Colored Men in Literature
  Negroes have written in these 50 years something like 10,000
books and pamphlets. The library of Congress had present at
the exposition a substantial library of negro authors including
among other subjects poetry, fiction, science, history and the-
ology, and here again the Pennsylvania negro leads all the States,
and the Philadelphia negro all the cities, in the literary produc-
tions of the race.
  Fifty years ago, professional life hardly was known to a negro
and few schools would permit him to study. Today there are
three thousand five hundred physicians, two thousand lawyers,
one thousand five hundred dentists, three thousand professional
actors, three hundred journalists, and various other occupations
unknown a few years ago to the race, and Pennsylvania leads all
States in negro professional men.
  Negroes today own five hundred thousand homes, and, strange
tosay, a less percentage of them is encumbered than those
owned by white people. The race owns over two hundred and
fifty thousand farms, and controls over twenty million acres of
land in the United States. Indeed,the land controlled by negroes
in this country covers a greater area than the combined area of
the countries of Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Wales and Eng-
land.
  If all the land in this great Commonwealth were turned over
to the negro race it would not equal what they now own and
control.
           Intellectual Progress of the Negro
  The Sociological Congress held at the exposition brought to-
gether a distinguished array of negro scholars.
  The Educational Congress brought together the leading edu-
cators of this country, while the speakers at the Religious Con-
gress represented the leading negro bishops, and other ministers
and laymen. When the papers and addresses of these speakers
are published they will present an amazing mass of documentary
evidence of the intellectual progress of the negro race in this
country.
  The physical progress of the race is no less important than
the intellectual and moral progress. This was shown by a Medi-
cal Exhibit and a Baby Show.  The negroes were shown to
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OHS Archives/Library Pamphlet Collection

Progress of the Negro Race: Address at a Patriotic Race Service, Philadelphia