The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-07-26
PROMINENT HEGRO
 ADVISES HIS RACE Prof. CouncIlI Delivers a Strong
 Address at Corona
HE TALKS VERY PLAINLY
Tells the Negroes They Must Build Up and Not Tear Down-The South Has Been a Great
 Missionary Tent.

Corona, July 25.-(speciaD. Prof. w. H. Council of Normal, Ala, one of the fore most negro educators and leaders in the county delivered an address on the Bright Side of the Southern Question" at the laying of the corner stone of the Colored Industrial School here today. He said:
 T have a right to talk. The sentiments that express here today and which now are expressed by the negro leaders in gen. eral, are nothing but the reiteration of my doctrine of nearly thirty years ago. I advocated and voted for such men as Judge Thomas G. Jones. These recent leaders have only discovered that he is great man, since we made him in spite of their fights against him. I saw in these noble Southerners tweny-lve years ago, the splendid characteristics which some of these near-sighted fellows are claiming to see at this day. Hence, vot ed for them and advocated that it was best to leave the South to the government of its own sons.
 sIn a speech which made at Tuscum- ba, Ala. in 1880, said: If you do not now make friends of and unite with the white people among whom you live on all ques- tions touching our political ari civil well fare. you will regret 1t in time to come. It will not be twenty-five years before the white people of this countrJ. if they have found that you go en masse against them, right or wrong, on all political questions will come into power and take from you the ballot which you continue to cast against them. The republican party will grow tired of you and seek to unload the negro element and like the bat who disowned by the beasts and not rec ognized by the birds you will find favor with neither democrats nor republicans
 "I don't claim any special foresight. but this is what I said twenty-five years ago, and today 1t Is verified. I have always endeavored to speak the truth without regard to popularity
 What ThIs Building Must Stand For. This building. whose foundation you are laying today, should be dedicated forever to all that is best and grandest in human character The basic truths for successful and lasting racial growth in the South, should be uppermost in the teachings here or the building will crum- ble to dust and the race will die in riot Let love, broad charity. hope and friend liness be cultivated here. Let each boy and girl be taught, If they do not under stand their relation to the white race of the South, that their teachings will not be in vain. No strife, for there is room for all now in the South and millions more. All of this underlies the book, and is better without the book than the book is with 1t.
 Teach every boy and every girl to build up and not tear down. Teach the boys that to be a God-fearing honest property owning, debt paying citizen Is greater than to be voter or be on terms of social equality with king. Let these truths be forever in the building whose foundation you make today. The negro must not hold Southern people as enemies for in every pulpit, every school room, every counting house in the South among white people, the negro has friends, although unknown to him, who will fight his battles every day and who vii take the great balance wheel that will hold In check all unkind, retrograding actions against him. The violent outbreaks against the negro as you no doubt have observed are more violent in the North than in the South This is caused by the great heterogeneous mass of people utterly ignorant of the genius and spirit of the American govern ment, who are often anarchists from birth, and who know nothing about the negro and have no sympathy for him. do not fear to state that investigation will prove that where these outbreaks oc- cur in the South, nine-tenths of the men who are Bullty or unlawful actions are not part of the parent stock of the Soutb- ern people. It may be centuries before the parent stock of the South will ever be so overcome and decimated, as have been the parent stock of East, North and Northwest that lawlessness from a lack of sympathy with our institutions and our people may hold the government, itself. in its unholy grip.
 What the Negro Owes the South.
 We are so prone to say unkind things of the south, because of slavery, that 1t is hard to look with favor upon anything the south has done. In my opinion the black man owes more to the south and the southern people than to any other section of the world. More miracles have been worked out in the south than were ever dreamed of in Palestine For three hundred years, the south has been a great missionary tent. in which thou sands of barbarians have been trans formed Into millions of industrious citi- zens. And right here, in the land of our bondage-forty years after freedom, we have accumulated millions of dollars in property, and tens of millions in moral forces. All of which could not have been accomplished without the good will and kindly spirit of our white neighbors
 Surroundings Propitious.
 I do not think it is going too far to state that no people have had more pro- pitious surroundings in their progress from barbarism to civilization than the negroes of America. That the negro should have been cast In new world with new blood, new energy, new hopes, and aspirations, instead of being thrown among the surplus, starving and effete populations of the old world, seems in itself, providential
 I am not uneasy about the future of negro education when the cause is en- couraged by the sons of the men who brought the negro through the great plantation schools to which I have all uded The southern states are simply carving out the legacy left them by the shareholders of the past, and that legacy is the full civilization of the ne- gro race as begun and carried on for three hundred years in the south The work which MT. l.. B. Musgrove and MT. I. R. Ryan are doing is simply the work committed to them by their fathers. Every true southerner Is willing to stand up and be counted among the friends of the negro
 Plantation Schools.
 Although, at times, the way has seem- ed rough, yet 1t has been constantly up- ward, until we find ourselves hand in hand with this new people. which IS