There can be no healthy growth in the life of a race or a nation without a self-reliant spirit animating the whole body; if it amounts to optimism, devoid of egotism and vanity, so much the better. This spirit necessarily carries with it intense pride of race, or of nation, as the case may be, and ramifies the whole mass, inspiring and shaping its thought and effort, however humble or exalted these may be,-as it takes "all sorts and conditions of men" to make up a social order, instinct with the ambition and the activity which work for "high thinking and right living," of which modern evolution in all directions is the most powerful illustration in history. If pride of ancestry can, happily, be added to pride of race and nation, and these are re-enforced by self-reliance, courage and correct moral living, the possible success of such people may be accepted, without equivocation, as a foregone conclusion. I have found all of these requirements so finely blended in the life and character of no people as that of the Japanese, who are just now emerging from "the double night of ages" into the vivifying sunlight of modern progress.

Born in slavery, Booker T. Washington became a noted educator, author, orator and political leader and was the dominant figure in the U. S. African American community from 1890-1915.

The Negro Problem is a collection of six historic essays on the state of race relations during the Reconstruction and early twentieth century. Written from the African American point of view these essays show how far race relations have progressed, and how far we have yet to go. Included are: Industrial Education for the Negro by Booker T. Washington The Talented Tenth by W.E. Burghardt DuBois The Disfranchisement of the Negro by Charles W. Chesnutt The Negro and the Law by Wilford H. Smith The Characteristics of the Negro People by H.T. Kealing Representative American Negroes by Paul Laurence Dunbar The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day by T. Thomas Fortune