor He was ac- 1 corded a magnificent ovation at the | close.
 | A number of newspaper men who had l heard him on important occasions before 1 pronounced it the finest effort he has ever l made
 At the morning session of the conference l the discussion chiefly of the negro in relation to religion.
 It was opened by Prof. John Roach <, Straton of Mercer university, Macon, Ga. l He discussed the relations of the races, | the superiority and inferiority of the l whites and blacks respectively and dwelt
 at length upon the effect of an inferior | race superior race.
 Rev. D. Clay Lilly of Tuscaloosa, sec-
 retary of the Southern Presbyterian board
 of negro evangelization, spoke specifically
 on the wiser form of religious work among the negroes, the question being whether
 the white agencies or colored agencies are | the better
 This same question was discussed by
 Rev W. A. Guerry. chaplain of the Uni-
 versity of the South, Sewanee Tenn, who
 took the position that negro teachers could
 deal best with the colored race.
 Comparison of Religious Condions
 The religious conditions of the negro to- | day as compared with those of slavery 1 days was discussed by Rev. c. c. Brown
 of Clinton. S C., and the Rev. J. R. Slat-
 tery of Baltimore spoke for the advisability | of raising the standard of ordination. One
 of the most sensational speeches was made | by Bishop Rennick of Baltimore, who de- 1 clared that from five to eight negroes in the
 north under northern conditions committed | crimes to one in the south
 | Professor W. F. Wilcox of the chief
 statsticians of the government, a New l Yorker by birth and ancestry made | speech declaring that the ultimate exter- l imitation of the black race was inevitable. There will be rapid decrease of the birth rate and a slow increase of the death rate until the negro race will stand as the American Indian stands today" said Pro- lessor Wilcox.
 He was followed by Secretary Welsh of the Indian Rights association At the afternoon session Hon. Alex c. King of Atlanta opened the discussion on the lynching question. He spoke on 'The punishment of crimes against women--ex- ! istins legal remedies and their sufficiencv~ His address treated almost exclusively
 or the crime of assault and of lynch law. He said it was in those communities where the dominance of the white race was the
 least secure and the menace of the black criminal the greatest that lynch law Is most likely to prevail.
 He called attention to the fact that with | the passage of time since the abolition of slavery the crime seems to grow in impor- 1 tance MT. King also noted the apparently | inheritent prejudice existing between the 1 lower class of white people and the negro
 who in being educated and by imitation
 was menacng the social status of this | class of white people. He said that this -~---------~~-------~-- --~~~~--------~~-~~~~>