The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-05-31
ONEAL DELIVERS ADDRESS
 ON THE NEGRO QUESTION:

Former Governor Emmet O'Neal was given an unusual welcome yesterday aft ernoon when he addressed a mixed audi ence-white and eolored-on the subject ''The Negro Question In Alabama" at the Sixteenth Street Colored Baptist church.
 The big auditorium was packed. A sec tion was reserved for white people If whom there were between POO and 509 present. The proportion of colored people was about three to one, making the audi ence somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 people
 unique feature of the afternoon was the singing of the colored choir. This consisted of splendid variation of ante bellum melodies and modern choruses,
 The former governor was keenly alive to the import of his subject, and was in splendid form. He spoke of the tremend- dous problem entailed upon the south by the civil war. Out of the devastation and destruction of the old south. he said, there must be carried into the making of the new two races-carried side by side, in justice, honor and right. That justice was and is to be that, he said, which the strong must always accord to the weak. There were two races which must be carried separately, for assimila- ton would debase, was intolerable, un- thinkable. Most of tn, solutions that have been offered for the tremendous prob lem, the speaker said, are visionary and impracticable. This is equally true of the idea of a separate state or states for the negroes, and that of their migration to Africa.
 Education, the speaker said, is and must be the solution of the problem, not book learning necessarily, but training for eff ficient and constructive service.
 The speaker recalled that it was said before the civil war, the nation could not exist half slave and half free; now. he said it cannot endure half literate and half illiterate.
 "If Alabama permits such a situation, '' he said, it shall have weight to drag her down."
 After the civil war, the speaker said, the negro's ideal was, of course his former master. The negro thought edu- cation was to free him from labor and make him like the southern gentleman who led a life of ease and luxury. Here the speaker spoke of what is being accom- rlished in industrial education in Ala hama and paid just and fitting tributa to Booker T. Washington as "the greatest man of the negro race.
 He spoke frankly and told the negroes that the percentage of crime among then Is too great; that there is too much blood shed in Alabama. The remedy for this condition, he said, must be education morality, religion. A religion based upo> the Ten Commandments, the Sermon or the Mount and the Golden Rule would make such condition impossible as to the negro race, or any other race. Another thing, he added, must be punishment by the law. with certainty and celerity
 Here the speaker paid fine tribute N. the negroes who were left to care for the farms and to protect the wives ana chil- dren of the white men of the south while those same white men were fighting tc keep the chains of salvery riveted upon the wrists of their slaves. Those negroes he said, left with such a trust never once raised their black hands except in pro- tection of their sacred charges
 Some of the melodies rendered in pure native style were Everybody talkinl bout Heaven aint gwine there'' Swing