Page:Women of distinction.djvu/28

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XX
INTRODUCTION.

had engaged his hours of leisure. He has since accepted the position of Visiting Physician and Lecturer on Physiology and Hygiene at St. Augustine Normal and Collegiate Institute, which position he now holds.

It is a noteworthy fact that Dr. Scruggs was the first colored man to hold these appointments in either Shaw University or St. Augustine Institute. He has also the distinction of having organized the Medical Association among the Afro-American physicians of North Carolina. As an earnest and effective race worker he has won a high reputation. For five years he has been the regular North Carolina correspondent of the National Baptist, of Philadelphia, a paper having probably the largest circulation of any Baptist organ in the country. His letters deal mainly with race interests, and he never fails to present the negro's case in equity. One communication of especial importance is a reply to Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, who had published in the North American Review an arraignment of the colored people of the country for what he considered a lack of progress during the years of their freedom.

Dr. Scruggs is a hard-working physician, but he finds time, amid the arduous duties of a most exacting profession, to keep in touch with the living issues of the day, and especially with those which concern us as Afro-Americans. Honor to all such young men among us! "May their tribe increase!" Afro-American womanhood may be congratulated upon the entrance into the lists on her behalf of so worthy and zealous a knight as Lawson Andrew Scruggs.

Josephine Turpin Washington.