This column discusses a public address that got a lot people talking back in 1900. Charles Dudley Warner (1829 - 1900) was an honored man back in his time - even today he is celebrated with a website that has preserved his better quotes - but non of those citations were pulled from the controversial speech that is remembered here. In his address as president of the American Social Science Association, Warner openly called into question the usefulness higher education for African-Americans. The news of his prattle soon spread like a prairie fire and thousands of editorials were set to newsprint. Three eloquent responses appear here, one was by the (white) editor of a prominent African-American paper, The New York Age.
