thizer with the afflicted and unfortunate, a model of good works, a teacher of faithfulness and an administrator of impartial justice.
Presiding over a quiet home with dignity, and at the same time with almost unlimited love and interest, is truly a condition of a home that is a most wisely bestowed blessing upon any people or community.
All these positions of trust and great responsibility have been well filled by our women for more than a quarter of a century.
Beginning life as they did, without a home and without the means with which to buy a home, yet, as determined as if Spartan soldiers, they placed homes where there were no homes, and at once became the queens thereof. Negro women have done more for the peculiar growth and development of their race than the women of any other people. In fact, negro women have been the life of nearly every negro enterprise now in existence. Without her the Church would be a mere name, and the ministry would scarcely eat bread.
They have been the life of the schools, and, indeed, many of our great men and women have been educated bv the money earned by the hard and unceasing efforts of our women. By the sweat of their brow and b' the powers of their brain and muscle our zuonicn liave made statesmen, lawyers, preachers, doctors, teachers, artists and mechanics, many of wdiom have coped with the best brain of America. The negro has successfully operated in every avocation in which it has been his privilege to enter, in both State and national affairs. By what
