[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I have just been
discussing the statement in the article by Mr. Julian Huxley in the Spectator of November 29th with Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones, lately specialist in charge of the Division of Racial Groups of the Board of Education, Washington, and now Educational Director of the Phelps- Stokes Fund, New York, the purpose of which is to promote edUcation of all sorts among Africans. Dr. Jones is now in this country writing his report. on the recent East African Education• Commission, of which he is Chairman. • ' As I imagined would be the case, Dr. Jones takes strong exception to the statement from Mr. Huxley that " there are no well- authenticated cases of pure blacks rising to any -eminence." At once he brought forward as evidence to the contrary such men as Dr. R. R. Moton, Booker Washington's successor at the great Negro 'Educational Institution at Tuskegee ; Dr. George Carver, who is .a member of the British Royal Society and a scientific -investigator of the first rank ; Bishop Vernon, late Registrar of the U.S.A. Treasury and now Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the States ; and. Dr. Kelly Miller, of Howard University, Washington, a mathematician of the very first order. The list' of the American-born negroes, without a trace of white blood in their veins, of this type could be greatly extended, but I think perhaps these names, and the rebuttal of Mr. Huxley's statement by such an authority on the subject as Dr. Jong, is sufficient evidence of the unfairness of the criticism made.
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