An Expression From Washington

By

JUDGE E. M, HEWLETT

My Dear Coleman;

I have carefully examined the proof sheets of your professional,
clerical, skilled and business directory of the colored people of Bal-
timore and Washington.

When I remember that you are a son of Sergeant Alexander B.
Coleman, who was commissioned by the State of Massachusetts to
recruit the gallant Fifty-fourth Regiment in the War of the Rebel-
lion, and who performed the services so well that he was compli-
mented by the Legislature of that State; and when I remember his
success as a business man in the city of Washington for many years
after the war, and the keen interest he took in all things tending
toward the uplift of the race, I am not surprised that you follow so
closely in his footsteps and keep up the tradition of the family.

In producing this book you have certainly done the race a most
unique and valuable service. It is in itself the strongest argument
against the inability of the race to engage in successful competition,
with the other races, in the business world.

One is astounded when he learns from your valuable production
the great number of men and women of the race who are engaged
in professional, clerical, skilled and business occupations in Balti-
more and Washington alone. The same being true of other large
cities. It proves conclusively that the color of the skin plays no
part in measuring the ability of people in any walk of life, and
shows beyond doubt that it is brains and push, and these alone, that
count for success in life, something in xvhich no race has a mo-
nopoly.

Your production is peculiarly valuable at this time, when our
country is engaged in a war for world democracy, and at the same
time is failing to see that equal and exact, justice is accorded the
colored man. Peculiarly valuable because you deal, not in fancies
but in facts; giving names and addresses; dealing not with those of
the past, but of the present. This effort of yours will do more than
any thing else to instruct the American people, as to the achieve-
ments of the colored people along all lines, and thereby create a
sentiment in favor of justice and fair play, where such sentiment
does not exist.

This work will take its place in the Congressional Library, and
there be preserved as a reference for future historians; thereby
linking your name, for all time, with the names of other benefac-
tors of man.

You, my friend, are entitled to the lasting gratitude of the race.