Nevertheless, in about ten days thereafter a turbulent spirit awoke; a general uprising that swept the sober-minded off their feet took place, and never before nor since has Westerville passed through such an event as was occasioned by my presence in the college; nor did it end there.

Meetings were held at which inflammatory speeches were made; I was assaulted on the street; in the classroom the leaves of my books were torn out, and I was, stuck with shawl-pins by those who sat around me; when I passed out of the building groups of waiting students pelted me with rocks hidden in wet snow-balls.

"[3] Fearing for the stability of the young university, members of the board of trustees offered to pay Thomas' tuition if he were to transfer to Oberlin.

"That there was substantial ground for uneasiness on the part of the college authorities is fully borne out by the fact that a number of students from Virginia and elsewhere left the school for good the following week.

"[3] He served with distinction in the 5th United States Colored Infantry Regiment during the Civil War of 1861–1865, suffering a gunshot wound that led to the amputation of his right arm.

"Thomas, William Hannibal colored, was a one armed Trial Justice who held hearings in Newberry during the days of radicalism.

Newberry Observer 3/21/1901" Thomas wrote correspondence for the A.M.E. Church's national newspaper The Christian Recorder from 1865 to 1870 and published 28 articles during that time.

"[7] He declared that the black individual in America was slowly and steadily deteriorating, and was "immersed in poverty, steeped in ignorance, stifled with immorality, inherently lazy, and a born pilferer.

To Washington, the type of evidence Thomas collected was purely anecdotal and lacked any way to confirm such claims like a name, place, or date.

Du Bois largely criticized the tone and characterizations Thomas made in his 1901 book The American Negro, finding most of the evidence dubious at best.

"[15] Du Bois claimed that the pressures and stresses of Black life had an effect on Thomas, one that, "tends to develop the criminal or the hypocrite, the cynic or the radical.

Thomas is described as a man that went South during reconstruction to teach the negro everything he needed to know but in a rapid amount of time.

While Du Bois accepted that a man can change his opinion in the course of ten years, over the ten years from the pamphlet to the book, Thomas removed himself from the Black community in the south, therefore to Du Bois, the original opinion from the pamphlet held more weight.