DISSIPATING A MYTH

BY the decisive margin of 803 votes to 376, an audience in Baltimore recently acknowledged the forensic triumph of Lincoln University of Pennsylvania over Oxford. Quite a triumph indeed, for a small and relatively unheard of institution to defeat the wellknown Britishers, and in itself a fact worth passing notice. But in addition it involves facts of far greater import. The afore-mentioned audience happened to be composed to the extent of ninety-five percent, of colored listeners, the debaters of Linclon University were themselves colored, and the debate was held in the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. This is indeed something for those who advocate the drawing of the color line to meditate upon. It could not have been for lack of opponents that Oxford took this novel and hitherto unattempted step. How long it would have been before an American institution would have done the same is impossible to estimate, but the frequency or infrequency with which the practice is repented will give a clue.

When the component parts of the audience are considered, the peculiar nature of the outcome is to a considerable extent explained, and the fact that Oxford lost another debate, or that a negro university won one over a notable opponent loses to a considerable degree its significance. Nevertheless, the bare fact that in this highest of inellectual sports an attempt has been made toward the meeting of while and colored on an equal footing, is highly creditable. There has been a great deal of loose talk and writing upon the intelligence of the negro, twisted from the truth by race prejudice and passion. Had the scene of this debate been laid further south anything from a race riot down might well have taken place, such, is the strength of tradition, no matter how illogical or untested it may be Oxford, by its meeting with Lincoln, has broken down one more of the barriers erected around the myth about the necessary inferiority of the negro mind.