This was the first time the writer has had the privilege of attending the closing exercises of this or of any school for the education of these people. Brought up among them, and always accustomed to regard them as inferior, he shared until recently the feeling so prevalent that in their education nothing more should be attempted than a fair common school training. This is not the place in which to argue that there is urgent need that the leaders of 7,000,000 people, who are to be redeemed from ignorance and lifted into a plane where they shall command the respect of those who are now unjustly prejudiced against them, shall be thoroughly disciplined and broadly educated; but it is the time to express the opinion of the writer, and of several others who attended with great interest these exercises, with something of his prejudices, that these students showed conclusively that they are capable of taking on the same culture, and under it of reaching the same excellencies of thought and discipline, as the more favored whites attain under like training; and that an objection to their higher education must be based on other ground than their inability to receive it, or the need of their race for such leaders as this school is sending out from year to year.
A gentleman, native of Tennessee, who has recently been called from the presidency of a Southern College to the management of the educational work of the State, was present during the commencement exercises, and contrasted them with those of the graduating class of the first institution of the State for whites, in terms so complimentary to the negro students, that, out of deference to the whites, his language will be omitted.
This work is no longer tentative. Both the possibility and value of it have been fully demonstrated, and the urgent demand is that the University shall be fully equipped for it. The point has been reached, in the estimation of all who know anything of its history, needs and opportunities, when it must be enlarged or suffer irreparably. It was, therefore, with gladness of heart that a large number of its friends, white and black, from the city and from other States, gathered to lay the corner-stone of Livingstone Missionary Hall on Wednesday afternoon.