Possibilities of the 
 negro in Symposium 
 
 REV. C. E. DOWMAN, D.D., 
 HON. JOHN TEMPLE GRAVES, 
 
 HENRY W. GRADY, 
 
 EX-GOVERNOR W. J. NORTHEN, 
 
 BISHOP WARREN A. CANDLER, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 BISHOP H. M. TURNER, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 BISHOP L. H. HOLSEY, D.D., 
 
 RICHARD H. EDMONDS, 
 
 WILLIS B. PARKS, M.D. 
 
 JI Solution of the negro Problem 
 
 Psychologically Considered 
 Cbe negro not "fl Beast." 
 
 The Franklin Printing and Publishing Company 
 ATLANTA, QA.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1904, 
 BY W. B. PARKS.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FOREWORD. Rev. C. E. Dowman, D.D., Ex-President 
 Emory College 1 
 
 CHICAGO UNIVERSITY SPEECH "THE PROBLEM OP THE 
 
 RACES." Hon. John Temple Graves 5 
 
 '* BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH." Henry W. Grady 35 
 
 " BUT WHAT OF THE NEGRO ? Henry W. Grady 56 
 
 " WHAT OF THE NEGRO ?" Henry W. Grady 59 
 
 " AGED Ex- SLAVES GATHER AT HOME OF OLD MASTER." 
 Robert Timmons 69 
 
 " RACES IN HARMONY; SOUTH SAFE AS HOME." Ex-Gov- 
 ernor W. J. Northen 74 
 
 " MUST PUT DOWN THE MOB OR BE PUT DOWN BY IT." 
 Bishop Warren A. Candler, D.D., LL.D 84 
 
 "RACES MUST SEPARATE." Bishop H. M. Turner, D.D., 
 LL.D 90 
 
 " RACE SEGREGATION." Bishop L. H. Holsey, D.D 99 
 
 "BURDEN OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM." Richard H. Ed- 
 monds 120 
 
 " A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM PSYCHOLOGICALLY 
 CONSIDERED; THE NEGRO NOT A BEAST." Willis B. 
 Parks, M.D 128 
 
 2201138
 
 FOREWORD. 
 
 BY CHAS. E. BOWMAN, D.D., 
 Ex-President Emory College, Oxford. 
 
 The negro is with us, much has been said and writ- 
 ten, but the last word has not yet been spoken, for 
 "nothing is settled, till it is settled right." After the 
 strife of words and the ebullition of passion, right and 
 truth will remain. No doubt, much that was unwise 
 and untrue has been said. Men have discussed this 
 question from the viewpoint of prejudice, passion, and 
 personal interest as well as from sincere, though often 
 misdirected philanthropy. But many of the highest 
 minds have carefully considered this problem ; some 
 are still seeking for a solution ; others have thought 
 it through, and from their premises have reached a 
 conclusion. 
 
 Dr. Willis B. Parks, the author of the essay which 
 closes this volume, has rendered a service to the think- 
 ing public by collecting and putting in permanent form 
 the mature thought of some of the leading men of both 
 races, as well as by his own contribution to the dis- 
 cussion of this question. The study of the negro from 
 a psychological standpoint, gives promise of a better 
 understanding of the peculiarities of his character and 
 conduct that have been difficult to explain, and fur- 
 nishes valuable suggestions of more intelligent meth- 
 ods for his improvement. The author, with scientific 
 candor and firmness, seeks to check any tendency to- 
 ward dehumanizing the negro by showing from the 
 application of the principles of psychology that he is 
 "not a beast," but a man.
 
 2 FOREWORD. 
 
 The eloquent and big-hearted Henry W. Grady, and 
 the concise and brilliant John Temple Graves, need 
 no introduction or commendation. The pure and pa- 
 triotic William J. Northen enjoys the confidence of 
 all races and sections. 
 
 The masterful bishop of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, South, Warren A. Candler, pleads for justice 
 toward the negro as opposed to the mob. The ear- 
 nest and observant bishop of the African Methodist 
 Church, Henry M. Turner, agrees that this question 
 can only be settled by the separation of the races, and 
 Rev. L. H. Holsey, D.D., the eloquent and big- 
 hearted bishop of the Colored M. E. Church, pleads 
 for the segregation of the race in some portion of our 
 national domain. 
 
 Richard H. Edmonds, editor of the "Manufacturers' 
 Record," an astute man of business, holds that if wily 
 politicians and sentimental philanthropists will let this 
 problem alone, the two races will probably work out 
 its solution. 
 
 Many say they are tired of this discussion but cer- 
 tain things are true : The negro is here, and here to 
 stay, and so long as there is the want of perfect ad- 
 justment between him and the white race, there will 
 be the problem, and so long as there is a problem, there 
 will be a discussion. 
 
 The position of the negro race is more critical now 
 than at any former period of its history. During the 
 time immediately succeeding emancipation, there was 
 a kindly and sympathetic relation between the white 
 people of the South and their former slaves. But 
 with the passing of the old masters and the old serv- 
 ants, with the coming of generations who know noth- 
 ing of the sentiments of affection and gratitude grow- 
 ing out of the relations of domestic slavery, and who 
 have been reared under the influence of passion on
 
 FOREWORD. 3 
 
 the one side and suspicion on the other, it was inevi- 
 table that the races should drift apart. 
 
 The Southern white man has easily lost confidence 
 in the negro. The increase of crime, the comparative 
 failure of education, the frequent divorcement of re- 
 ligion from morality, the menace to the safety of the 
 home and of innocent women from the rapist have 
 turned the feelings of many white men from sym- 
 pathetic helpfulness to strained toleration. 
 
 It would be putting- the case very mildly to say that 
 the negro's most enthusiastic friends in the North are 
 disappointed in him. His moral and social progress 
 has not been what they expected as a result of their 
 investment of money and help. The laboring classes 
 of the North will not admit him. The doors of social 
 life are closed against him. Since the Southern States 
 have, as a matter of self-preservation, practically elimi- 
 nated him from politics, whose affection for "the man 
 and brother" was prompted by self-interest, has no 
 further use for him. 
 
 With the North indifferent and the South unsympa- 
 thetic, the negro would be crushed between the upper 
 and the nether millstone. But his future is in his own 
 hands. Content with his civil liberty, enjoying educa- 
 tional advantages at the cost of his white neighbors, 
 with a fair field for his industry, not excluded from 
 the ranks of skilled labor, wjth the fields, the forests, 
 the mines of the South, begging 1 for him with the 
 monopoly of domestic service, he is in position to 
 make rapid progress in the accumulation of property, 
 the building- of homes, and in the elevation of his so- 
 cial condition. 
 
 The South will not have him as a social equal nor 
 as a political master, but she needs him, and wants him 
 as a powerful factor in her industrial prosperity. His 
 labor augments her wealth, his growing demand for
 
 4 FOREWORD. 
 
 the necessity of civilized life makes a market for her 
 products, his increase of population gives proportion- 
 ate influence in national legislation. 
 
 Bishop Galloway, one of the most eloquent preach- 
 ers of the Methodist church, said in a public address 
 a few months ago, that when the negro left the South 
 he would go with him, and the utterance was received 
 with enthusiastic applause. 
 
 , The South is willing to give the negro a chance. As 
 the ward of the nation he has been spoiled ; as the 
 football of demagogues he has been corrupted. As 
 the pet of sentimental philanthropists he has been 
 placed in a false and dangerous position. As the prey 
 of the avaricious, his vices have been fostered for their 
 gain. 
 
 What the future has for him depends on himself. 
 The sky is clearing. The views of all sections and 
 parties are coming nearer together. The wisest men 
 of the negro race are recognizing the time basis of his 
 salvation. His best friends, who are among the white 
 people of the South, are ready to help him under prac- 
 tical ways. 
 
 What shall we do with him shall no longer be dis- 
 cussed. With equality before the law, with equity in 
 business, with sympathy in all his efforts to better his 
 condition on all proper lines, instead of being a 
 menace to our safety, a disturbing element in our 
 politics, and a peril to himself, he may become a race 
 unit in our great cosmopolitan national life, "sepa- 
 rate as the billows, but not as the sea," and under the 
 benign influence of the gospel of the Son of man, our 
 civilization may show the possibility of which has been 
 declared impossible a superior and an inferior race 
 living and working together in true harmony and co- 
 operation.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 BY JOHN TEMPLE CRAVES. 
 
 (Chicago University Speech.) 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 Permit me in the beginning to acknowledge the 
 courtesy which gives me access to a platform so noble 
 and to an audience so distinguished as this. 
 
 All sections of our common country pay tribute to 
 the merit and equipment of this splendid University. 
 Its work is playing a mighty part in the educational 
 uplift of the times. Its record has been notable among 
 the forces which have given us a reunited country. 
 The State and the section from which I come have 
 made their yearly vital contribution to its student- 
 roll, and the superb beneficence of the founder, joined 
 to the noble liberality of citizens of Chicago, and to 
 the consecrated talent and attainments of its faculty, 
 have made an institution so virile in life, so compre- 
 hensive in character, and so national in scope that it 
 has come, while yet in early youth, to be the alma 
 mater of the sections and the pride of the republic. 
 
 Fortunate am I, and happy, in that I bring the con- 
 victions of this hour to a platform so free, and to an 
 atmosphere so impartial. Questions of abstract policy 
 problems of humanity bearing a hint of section or 
 a complication of party are not for the ears of faction 
 or for the passions of politics. Upon the fierce and 
 heated bosom of established prejudice the cold stream 
 of reason falls too frequently to steam and hissing, and 
 
 (5)
 
 6 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 men who have convictions that are rather definite 
 than popular, may thank God for the calmer air of 
 universities, and for the clear and unbiased minds of 
 students seeking truth. It is here, and here only, that 
 problems of duty and of destiny can find a fair hear- 
 ing and a free solution in the tranquil temper and un- 
 fettered vision of republican youth. 
 
 Upon this dear presumption I hasten to my work. 
 
 The problem which I bring to you to-day is yours 
 as well as mine. Whoever you are, and from what- 
 ever section you come, the problem is yours inherited 
 from the fathers and handed down to the sons with 
 complications increasing so rapidly, and difficulties 
 multiplying so fast that every instinct of prudence, 
 and every suggestion of safety plead for its prompt 
 and full consideration, while it may yet be solved a 
 problem for the whole country, because it can not be 
 settled by a section ; and a problem for this generation, 
 because in this generation it must inevitably reach its 
 crisis and advance in promise or decline in evil pre- 
 sage to its conclusion. 
 
 The thinkers of the Old World, from Gladstone and 
 Bismarck, through James Bryce and Arthur Balfour, 
 to Chamberlain and Crispi, viewing our country from 
 the vantage ground of distance, have with one voice 
 proclaimed this the first and foremost problem of our 
 national life. 
 
 The thinkers of our own world, who see the prob- 
 lem clearly, are appalled at the comprehensive danger 
 of its elements, and amazed at the apathy of their 
 countrymen toward it. 
 
 Will you bear with me, then, while I state this prob- 
 lem briefly and as fairly as I can? 
 
 The Civil War of the sixties was the tragedy of the 
 nineteenth century. Its real cause dated back to con- 
 stitutional constructions, and to the irrepressible con-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 7 
 
 flict over the nature of the compact framed by the 
 fathers. Its provoking- incident, its precipitating 
 cause, was slavery. 
 
 A republic of white men, living in a country de- 
 veloped and established by sturdy colonists of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race, prospering under a constitution 
 framed by white men for the author of the Declara- 
 tion was a slaveholder flourishing magnificently un- 
 der institutions molded by their united brains, ce- 
 mented by their common blood, and sanctified by their 
 common patriotism fell at outs over a black man 
 brought from savage Africa and sold from trading 
 ships to bondage and slavery, first in Massachusetts, 
 and afterwards in the South. We do not halt here to 
 wrangle over the mooted responsibility of his bring- 
 ing, or the causes of his subsequent concentration in 
 one section of the country. He came, he drifted, and 
 he divided us. Agitators, sincere but passionate, 
 raised the question of his liberty. The sections divided 
 in interest and sentiment upon the issue, and over his 
 black body brethren of a white race and of a common 
 glorious heritage went to war. 
 
 Of equal valor, but of unequal numbers, the men 
 of the North and the men of the South grappled for 
 four years at each other's throats ; and for this black 
 man of Africa the white men of America sacrificed a 
 million heroic lives and spent $12,000,000,000 of their 
 money. 
 
 Whether it were worth the colossal sacrifice, his- 
 tory, and one hundred thousand broken homes, must 
 in time declare. And whether the sacrifice were vain 
 and profitless, history and the unsolved problem must 
 also say. 
 
 From the unequal contest one section emerged vic- 
 torious, and the other section lingered solemn and 
 broken in defeat.
 
 8 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 The first act of the victor was to free the slaves. 
 The next act of the victor was to make the black man, 
 just now a slave, a citizen and the equal of his master. 
 There were four million black men then. There are 
 nine million now, and seven million in the South. 
 
 Here, then, the equations start : 
 
 Two opposite, unequal, and antagonistic races are 
 set side by side for government and destiny. One of 
 these, by the record, is the strongest race on earth ; 
 the other, by the record, is the weakest race on earth. 
 One, a race whose achievements make, in large part, 
 the history of the world ; the other, a race which, in 
 all its annals, has written no history, built no monu- 
 ments, made no books, and recorded no achievement, 
 and whose only progress has been from contact with 
 the stronger race. One, a race, proud, progressive, 
 dominant, and historically free ; the other, a race that 
 came out of centuries of savagery into centuries of 
 slavery, and was transplanted in one tropical and un- 
 natural night from barbarism and slavery into liberty 
 and full equality. One, a live, vital, twentieth-century 
 race, pulsing the hope and progress of the world ; the 
 other, a race without a record, undeveloped, untrained, 
 but lately slaves, and at the utmost a seventh-century 
 civilization. 
 
 There they are master and slave, civilized and 
 half-civilized, strong and weak, conquering and servile, 
 twentieth-century and seventh-century thirteen hun- 
 dred years apart set by a strange and incomprehen- 
 sible edict of statesmanship or of passion, set by the 
 constitution and the law, the weakest race on earth 
 and the strongest race on earth, side by side, on equal 
 terms to bear an equal part in the conduct and re- 
 sponsibility of the greatest government the world ever 
 saw!
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 9 
 
 It was an experiment without a precedent in history 
 and without a promise in the annals of man. 
 
 Impracticable in abstract form, the proposition is 
 rendered impossible by its complications. The mas- 
 ter race keenly resents the sudden elevation and the 
 forced equality of their slaves. The victorious section 
 eagerly demands the trial, and desires the success of 
 its experiment. The master race, from long- contact 
 and close association, carries the ineradicable convic- 
 tion of the inherent and incurable inferiority and in- 
 capacity of the black man. The victor section, rea- 
 soning from abstract philanthropy at the distance of a 
 thousand miles, cherishes a fixed faith in the unity 
 of race and the equality of man. Sectional jealousies 
 compass the experiment with bitterness. Partisan 
 politics complicate it with selfish schemes. Frequent 
 crimes and recurring violence distort it with passion. 
 And behind it all, openly confessed in one section, and 
 only half denied in the other section, there lives and 
 breathes in both races and in all sections, the deep, tin- 
 circumscribed, and apparently ineradicable prejudice of 
 opposite races, which renders union and sympathy and 
 full co-operation hopeless and out of the question for- 
 ever. 
 
 So that the problem is one of irreconcilable ele- 
 ments. It is one of impossible conditions. Stated in 
 a sentence, this is the problem : How the strongest of 
 races and the weakest of races, thirteen hundred years 
 apart in civilization, unequal in history and develop- 
 ment, incongruous, unassimilable and inherently an- 
 tagonistic, tossed between party schemes and sectional 
 jealousies, irritated by racial conflicts and misled by 
 mistaken philanthropy, can live on equal terms under 
 exactly the same laws, and share on equal terms in 
 the same government when no other races, opposite 
 and antagonistic, have ever shared, in peace and tran-
 
 10 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 quility, since the world began, any country or any 
 government created by God or fashioned by man. 
 
 This is the question that the times are called to an- 
 swer. This is the riddle that the twentieth century is 
 asked to read. This is the experiment that the tem- 
 porizing- statesmanship of a civil revolution has forced 
 upon the age. 
 
 The statement of the proposition carries its condem- 
 nation, and the equations must be changed before the 
 problem can be solved. 
 
 The experiment has had thirty-eight years of trial, 
 backed by the power of the federal government and 
 by the sympathy of the world. It has failed. From 
 the beginning to the hour that holds us, it has failed. 
 The races are wider apart and more antagonistic than 
 they were in 1865. There is less of sympathy and 
 more of tension than the races have known since the 
 terrible days of reconstruction made chaos in the 
 South. The Fifteenth Amendment is practically re- 
 pealed. In nearly every State of his numerical habita- 
 tion, the negro is disfranchised under the forms of 
 law. In all the States where his ballot is a menace 
 to white supremacy, it is restrained. With all these 
 years, and all these forces at his back, there has been 
 an utter failure to establish the negro in a satisfactory 
 and self-reliant position under the law. Four decades 
 after his emancipation he is in point of fact less a free- 
 man and infinitely less a citizen than he was^ in 1868. 
 The tumult of the times about us proclaim the con- 
 tinued existence and the unreconciled equations of 
 the problem that he makes ; and in the common judg- 
 ment of mankind the legend, FAILURE, is written 
 large and lowering above the tottering fabric of his 
 civil rights. 
 
 And yet the experiment goes on. Unchanging and 
 unlearning, the republic gropes in solemn stupidity, in
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 1 1 
 
 helpless apathy, in misguided philanthropy, through 
 ceaseless complications and hopeless precedent to the 
 hopeless and preordained conclusion. The experiment 
 goes on. 
 
 I ask you, men and women of this University, to 
 consider with me the difficulties which this vast prob- 
 lem entails, and the mighty reasons which, for the 
 sake of both races, sternly and imperatively require its 
 solution. 
 
 To the white man this problem means division. It 
 imperils national unity. It always has done so. It 
 always will do so. From the Philadelphia conven- 
 tion to the present hour the negro has always been 
 a bone of contention. North, East and West, the sec- 
 tions tolerate in tranquility divisions of trade and sen- 
 timent, and clasp hands everywhere without suspicion 
 or distrust. But a Chinese wall of prejudice shuts 
 out the South on this question from the sympathy 
 of the American people, and although fraternal plati- 
 tudes may cross it, and political affiliations may scale 
 it, and commercial interchange may run its electric 
 wires under and above it, and although but recently 
 military loyalty has seemed to shatter it, this wall 
 stands, in the sight of God and of nations, and hedges 
 in the South as a separate and peculiar people, hin- 
 dered with misapprehension, held aloof in prejudice, 
 and fretted by a criticism which, if sometimes founded 
 in philanthropy, is too often expressed in passtbn and 
 answered in bitterness. 
 
 And so long as the problem 1 stands the old slave 
 States of the South, unwillingly, protestingly, despair- 
 ingly, and yet inevitably, must be, and will be, the 
 continuing gap in the magnificent line of our national 
 unity. 
 
 To the white man of the South the problem hampers, 
 its material development. It halts our growth. By
 
 12 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 the records of the census it frightens immigration 
 from industrial competition with the negro. It largely 
 deters capital from investment in the shadow of an 
 unsolved problem. It makes a standard of labor that 
 prejudices all our Southern poor against menial but 
 honorable service. It depresses agriculture on the 
 farms and property in the suburbs, and drives all who 
 can afford the change to the safety afforded by prox- 
 imity and police protection in the cities. The South 
 is unequaled in the four great basic raw materials of 
 coal, iron, cotton and lumber. And yet, while $100,- 
 000,000 of our money goes yearly to Europe at 4 per 
 cent., these great fields are scantily developed. And 
 thus, while one great section of our country is halted 
 in development, the free movement of men and money 
 in all sections is hindered toward the inviting field of 
 opportunity. 
 
 It is a problem of moral decay. It demoralizes pol- 
 itics. Wherever a black supremacy is threatened 
 through a black majority the black ballot is strangled 
 without reserve in the black hands that hold it against 
 the safety of the State. This is wrong. It is illegal. 
 It is monstrous. But it is true. It is true in Georgia. 
 It is true in South Carolina. Aye, and it would be 
 true in Massachusetts and in Illinois. Put yourself, 
 men of Illinois, in the place of the people you perhaps 
 condemn. Suppose that by the steady drift of emi- 
 gration the negro had come from the South to be a 
 majority in every congressional district, in every legis- 
 lative precinct, and in every municipal ward of Illinois. 
 Suppose that, realizing this majority, he had organ- 
 ized to utilize it. Suppose that you looked forward, in 
 the next election, not only to the probability, but to 
 the absolute certainty, that the next governor of Illi- 
 nois would be a negro; that you would have two 
 negroes in the United States Senate to take the places
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 13 
 
 of Hopkins and of Cullom; that you would have a 
 solid negro delegation in Congress; a legislature at 
 Springfield looking like a blackbird pie; negro judges 
 on the bench; negro solicitors in your courts; negro 
 mayors in your chairs, and a negro policeman on your 
 streets let me ask you, man of Illinois, with your 
 pride in the past glories, and your confidence in the 
 future achievements of your historic State let me ask 
 you, if, in the shadow of this threat and danger, the 
 streets of Springfield and Chicago, and the woods an 1 
 prairies of Illinois, would not be filled with eager 
 white men asking how the South suppressed the ne- 
 gro vote? 
 
 And will you answer that frank question, man of 
 Illinois, or man of Massachusetts, like an honest Cau- 
 casian, and like an Anglo-Saxon gentleman? 
 
 But the stern and solemn necessity does not cure 
 the moral stain. The deadliest influence that can com- 
 pass a popular government is in the decay of the spirit 
 that hedges the ballot with sanctity. The ballot is 
 the palladium of our liberties. The ballot is sacred. 
 A crime against the ballot is a stab at the constitution, 
 and the necessity which makes the ballot the 
 sport of conditions must be removed if the re- 
 public shall survive. And yet the problem shows no 
 promise on this line. We might as well be honest 
 here. We might as well face stern facts with fearless 
 frankness. I do not say it is right. I know it is wrong. 
 I do not defend. I do not justify. I do not argue it 
 at all. But I am simply here to tell you plainly, defi- 
 nitely, resolutely, from the fulness and certainty of 
 knowledge, that which you already know, and that 
 which, under reversed conditions, you would unques- 
 tionably endorse that there will never come a change 
 in these suppressions while these conditions last. 
 
 Never, never in a thousand years will the negro,
 
 14 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 North or South, be allowed to govern in this republic, 
 even where his majorities are plain. We might as well 
 : fix this fact in our minds to stay. No statute can 
 eradicate, no public opinion can remove, no armed 
 force can overthrow, the inherent, invincible, inde- 
 structible, and, if you will, the unscrupulous capacity 
 .and determination of the Anglo-Saxon race to rule. 
 
 It is only the knife of surgery that can cure this 
 poison in the body and the bones of politics. Under 
 the shadow of the problem our politics must, and will, 
 be stained. 
 
 Good government at this point, and wherever this 
 black ballot is counted, is threatened, too, in its integ- 
 rity by the growing numbers and the increasing ve- 
 nality of this mercenary and irresponsible and ever- 
 purchasable vote, prolific of corruption, balancing be- 
 tween factions, and holding the mighty power of de- 
 cision in tremendous issues at the beck of a tribe or 
 the swell of a savage prejudice. 
 
 The problem also throttles political independence in 
 the South. We have been ready there for years to 
 divide on party lines. We do not dare to do it. With 
 the white race divided, the negro is held up once more 
 to the ballot-box and becomes the balance of power in 
 the policies of the time. We have our separate and 
 divergent convictions on economic issues. We crush 
 these under the iron heel of necessity. We have our 
 varying interests that would naturally be expressed 
 in opposing politics. We sacrifice these material is- 
 sues to the greater stake. And the great people of the 
 South, dominated and solidified by the fear of this 
 unwholesome balance, are whipped, protesting, into 
 line behind expediency, and forced to compulsory 
 union in a single party. The education of the hustings, 
 the friction of ideas, the vigilant watchfulness of jeal- 
 ous partisanship, and the political liberty of the
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 15 
 
 thinker and of the voter, are all lost in the shadow of 
 the somber apprehension. 
 
 In a land of light and liberty, in an age of enlight- 
 enment and law, the women of the South are prison- 
 ers to danger and fear. While your women may walk 
 from suburb to suburb, and from township to town- 
 ship, without escort and without alarm, there is not a 
 woman of the South, wife or daughter, who would be 
 permitted, or who would dare to walk at twilight un- 
 guarded through the residence streets of a populous 
 town, or to ride the outside highways at midday. The 
 terror of the twilight deepens with the darkness, and 
 in the rural regions every farmer leaves his home with 
 apprehension in the morning and thanks God when 
 he comes from the fields at evening to find all well 
 with the women of his home. For behind the preju- 
 dice of race stalks the fiend of lust, and behind the 
 rapist thunders the mob engine of vengeance, mon- 
 strous, lawless, deplorable, but, under the uncured de- 
 fects of the law the fiery terror of the criminal and 
 the chief defense of woman. 
 
 This is also a problem of justice. Fair as our de- 
 signs, and equitable as our verdicts, as tested by the 
 highest courts, the prejudice of race inevitably poisons 
 law and tempts justice, from the jury's box to the 
 judge's bench. 
 
 It is a problem of religious unity separating breth- 
 ren and dividing usefulness. For more than one great 
 religious body in this country, cherishing a common 
 creed, believing in one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 
 are sundered and set in separate and sectional camps 
 by the clash of convictions here. 
 
 It is a problem of numbers. Four million slaves 
 were freed. There are nine million negroes now. 
 The problem grows in difficulty with marvelously in- 
 creasing numbers, and is magnified in vitality by de- 
 lay. If antagonisms, now so fundamental, are not
 
 16 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 softened ; if prejudices, now so serious, are not healed, 
 then the future darkens, and we shall enter with 
 swollen numbers upon a period of strife and wrangle, 
 in whose perils our present troubles will not be remem- 
 bered. Optimism is easy. Optimism is popular. But 
 the logic of conditions is ominous with warning, and 
 it is braver to be honest and wiser to be prepared. 
 
 Here, then, the issues: Unity of the republic, ma- 
 terial development, purity of politics, political inde- 
 pendence, respect for the ballot, reverence for the con- 
 stitution, the safety of our homes, the sanctity of our 
 women, the supremacy of law, the sacredness of jus- 
 tice, the integrity of race, and the unity of the church. 
 There is not a phase of our civilization, there is not 
 a principle of our race, there is not a fundamental of 
 society, that is not wrapped in the hopeless tangle 
 which this problem weaves. 
 
 These are difficulties which compass the white man 
 of the -South. Heaven knows they are serious enough. 
 
 But what of the negro? It would be cruel and un- 
 kind to cast up the balances of this great account with- 
 out considering him. I speak the representative senti- 
 ment of the South when I say that we would not come 
 to the consideration of this tremendous issue without 
 a high and humane consideration for the negro. How 
 does the problem come to him, and what does the 
 future hold? 
 
 "Will the white man permit the negro to have an 
 equal part in the industrial, political, social and civil 
 advantages of the United States?" This, as I under- 
 stand it, is the question which involves his life and 
 destiny. 
 
 These words come from a negro the wisest, the 
 most thoughtful, and the most eloquent negro of his 
 time as discreet as Washington, a deeper thinker, 
 and a much more eloquent man. But for one hour of
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 17 
 
 the Atlanta exposition, Council, of Huntsville, might 
 stand to-day where Washington, of Tuskegee stands 
 as the recognized leader of his race. 
 
 This question, asked by Council, as the deliberate 
 representative of his people, is the core j^i the negro 
 problem. 
 
 The answer to it is in every white man's heart, even 
 if it does not lie openly on every white man's lips. It 
 may be expressed in diplomacy; it may be veiled in 
 indirection ; it may be softened in philanthropy ; it may 
 be guarded in politic utterance, and oftenest of all, it 
 is restrained by ultra conservatism and personal tim- 
 idity. But wherever the answer to this vital question 
 comes, stripped of verbiage and indirection, it rings 
 like a martial bugle in the single syllable "No !" 
 
 This may not be right, but it is honest. It may 
 not be just, but it is evident. It may not be politic, 
 but it is a great, glaring, indisputable, indestructible 
 fact. North and South, the answer, wherever it is 
 honest, is the same. I agree with Albion Tourgee 
 that there are not ten thousand men in the republic 
 who can answer that question in the affirmative. 
 Council knows the answer and states it with the cour- 
 age of a man. Bishop Turner knows it ; Bishop Hol- 
 sey knows it ; Bryden and Bruce and Taylor knew it ; 
 the Chicago papers know it; I think that Booker T. 
 Washington knows it sadly in his heart, and I believe 
 that every thoughtful gentleman who strips theory 
 from the bare form of fact knows it here and every- 
 where. 
 
 This is from first to last a race problem. It is an 
 issue of race and not of politics. It is a thing of skin 
 and type, and not of section or condition. It is a pail 
 of the universal problem. The history of man has 
 been written in a race antagonism and in race separa- 
 tion. The Hebrew and Egyptian, the Jew and the 
 
 2ns
 
 18 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 Gentile, the Turk and the Christian, Magyar and Hun- 
 garian, Venetian and Moor, Mexican and Texan, ne- 
 gro and Chinaman, white man and Indian the repul- 
 sion is the same. 
 
 A thousand years have not removed the prejudice 
 against the Jew, who is the aristocrat of history. How 
 then shall the negro hope to conquer where the Jew 
 has failed? This race prejudice has no sectional lines. 
 It is held in no geographical boundaries. Every issue 
 of the leading negro papers published in the North 
 reeks with protest against the discriminations exer- 
 cised throughout the North against the negro race. 
 Boston, the metropolis of abolition, will not employ 
 negroes in the department stores. Nor will Chicago. 
 The Boston "Globe" received a formal social protest 
 against the employment of a negro reporter on its 
 local staff. The sister's son of Wendell Phillips, rich 
 with the evangel blood of emancipation, refused to 
 associate with a negro in Harvard University. Fred 
 Douglas in his last speech declared that only one white 
 man in all the ranks of the abolitionists had ever per- 
 mitted him to forget in his presence that he was a 
 negro. There are 40,000 negroes in Ohio, Pennsyl- 
 vania and New York. Where is the office that they 
 hold, or the station of trust and profit that they fill? 
 In Mr. Crumpacker's State of Indiana they lynch ne- 
 groes almost as frequently and upon much less provo- 
 cation than in Georgia. A riot raised on race preju- 
 dice reddened the central avenues of New York. Chi- 
 cago citizens chased a negro through the central 
 streets, ready with a rope to visit capital punishment 
 for theft. Boston elected a negro by accident to her 
 common council, and then offered him $10,000 to re- 
 move his offensive color from the chamber in which 
 he served. 
 
 Race prejudice is as old as the world, and as ever-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 19 
 
 lasting as the hills, and this prejudice deep, uncircum- 
 scribed and uneradicable sits like a shadow on the 
 future of the weaker race. It makes the core of his 
 problem, and it answers Council's earnest question 
 with an inexorable "No !" 
 
 Under this prejudice the negro can never, North 
 or South, be received in equal social and personal 
 relations with the families of the white race, and can 
 never, therefore, be a social equal with the white man. 
 
 Under this prejudice he will never, North or South, 
 be permitted to govern in any State or country, even 
 where he has a majority, and he can never, therefore, 
 foe a political equal. 
 
 If he can have, then, neither social nor political 
 equality and every fact and all theory and all in- 
 stinct and every unbroken precedent declare that he 
 can not then he can never under these conditions 
 reach the full development of a citizen or the full 
 stature of a man. If he remains in this country, he 
 must remain as an inferior, and his suffrage becomes 
 a mockery and his liberty a farce. 
 
 It is a problem for the negro, because he can never 
 compete with Anglo-Saxon civilization. Once more 
 I recall that his is the weakest and ours the strongest 
 race on earth. Our majority is 60,000,000, and we 
 have a thousand years the start of him. No race has 
 ever competed successfully with the Saxon, and where 
 is the hope of the negro? In politics, in society, in 
 industry and in trade there is no well-founded hope 
 for the inferior race. History without a break, and 
 precedent without a variation, proclaim this to be true. 
 There is not a line of light or promise of equality for 
 him in any field. 
 
 This is the core of my contention the basis of my 
 argument. All our splendid platitudes are wrecked on 
 this stern fact. All our brave philanthropies beat out
 
 20 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 their beautiful lives on this inexorable truth. The ne- 
 gro fronts a hopeless and unequal competition ! 
 
 There he stands, that helpless and unfortunate in- 
 ferior. For his sake the one difference has widened 
 between the sections of our common country. Ovcr 
 his black body we have shed rivers of blood and treas- 
 ure to emphasize our separate convictions of his des- 
 tiny. And yet, as the crimson tide rolls away into the 
 years, we realize that all this blood and treasure and 
 travail was spent in vain, and that the negro, whom a 
 million Americans died to free, is in present bond and 
 future promise still a slave, whipped by circumstance,, 
 trodden under foot by iron and ineradicable prejudice ; 
 shut out forever from the opportunities which are the 
 heritage of liberty, and holding in his black hand the 
 hollow parchment of his franchise as a free man, looks 
 through a slave's eyes at the impassable barriers which- 
 imprison him forever within the progress and achieve- 
 ment of a dominant and all-conquering race. 
 
 By the whole unbroken record of Anglo-Saxon his- 
 tory, I swear that this is true. 
 
 Two things seem clear, then, in relation to the race 
 problem. In its present status it compasses the pro- 
 gress of the white man with demoralization and diffi- 
 culty that puts his very civilization in peril and dis- 
 repute. 
 
 In its present status it wraps the negro's destiny in 
 unequal competition and leaves him helpless under 
 the weight of a prejudice universal, unlifting, un- 
 changing, and overwhelming. 
 
 Shall this experiment go on? 
 
 Will education soften these conditions and bring 
 the experiment to success? Serious thinkers deeply 
 question this. By the record of the census, the negro's 
 criminality has increased as his illiteracy has de- 
 creased, and his race antagonism has grown with his-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 21 
 
 intelligence. Education brings light, and light per- 
 ception, and with quickened faculties the negro sees 
 the difference between his real and his constitutional 
 status in the republic. He sees that neither worth nor 
 merit nor attainment can overcome the world-wide 
 repulsion of type and color; and, seeing this, he is 
 moved to rebellious protest and sometimes to violent 
 revenge. Education spoils the laborer and makes in- 
 evitably, and logically, and laudably, the aspirant for 
 social and political equalities which have been, and 
 will be, forever denied him by the ruling race. Edu- 
 cation develops wants which can not be supplied, and 
 aspirations which never can be met. Industrial edu- 
 cation will not win where mental education has faile-'l 
 The hand is not greater than the head. Industrial 
 competition will make a sterner struggle with the su- 
 perior people. The battle of the loaf will be the dead- 
 liest and most destructive contest of the races. 
 
 Will the formal repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment 
 cut the core from the political problem, and develop 
 peace? I do not think so. The elimination of the 
 negro from politics would remove him from strife and 
 wrangle, and destroy the sectional bitterness with 
 which his history has divided the republic. But it 
 would cut hope and motive and ambition from his 
 horizon, and leave him sunken and degraded, with 
 nothing to live for but his creature comfort and his 
 lust. 
 
 Will religion heal the problem and lose the preju- 
 dice of race in the brotherhood of man? Not this 
 side of the millennium not before the coming of 
 Christ will human nature undergo the regeneration 
 that will bring this result to pass. If the spirit of 
 Christ could pervade the world if the devil of preju- 
 dice could be held in bondage for a thousand years 
 when the world is the new heaven ; when man is every-
 
 22 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 where the image of his Maker these things may then 
 be solved in the alembic of religion. But "ifs" are in- 
 tangible, "whens" are immaterial, and both are millen- 
 nial. For when these "ifs" are materialized into 
 "is'es," and the "whens" are crystallized into "nows," 
 then, indeed, this corruptible shall have put on incor- 
 ruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality 
 in the land where prejudice is ended and problems 
 have no place. 
 
 Can the strong race lift up the weaker to its level? 
 Not in contact, not in proximity. Never. In the long, 
 slow process the higher would inevitably sink nearer 
 to the level of the lower race. Inferior races absorb- 
 the vices rather than the virtues of the superior race. 
 The Hawaiian has degenerated in health and morals 
 by contact with the English-speaking race. The 
 Turanian and Tasmanian races perished by contact 
 with higher civilization. The Maoris and New Zeal- 
 anders suffered so, and the noble red man is to-day a 
 besotted wretch perishing in the white heat of a civil- 
 ization for which he was never designed. Not in 
 equal relations, not side by side, can the higher race 
 reform the lower. Apart and separate, by missionary 
 and evangel, by example and by counsel, we may help 
 an inferior race to be helpful, self-reliant, and free. 
 But not under the shadow of our robust and stalwart 
 sins, or under the iron weight of our all-conquering 
 evils. History stamps discouragement on the theory 
 everywhere. 
 
 May God keep this great Caucasian people from- 
 the poison of a "mongrel" blood ! 
 
 Is there any other remedy ? Is there any other balm 
 in Gilead? Is there any healing here? Not within 
 my vision, and not within the records of experience. 
 Try all these remedies, test them all as they have all 
 been tested and mocked in the trials of the years. Try
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE EACES. 23 
 
 any new remedy that wisdom or quackery may pro- 
 pose. And when we have tried them all, and have 
 failed in all, as we are failing and will forever fail, it 
 may be that Almighty God, the last imminent factor 
 in the destiny of nations, will strike the scales from 
 our blinded eyes and lead us by elimination and higher 
 logic to see the remedy the only remedy His 
 remedy. 
 
 For on the single occasion when the skies were 
 parted for light upon the problem of the wrangling 
 races, Almighty God reached down to Egypt and by 
 the definite way of separation, led by the Jews, His 
 chosen people, over seas of difficulty and through 
 wildernesses of doubt to their promised land. 
 
 Separation of the races is the way the only way. 
 If God "hath made of one blood all the nations of the 
 earth," He hath also "established unto them the metes 
 and bounds of their habitation !" He did not intend 
 that opposite and antagonistic races should live to- 
 gether. The prejudice of race is a pointing of provi- 
 dence, and the antagonism of peoples is the fixed 
 policy by which God peoples the different portions of 
 the universe and establishes the individuality of the 
 nations. The act that brought these people together 
 on this continent was a sin of the fathers a sin of 
 greed, an iniquity of trade and the sorrow and suffer- 
 ing of the present is for the sin of the past, a sin 
 against nature, and a sin against God. The curse can 
 be lifted only when nature is vindicated and God is 
 obeyed. The problem will be solved only when the 
 negro is restored to the "bounds of his habitation." 
 
 The wisdom of our wise men has fallen in line with 
 the wisdom of the Almighty. Some of the greatest 
 names and greatest hearts in all our history have 
 thought and said that separation was the logical, the 
 inevitable, the only solution. Daniel Webster said so.
 
 24 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 Thomas Jefferson said so, most definitely and elo- 
 quently. Edward Everett said so. James Madison 
 said so. Henry Clay believed and said it. Twice in 
 his glorious and illustrious lifetime, Abraham Lin- 
 coln, who did not believe in the negro as a citizen and 
 a voter, moved in his public station toward a definite 
 plan of separation. By the sending of Thomas For- 
 tune to the Philippines, President Roosevelt is, infer- 
 entially at least, in consideration of a similar plan. 
 Henry Grady believed in it. Bishop Turner is its open 
 advocate. Blyden and Council and Taylor, and the 
 ablest leaders of the race, are said to favor it ; and I 
 think that Booker Washington in his heart knows that 
 neither worth nor merit nor achievement will ever 
 bridge the impassable barrier of race prejudice, and 
 that, when the last arrow of his noble but hopeless 
 effort has been shot, it must come to this at last. 
 
 We have temporized for forty years upon this prob- 
 lem. In the exhaustion of all our expedients, in the 
 failure of all our theories, and in the providence of 
 God, we have come at last to the parting of the ways. 
 
 There is not a hope in fact or reason for the negro 
 outside of separation. 
 
 There is no peace, no purity, no tranquil develop- 
 ment, no durable prosperity, and no moral growth for 
 the white race outside of separation. 
 
 It is neither impossible nor impracticable. The ele- 
 ments are willing and the way is in reach. This is not 
 a day of impossibilities. To the genius, the energy, 
 and the necessities of this age all things are possible. 
 Every day sees the business world, the educational 
 world, the political world converting the impossible 
 into the possible. The hand of the Almighty is stead- 
 ily opening the way. 
 
 It is a day of large things, a day of magnificent en- 
 terprises, a day of colossal movements everywhere.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 25 
 
 England has offered a kingdom tract in Africa to 
 the Jews of the world. The Zionist congress in Switz- 
 erland has met the offer, and the children of Israel- 
 God's chosen people scattered for centuries through 
 all the world, will come trooping back to re-establish 
 Israel as a nation and to make a New Jerusalem upon 
 ihe earth. Wonderful and inspiring spectacle! Is 
 there anything so wonderful, so marvelous, as this in 
 the proposition to establish a compact, gregarious and 
 comparatively docile race of negroes in a State or 
 country of their own? 
 
 Is the expense appalling? Is the cost prohibitive? 
 England again offers an example. England, our 
 mother-country England, next to ourselves, the 
 greatest and most enlightened government under the 
 sun England has just put its hand into its pocket 
 to expend $500,000,000 in order to buy out the Irish 
 landlords and to heal the otherwise incurable running 
 sore of Irish discontent. Wonderful liberality ! Won- 
 derful statesmanship! 
 
 We are as rich as England richer than England 
 and twice as rich as any other kingdom in the world. 
 We have as great a stake, as tremendous a necessity 
 in this negro problem as England had with Ireland. 
 We have already expended $i ,,000,000,000 in the futile 
 effort to make the negro free. If England, just out 
 of the war in Africa, can expend $500,000,000 to solve 
 its Irish problem, then surely, the greatest of republics, 
 in this era of peace and unparalleled prosperity at 
 the acme of its wealth, at the zenith of its greatness 
 .and power can well afford to put a few hundred mil- 
 lions into the solution of the vital problem of its races 
 a problem demoralizing to one race and hopeless 
 for another ; a problem that menaces unity, purity and 
 peace. Liberality in this emergency is superb econ- 
 omy.
 
 26 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 The argument of analogy would seem conclusive. 
 
 Somewhere, and in some way, if the races are to 
 separate, there must be found a place for the negro, a 
 plan of separation, an inducement, and the consent cf 
 the elements involved. Briefly and in fragmentary 
 outline., let us consider these. 
 
 In the matter of location. Follow first the inferen- 
 tial line of the President of the United States the 
 Philippines. Thomas Fortune's mission was said to 
 be successful. His report was published that the Phil- 
 ippine soil and climate was suited to the negro; that 
 the territory was ample, and that on one of these 
 islands he believed the fortunes of the negro and the 
 Dative might be worked out side by side. It may be 
 that the islands of the sea were placed by Providence 
 in our keeping to furnish an answer to the problem 
 of the times. The repatriation of Africa is the senti- 
 mental ideal of the advocates of separation to go 
 back to the Dark Continent from which they came, 
 carrying the light, the law and the gospel of the great 
 republic, after two centuries of touch, and side by side 
 with the children of Israel, to establish anew the 
 merits and the mission of an unfortunate race. If 
 there be those who would oppose on philanthropic 
 grounds the sending of the negro so far out of reach 
 of help and regulation, there is land to be had at home. 
 Lower California might be secured. The lands west 
 of Texas might be had. But the government does not 
 need to purchase. Four hundred million acres of gov- 
 ernment land is yet untaken and undeveloped in the 
 West. Of these vast acres the expert hydrographer 
 of the Interior Department has reported that it is 
 easily possible to redeem by irrigation enough to sup- 
 port in plenty a population of sixty million people. 
 So that the question of location is secure. A grega- 
 rious race might be settled anywhere within this scope
 
 THE PEOBLEM OF THE EACES. 27 
 
 of suggestion with a population not so dense as that 
 of Belgium and the Netherlands. The cost would 
 vary with the location, but under any conservative 
 plan it would not be greater than England will spend 
 in Ireland, and not nearly so much as the Jews for 
 their New Jerusalem. 
 
 No reasonable or considerate plan would call for 
 the wholesale or summary deportation of the negro. 
 With his consent, and with governmental aid, the 
 movement might proceed slowly and with consider- 
 ation. The older negroes would scarcelv care to go. 
 They are passing rapidly to a land that our problems 
 can not reach. Within conservative limits, the trans- 
 portation even to Africa would be practicable and 
 easy. If only the vessels that brought foreigners to our 
 shores from 1880 to 1885 had carried back to Africa 
 as many negroes as they brought immigrants to us, 
 not a single black man, woman or child would have 
 been left in the country in 1885 ! Carl McKinley, the 
 ablest and clearest statistician who has ever figured on 
 this line, has made it plain that to induce the annual 
 emigration of 12,500 child-bearing females of the aver- 
 age age of twenty years, would remove the maternal 
 element of the negro race in forty years, and leave it 
 easy to carry the remaining part. To remove in forty 
 years all the negroes who are now under the age of 
 forty years, and to remove the increase only all the 
 children who shall be born within these forty years 
 would be the remainder of the problem an easy and 
 practicable task. And the same cool statistician, figur- 
 ing liberally and counting it as sure that the govern- 
 ment would do what it unquestionably ought to do, 
 and send these people with some moneyed provision 
 for their earlier wants, estimates that at $200 a head it 
 would cost only $10,000,000 a year, which is less than 
 one-twelfth of the nation's revenue from its internal
 
 28 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 taxes, or in forty years the total cost would be $400,- 
 000,000 or $100,000,000 less than England has just 
 paid for peace and tranquility in Ireland. If any of 
 you who hear should care to investigate this phase of 
 the question deeply, and to carry these calculations 
 forward, you will find Mr. McKinley's book, "An Ap- 
 peal to Pharaoh," one of the most instructive and con- 
 vincing volumes you have ever read. 
 
 Of course, in the event of locating the negro in this 
 -country, the cost would be largely but indefinitely re- 
 duced. 
 
 Whether a State or colony should be the form of 
 government would be within the discretion of the 
 statesmen who put this plan into action. If a State, 
 it would have the model and example of our own 
 States to shape its plan and government. It might be 
 made a counterpart of our surrounding States ; for the 
 negro's is an imitative mind, and he could not find a 
 nobler model. If a State, it should be exclusively a 
 negro State. Every office in it, from chief justice of 
 the court to coroner of the county, should be held ex- 
 clusive to the negro race. Every white man should 
 "be debarred from right of franchise or of holding 
 property in that State. It should be especially if 
 in this country from first to last a negro State hold- 
 ing its rights under the Constitution the right to rep- 
 resentation in the Federal congress paying its taxes 
 to the government, but holding every right free and 
 unchallenged, equal in every way to Illinois or Geor- 
 gia. In the distribution of the army there might be 
 placed a Federal garrison on its border for protection 
 without and order within the State. 
 
 The superb inducement to the negro would be 
 found in the freedom, the individuality, and the oppor- 
 tunity of an independent commonwealth, in which he 
 would be freed from the unequal competition of a su-
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE EACES. 2& 
 
 perior people, and given a chance to develop a char- 
 acter, and to demonstrate the merits of his leaders and 
 the capacities of the race. 
 
 The constraining inducement to go should most 
 unquestionably be given in an amendment to the Con- 
 stitution which restricted his ballot to the State set 
 apart for him by the generosity of the government. 
 This would be fair. It would be equitable. Let no 
 white man vote in the negro State to harass the negru 
 councils, and let no negro vote in any other State than 
 his own. Yon cannot vote in Georgia ; I cannot vote 
 in Illinois. The hardship is not great in view of the 
 tremendous reasons that require it, and in return for 
 the magnificent advantages which compensate it. 
 This provision would be necessary as a controlling 
 inducement for the change. Every aspiration in the 
 negro race should set toward the state of his oppor- 
 tunity. And if, with this great goal before him, he 
 hesitated to go, or failed in going, it would be the last 
 crowning proof of the hopeless and remediless infe- 
 riority of his people. Never was proposition fairer. 
 Never was compensation nobler to a race. A flag for 
 a fetich ; a country for a prison ; and a glorious and 
 unhindered opportunity for the empty mockery of a 
 ballot, which has been and will be strangled here for- 
 ever in his grasp. 
 
 Will the negro go? I think honestly and deliber- 
 ately that he will. The protest of the very few weil- 
 fed, well-kept, and well-conditioned negroes who sur- 
 round us here must not blind us to the plea of the 
 helpless and hopeless thousands who see no light in 
 the present and no hope in their future environment. 
 Many of the ablest and truest leaders of the race are 
 ardent advocates of separation. Bishop Turner, the 
 wisest and most conservative leader of his race, is the 
 advocate and evangel of a negro republic in Africa.
 
 30 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 Ten thousand negroes in Kansas petitioned congress 
 to appropriate money for a plan of separation. As 
 a recognized advocate of the plan, I have had thous- 
 ands of letters from negroes thanking me and bidding 
 me God-speed with their prayers. Societies have been 
 formed all over the country, some of them doing me 
 the honor to bear my name, to organize the coopera- 
 tive movement for a separate state. A circular car- 
 rying the plan was put ten years ago into the hands 
 of one of the ablest and most eloquent negroes of the 
 South. He carried it, not to persuade, but to explain 
 to leading negroes in every section of the country, 
 and out of 5,000 circulars 4,500 came back to us bear- 
 ing the deliberate, grateful approval of the best repre- 
 sentatives of the negro race. I believe that, fairly 
 presented to his intelligence, fairly appealing to his 
 love of change, and with a general understanding of 
 its advantages and opportunities, the negro will thank 
 God and bless America for a plan like this. 
 
 Will the white South be willing for the negro to go ' 
 I frankly confess the promise of some opposition to 
 ihe idea in the South. Paradoxical as it may seem, the 
 South loves the negro not the new negro, but the 
 old. In his place and in the relations clearly under- 
 stood, there is a feeling of affection between the south- 
 ern white man and the better negroes which our 
 friends to the north of us can never appreciate and 
 never understand. But the relations of the races in 
 the South are constantly growing more strained and 
 unpleasant. The new negro is killing the relation 
 established by the old negro. Every year the reluc- 
 tance of the South to part with the negro is lessened, 
 and the multiplying crimes and increasing unthrift of 
 the negro are changing this reluctance to a positive 
 anxiety for his departure. 
 
 The chief opposition in the South would rest upon
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 31 
 
 the misapprehension, which you doubtless share, that 
 the negro is indispensable to the agriculture and labor 
 conditions of that section. That was once true. It 
 is no longer true. I state here for the first time a fact 
 which will be as surprising to the South as it is to you ; 
 The negro no longer makes the staple or cereal crops 
 of the South ! The cotton of Texas, of Louisiana, and 
 of Mississippi is made chiefly by the white man and 
 not by the negro! The negro is no longer an indus- 
 trial necessity. This fact is from the census. It is 
 not as yet published, but it comes straight from an 
 authority beyond question in the Labor Bureau at 
 Washington. It is being verified and understood bv 
 the best observers and thinkers of the States ; and 
 when that fact that tremendous fact, now so little 
 understood becomes generally known in the country 
 and in the South, then the South will stand as solidly 
 for separation as its humblest representative stands 
 for it here to-day. 
 
 And if this means the reduction of our representa- 
 tion in Congress, let that come. It would be a tem- 
 porary loss. The exodus of the negro will let in the 
 tides of an improved and restricted immigration, and 
 the working Swede, the thrifty German, and the gal- 
 lant Irishman will come in to renew our political sta- 
 tus and to fill the hiatus with a homogeneous people. 
 
 Will the northern white man be willing for the ne- 
 gro to go? 
 
 The politician, unthinking, and the philanthropist, 
 far-thinking and generally over-thinking, answers, 
 "No!" The masses the real people answer, "Yes !" 
 Recent events have uncovered a revolution of senti- 
 ment in the North toward the negro. The masses 
 have been disillusioned. The idleness, the ingrati- 
 tude, the insolence, and the crime of the negro have 
 alienated even his friends. Even the philanthropists
 
 32 THE PEOBLEM OF THE KACES. 
 
 must be hopeless at least over the unchanged and un- 
 changing conditions which they protest. As for the 
 politicians, they are parrots echoes of opinions, 
 which they follow, but never make. The masses, 
 in some things at least, are the masters of the politi- 
 cians and the masses see the truth. 
 
 Standing here to-day, and standing as I have so 
 often stood before the real people of the North and 
 West, understanding their spirit and their temper, I 
 announce before you, without hesitation and without 
 reserve, that upon this issue and under the new light 
 which the decade has brought it, I would be willing 
 with absolute confidence to submit to the vote of the 
 real people of the North and West the whole question 
 of the South and the negro whether that issue be 
 disfranchisement or whether it be separation ! 
 
 Let the negro continue to settle in the North, as he 
 has done. And if the problem continues, it will bo 
 our only recourse to persuade him to settle in these 
 great centers where our brethren may share and un- 
 derstand our perplexities. Let the tide continue to 
 drift here and the day will come when the laboring 
 masses of the North will arise and demand a separa- 
 tion just as sternly as they demanded and secured the 
 exclusion of the Chinese. 
 
 The philanthropist will grow weary, the theorist 
 will despair, and the politician in time will undergo a 
 change of heart. And we all shall come in the fulness 
 of real philanthropy, and in the soundness of real dis- 
 cretion, to see the only solution the one remedy 
 and to follow it in the fear of God and in the faith of 
 the people, to prosperity and peace. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, my message is given and 
 my mission is done. The scope of the discussion is 
 too vast for an hour and too deep for a morning's 
 thought. I have offered the bare elements which your
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 33 
 
 brains and your scholarship must clothe with the form 
 and substance of more elaborate truth. May the 
 words which have been spoken in weakness be raised 
 in strength, and may you see my people and their 
 problem as you have not done before. 
 
 Let my parting words plead for the harmony and 
 sympathy which lie for us beyond this dividing issue. 
 Abraham Lincoln told you in 1859 that the Union 
 "could not survive half slave and half free." I believe 
 with all my mind that if he lived to-day his noble lips 
 would frame again the truth that the Union cannot 
 any longer live half black and half white half slave 
 and half free ! This is an issue upon which it seems 
 we can never agree. 
 
 For half a hundred years we have wrangled and 
 fought and bled and died about this black man from 
 Africa! Is the wrangle worth its fearful cost? Shall 
 the great northern section of our common country 
 always turn its hand against the great southern sec- 
 tion of our country? Shall the young American of 
 the North steel his heart against the young American 
 of the South over an alien's cause ? Shall the children 
 of one blood and of a common glorious heritage di- 
 vide in bitterness over a stranger in our midst ? Shall 
 the memories of Eutaw and Yorktown be obliterated 
 in the recollections of Wilmington and Newnan? 
 Shall the peace and harmony of this great republic be 
 forever imperiled for the sake of the negro, whose 
 faults and whose weakness so wonderfully outweigh 
 his virtues and his gratitude? Shall the black man 
 from Africa hinder and delay the work and the des- 
 tiny of our imperial race? 
 
 Great God! The idea is monstrous and unthink- 
 able ! The South is neither cruel nor unpatriotic, and 
 the North knows it. The North is neither immov- 
 able nor vindictive, and the South knows it. If either 
 
 3 ns
 
 34 THE PROBLEM OF THE RACES. 
 
 of us is mistaken, and if both of us are misunderstood, 
 we are yet one people, and we must meet upon the 
 plane of our brotherhood and our destiny. 
 
 Men and women of the University, I appeal to you 
 who make the future. I appeal for Caucasian unity. 
 I appeal for the imperial destiny of our mighty race. 
 This is our country. We made it. We molded it. 
 We control it, and we always will. We have done 
 great things. We have mighty things yet to do. The 
 negro is an accident an unwilling, a blameless, but 
 an unwholesome, unwelcome, helpless, unassimilable 
 element in our civilization. He is not made for our 
 times. He is not framed to share in the duty and the 
 destiny which he perplexes and beclouds. Let us put 
 him kindly and humanely out of the way. Let us give 
 him a better chance than he has ever had in history, 
 and let us have done with him. Let us solve his prob- 
 lem frankly, fearlessly, nobly, and speedily. Let us 
 put it behind us. Let us purify our politics of the 
 perplexity. Let us liberate the South to vote and to 
 think like free-men upon the mighty issues of the 
 times. 
 
 And in the name of history and destiny, in the name 
 of the past and in the name of the future, in the name 
 of God and of our mission, I appeal to this great, con- 
 quering Caucasian race to lock arms and go forward 
 and onward and upward to its essential work.
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 BY HENRY W. GRADY. 
 
 Mr. President: Bidden by your invitation to a dis- 
 cussion of the race problem forbidden by occasion 
 to make a political speech I appreciate in trying to 
 reconcile orders with propriety the predicament of the 
 little maid who, bidden to learn to swim, was yet ad- 
 jured, "Now, go, my darling, hang your clothes on a 
 hickory limb, and don't go near the water." 
 
 The stoutest apostle of the church, they say, is the 
 missionary, and the missionary, wherever he unfurls 
 his flag, will never find himself in deeper need of unc- 
 tion and address than I, bidden to-night to plant the 
 standard of a Southern Democrat in Boston's ban- 
 quet-hall, and discuss the problem of the races in the 
 home of Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr. President, 
 if a purpose to speak in perfect frankness and sin- 
 cerity; if earnest understanding of the vast interests 
 involved ; if a consecrating sense of what disaster may 
 follow further misunderstanding and estrangement, if 
 these may be counted to steady undisciplined speech 
 and to strengthen an untried arm then, sir, I find the 
 courage to proceed. 
 
 Happy am I that this mission has brought my feet 
 at last to press New England's historic soil, and my 
 eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. 
 Here, within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker 
 Hill where Webster thundered and Longfellow sang, 
 Emerson thought and Channing preached here in 
 the cradle of American letters, and almost of Ameri- 
 
 (35)
 
 36 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 can liberty, I hasten to make the obeisance that every 
 American owes New England when first he stands 
 uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange appari- 
 tion ! This stern and unique figure carved from the 
 ocean and the. wilderness its majesty kindling and 
 growing amid the storms of winters and of wars 
 until at last the gloom was broken, its beauty dis- 
 closed in the sunshine, and the heroic workers rested 
 at its base while startled kings and emperors gazed 
 and marveled that from the rude touch of this hand- 
 ful, cast on a bleak and unknown shore, should have 
 come the embodied genius of human government, and 
 the perfected model of human liberty ! God bless the 
 memory of those immortal workers and prosper the 
 fortunes of their living sons and perpetuate the in- 
 spirations of their handiwork. 
 
 Two years ago, sir, I spoke some words in New 
 York that caught the attention of the North. As I 
 stand here to reiterate, as I have done everywhere, 
 every word I then uttered to declare that the senti- 
 ments I then avowed were universally approved in the 
 South I realize that the confidence begotten by that 
 speech is largely responsible for my presence here to- 
 night. I should dishonor myself if I betrayed that 
 confidence by uttering one insincere word, or by with- 
 holding one essential element of the truth. Apropos 
 of this last, let me confess, Mr. President before the 
 praise of New England has died on my lips that I 
 believe the best product of her present life is the pro- 
 cession of 17,000 Vermont Democrats that for twenty- 
 two years, undiminished by death, unrecruited by 
 birth or conversion, have marched over their rugged 
 hills, cast their democratic ballots, and gone back 
 home to pray for their unregenerate neighbors, and 
 awake to read the record of 25,000 Republican ma-
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 37 
 
 jority. May God of the helpless and the heroic help 
 them and may their sturdy tribe increase! 
 
 Far to the south, Mr. President, separated from 
 this section by a line, once defined in irrepressible dif- 
 ference, once traced in fraticidal blood,and now, thank 
 Cod, but a vanishing shadow, lies the fairest and rich- 
 est domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave 
 and hospitable people. There, is centered all that can 
 please or prosper humankind. A perfect climate, 
 above a fertile soil, yields to the husbandman every 
 product of the temperate zone. There, by night the 
 cotton whitens beneath the stars, and by day the 
 wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf. In the 
 same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, 
 and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. 
 There, are mountains stored with exhaustless treas- 
 ures ; forests, vast and primeval, and rivers that, tum- 
 bling or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of the 
 three essential items of all industries cotton, iron and 
 wood that region has easy control. In cotton, a fixed 
 monopoly in iron, proven supremacy in timber, the 
 reserve supply of the Republic. From this assured 
 and permanent advantage, against which artificial 
 conditions can not much longer prevail, has grown 
 an amazing system of industries. Not maintained by 
 human contrivance of tariff or capital, afar off from 
 the fullest and cheapest source of supply, but resting 
 in Divine assurance, within touch of field and mine 
 and forest not set amid costly farms from which 
 competition has driven the farmer in despair, but amid 
 cheap and sunny lands, rich with agriculture, to which 
 neither season nor soil has set a limit this system of 
 industries is mounting to a splendor that shall dazzle 
 and illumine the world. 
 
 That, sir, is the picture and the promise of my home 
 a land better and fairer than I have told you, and
 
 38 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 yet but fit setting, in its material excellence, for the 
 loyal and gentle quality of its citizenship. Against 
 that, sir, we have New England, recruiting the Re- 
 public from its sturdy loins, shaking from its over- 
 crowded hives new swarms of workers and touching 
 this land all over with its energy and its courage. And 
 yet, while in the Eldorado of which I have told you, 
 but 15 per cent, of lands are cultivated, Its mines 
 scarcely touched and its population so scant that, were 
 it set equidistant, the sound of the human voice could 
 not be heard from Virginia to Texas while on the 
 threshold of nearly every house in New England 
 stands a son, seeking with troubled eyes some new 
 land in which to carry his modest patrimony, the 
 strange fact remains that in 1880 the South had fewer 
 Northern-born citizens than she had in 1870 fewer 
 in '70 than in '60. Why is this? Why is it, sir, 
 though the sectional line be now but a mist that the 
 breath may dispel, fewer men of the North have 
 crossed it over to the South than when it was crimson 
 with the best blood of the Republic, or even when the 
 slaveholder stood guard every inch of its way? 
 
 There can be but one answer. It is the very prob- 
 lem we are now to consider. The key that opens that 
 problem will unlock to the world the fairest half of 
 this Republic, and free the halted feet of thousands 
 whose eyes are already kindled with its beauty. Bet- 
 ter than this, it will open the hearts of brothers for 
 thirty years estranged, and clasp in lasting comrade- 
 ship a million hands now withheld in doubt. Noth- 
 ing, sir, but this problem, and the suspicions it breeds, 
 hinders a clear understanding and a perfect union. 
 Nothing else stands between us and such love as 
 bound Georgia and Massachusetts at ValleyForge and 
 Yorktown, chastened by the sacrifices at Manasses 
 and Gettysburg, and illumined with the coming of
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 39 
 
 better work and a nobler destiny than was ever 
 wrought with the sword or sought at the cannon s 
 mouth. 
 
 If this does not invite your patient hearing to-night 
 hear one thing more. My people, your brothers in 
 the South brothers in blood, in destiny, in all that 
 is best in our past and future are so beset with this 
 problem that their very existence depends upon its 
 right solution. Nor are they wholly to blame for its 
 presence. The slave-ships of the Republic sailed from 
 your ports the slaves worked in our fields. You will 
 not defend the traffic, nor I the institution. But I do 
 hereby declare that in its wise and human administra- 
 tion, in lifting the slave to heights of which he had 
 not dreamed in his savage home, and giving him a 
 happiness he has not yet found in freedom our fath- 
 ers left their sons a saving and excellent heritage. 
 In the storm of war this institution was lost. I thank 
 God as heartily as you do that human slavery is gone 
 forever from the American soil. But the freedman re- 
 mains. With him a problem without precedent or 
 parallel. Note its appalling conditions. Two utterly 
 dissimilar races on the same soil with equal political 
 and civil rights almost equal in numbers, but terri- 
 bly unequal in intelligence and responsibility each 
 pledged against fusion one for a century in servi- 
 tude to the other, and freed at last by a desolating war 
 the experiment sought by neither, but approached- 
 by both with doubt these are the conditions. Under 
 these, adverse at every point, we are required to carry 
 these two races in peace and honor to the end. Never, 
 sir, has such a task been given to mortal stewardship. 
 Never before in this Republic has the white race di- 
 vided on the rights of an alien race. The red man 
 was cut down as a weed, because he hindered the way 
 of the American citizen. The yellow man was shut
 
 40 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 out of this Republic because he is an alien and in- 
 ferior. The red man was owner of the land the yel- 
 low man highly civilized and assimilable but they 
 hindered both sections and are gone ! But the black 
 man, affecting but one section, is clothed with every 
 privilege of government and pinned to the soil, and 
 my people commended to make good at any hazard, 
 and at any cost, his full and equal heirship of Ameri- 
 can privilege and prosperity. It matters not that 
 wherever the whites and blacks have touched, in any 
 era, or any clime, there has been irreconcilable vio- 
 lence. It matters not that no two races, however simi- 
 lar, have lived anywhere at any time on the same soil 
 with equal rights in peace ! In spite of these things, 
 we are commanded to make good this change of 
 American policy which has not perhaps changed 
 American prejudice to make certain here what has 
 elsewhere been impossible between whites and blacks 
 and to reverse, under the very worst conditions, the 
 universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, 
 to this superhuman task with an impatience that 
 brooks no delay a rigor that accepts no excuse 
 and a suspicion that discourages frankness and sin- 
 cerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so 
 interwoven with our industrial fabric that we can not 
 disentangle it if we would so bound up in our honor- 
 able obligation to the world, that we would not, if we 
 could. Can we solve it? The God who gave it into 
 our hands, He alone can know. But this the weak- 
 est and wisest of us do know : we can not solve it with 
 less than your tolerant and patient sympathy with 
 less than the knowledge that the blood that runs in 
 your veins is our blood and that when we have done 
 our best, whether the issue be lost or won, we shall 
 feel your strong arms about us and hear the beating 
 of your approving hearts.
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 41 
 
 The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men of 
 the South the men whose genius made glorious 
 every page of the first seventy years of American his- 
 tory whose courage and fortitude you tested in five 
 years of the fiercest war whose energy has made 
 bricks without straw, and spread splendor amid the 
 ashes of their war-wasted homes these men wear this 
 problem in their hearts and their brains, by day and 
 by night. They realize, as you can not, what this 
 problem means what they owe to this kindly and de- 
 pendent race the measure of their debt to the world 
 in whose despite they defended and maintained slav- 
 ery. And though their feet are hindered in -its under- 
 growth, and their march encumbered with its bur- 
 dens, they have lost neither the patience from which 
 comes clearness, nor the faith from which comes 
 courage. Nor, sir, when in passionate moments is 
 disclosed to them that vague and awful shadow, with 
 its lurid abysses and its crimson stains, into which I 
 pray God they may never go, are they struck with 
 more of apprehension than is needed to complete their 
 consecration ! 
 
 Such is the temper of my people. But what of the 
 problem itself? Mr. President, we need not go one 
 step further unless you concede right here the people 
 I speak for are as honest, as sensible, and as just as 
 your people, seeking as earnestly as you would in their 
 place, to rightly solve the problem that touches them 
 at every vital point. If you insist that they are ruf- 
 fians, blindly striving with bludgeon and shotgun to 
 plunder and oppress a race, then I shall sacrifice my 
 self-respect and tax your patience in vain. But admit 
 that they are men of common sense and common hon- 
 esty wisely modifying an environment they can not 
 wholly disregard guiding and controlling as best 
 they can the vicious and irresponsible of either race
 
 42 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 compensating error with frankness, and retrieving in 
 patience what they lose in passion and conscious all 
 the time that wrong means ruin admit this, and we 
 may reach an understanding to-night. 
 
 The President of the United States, in his late mes- 
 sage to Congress, discussing the plea that the South 
 should be left to solve this problem, asks : "Are they 
 at work upon it ? What solution do they offer? When 
 will the black man cast a free ballot? When will he 
 have the civil rights that are his?" I shall not here 
 protest against the partisanry that, for the first time 
 in our history, in time of peace, has stamped with the 
 great seal of our government a stigma upon the peo- 
 ple of a great and loyal section, though I gratefully 
 remember that the great dead soldier, who held the 
 helm of state for the eight stormy years of reconstruc- 
 tion, never found need for such a step; and though 
 there is no personal sacrifice I would not make to 
 remove this cruel and unjust imputation on my peo- 
 ple from the archives of my country ! But, sir, backed 
 by a record, on every page of which is progress, I 
 venture to make earnest and respectful answer to the 
 questions that are asked. I bespeak >our patience, 
 while, with vigorous plainness of speech, seeking your 
 judgment rather than your applause, I proceed, step 
 by step. We give to the world this year a crop of 
 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth $45,000,000, and its 
 cash equivalent in grain, grasses and fruit. This 
 enorumous crop could not have come from the hands 
 of sullen and discontented labor. It comes from 
 peaceful fields, in which laughter and gossip rise 
 above the hum of industry, and contentment runs 
 with the singing plow. 
 
 It is claimed that this ignorant labor is defrauded 
 of its just hire. I present the tax books of Georgia, 
 which show that the negro, twenty-five years ago a
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 43 
 
 slave, has in Georgia alone, $10,000,000 of assessed 
 property, worth twice that much. Does not that rec- 
 ord honor him, and vindicate his neighbors? What 
 people, penniless, illiterate, has done so well? For 
 every Afro-American agitator, stirring the strife in 
 which alone he prospers, I can show you a thousand 
 negroes, happy in their cabin homes, tilling their own 
 land by day, and at night taking from the lips of their 
 children the helpful message their State sends them 
 from the schoolhouse door. And the schoolhouse 
 itself bears testimony. In Georgia we added last year 
 $250,000 to the school fund, making a total of more 
 than $1,000,000 and this in the face of prejudice not 
 yet conquered of the fact that the whites are assessed 
 for $368,000,000, the blacks for $10,000,000, and yet 
 forty-nine per cent of the beneficiaries are black chil- 
 dren and in the doubt of many wise men if education 
 helps, or can help, our problem. Charleston, with her 
 taxable values cut half in two since 1860, pays more 
 in proportion for public schools than Boston. Al- 
 though it is easier to give much out of much than 
 little out of little, the South, with one-seventh of the 
 taxable property of the country, with relatively larger 
 debt, having received only one-twelfth as much public 
 land, and having back of its tax-books none of the 
 half billion of bonds that enrich the North and 
 though it pays annually $26,000,000 to your section 
 as pensions, yet gives nearly one-sixth of the public 
 school fund. The South, since 1865, has spent $122,- 
 000,000 in education, and this year is pledged to $37,- 
 000,000 for State and city schools, although the blacks, 
 paying one-thirtieth of the taxes, get nearly one-half 
 of the fund. 
 
 Go into our fields and see whites and blacks work- 
 ing side by side. On our buildings in the same 
 squad. In our shops at the same forge. Often the
 
 44 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 blacks crowd the whites from work, or lower wages 
 by the greater need or simpler habits, and yet are 
 permitted because we want to bar them from no 
 avenue in which their feet are fitted to tread. They 
 could not there be elected orators of the white uni- 
 versities, as they have been here, but they do enter 
 there a hundred useful trades that are closed against 
 them here. We hold it better and wiser to tend the 
 weeds in the garden than to water the exotic in the 
 window. In the South, there are negro lawyers, teach- 
 ers, editors, dentists, doctors, preachers, multiplying 
 with the increasing ability of their race to support 
 them. In villages and towns they have their military 
 companies equipped from the armories of the State, 
 their churches and societies built and supported large- 
 ly by their neighbors. What is the testimony of the 
 courts In penal legislation we have steadily reduced 
 felonies to misdemeanors, and have led the world in 
 mitigating punishment for crime, that we might save, 
 as far as possible, this dependent race from its own 
 weakness. In our penitentiary record sixty per cent, 
 of the prosecutors are negroes, and in every court the 
 negro criminal strikes the colored juror, that white 
 men may judge his case. In the North, one negro in 
 every 1,865 * s m J a ^ m the South only one in 446. In 
 the North the percentage of negro prisoners is six 
 times as great as native whites in the South, only 
 four times as great. If prejudice wrongs him in 
 Southern courts, the record shows it to be deeper in 
 Northern courts. 
 
 I assert here, and a bar as intelligent and upright 
 as the bar of Massachusetts will solemnly indorse my 
 assertion, that in the Southern courts, from highest to 
 lowest, pleading for life, liberty or property, the ne- 
 gro has distinct advantage because he is a negro, apt 
 to be overreached, oppressed and that this advantage
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 45 
 
 reaches from the juror in making his verdict to the 
 judge in measuring his sentence. Now, Mr. Presi- 
 dent, can it be seriously maintained that we are ter- 
 rorizing the people from whose willing hands come 
 every year $1,000,000,000 of farm crops? Or have 
 robbed a people who, twenty-five years from unre- 
 warded slavery have amassed in one State $20,000,- 
 ooo of property? Or that we intend to oppress the 
 people we are arming every day? Or deceive them 
 when we are educating them to the utmost limit of 
 our ability? Or outlaw them when we work side by 
 side with them? Or re-enslave them under legal 
 forms when for their benefit we have even imprudently 
 narrowed the limit of felonies and mitigated the se- 
 verity of law? My fellow countrymen, as you your- 
 self may sometimes have to appeal to the bar of hu- 
 man judgment for justice and for right, give to my 
 people to-night the fair and unanswerable conclusion 
 of these incontestible facts. 
 
 But it is claimed that under this fair seeming there 
 is disorder and violence. This I admit. And there 
 will be until there is one ideal community on earth 
 after which we may pattern. But how widely it is 
 misjudged ! It is hard to measure with exactness 
 whatever touches the negro. His helplessness, his 
 isolation, his century of servitude, these dispose us to 
 emphasize and magnify his wrongs. This disposition, 
 inflamed by prejudice and partisanry, has led to in- 
 justice and delusion. Lawless men may ravage a 
 county in Iowa and it is accepted as an incident in 
 the South a drunken row is declared to be the fixed 
 habit of the community. Regulators may whip vaga- 
 bonds in Indiana by platoons, and it scarcely, arrests 
 attention a chance collision in the South among 
 relatively the same classes is gravely accepted as evi- 
 dence that one race is destroying the other. We
 
 46 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 might as well claim that the Union was ungrateful 
 to the colored soldiers who followed its flag, because 
 a Grand Army post in Connecticut closed its doors 
 to a negro veteran, as for you to give racial signifi- 
 cance to every incident in the South, or to accept ex- 
 ceptional grounds as the rule of our society. I am not 
 one of those who becloud American honor with the 
 parade of the outrages of either section, and belie 
 . American character by declaring them to be significant 
 and representative. I prefer to maintain that they are 
 neither, and stand for nothing but the passion and the 
 sin of our poor fallen humanity. If society, like a 
 machine, were no stronger than its weakest part, I 
 should despair of both sections. But, knowing that 
 society, sentient and responsible in every fibre, can 
 mend and repair until the whole has the strength of 
 the best, I despair of neither. These gentlemen who 
 come with me here, knit into Georgia's busy life as 
 they are, never saw, I dare assert, an outrage commit- 
 ted on a negro ! And if they did, not one of you would 
 be swifter to prevent or punish. It is through them, 
 and the man who thinks with them making nine- 
 tenths of every Southern community that these two 
 races have been carried thus far with less of violence 
 than would have been possible anywhere else on earth. 
 And in their fairness and courage and steadfastness 
 more than in all the laws that can be passed, or all 
 the bayonets that can be mustered is the hope of our 
 future. 
 
 When will the black cast a free ballot? When ig- 
 norance anywhere is not dominated by the will of the 
 intelligent; when the laborer anywhere casts a vote 
 unhindered by his boss ; when the vote of the poor any- 
 where is not influenced by the power of the rich; 
 when the strong and the steadfast do not everywhere 
 control the suffrage of the weak and shiftless then,
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 47 
 
 and not till then, will the ballot of the negro be free. 
 The white people of the South are banded, Mr. Presi- 
 dent, not in prejudice against the blacks not in sec- 
 tional estrangement, not in the hope of political do- 
 minion, but in a deep and abiding necessity. Here 
 is this vast ignorant and purchasable vote clannish, 
 credulous, impulsive and passionate tempting every 
 art of the demagogue, but insensible to the appeal of 
 the statesman. Wrongly started, in that it was led into 
 alienation from its neighbor and taught to rely on 
 the protection of an outside force, it can not be merged 
 and lost in the two great parties through logical cur- 
 rents, for it lacks political conviction and even that 
 information on which conviction must be based. It 
 must remain a faction strong enough in every com- 
 munity to control on the slightest division of the 
 whites. Under that division it becomes the prey of 
 the cunning and unscrupulous of both parties. Its 
 credulity is imposed on, its patience inflamed, its cu- 
 pidity tempted, its impulses misdirected and even 
 its superstition made to play its part in a campaign 
 in which every interest of society is jeopardized and 
 every approach to the ballot-box debauched. It is 
 against such campaigns as this the folly and the 
 bitterness and the danger of which every Southern 
 community has drunk deeply that the white people 
 of the South are banded together. Just as you in Mas- 
 sachusetts would be banded if 300,000 black men 
 not one in a hundred able to read his ballot banded 
 in a race instinct, holding against you the memory 
 of a century of slavery, taught by your late conquer- 
 ors to distrust and oppose you, had already travestied 
 legislation from your statehouse, and in every species 
 of folly or villainy has wasted your substance and ex- 
 hausted your credit. 
 
 But admitting the right of the whites to unite
 
 48 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 against this tremendous menace, we are challenged 
 with the smallness of our vote. This has long been 
 flippantly charged to the evidence, and has now been 
 solemnly and officially declared to be proof of political 
 turpitude and baseness on our part. Let us see. Vir- 
 ginia a State now under fierce assault for this al- 
 leged 'crime cast, in 1888, seventy-five per cent, of 
 her vote. Was it suppression in Virginia and natural 
 causes in Massachusetts? Last month Virginia cast 
 sixty-nine per cent, of her vote, and Massachusetts, 
 fighting in every district, cast only forty-six per cent, 
 of hers. If Virginia is condemned because thirty-one 
 per cent, of her vote was silent, how shall this State 
 escape in which fifty-one per cent, was dumb? Lei 
 us enlarge this comparison. The sixteen Southern 
 States in 1888 cast sixty-seven per cent, of their total 
 vote the six New England States but sixty-three per 
 cent, of theirs. By what fair rule shall the stigma be 
 put upon one section, while the other escapes? A 
 congressional election in New York last week, with 
 the polling-place within touch of every voter, brought 
 out only 6,000 votes of 28,000 and the lack of oppo- 
 sition is assigned as the natural cause. In a district in 
 my State, in which an opposition speech has not been 
 heard in ten years, and the polling-places are miles 
 apart under the unfair reasoning of which my sec- 
 tion has been a constant victim the small vote is 
 charged to be proof of forcible suppression. In Vir- 
 ginia an average majority of 10,000, under hopeless 
 division of the minority, was raised to 42,000; in 
 Iowa, in the same election, a majority of 32,000 was 
 wiped out, and an opposition majority of 8,000 was 
 established. The change of 42,000 votes in Iowa is 
 accepted as political revolution in Virginia an in- 
 crease of 30,000 on a safe majority is declared to be 
 proof of political fraud. I charge these facts and fig-
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 49 
 
 tires home, sir, to the heart and conscience of the 
 American people, who will not assuredly see one sec- 
 tion condemned for what another section is excused ! 
 
 If I can drive them through the prejudice of the 
 partisan, and have them read and pondered at the fire- 
 side of the citizen, I will rest on the judgment there 
 formed and the verdict there rendered ! 
 
 It is deplorable, sir, that in both sections a larger 
 percentage of the vote is not regularly cast, but more 
 inexplicable that this should be so in New England 
 than in the South. What invites the negro to the 
 ballot-box? He knows that, of all men, it has promised 
 him most and yielded him least. His first appeal tq 
 suffrage was the promise of "forty acres and a mule.'' 
 His second, the threat that Democratic success meant 
 his re-enslavement. Both have proved false in his 
 experience. He looked for a home, and he got the 
 Freedman's Bank. He fought under the promise of the 
 loaf, and in victory was denied the crumbs. Dis- 
 couraged and deceived, he has realized at last that his 
 best friends are his neighbors, with whom his lot is 
 cast, and whose prosperity is bound up in his and 
 that he has gained nothing in politics to compensate 
 the loss of their confidence and sympathy that is at 
 last his best and his enduring hope. And so, without 
 leaders or organization and lacking the resolute 
 heroism of my party friends in Vermont, that 
 makes their hopeless march over the hills a high and 
 inspiring pilgrimage he shrewdly measures the oc- 
 casional agitator, balances his little account with poli- 
 tics, touches up his mule and jogs down the furrow, 
 letting the mad world jog as it will ! 
 
 Trie negro vote can never control in the South, and 
 it would be well if partisans in the North would un- 
 derstand this. I have seen the white people of a State 
 set about by black hosts until their fate seemed sealed. 
 
 4ns
 
 50 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 But, sir, some brave man, banding them together, 
 would rise, as Elijah rose in beleagured Samaria, and, 
 touching their eyes with faith, bid them look abroad 
 to see the very air "filled with the chariots of Israel 
 and the horsemen thereof." If there is any human 
 force that can not be withstood, it is the power of the 
 banded intelligence and responsibility of a free com- 
 munity. Against it, numbers and corruption can not 
 prevail. It can not be forbidden in the law or di- 
 vorced in force. It is the inalienable right of every 
 free community and the just and righteous safe- 
 guard against an ignorant or corrupt suffrage. It is 
 on this, sir, that we rely in the South. Not the cow- 
 ardly menace of mask or shotgun, but the peaceful 
 majesty of intelligence and responsibility, massed and 
 unified for the protection of its homes and the pre- 
 servation of its homes and the preservation of its lib- 
 erty*' That, sir, is our reliance and our hope, and 
 against it all the powers of the earth shall not prevail. 
 It was just as certain that Virginia would come back 
 to the unchallenged control of her white race that 
 before the moral and material power of her people* 
 once more unified, opposition would crumble until its 
 last desperate leader was left alone vainly striving to 
 rally his disordered hosts as that night should fade 
 in the kindling glory of the sun. You may pass force 
 bills, but they will not avail. You may surrender your 
 liberties to Federal election law, you may submit, in 
 fear of a necessity that does not exist, that the very 
 form of this government may be changed this old 
 State that holds in its charter the boast that "it is a 
 free and independent commonwealth" it may de- 
 liver its election machinery into the hands of the gov- 
 ernment it helped to create but never, sir, will a sin- 
 gle State in this Union, North or South, be delivered 
 again to the control of an ignorant and inferior race..
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 51 
 
 We wrested our State government from negro su- 
 premacy when the Federal drumbeat rolled closer to 
 the ballot-box and Federal bayonets hedged it deeper 
 about than will ever again be permitted in this free 
 government. But, sir, though the cannon of this Re- 
 public thundered in every voting district of the South, 
 we still should find in the mercy of God the means and 
 the courage to prevent its re-establishment ! 
 
 I regret, sir, that my section, hindered with this 
 problem, stands in seeming estrangement to the 
 North. If, sir, any man will point out to me a path 
 down which the white people of the South divided 
 may walk in peace and honor, I will take that path 
 though I took it alone for at the end, and nowhere 
 else, I fear, is to be found the full prosperity of my 
 .section and the full restoration of this Union. But, 
 sir, if the negro had not been enfranchised, the South 
 would have been divided and the Republic holds the 
 South united and compact. What solution, then, can 
 we offer for this problem ? Time alone can disclose it 
 to us. We simply report progress and ask your pa- 
 tience. If the problem be solved at all and I firmly 
 believe it will, though nowhere else has it been it 
 will be solved by the people most deeply bound in 
 interest, most deeply pledged in honor to its solution. 
 I had rather see my people render back this question 
 rightly solved than to see them gather all the spoils 
 over which faction has contended since Catiline con- 
 spired and Caesar fought. Meantime we treat the ne- 
 gro fairly, measuring to him justice in the fullness 
 the strong should give to the weak, and leading him 
 in the steadfast ways of citizenship that he may no 
 longer be the prey of the unscrupulous and the sport 
 of the thoughtless. We open to him every pursuit in 
 which he can prosper, and seek to broaden his training 
 .and capacity. We seek to hold his confidence and
 
 52 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 friendship, and to pin him to the soil with ownership,, 
 that he may catch in the fire of his own hearthstone 
 that sense of responsibility the shiftless can never 
 know. And we gather him into that alliance of in- 
 telligence and responsibility that, though it now runs 
 close to racial lines, welcomes the responsible and in- 
 telligent of any race. By this course, confirmed in 
 our judgment and justified in the progress already 
 made, we hope to progress slowly but surely to the 
 end. 
 
 The love we feel for that race you can not measure 
 nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the spirit of my 
 old black mammy from her home up there looks down 
 to bless, and through the tumult of this night steals 
 the sweet music of her crooning as thirty years ago 
 she held me in her black arms and led me smiling into 
 sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak, snd I catch a 
 vision of an old Southern home, with its lofty pillars, 
 and its white pigeons fluttering down through the 
 golden air. I see women with strained and anxious 
 faces, and children alert, yet helpless. I see night 
 come down with its dangers and its apprehensions, 
 and in a big homely room I feel on my tired head the 
 touch of loving hands now worn and wrinkled, but 
 fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and 
 stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man 
 as they lay a mother's blessing there while at her 
 knees the truest altar I yet have found I thank God 
 that she is safe in her sanctuary, because her slaves, 
 sentinel in the silent cabin or guard at her chamber 
 door, puts a black man's loyalty between her and dan- 
 ger. 
 
 I catch another vision. The crisis of battle a sol- 
 dier struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuffling 
 through the smoke, winding his black arms about the 
 fallen form, reckless of the hurtling death bending
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 53 
 
 his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the 
 stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that 
 he would lay down his life in his master's stead. I 
 see him by the weary bedside, ministering with un- 
 complaining patience, praying with all his humble 
 heart that God will lift his master up, until death 
 come in mercy and in honor to still the soldier's 
 agony and seal the soldier's life. I see him by the 
 open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering 
 for the death of him who in life fought against his free- 
 dom. I see him when the mound is heaped and the 
 great drama of his life is closed, turn away, and with 
 downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into new 
 and strange fields, faltering, struggling, but moving 
 on, until his shambling figure is lost in the light of 
 this better and brighter day. And from the grave 
 comes a voice saying: "Follow him! Put your arms 
 .about him in his need, even as he put his about me. 
 Be his friend as he was mine." And out into this new 
 world strange to me as to him, dazzling, bewilder- 
 ing both I follow ! And may God forget my peoples 
 when they forget these. 
 
 Whatever the future may hold for them whether 
 they plod along in the servitude from which they 
 have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was laid 
 hold upon by the Roman soldiers and made to bear 
 the cross of the fainting Christ whether they find 
 homes again in Africa, and thus hasten the prophecy 
 of the psalmist who said: "And suddenly Ethiopia 
 shall hold out her hands unto God" whether forever 
 dislocated and separated, they remain a weak people 
 beset by stronger, and exist as the Turk, who lives 
 in the jealousy rather than in the conscience of Eu- 
 rope or whether in this miraculous Repubic they 
 break through the caste of twenty centuries and, be- 
 lying universal history, reach the full stature of citi-
 
 54 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 
 
 zenship, and in peace maintain it we shall give them* 
 uttermost justice and abiding friendship. And what- 
 ever we do, into whatever seeming estrangement we 
 may be driven, nothing shall disturb the love we bear 
 this Republic, or mitigate our consecration to its serv- 
 ice. I stand here, Mr. President, to profess no new- 
 loyalty. When General Lee, whose heart was the tem- 
 ple of our hopes, and whose arm was clothed with our 
 strength, renewed his allegiance to the government at 
 Appomattox, he spoke from a heart too great to be 
 false, and he spoke for every honest man from Mary- 
 land to Texas. From that day to this, Hamilcar 
 has nowhere in the South sworn young Hannibal to- 
 hatred and vengeance but everywhere to loyalty and 
 to love. Witness the soldier standing at the base of a 
 Confederate monument above the graves of his com- 
 rades, his empty sleeve tossing in the April wind, ad- 
 juring the young men about him to serve as honest 
 and loyal citizens the government against which their 
 fathers fought. This message, delivered from that 
 sacred presence, has gone home to the hearts of my 
 fellows ! And, sir, I declare here, if physical courage 
 be always equal to human aspiration, that they would 
 die, sir, if need be, to restore this Republic their fath- 
 ers fought to dissolve ! 
 
 Such, Mr. President, is this problem, as we see it," 
 such is the temper in which we approach it ; such the 
 progress made. What do we ask of you? First, pa- 
 tience ; out of this alone can come perfect work. Sec- 
 ond, confidence; in this alone can you judge fairly. 
 Third, sympathy ; in this you can help us best. Fourth, 
 give us your sons as hostages. When you plant your 
 capital in millions, send your sons that they may help 
 know how true are our hearts and may help to swell 
 the Anglo-Saxon current until it can carry without 
 danger this black infusion. Fifth, loyalty to the Re-
 
 THE BOSTON BANQUET SPEECH. 55 
 
 public for there is sectionalism in loyalty as in es- 
 trangement. This hour little needs the loyalty that is 
 loyal to one section and yet holds the other in endur- 
 ing suspicion and estrangement. Give us the broad 
 and perfect loyalty that loves and trusts Georgia alike 
 with Massachusetts that knows no South, no North, 
 no East, no West; but endears with equal and patri- 
 otic love every foot of our soil, every State of our 
 Union. 
 
 A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels 
 every one of us to-night to lose in patriotic consecra- 
 tion whatever estranges, whatever divides. We, sir, 
 are Americans and we fight for human liberty. The 
 uplifting force of the American idea is under every 
 throne on earth. France, Brazil these are our victo- 
 ries. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppres- 
 sion this is our mission. And we shall not fail. God 
 has sown in our soil the seed of his millennial harvest, 
 and he will not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until 
 his full and perfect day has come. Our history, sir, 
 has been a constant and expanding miracle from Ply- 
 mouth Rock and Jamestown all the way aye, even 
 from the hour when, from the voiceless and trackless 
 ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired 
 sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that 
 stupendous day when the old world will come to 
 marvel and to learn, amid our gathered treasures let 
 us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the 
 spectacle of a republic compact, united, indissoluble in 
 the bonds of love loving from the Lakes to the Gulf 
 the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every 
 hill serene and resplendent at the summit of human 
 achievement and earthly glory blazing out the path, 
 and making clear the way up which all the nations of 
 the earth must come in God's appointed time !
 
 BUT WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 
 
 EXCERPTS FROM THE NEW SOUTH SPEECH DELIVERED BY 
 
 HENRY W. GRADY AT THE BANQUET OF THE NEW 
 
 ENGLAND CLUB, NEW YORK. 
 
 It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however 
 humble, in this work. Never was nobler duty con- 
 fided to human hands than the uplifting and upbuild- 
 ing of the prostrate and bleeding South misguided, 
 perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, 
 brave and generous always. In the record of her so- 
 cial, industrial and political illustration we await witn 
 confidence the verdict of the world. 
 
 Have we solved the problem he presents or pro- 
 gressed in honor and equity toward solution? Let 
 the record speak to the point. No section shows a 
 more prosperous laboring population than the ne- 
 groes of the South, none in fuller sympathy with the 
 employing and land-owning class. He shares our 
 school fund, has the fullest protection of our laws and 
 the friendship of our people. Self-interest, as well as 
 honor, demand that he should have this. Our future 
 our very existence depend upon our working out this 
 problem in full and exact justice. We understand 
 that when Lincoln signed the emancipation proclama- 
 tion, your victory was assured, for he then committed 
 you to the cause of human liberty, against which the 
 arms of man can not prevail while those of our 
 statesmen who trusted to make slavery the corner- 
 stone of the Confederacy doomed us to defeat as far 
 as they could, committing us to a cause that reason 
 
 (56)
 
 BUT WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 57 
 
 could not defend or the sword maintain in sight of 
 advancing civilization. 
 
 Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say, "that 
 he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bun- 
 ker Hill," he would have been foolish, for he might 
 have known that whenever slavery became entangled 
 in war it must perish, and that the chattel in human 
 flesh ended forever in New England when your fathers 
 not to be blamed for parting with what didn't pay 
 .sold their slaves to our fathers not to be praised for 
 knowing a paying thing when they saw it. The rela- 
 tions of the Southern people with the negro are close 
 and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four 
 years he guarded our defenseless women and children, 
 whose husbands and fathers were righting against his 
 freedom. To his eternal credit be it said that when- 
 ever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in 
 -open battle, and when at last he raised his black and 
 humble hands that the shackles might be struck off, 
 those hands were innocent of wrong against his help- 
 less charges, and worthy to be taken in loving grasp 
 by every man who honors loyalty and devotion. Ruf- 
 fians have maltreated him, rascals have misled him, 
 philanthropists established a bank for him, but the 
 South, with the North, protests against injustice to 
 this simple and sincere people. To liberty and en- 
 franchisement is as far as law can carry the negro. 
 The rest must be left to the conscience and common 
 sense. It must be left to those among whom his lot 
 is cast, with whom he is indissolubly connected, and 
 whose prosperity depends upon their possessing his 
 intelligent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been 
 kept with him, in spite of calumnious assertions to the 
 contrary by those who assume to speak for us or by 
 frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the 
 future, if the South hold her reason and integrity.
 
 58 BUT WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 
 
 But have we kept our faith with you? In the fullest 
 sense, yes. When Lee surrendered I don't say when 
 Johnson surrendered, because I understand he still 
 alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last 
 as the time when he determined to abandon any fur- 
 ther prosecution of the struggle when Lee surren- 
 dered, I say, and Johnson quit, the South became,, 
 and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought 
 hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in 
 perfect frankness accept as final the arbitrament of 
 the sword to which we had appealed. The South 
 found her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The 
 shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell 
 forever when the shackles of the negro slave were 
 broken. Under the old regime the negroes were 
 slaves to the South ; the South was a slave to the sys- 
 tem. The old plantation, with its simple police regu- 
 lations and feudal habit, was the only type possible 
 under slavery. Thus was gathered in the hands of a 
 splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that 
 should have been diffused among the people, as the 
 rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gath- 
 ered at the heart, filling that with affluent rapture but 
 leaving the body chill and colorless.
 
 WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 
 
 EXCERPTS FROM "THE SOUTH AND HER PROBLEMS," 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE DALLAS STATE FAIR BY 
 
 HENRY W. GRADY. 
 
 This of him. I want no better friend than the black 
 boy who was raised by my side, and who is now 
 trudging patiently with downcast eyes and shambling 
 figure through his lowly way in life. I want no 
 sweeter music than the crooning of my old "mammy," 
 now dead and gone to rest, as I heard it when she 
 held me in her loving arms, and bending her old black 
 face above me stole the cares from my brain, and led 
 me smiling into sleep. I want no truer soul than that 
 which moved the trusty slave, who for four years 
 while my father fought with the armies that barred 
 his freedom, slept every night at my mother's cham- 
 ber door, holding her and her children as safe as if 
 her husband stood guard, and ready to lay down his 
 humble life on her threshold. History has no parallel 
 to the faith kept by the negro in the South 
 during the war. Often five hundred negroes to 
 a single white man, and yet through these dusky 
 throngs the women and children walked in safety, and 
 the unprotected homes rested in peace. Unmar- 
 shaled the black battalions moved patiently to the 
 fields in the morning to feed the armies their idleness 
 would have starved, and at night gathered anxiously 
 at the big house to "hear the news from marster, ' 
 though conscious that his victory made their chains 
 enduring. Everywhere humble and kindly ; the body- 
 
 (59)
 
 60 WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 
 
 guard of the helpless; the rough companion of the 
 little ones; the observant friend; the silent sentry in 
 his lowly cabin; the shrewd counsellor. And when 
 the dead came home, a mourner at the open grave. 
 A thousand torches would have disbanded every 
 Southern army, but not one was lighted. When the 
 master going to a war in which slavery was involved 
 said to his slave, "I leave my home and loved ones in 
 your charge," the tenderness between man and mas- 
 ter stood disclosed. And when the slave held that 
 charge sacred through storm and temptation, he gave 
 new meaning to faith and loyalty. I rejoice that when 
 freedom came to him after years of waiting, it was all 
 the sweeter because the black hands from which the 
 shackles fell were stainless of a single crime against 
 the helpless ones confided to his care. 
 
 From this root, imbedded in a century of kind and 
 constant companionship, has sprung some foliage. 
 As no race had ever lived in such unresisting bond- 
 age, none was ever heard with such swiftness 
 through freedom into power. Into hands stili trem- 
 bling from the blow that broke the shackles, was 
 thrust the ballot. In less than twelve months from 
 the day he walked down the furrow a slave, the negro 
 dictated in legislative halls from which Davis and 
 Calhoun had gone forth, the policy of twelve com- 
 monwealths. When his late master protested against 
 his misrule, the federal drum-beat rolled around his 
 strongholds, and from a hedge of federal bayonets he 
 grinned in good-natured insolence. From the proven 
 incapacity of that day has he far advanced? Simple, 
 credulous, impulsive easily led and too often easily 
 bought, is he a safer, more intelligent citizen now than 
 then ? Is this mass of votes, loosed from old restraints, 
 inviting alliance or awaiting opportunity, less menac-
 
 WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 61 
 
 ing than when its purpose was plain and its way di- 
 rect? 
 
 My countrymen, right here the South must make 
 a decision on which very much depends. Many wise 
 men hold that the white vote of the South should di- 
 vide, the color'line be beaten down, and the Southern 
 States ranged on economic or moral questions as in- 
 terest or belief demands. I am compelled to dissent 
 from this view. The worst thing, in my/ opinion, that 
 could happen is that the white people of the South 
 should stand in opposing factions, with the vast mass 
 of ignorant or purchasable negro votes between. 
 Consider such a status. If the negroes were skillfully 
 led and leaders would not be lacking it would 
 give them the balance of power a thing not to be 
 considered. If their vote was not compacted, it would 
 invite the debauching bid of factions, and drift surely 
 to that which was the most corrupt and cunning. 
 With the shiftless habit and irresolution of slavery 
 days still possessing him, the negro voter will not in 
 this generation, adrift from war issues, become a 
 steadfast partisan through conscience or conviction. 
 In every community there are colored men who re- 
 deem their race from this reproach, and who vote un- 
 der reason. Perhaps in time the bulk of this race 
 may thus adjust itself. But, through what long and 
 monstrous periods of political debauchery this status 
 would be reached, no tongue can tell. 
 
 The clear and unmistakable domination of the white 
 race, dominating not through violence, not through 
 party alliance, but through the integrity of its own 
 vote and the largeness of its sympathv and justice 
 through which it shall compel the support of the 
 better classes of the colored race that is the hope 
 and assurance of the South. Otherwise, the negro- 
 would be bandied from one faction to another. His
 
 62 WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 
 
 .credulity would be played upon, his cupidity tempted, 
 his impulses misdirected, his passions inflamed. He 
 would be forever in alliance with that faction which 
 was most desperate and unscrupulous. Such a stare 
 would be worse than reconstruction, for then intelli- 
 gence was banded, and its speedy triumph assured. 
 But with intelligence and property divided bidding 
 and overbidding for place and patronage irritation 
 increasing with each conflict the bitterness and des- 
 peration seizing every heart political debauchery 
 deepening, as each faction staked its all in the miser- 
 able game there would be no end in this, until our 
 suffrage was hopelessly sullied, our people forever di- 
 vided, and our most sacred rights surrendered. 
 
 One thing further should be said in perfect frank- 
 ness. Up to this point we have dealt with ignorance 
 .and corruption but beyond this point a deeper issue 
 confronts us. Ignorance may struggle to enlighten- 
 ment, out of corruption may come the incorruptible. 
 God speed the day when every true man will work 
 and pray for its coming the negro must be led to 
 know and through sympathy to confess that his in- 
 terests and the interests of the people of the South 
 are identical. The men who, from afar off, view this 
 .subject through the cold eye of speculation or see it 
 distorted through partisan control of the affairs of the 
 South. We have no fears of this ; already we are at- 
 taching to us the best elements of the race, and as we 
 proceed our alliance will broaden; eternal pressure 
 but irritates and impedes. Those who would put the 
 negro race in supremacy would work against infalli- 
 ble decree, for the white race can never submit to its 
 domination, because the white race is the superior 
 race. But the supremacy of the white race of the 
 South must be maintained forever, and the domina- 
 .tion of the negro race resisted at all points and at all
 
 VHAT OF THE NEGRO. 63 
 
 hazards because the white race is the superior race. 
 This is the declaration of no new truth. It has abided 
 forever in the marrow of our bones, and shall run for- 
 ever with the blood that feeds Anglo-Saxon hearts. 
 
 In political compliance the South has evaded the 
 truth, 'and men have drifted from their convictions. 
 But we can not escape this issue. It faces us wherever 
 we turn. It is an issue that has been, and will be. 
 The races and tribes of earth are of divine origin. 
 Behind the laws of man and the decrees of war, stands 
 the law of God. What God hath separated let no man 
 join together. The Indian, the Malay, the Negro, the 
 Caucasian, these types stand as markers of God's will. 
 Let no man tinker with the work of the Almighty. 
 Unity of civilization, no more than unity of faith, will 
 never be witnessed on earth. No race has risen, or 
 will rise, above the ordinary place. Here is the piv- 
 otal fact of this great matter two races are made 
 equal in law, and in political rights, between whom 
 , the caste of race has set an impassable gulf. This 
 gulf is bridged by a statute, and the races are urged 
 to cross thereon. This can not be. The fiat of the Al- 
 mighty has gone forth, and in eighteen centuries of 
 history, it is written. We would escape this issue if 
 we could. From the depths of its soul the. South in- 
 vokes from heaven "peace on earth, and good will to 
 man." She would not, if she could, cast this race 
 back into the condition from which it was righteously 
 raised. She would not deny its smallest or abridge its 
 fullest privilege. Not to lift this burden forever from 
 her people would she do the least of these things. 
 She must walk through the valley of the shadow, for 
 God has so ordained. But He has ordained that she 
 shall walk in that integrity of race that was created 
 in His wisdom and has been perpetuated in His 
 strength. Standing in the presence of this multitude,
 
 64 WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 
 
 sobered with the responsibility of the message I de- 
 liver to the young men of the South, 1 declare that 
 the truth above all others to be worn unsullied and 
 sacred in your hearts, to be surrendered to no force, 
 sold for no price, compromised in no necessity, but 
 cherished and defended as the covenant of your pros- 
 perity, and the pledge of peace to your children, is 
 that the white race must dominate forever in the 
 South, because it is the white race, and superior to 
 that race by which its supremacy is threatened. 
 
 It is a race issue. Let us come to this point, and 
 stand here. Here the air is pure and the light is clear, 
 and here honor and peace abide. Juggling and eva- 
 sion deceives not a man. Compromise and subservi- 
 ence has carried not a point. There is not a white 
 man North or South who does not feel it stir in the 
 gray matter of his brain and throb in his heart. Not 
 a negro who does not feel its power. It is not a sec- 
 tional issue. It speaks in Ohio and in Georgia. It 
 speaks wherever the Anglo-Saxon touches an alien 
 race. It has just spoken in universally approved leg- 
 islation in excluding the Chinaman from our gates, 
 not for his ignorance, vice or corruption, but because 
 he sought to establish an inferior race in a republic 
 fashioned in the wisdom and defended by the blood 
 of a homogeneous people. 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon blood has dominated always and 
 everywhere. It fed Alfred when he wrote the charter 
 of English liberty; it gathered about Hampden as he 
 stood beneath the oak; it thundered in Cromwell's 
 veins as he fought his king; it humbled Napoleon at 
 Waterloo; it has touched the desert and jungle with 
 undying glory; it carried the drum-beat of England 
 around the world and spread on every continent the 
 gospel of liberty and of God ; it established this repub- 
 lic, carved it from the wilderness, conquered it from
 
 WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 65 
 
 the Indians, wrested it from England, and at last, 
 stilling its own tumult, consecrated it forever as the 
 home of the Anglo-Saxon, and the theater of his 
 transcending achievement. Never one foot of it can 
 be surrendered while that blood lives in American 
 veins, and feeds American hearts, to the domination 
 of an alien and inferior race. 
 
 And yet that is just what is proposed. Not in 
 twenty years have we seen a day so pregnant with 
 fate to this section as the sixth of next November. 
 If President Cleveland is then defeated, which God 
 forbid, I believe these States will be led through sor- 
 rows compared to which the woes of reconstruction 
 will be as the fading dews of morning to the roaring 
 flood. To dominate these States through the colored 
 vote, with such aid as Federal patronage may de- 
 bauch or Federal power determine, and thus through 
 its chosen instruments perpetuate its rule, is in mv 
 opinion the settled purpose of the Republican party. 
 I am appalled when I measure the passion in which 
 this negro problem is judged by the leaders of the 
 party. Fifteen years ago Vice-President Wilson said 
 and I honor his memory as that of a courageous 
 man : "We shall not have finished with the South un- 
 til we force its people to change their thought, and 
 think as we think." I repeat these words, for I 
 heard them when a boy, and they fell on my ears as 
 the knell of my people's rights "to change their 
 thought, and make them think as we think." Not 
 enough to have conquered our armies to have deci- 
 mated our ranks, to have desolated our fields and re- 
 duced us to poverty, to have struck the ballot from 
 our hands and enfranchised our slaves to have held 
 us prostrate under bayonets while the insolent 
 mocked and thieves plundered but their very souls 
 must be rifled of their faiths, their sacred traditions 
 
 5 ns
 
 66 WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 
 
 cudgeled from memory, and their immortal minds 
 beaten into subjection until thought had lost its in- 
 tegrity, and we were forced "to think as they think.'' 
 And just now General Sherman has said, and I honor 
 him as a soldier: 
 
 "The negro must be allowed to vote, and his vote 
 must be counted ; otherwise, so sure as there is a God 
 in heaven, you will have another war, more cruel than 
 the last, when the torch and dagger will take the place 
 of the muskets of well-ordered battalions. Should the 
 negro strike that blow, in seeming justice, there will 
 be millions to assist them." 
 
 And this general took Johnson's sword in surren- 
 der ! He looked upon the thin and ragged battalions 
 in gray, that for four years had held his teeming and 
 heroic legions at bay. Facing them, he read their 
 courage in their depleted ranks, and gave them a sol- 
 dier's parole. When he round it in his heart to taunt 
 these heroes with this threat, why careless as he was 
 twenty years ago with fire, he is even more careless 
 now with his words. If we could hope that this prob- 
 lem would be settled within our lives I would appeal 
 from neither madness nor unmanliness. But when I 
 know that, strive as I may, I must at last render this 
 awful heritage into the untried hands .of my son, al- 
 ready dearer to me than my life, and that he must in 
 turn bequeath it unsolved to his children, I cry out 
 against the inhumanity that deepens its difficulties 
 with this incendiary threat, and beclouds its real issue 
 with inflaming passion. 
 
 This problem is not only enduring, but it is widen- 
 ing. The exclusion of the Chinese is the first step in 
 the revolution that shall save liberty and law and re- 
 ligion to this land, and in peace and order, not en- 
 forced on the gallows, or at the bayonet's end, but 
 proceeding from the heart of an harmonious peo-
 
 WHAT OF THE NEGRO. 67 
 
 pie, shall secure in the enjoyment of the rights, and 
 the control of this republic, the homogeneous people 
 that established and has maintained it. The next 
 step will be taken when some brave statesman, look- 
 ing Demagogy in the face, shall move to call to the 
 stranger at our gates, "Who comes there?" admit- 
 ting every man who seeks a home, or honors our in- 
 stitutions, and whose habit and blood will run with 
 the native current; but excluding all who seek to 
 plant anarchy or to establish alien men or measures 
 on our soil ; and will then demand that the standard 
 of our citizenship be lifted and the right of acquiring 
 our suffrage be abridged. When that day comes, and 
 God speed its coming, the position of the South will 
 be fully understood, and everywhere approved. Until 
 then, let us giving the negro every right, civil and 
 political, measured in that fullness the strong should 
 always accord the weak holdng him in closer friend- 
 ship and sympathy than he is held by those who would 
 crucify us for his sake realizing that on his prosper- 
 ity ours depends let us resolve that never by exter- 
 nal pressure, or internal division, shall he establish 
 domination, directly or indirectly, over that race that 
 everywhere has maintained its supremacy. Let this 
 resolution be cast on the lines of equity and justice. 
 Let it be the pledge of honest, safe and impartial ad- 
 ministration, and we shall command the support ox 
 the colored race itself, more dependent than any other 
 on the bounty and protection of government. Let us 
 be wise and patient, and we shall secure through its 
 acquiescence what otherwise we should win through 
 conflict, and hold in insecurity. 
 
 All this is no unkindness to the negro but rather 
 that he may be led in equal rights and in peace to his 
 uttermost good. Not in sectionalism for my heart 
 beats true to the Union, to the glory of which your
 
 68 WHAT OF THE XEGEO. 
 
 i 
 
 life and heart is pledged. Not in disregard of the 
 world's opinion for to render back this problem in the 
 world's approval is the sum of my ambition, and the 
 height of human achievement. Not in reactionary 
 spirit but rather to make clear that new and grander 
 way up which the South is marching to higher des- 
 tiny, and on which I would not halt her for all the 
 spoils that have been gathered unto parties since Cati- 
 line conspired, and Caesar fought. Not in passion, 
 my countrymen, but in reason not in narrowness, 
 but in breadth that we may solve this problem in 
 calmness and in truth, and lifting its shadows let per- 
 petual sunshine pour down on two races, walking to- 
 gether in peace and contentment. Then shall this 
 problem have proved our blessing, and the race that 
 threatened our ruin work our salvation as it fills our 
 fields with the best peasantry the world has ever seen. 
 Then the South putting behind her all the achieve- 
 ments of her past and in war and in peace they beg- 
 gar eulogy may stand upright among the nations 
 and challenge the judgment of man and the approval 
 of God, in having worked out in their sympathy, and 
 in His guidance, this last and surpassing miracle of 
 human government.
 
 AGED EX-SLAVES GATHER AT HOME OF OLD 
 MASTER. 
 
 BY ROBERT TIMMONS. 
 
 Palmetto, Ga., September 26. (Special.) In sharp 
 contrast to the bloody scene which was enacted in 
 this town in April, 1899, when the riot occurred in. 
 which three negroes were shot down by a mob after 
 they had been placed under arrest for attempting 1 to 
 burn the town, was the peaceful and altogether 
 unique scene which was witnessed at the old Menefee 
 homestead when fifteen negroes, all ex-slaves, gath- 
 ered in a reunion at the home of their former master 
 here to-day. 
 
 Never before in the history of Georgia, and prob- 
 ably never before in the history of the South, was 
 there just such a gathering as that at this old South- 
 ern plantation. 
 
 The idea of holding this reunion at the home of 
 their former master, who has been dead for a number 
 of years, was conceived by one of the negroes pres- 
 ent, and when it was suggested to the other ex-slaves 
 it was received with their heartiest approval. Only 
 one of the negroes who was present at the reunion is 
 a resident of Palmetto, all the others coming from a 
 distance and from different points in the State. The 
 oldest member of the party, "Uncle" Edmund Mene- 
 fee, who is 80 years old, came from near Hiram, Ga., 
 in Cobb county, and walked the entire distance, about 
 fifty miles, in order that he might see once more the 
 
 (69)
 
 70 EX-SLAVES AT HOME OF OLD MASTER. 
 
 old homestead and the other slaves with whom he was 
 associated when a young man. 
 
 Several of the negroes who attended the reunion 
 are residents of Atlanta and came down on the morn- 
 ing train, returning to the city in the evening. 
 
 The negroes who were present and who came from 
 different parts of the State to attend the reunion were 
 "Uncle" Edmund Menefee, of Cobb county; "Uncle" 
 Lev Menefee, of 19 Wilson street, Atlanta; Willis 
 Menefee Randall, of 156 Magnolia street, Atlanta; 
 Fielding Menefee, of Cobb county; Wilson Menefee 
 and Stewart Menefee, of Atlanta ; Clarke Menefee and 
 Taylor Slaughter, of Campbell county; Easter Men- 
 efee, Amanda Menefee and Gabriel Menefee, of Cobb 
 county, and his mother, "Aunt" Hennie Menefee, the 
 old family cook, who estimates her age at 90 years; 
 Jennie Menefee, John Menefee and Harvie Menefee. 
 
 These are the only living ex-slaves of about 125 
 who belonged to the estate of Major Menefee, and 
 who were given their freedom by him after the war 
 had closed. As was customary after being given their 
 freedom, the negroes took the name of their former 
 master. 
 
 Each of these negroes is well-to-do, many of them 
 are property owners. Most of them followed the bus- 
 iness which was taught them as slaves, that of tilling 
 the soil. They say they are in the South to stay. It 
 was estimated that the value of the property owned 
 by them is about $10,000. 
 
 The white persons who were present and witnessed 
 the celebration of these ex-slaves were : Mrs. M. A. 
 Wiley, of Palmetto; Mrs. S. M. Dean, of Atlanta; 
 Mrs. John H. Covin, of Hogansville, all daughters of 
 Major Willis Menefee ; Dr. W. S. Zellars, one of the 
 oldest inhabitants of Palmetto, who was the physician 
 employed by Major Menefee to attend the slaves be-
 
 EX-SLAVES AT HOME OF OLD MASTER. 71 
 
 fore the war ; Mrs. Maggie Dean Morris, of Atlanta ; 
 Willis Menefee Timmons, of Atlanta; Mrs. E. K. 
 Farmer, of Fitzgerald, Ga. ; Miss Stevie Timmons, of 
 Atlanta; Mrs. Howard Wooding, of Hogansville; 
 B. E. L. Timmons, Jr., of Inman ; Thomas Covin, of 
 Hogansville, and B. H. Timmons, of Atlanta, all 
 grandchildren of Major Menefee, and Miss Mabel 
 Brown and Mrs. T. P. Zellars, together with several 
 ether friends of the family. 
 
 The old Menefee home is located about half a mile 
 from the center of town, and is a typical ante-bellum 
 residence. It is situated some distance back from the 
 road and is reached by a broad gravel walk leading 
 up to the large stone steps between an avenue of 
 cedar trees. As it was before the war the large yard 
 immediately in front of the house is filled with all 
 kinds of beautiful and sweet smelling flowers, vines 
 and shrubbery indigenous to Southern soil, among 
 which the humming birds flit on their honey-gather- 
 ing expeditions all during the summer days. 
 
 In front of the house, across the Atlantic & West 
 Point railroad, and to the rear, after passing a pine 
 and oak grove, stretch acres and acres of rich corn 
 and cotton fields which compose the plantation. The 
 home and plantation is now owned by Mrs. M. A. 
 Wiley, the oldest living daughter of Major Menefee. 
 
 When the old ex-slaves began to arrive in the 
 morning it was an interesting sight to a member of a 
 younger generation of whites to watch them as they 
 wandered about over the place, viewing the scenes so 
 familiar to them in the days before the war when they 
 were a part of the property which made up this South- 
 ern plantation. Many of them had never visited the 
 plantation since several years after the war, when 
 they left to provide for themselves. 
 
 The intensely religious nature, so characteristic of
 
 72 JEX-SLAVES AT HOME OF OLD MASTER. 
 
 the negro, was clearly shown as they walked about 
 the yard and through the house with uncovered heads 
 to show their reverence for the place where they had 
 spent what each said was the happiest period of their 
 lives. A touching scene was witnessed when they 
 were carried into the spacious parlor of the home and 
 shown the portrait of their former master. They 
 stood with bowed heads, many of them weeping, and 
 each speaking with praise unrestrained of the master 
 who had treated them so kindly when they wers 
 slaves. 
 
 They visited the dairy, the stables, the apple or- 
 chard and the hill in the rear of the "big" house, 
 where was situated the "quarters" during the time 
 they lived on the plantation as slaves. Many interest- 
 ing incidents of the former days were remembered 
 and recited in their quaint negro dialect by the older 
 members of the party. 
 
 At the noon hour, as was her custom before the 
 war, old "Aunt" Hennie, the cook, blew the conch 
 shell which had so often called them to their meals, 
 and they gathered under the wide-spreading oaks in 
 the rear of the house, where a table loaded down with 
 good things to eat had been prepared for them. 
 
 After the meal was finished the children and grand- 
 children of their former master gathered in the yard 
 under the tree and listened to the negroes as they re- 
 lated incidents of the days of slavery before and dur- 
 ing the war. 
 
 They never tired of singing the praise of their mas- 
 ter, "Marse Willis," and their mistress, "Miss Jan- 
 nette." They told of how well they had been treated 
 as slaves and of how, though they wanted freedom, 
 yet when freedom came they wanted to remain on the 
 same plantation and continue to work for their mis- 
 tress, after the death of their master. They told of
 
 " Uncle Gabriel," 
 
 52 years old. 
 " Uncle" Fielding, 
 50 years old. 
 
 " Aunt " Henuie, 
 90 years old. 
 
 'Uncle" Willis, 
 G3 years old. 
 
 " Uncle " Lev, 
 
 77 years old. 
 
 Uncle" Edmond, 
 
 80 years old. 
 
 Former slaves of Major Willis Menefee, who attended remarkable reunion 
 held at old Menefee Homestead in Palmetto.
 
 EX-SLAVES AT HOME OF OLD MASTER. 73 
 
 how their master had taught them to be religious, to 
 be neat and clean, to be always honest and give the 
 proper respect to the whites. These lessons, they said, 
 had remained with them and they were teaching them 
 to their children. 
 
 "Uncle" Edmund, the oldest member of the party, 
 and the one who had walked fifty miles to attend the 
 reunion, told of how he had remained with his mis- 
 tress during the war and had gladly protected her, 
 the children and the house while Sherman and his 
 yankees were marching through Palmetto. 
 
 Many old plantation melodies were sung and each 
 one of the fifteen present joined in. The music was 
 of that quaint, perfectly harmonious kind such as only 
 negroes can make. 
 
 The songs and stories continued till late in the 
 afternoon, and before the gathering broke up it was 
 agreed that each year the reunion wouM be held on 
 the old plantation.
 
 RACES IN HARMONY; SOUTH SAFE AS HOME. 
 
 COULD NOT DEPORT NEGRO IF SUCH WAS DESIRED THF, 
 
 RACES ARE MORE IN HARMONY THAN THEY HAVE 
 
 BEEN AT ANY TIME SINCE THE ClVIL WAR. 
 
 EX-GOVERNOR W. J. NORTHEN, OF GEORGIA. 
 
 In connection with the wide discussion concerning 
 the subject of lynching, violence and mob law that has 
 followed the publication of the communication of 
 Bishop Candler on the matter in the Constitution, 
 the following interview with former Governor W. J, 
 Northen is sure to prove both interesting and profit- 
 able. 
 
 It will be remembered in this connection that Mr. 
 Northen has not only been a close and careful studenr 
 of the entire subject, but was pertinently, if not per- 
 sonally, responsible for the introduction of the anti- 
 lynching legislation during his term of office which 
 still presents the legal side of the matter in the State 
 statutes of Georgia. 
 
 Former Governor Northen also furnishes in the 
 interview certain statistics and chapters of history re- 
 garding the anti-lynching movement that are abso- 
 lutely essential in the discussion of the subject. Per- 
 haps the greatest and most prominent feature brought 
 out by this student is his cheerful, optimistic view of 
 the situation and facts which prove that Georgia, at 
 least, has traveled far on the road of solving this 
 much mooted question. 
 
 (74)
 
 RACES IN HARMONY. 75- 
 
 Where some men have painted the South as a dan- 
 gerous and unsafe place to live in, he points with facts 
 rather than arguments to prove that home, sweet 
 home, is never sweeter and safer than right among 
 the green fields of Georgia. Where some point to the 
 exile or ostracism of the negro as the only solution, 
 ex-Governor Northen shows that the problem is al- 
 ready well advanced toward a peaceful and satisfac- 
 tory settlement in a better understanding between the 
 two races. 
 
 While he opposes lynching and mob violence from 
 any standpoint, he seems to almost deplore the fact 
 that there is not some greater punishment for the 
 crime of rape than the sentence of death, which the 
 law provides. He criticises, too, the unscrupulous 
 press in painting a reign of lawlessness and carnage 
 regardless of facts that furnishes erroneous impres- 
 sions that are quickly grasped by the newspapers of 
 the North and reprinted to show that the South is still 
 grappling with a problem that makes a visit to Dixie 
 land a trip attended with jeopardy while the erection 
 of a home in the Southland demands little less than 
 military protection. 
 
 When approacheed on the subject, ex-Governor 
 Northen said that he had kept up with the discussions 
 of the matter as they have appeared in the newspa- 
 pers. He was strongly of the opinion that no consid- 
 erable portion of the people of the South were in fa- 
 vor of mob violence or lynch law, while so far as 
 Georgia is concerned, he said that he could state au- 
 thoritatively that the sentiment was in favor of allow- 
 ing the law to take its course in the settlement of jus- 
 tice. 
 
 "If you will pardon the personal reference, let me 
 say, during my administration I had occasion to make 
 a very thorough official investigation, that fully satis-
 
 76 RACES IN HARMONY. 
 
 fied me that the people of this State, as a body, were 
 in the fullest sympathy with the administration of the 
 law and that they were ready to uphold it at any and 
 all hazard, whatever the nature of the crime demand- 
 ing punishment." 
 
 In further proof of his confidence in the people he 
 said: 
 
 "When I left the capitol I left on file a mass of cor- 
 respondence covering", to my satisfaction, the position 
 of the people of this State on mob violence and lynch- 
 ing. Taking as the starting point, I filed the admira- 
 ble essay by the then distinguished Chief Justice of the 
 Supreme Court, as read before the State Bar Associa- 
 tion, pleading for the maintenance of the law and the 
 authority of the courts in the prosecution of criminals 
 and the punishments for crime, whatever the viola- 
 tion and however damnable the outrage. The courts, 
 he proclaimed, are sufficient and he inveighed strong- 
 ly against the fury and the wreck of a maddened mob. 
 
 "Apprehending that I might have occasion to en- 
 force the observance of the law in the suppression of 
 a mob, I addressed letters to the daily newspapers in 
 the State to know whether I would be supported in 
 the policy. From every daily paper I received not 
 only favorable replies, but in each case the statements 
 were very strongly put. 
 
 "I then addressed letters to each one of the supe- 
 rior court judges and the solicitors general of the sev- 
 eral courts, to know whether or not they were in sym- 
 pathy with the sentiments of the distinguished Chief 
 Justice as expressed in the essay to which I have al- 
 luded. To a man I found them to be just as strong. 
 
 "Following the matter further, I wrote to the sher- 
 iffs over the State and I found them ready to support 
 the law to the fullest extent of their authority. 
 
 "All this correspondence I left on file at the capitol,
 
 RACES IN HARMONY. 77 
 
 attesting the loyalty of the officers of the State to the 
 majesty of the law. 
 
 "When the General Assembly met I had a conference 
 with prominent members of the judiciary committee 
 as to the sufficiency of law for the punishment of mob 
 violence and kindred lawlessness, and it was agreed 
 that absolute security would be effected by some addi- 
 tional legislation. Hon. Warner Hill, chairman of 
 this committee, was selected to frame such statute, 
 and it passed both houses without a dissenting vote. 
 This statute authorizes the sheriff or other officer in 
 charge to suppress mob violence by arresting the par- 
 ties so engaged and placing them in the common jail 
 to be dealt with as the law directs ; it declares that 
 any citizen engaged in mobbing or lynching is guilty 
 of felony and on conviction to be punished by impris- 
 onment in the penitentiary; and should death result 
 from such mob violence the person causing said death 
 shall be subject to indictment and trial for murder. 
 The statute further provides that the sheriff shall be 
 punished for failure to do his duty. The law gives the 
 sheriff authority to summon to his aid, with arms, any 
 number of citizens he may need to suppress the mob, 
 and to take human life, if it be necessary, to enforce 
 the law. 
 
 "When this bill became law I sent a copy to each 
 sheriff in the State, accompanied by the following let- 
 ter: 
 
 " 'State of Georgia, Executive Department, Atlan- 
 ta, Ga., December 19, 1893. My Dear Sir: I enclose 
 you herewith copy of bill introduced by Hon. Warner 
 Hill, passed unanimously by the recent General As- 
 sembly, and approved this day. 
 
 " 'I send you the bill thus early that you may at 
 once know its provisions and that I may apprise you 
 of the authority given you in the Act, as well as the
 
 78 RACES IN HARMONY. 
 
 responsibility now put upon you to preserve the peace 
 and honor of the State. 
 
 " 'The General Assembly, by unanimous action, has 
 pronounced death by mob violence murder, and de- 
 clared that all citizens who become parties thereto 
 are subject to indictment and trial under such charge. 
 You will observe, further, that the Act not only au- 
 thorizes you to summon to your aid any and all the 
 citizens of your county, in your efforts to suppress 
 mob violence and lawlessness, but it very properly 
 pronounces failure to respond on the part of such cit- 
 izens so summoned a misdemeanor, and upon convic- 
 tion they will be duly punished under the law. 
 
 " 'I can hardly believe that any officer of the law in 
 this State will so far fail in duty as to deserve the pun- 
 ishment prescribed in section 2 of this Act, yet I am 
 candid to say that I suggested and I am, therefore, 
 responsible for this enactment, as I desired to make it 
 absolutely certain that another case of mob violence 
 should never be possible in this State. 
 
 " 'The Act, therefore, compels both the citizen and 
 the officer to discharge their duties under penalty of 
 the law. 
 
 " 'The honor of the State, as far as your jurisdic- 
 tion extends, is now in your hands, and I shall watch 
 with great interest the outcome of this new legisla- 
 tion. 
 
 " 'Your strong letter, received some months ago, 
 assuring me of your determined purpose to aid in sup- 
 pressing lawlessness, has had much to do with the 
 passage of this bill, and I am constrained to believe 
 you will do your whole duty and that mob law in 
 Georgia is now at an end. 
 
 " 'W. J. NORTHEN, Governor.' 
 
 "I have given you these facts to demonstrate three 
 things :
 
 RACES IN HARMONY. 79 
 
 "i. That every court officer is fully ready to do his 
 full duty in the enforcement of the law. 
 
 "2. That the machinery of the courts is sufficient 
 to punish adequately and fully, as provided by law, 
 every crime possible to human villainy. 
 
 "3. That the sentiment of the people in this State 
 is strongly against mob violence, especially as ex- 
 pressed in lynching. If this were not true, the news- 
 papers in the State would not have given to me the 
 expressions stated to you a moment ago. If it were 
 not true, the bill that became law would not have 
 passed the General Assembly of the State without a 
 dissenting vote. The lawmakers represented the peo- 
 ple, and they put the views of the people into State 
 enactment. The sentiment of the people of this State 
 is unquestionably against mob violence and lynching." 
 
 In answer to the question as to whether or not 
 there had been lynchings since the enactment of that 
 law, he replied: 
 
 "Yes, and there have been in this State and every 
 other State violations of every criminal law in the 
 Code, but that does not indicate that the people are 
 not pronounced against such iniquities. The question 
 to which I am making reply is : Does any considera- 
 ble portion of the people at the South favor mob vio- 
 lence or lynch law?" 
 
 When asked to suggest some remedy, the ex-Gov- 
 ernor continued : 
 
 "I believe the people in the rural districts are as 
 much entitled to police protection as the people in 
 the cities. I do not make the suggestion because of 
 the presence of the negroes any more than I would 
 make the suggestion to the cities because of their 
 absence, but on general conditions that demand pro- 
 tection. Every county in this State and in every other 
 State, North or South, should have a police force
 
 80 RACES IN HARMONY. 
 
 efficient and active. The sheriff should be chief of 
 such county police, and see that they are vigilant. 
 This will not only largely eliminate the little remain- 
 ing spirit there is still among our people to deal sum- 
 mary vengeance upon outlaws, but it would furnish 
 such protection as to prevent crimes of all kinds in 
 the rural sections. It is well to say, as you have r 
 doubtless, oberved, that there has been not only less 
 occasion for mob violence because of assaults, but 
 that the people have more generally refrained from 
 violence and awaited action by the courts. The rela- 
 tions between the races are not so antagonistic as for- 
 merly, but far more cooperative. To believe this, 
 you have only to recall the conditions that existed 
 soon after the war when the ku-klux were believed 
 to be necessary to the safety of the people. After 
 these, came the vigilance committees, and now, if we 
 had the county police, regulated by law, the situation 
 would be largely, if not completely, met. 
 
 "Next, I would be glad to see the sheriffs devote 
 one entire session of their State convention to the 
 discussion of matters pertaining to their duties in sub- 
 duing mobs and enforcing the law. Such discussion 
 will not only bring helpful suggestions to officers of 
 the law, but it will tend to create most healthful pub- 
 lic opinion and establish authority. 
 
 "The great objection, as stated oftentimes, is the 
 necessity for the presence of the outraged victim be- 
 fore the court during the trial of the alleged outlaw. 
 To remedy this, I call your attention to a provision of 
 the Code of 1882, section 4663, as follows : 
 
 " 'It shall be the duty of the judges of the superior 
 courts to make a special report annually to the Gov- 
 ernor of this State previous to the meeting of the 
 General Assembly, and by him to be submitted to the 
 Legislature, of all such defects, omissions or imper-
 
 RACES IN HARMONY. 81 
 
 fections in this Code, as experience on their several 
 circuits may suggest.' Surely, the judiciary of the 
 State can suggest some enactment that will meet the 
 demands of the case and prevent the humiliation com- 
 plained of in case of court trial. 
 
 "After having expressed myself thus far at your re- 
 quest, may I now be allowed to say there has been a 
 good deal of morbid and extravagant statements 
 about conditions at the South upon the subject of out- 
 rages and lynchings. There is not a better civilization 
 in any State or section in this Union than in Georgia, 
 and at the South. I have lived here all my life, and I 
 have been all over the United States, and I have yet 
 to find a place for which I would exchange a home 
 in Georgia or at the South. I have lived among ne- 
 groes all my life, and, like the distinguished bishop, 
 I do not want to live where there are none. I will 
 trust them in every relation far more confidently than 
 I would the mongrel population of self-announced 
 socialists, anarchists and outlaws, who do the menial 
 service of other sections. We do not want to deport 
 the negroes. We could not if we so desired. How 
 can you force 10,000,000 of people to leave the coun- 
 try, when they exercise the same civil rights as are 
 accorded to you? If they consented to go, where is 
 the country accessible in which they would be more 
 acceptable than to you? Who would receive them, 
 if you cast them off? They now have to their credit 
 upon the tax books more than a half billion dollars 
 worth of property. Who would buy at the prices they 
 would, later, demand for their holdings? If these 
 conditions were all met, the expense of transportation 
 would burden the government beyond recovery in 
 its most prosperous days. Who would buy for them 
 their furnishings and the lands upon which they must 
 settle? . 
 
 6 ns
 
 82 RACES IX HARMONY. 
 
 "The negro furnishes almost exclusively the farm 
 labor at the South. If all other possible conditions 
 could be met satisfactorily their leaving in a body o r 
 gradually would paralyze the agricultural conditions 
 at the South beyond recovery for three generations. 
 Let it be understood that the negroes are here to stay, 
 and we are going to see that they behave themselves 
 or punish them with the extreme penalty of the law 
 when they deserve and give them fullest credit when 
 their conduct so demands. 
 
 "The better classes of the negroes have shown them- 
 selves quite as much in favor of the death penalty 
 for the outlaws of their race who commit assaults as 
 are the white people themselves. There is no longer 
 that disposition to conceal and protect these crimi- 
 nals against full and proper punishment. When this 
 punishment is administered uniformly by due process 
 of law and not by the barbarous burnings by the mob, 
 you will find the most active co-operation on their part 
 in bringing the criminal to the tribunal designated to 
 punish crime. 
 
 "For all these years I have had occasion to watch 
 closely the relations between the races in this State, 
 and I say to you, most positively, there has not been 
 a time since the war when we were more in harmony 
 than we are to-day. 
 
 "Have you not observed that a great deal of mis- 
 information is given to the press and scattered over 
 the country to the great damage of our honor as a 
 State and our best material interests ? A case in point 
 occurred only a short time since when we were told 
 that a white man and a negro had committed an out- 
 rage on an old white woman in one of our lower coun- 
 ties and that both these outlaws had been promptlv 
 lynched. The next day we were told the outrages had 
 not been committed, and, of course, the lynching had
 
 EACES IN HARMONY. 83 
 
 not taken place. Again, we constantly see something 
 like this : 'A villanious negro committed a fearful crime 
 in this community yesterday and he is being pursued 
 by an infuriated crowd of men. He will be lynched 
 as soon as captured.' Why not wait until the lynch- 
 ing occurs ? There seems to be a morbid appetite on 
 the part of some correspondents and some newspa- 
 pers that are afraid of being 'scooped' and it is grati- 
 fied to the great damage of our civilization and the 
 honor of the State. 
 
 "There is no crime known to me more villainous 
 and damning than the one unnamed. If there were 
 punishment greater than death I would be glad to see 
 it administered to the guilty outlaw, under due pro- 
 cess of law before the courts, but I protest now, as I 
 have for all these years, against mob law and lynch- 
 ing. Our law properly pronounces such brutality 
 murder, and no crime, however heinous,, can justify 
 it. I have shown you that our people do not counte- 
 nance it, and any statement to the contrary is untrue. 
 We are now putting all the idle negroes to work and 
 the better negroes are helping to this end. Vice and 
 crime have greatly decreased among them and we are 
 practically free from trouble. Let us stop the contin- 
 ued abuse of the negro and rather help him to be use- 
 ful to himself and the community. Commend him 
 freely and generously and publicly, if you will, when 
 he does well, and punish him severely in the courts 
 when he is vicious, and let that be the end of it. We 
 have no occasion for a constant crying out. We have 
 peace and abundant prosperity. Just let us say so, 
 publish the crimes of the people if it is best, but let us 
 be sure they have been committed before we say so."
 
 MUST PUT DOWN THE MOB OR BE PUT 
 DOWN BY IT. 
 
 BY BISHOP WARREN A. CANDLER, D.D., 
 Of the Methodist Church. 
 
 The lynching mania can no longer be considered a 
 local, or sectional evil. It has spread to every part of 
 our country and shows itself as the manifestation of 
 a spirit that deserves the reprobation of the good 
 everywhere without regard to party or place. 
 
 It is something worse than unfair for the people of 
 the North to treat the subject as if it were a peculiar 
 sin of the South, and it is something worse than a 
 mistake for the people of the South to defend it as if 
 it were their especial besetment about which they felt 
 .a self-convicting sensitiveness. It is the duty of all 
 good people in every part of our country to unite in 
 putting down the mob. For let us be well assured 
 that the good people will put down the mob, or the 
 mob will put down the good people. 
 
 When a lynching occurs, the law is more truly 
 lynched than is the victim of the mob's fury. It is an 
 outburst of anarchy, and not an eruption of righteous, 
 indignation against an atrocious crime. 
 
 In defense of lynching, it is sometimes said : "Stoi> 
 the outrages that provoke lynching and the lynching 
 will cease." But pray tell which outrage is meant? 
 If reference to the horrible crime of rape is intended, 
 it is enough to say in reply that it is not the cause of 
 one-fourth the lynchings which occur in the United 
 States. Two years since, for example, the figures for 
 
 (84)
 
 MUST PUT DOWN THE MOB. 85 
 
 a year showed only sixteen cases of ravishing- against 
 128 lynchings. In the case at Evansville, Ind., the 
 original sin which gave rise to the lynching was the 
 .shooting of a policeman. But the mob sent a load of 
 buckshot into the breast of a young girl of 15 years of 
 age, who was in no wise involved. How can such 
 reckless fury ever cure crime, or arrest disorder? Is 
 there one home more secure or one life more safe by 
 reason of such horrible outbursts ? 
 
 Who composed this Indiana mob? Were its lead- 
 ers men who were incontrollably jealous for morality 
 and justice? On the contrary, the arrests made sub- 
 sequent to the lynching showed among the leaders 
 three professional gamblers, three men known to the 
 police as desperate characters, and one man who had 
 been guilty of killing another some years ago. Is ft 
 not clear that this lynching was fomented and carried 
 out by a lot of blood-thirsty scapegraces, who had not 
 the slightest interest in anything good? They are 
 the sort who find pleasure in the bloody brutalities of 
 the prize fight. And yet men of respectability were 
 iound foolish enough to apologize for the atrocities. 
 
 And such are the men, generally, who organize 
 mob violence. How delighted they must be when 
 -decent people rush into print to defend, if not to eulo- 
 gize, their diabolical deeds! Is it not time decent 
 people put their pens to better use? The mob which 
 they eulogize to-day will turn upon its defenders to- 
 morrow. The taste for blood grows with indulgence. 
 
 Lynch law, I repeat, is anarchy, and anarchy is al- 
 ways the forerunner of destruction in republics. This 
 evil strikes at the very heart of our civil institutions. 
 If unchecked it will increase, and eventually become 
 unendurable by the vicious even. Men will grow so 
 weary of it that they will welcome any sort of strong 
 hand which will undertake to put it down, even the
 
 86 MUST PUT DOWN THE MOB. 
 
 hand of tyranny. They will argue that the tyranny 
 of one strong, wise man is preferable to the many- 
 headed tyranny of a brainless mob, as, indeed, it is. 
 Then the hour for the "man on horseback" will have 
 struck and he will appear. The anarchy of Sulla and 
 Marius produced Caesarism, with all the dreadful con- 
 sequences it drew after it. The spirit of mobocracy 
 in the Grecian republics made Philip of Macedon pos- 
 sible and opened the way for Alexander. Robespierre 
 and his rioters gave Napoleon his chance. They slew 
 the liberty which they professed to love. 
 
 And let no man suppose that such an outcome is 
 impossible in our land and time. The American peo- 
 ple are as quick as any to adore a military hero, and 
 they can make one out of as small amount of the raw 
 material as any nation that ever kissed a sword or 
 bowed to a plume. Witness the election of Jackson 
 and the "rough rider" to the highest office. More- 
 over, it should be remembered that we turn out of 
 the military academy of the nation annually more 
 than a hundred young men. whose future turns on 
 the use of the sword. They are generally men of 
 worldly honor and ambition. Many of them come 
 from influential families, and have the influence of 
 such connections back of them. Would it be a 
 strange thing if in all their number there should be 
 found one capable of seizing power in the name of 
 order? Or, would it be a matter of wonder if the 
 people, having grown weary of disorder, should glad- 
 ly welcome a strong, educated man of honor, who 
 should appear and promise them peace and security? 
 Stranger things have happened. 
 
 Depend upon it, no nation ever retains liberty after 
 it ceases to maintain law. Lynch law protects no 
 home, but does rather pull down the strongest de- 
 fense of all the homes in the commonwealth. Our
 
 MUST PUT DOWN THE MOB. 87 
 
 homes are sheltered by law, and they are not shielded 
 by lawlessness. 
 
 We have problems enough to solve in this country, 
 to be sure. But we have no problem which cannot 
 be solved by the practice of personal and civic right- 
 eousness every day. The man who will not try that 
 remedy has no right to propose any other. In the 
 end, all other solutions will be found worse than vain. 
 With reference to the various picturesque propos- 
 als which are periodically made to cure all our ills, it 
 is, perhaps, not unkind to say that the silence of their 
 authors would be more valuable than their speech. 
 It seems that there is a certain amount of periodical 
 space to be filled and a certain number of men who 
 live by filling it with their pieces. When the weather 
 gets warm and they find it hard to write anything 
 that will be read what else can these men do but 
 fall to solving all the problems of the nation the 
 South in particular in order to settle their own 
 pressing question, "How shall I manage to say some- 
 thing that will sell and provide for my board bill?" 
 And then, too, the "chautauqua season" is a very dan- 
 gerous period of the year, especially during those 
 years when the Congress of the United States is not 
 in session and the thrifty statesman who is deficient 
 in a sense of responsibility for his words, is "out for 
 the stuff," and when platform managers, who have an 
 eye for gate receipts only, are out hunting for "draw- 
 ing" sensationalists, without regard for the kind of 
 things that the sensation-mongers may pour out of 
 their easy-acting mouths. 
 
 What a pity these men undertake to handle mat- 
 ters so serious and so complex! Yea, what a peril! 
 Adventurous sportsmen discharging firearms in a 
 powder-house would not be a greater menace to good 
 order and security.
 
 88 MUST PUT DOWN THE MOB. 
 
 Good men, helped of God, can solve all our ques- 
 tions if they can only find a way to muzzle the agita- 
 tors, or if they can find a way to switch the agitators 
 off on subjects that they can talk about without en- 
 dangering the peace of society. I think, for example, 
 that the race question could be settled if we can find 
 out how to silence men who make merchandise out 
 of its discussion. For one, I am not nearly so afraid 
 of the race question as I am of the race of "chautau- 
 qua platformers and performers !" The apprehension 
 of the mischief they may do to all the races in our 
 country haunts me all through the dog-days. I know 
 how to get on with the negroes, for I was brought up 
 with them. But one of these problem-solving talkers 
 scares me. I am not afraid of him for what he really 
 is, but for what some well-meaning people may take 
 him to be. A bleating calf jumping suddenly from 
 under a chinquapin bush may make a really gentle 
 horse run away ; or a moon-eyed horse hitched along- 
 side a reliable nag may shy at what he thinks is a 
 bogie and frighten his mate into the most dangerous 
 misbehavior. It is thus some good men have been 
 led to apologize for lynching. They have seen night- 
 mares until they are prepared to conjure with a real 
 horror in order to down a ghost. 
 
 The situation in the South is one of difficulty, of 
 course. So is the situation in Chicago, or that of 
 Paris, or that of London, or that of New York. Our 
 homes in the South are safer than the homes of Chi- 
 cago. Give me the negro any time, in preference to 
 the anarchists and free lovers. In fact, I do not wish 
 to live in any country where there are no negroes. 
 
 But if our difficulties were a thousand-fold greater 
 than they are, lynchings would not remove them. 
 Such deeds of lawlessness multiply aM our troubles. 
 If these things must be anywhere in our country, let
 
 MUST PUT DOWN THE MOB. 89 
 
 them be confined to the North, where a denser popu- 
 lation, composed of all sorts of heterogeneous ele- 
 ments, furnish greater provocations to them, and, per- 
 force, more excuse for them. 
 
 We do not want any such barbarities to defend our 
 Southern civilization.
 
 RACES MUST SEPARATE, ASSERTS BISHOP 
 TURNER. 
 
 One of the features of the mass meeting yesterday 
 afternoon at the People's tabernacle was the address 
 of Bishop Henry M. Turner on the subject, "Is the 
 Pulpit Equal to the Times? If so, Why this Quibble 
 that Frightens the Common People and Seemingly 
 Paralyzes Labor in the Farming Sections?" 
 
 Bishop Turner devoted a considerable portion of 
 his time in replying to Dr. H. S. Bradley, who in an 
 address last Monday declared that the separation of 
 the races was a chimerical proposition. Bishop Tur- 
 ner declared that separation of the races was the 
 only solution of the race problem, though he did not 
 expect all the negroes to rush out of the country. 
 What he wishes is for the negro to be given an oppor- 
 tunity to go to Africa if he so desires. 
 
 He spoke as follows : 
 
 "Mr. Chairman Among the remarks that I shall 
 make on this occasion will be a few in reply to Rev. 
 Dr. H. S. Bradley, who fills one of the first pulpits of 
 Atlanta, and is the pastor of a congregation cultured 
 and refined. 
 
 "I venerate the distinguished divine, Rev. Dr. H. 
 S. Bradley, scholarly, eloquent, humane, as he is, and 
 I believe he is a Christian gem of the first water. In- 
 deed, I have received a personal recognition from 
 him that I have been accorded by no other white min- 
 ister in the city of Atlanta, while all have treated me 
 with respect. But it so happens that God made me 
 out of that kind of material which enables me to rise 
 
 (90)
 
 KACES MUST SEPARATE. 91 
 
 above personal considerations sufficiently to agree 
 with my enemies and differ with my friends when the 
 question at issue requires it. Personal likes and dis- 
 likes have nothing to do with my honest opinions. 
 
 "The learned doctor last Monday night, the 2ist 
 instant, delivered an elegant and rhetorical speech be- 
 fore a mass meeting of my race (and I was present) 
 against the separation of the races I mean the white 
 and black races, or, as the Africans say, the Buchra 
 man and the Otutu man. He hurled his florid re- 
 marks against negro emigration, segregation, any 
 form of separation or any movement that would con- 
 template negro concretion, civilly or politically, and 
 as I saw it presented one of the most eloquent and il- 
 logical addresses I have heard for a great while not 
 because he is wanting in logical ability and attain- 
 ments, for I have heard him both in the pulpit, on the 
 platform, and have read after him, but because he 
 was handling a subject which he had never studied 
 with a view of its practical results, as the early his- 
 tory of Rome, of North America, of South America 
 and of Australia, and indeed the history of all peoples 
 and nations would have shown the folly of his posi- 
 tion. For emigration is the philosophy of ancient 
 and modern history. 
 
 "The bulk of white men know but little about the 
 inner feelings and idiosyncrasies of the negro, and 
 when they speak about black men emigrating to bet- 
 ter their conditions they signally fail by reason of the 
 fact that it is not a question that concerns them 
 enough to give it deep and protracted thought. I 
 know there are many white men who ride into popu- 
 larity by pretending to know all about the negro, but 
 they only know the ignorant and scullion side of him. 
 
 "In this country, where white represents God, and 
 black the devil, but little thought is given to the black
 
 92 RACES MUST SEPARATE. 
 
 man's future. Everything that concerns the negro 
 is whittled down to the present contingencies, and 
 the eternal .future which involves and comprehends 
 change, revolution, mutation and the mighty destiny 
 of races, is but little thought of, and if the negro does 
 not think about it himself, it will receive but little at- 
 tention and our status as a race, to use the language 
 of the elder Judge Lumpkin, is so ignoble, and the 
 foolish scarecrow of social equality has become such 
 a hobgoblin with the ignorant masses, that we are 
 further apart in spirit and sympathy than heaven and 
 hell. We are as ignorant of each other as races as if 
 we did not live in the same world. The very condi- 
 tions that surround and confront us forbid a white 
 man from having any real knowledge of the negro, 
 and I could bring" a hundred illustrations to establish 
 this fact. It was verified the other night in Dr. Brad- 
 ley's address when he said the negroes were Ameri- 
 can citizens, and do not wish to be segregated. I 
 grant that the doctor represented a large portion, for 
 as the Savannah News says, 'The negro is not yet a 
 nation building race,' but if he will put a steamer be- 
 tween here and Africa and make the rates of travel as 
 cheap as white emigrants get from Europe to Amer- 
 ica 4,000,000 will leave as soon as they can adjust their 
 little affairs. While I am not burdened to death with 
 intelligence, I have too much sense to say that ail 
 would go. I do not know as half would go. Jahn in 
 his Biblical archaeology says that not half of the chil- 
 dren of Israel ever left Egypt for the promised land, 
 but the vast multitude which remained has never been 
 heard of from that day till this. No people in the 
 world's history, who were not self-reliant and who are 
 not prompted by their inner nature to sue for better 
 conditions, have ever reached the plane of respecta- 
 bility. Indeed, they are invariably crushed out of ex-
 
 KACES MUST SEPARATE. 93 
 
 istence and exterminated. I have been reading his- 
 tory fifty years and over and if there is any exception 
 to this rule, outside possibly of the Saxons who were 
 absorbed, and also did much of the absorbing by vir- 
 tue of being of the same color and having the most 
 beautiful women on earth at that time, I would be 
 pleased to have them pointed out. 
 
 "The doctor says the negro is an American citizen. 
 I wish he was correct. Twelve millions of colored 
 people of the United States would throw their hats, 
 parasols and umbrellas heaven high, if possible, if his 
 declaration about the citizenship of the negro was a 
 reality, or could be established. Surely the doctor has 
 not been apprised of the fact that the conclave in 
 Washington, D. C., called the United States Supreme 
 Court, has issued a legislative decision taking away 
 every vestige of his civil rights, and in the recent Ala- 
 bama case has declared his political rights a nullity, 
 and outside of the right to pay taxes and work on the 
 roads he has not a single right that would prompt 
 him to be a man. I would mention the degradation 
 this decision, or these decisions (for there are three 
 of them), have inflicted upon the negro, in detail, but 
 it would be too voluminous and do no good ; but I 
 will give $500 if any man will show me such a decis- 
 ion from any court of last resort in the history of the 
 world. Its uniqueness stands in the fact that thev 
 legislated and decided at the same time. No instance 
 of the kind is found in the chronicles of the nation. 
 
 "But just at this point I beg to ask the doctor if 
 he could have any respect for a man, or any set of 
 men, who would sit quietly under the condition of 
 things that confront the negro in this country? If 
 he wants to know what I mean, just let him color his 
 face (for white is not a color) and attempt to be a 
 man and a gentleman for one day, and he will under-
 
 94 RACES MUST SEPARATE. 
 
 stand the meaning thoroughly. We are daily the sub- 
 jects of comment and misrepresentation. God :s 
 charged with folly for attempting to make a man and 
 failing to complete His job, and he is assigned to the 
 realm of inferiority, and yet more laws have been en- 
 acted by the different legislatures of the country, and 
 more judicial decisions have been delivered and pro- 
 claimed against this piece of inferiority called negro 
 than have been issued against any people since time 
 began. It would appear that the negro is the greatest 
 man on earth if we are to judge from the judicial de- 
 cisions in the code books of the country to keep him 
 down. 
 
 "The Pilgrim fathers did not have to contend with 
 one-half of the legal fetters, but they left the old coun- 
 try and sought a land where they could develop the 
 mighty forces that heaven had implanted in their na- 
 tures, and the result is a great and powerful people 
 have been developed. Which does the doctor have 
 the highest respect for the early settlers of Plymouth 
 in Massachusetts and Jamestown, Va., or the doci'e 
 negro who will not try to help himself? 
 
 "I have been singled out in this country as the 
 chief factor in the African emigration movement, and 
 as such I believe that I have received all of a hundred 
 thousand letters, some of them containing dozens and 
 dozens of names, who are clamoring for transporta- 
 tion conveniences and cheap rates from this to the 
 land of our ancestors, so they can return to Africa 
 without having to pay their way to New York City, 
 then to Liverpool, England, and then to Africa, which 
 they have to do at present, costing them more on the 
 cars to New York than white people have to pay from 
 Queenstown, Liverpool, Hamburg and other points 
 to come to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, New 
 "Orleans and Savannah.
 
 RACES MUST SEPARATE. 95 
 
 "Think of it, 557 steamers, besides sailing ships, are 
 hugging the shores of Africa the year round from 
 Europe, and not one from the United States. These 
 European steamers, carrying to her ports hundreds of 
 millions, if not a billion dollars of commerce annu- 
 ally, and not the worth of a nickel of commerce from 
 the United States. Some of us have been trying for 
 years to get this government to subsidize a ship for 
 mail purposes, and let it serve as a transport for emi- 
 gration and commerce, as a start to the movement, 
 but up to the present our efforts have been fruitless. 
 President Harrison would have done something, but 
 he was afraid of public sentiment. President Cleve- 
 land saw the philosophy of it, but was contending with 
 the Hawaiian question and disposed of it by saying 
 time would make it all right; and time will do it. 
 This nation, or its aggregated people, will either have 
 to open up a highway to Africa for the discontented 
 black man or the negro question will flinder this gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 "There will be no peace to the United States as 
 long as the negro question is an issue. Might may 
 hold the scepter and sway legislative and judicial pow- 
 er for a time, and even suppress free speech and tyran- 
 nize over the dissatisfaction of a people for a while, 
 but right will step to the front in its own good time 
 and twist the scepter from the hands of might, for 
 the reason that God is right. A United States Sena- 
 tor from a Southern State said to me some time ago: 
 'I am opposed to your emigration agitation, espe- 
 cially about returning to Africa in any numbers. You 
 are keeping up an unnecessary excitement,' but finallv 
 said : 'Remember, Turner, that I am opposed to it as 
 a white man, as your race furnishes us with a cheap 
 and obedient labor; but if I was a negro I will be
 
 96 RACES MUST SEPARATE. 
 
 d d if I would not leave this country before the 
 
 sun goes down.' 
 
 "I do not regard Hon. John Temple Graves as the 
 quintessence of infallibility, especially when he is dis- 
 cussing and commenting upon the intellectual and 
 moral status of my race, as he represented them in 
 some respects, in Chautauqua and Chicago, while he 
 only expressed the current opinion of the white people 
 generally ; but the remedy that he pointed out to the 
 American people, in regard to the existing condition 
 of things, in my opinion, and in the opinion of sober 
 thinking people generally, raises him to a national 
 majesty, and makes him the greatest statesman and 
 philosopher in the land. Among the notable and il- 
 lustrious men of the country Mr. Graves towers above 
 them all. Bismarck never offered to Germany, nor 
 Gladstone to England, a wiser measure and a more 
 philosophical proposition, than Mr. Graves has of- 
 fered to the American people. He is evidently a wide- 
 ly read scholar, a master logician, and has the courage 
 of his convictions, and defies public criticism, when 
 he tells the white and black man in this country they 
 must separate, for separation is the ultimatum, and 
 that alone will bring peace to this nation. 
 
 "I will tell the black man what Mr. Graves thought, 
 but was reluctant to express. Your very existence 
 depends upon separation. At present there is no 
 Christian unity, much less civil and political unity. 
 A shameful division prevails. 
 
 "When I speak of separation I do not say that ev- 
 erybody will go or must go. I am only contending 
 that there should be a highway made across the At- 
 lantic (only 3,350 miles from the city hall of New 
 York) for such black men and women as are self-re- 
 liant and have those manhood aspirations that God 
 planted in them and degrading laws will intensify. We
 
 EACES MUST SEPARATE. 97 
 
 are not clamoring for rich men, or men of respectable 
 means. We want smart, energetic and self-reliant 
 men. If Australia could be made one of the greatest 
 countries on earth by penal convicts, who would dare 
 say that respectable colored men could not also 
 build up a nation? 
 
 "It was also proclaimed the other night that Libe- 
 ria was a failure and had played out. I know Liberia. 
 I know Muhlenburg Station. I presided over an an- 
 nual conference there of ordained ministers, and I 
 am prepared to say that a finer republic is not found 
 on earth than Liberia, consisting of 35,000 civilized 
 and a million and a half of heathen people. Monro- 
 via, the capital, with a population of 6,000, is one of 
 the most beautiful cities, as seen from the ocean, that 
 either England or America can present. 
 
 "The state house, presidential mansion, cabinet de- 
 partments, and a score of cities in the republic, and 
 the ships that stand in her various harbors, tell their 
 own story, and there is not a bar-room in the republic 
 to curse and ultimately damn her young men. If 
 Georgia has played out, then Liberia has played out, 
 but I grant that Liberia needs immigrants, and a 
 number of business men to help develop and bring in- 
 to utilization her resources. I mean her gold, silver, 
 diamonds, coal and to till the richest soil on earth. 
 
 "I must not make my remarks too long. Let me 
 say, however, that the negro is the richest man in the 
 world, if he had intelligence enough to know it. We 
 will get that intelligence, however, in God's own good 
 time. The American negro, with a few exceptions, is 
 the lowest specimen of the African tribes. The supe- 
 rior African sold us inferior Africans to the white 
 men. We were slaves hundreds and thousands of 
 years to our African masters before we were sold to 
 this country to become the slaves of our white mas- 
 
 7 ns
 
 98 RACES MUST SEPARATE. 
 
 ters ; but this lower type has to return in numbers, to 
 civilize and Christianize the higher type, and the white 
 man has to help us to do it, and God will see he does 
 it, or the nation that owes us $40,000,000,000 for two 
 hundred years' work performed and services rendered 
 will commence to wane and end in broken fragments, 
 like the Roman empire. I grant that the outlook for 
 the future between the two races looks far more pa- 
 cific than what it did. 
 
 "The assistance rendered by our white {riends to 
 Morris Brown college, especially, where we hope to 
 train African missionaries, and elevate that portion of 
 our race, who will live and die here, seems to tinge the 
 future with brighter prospects. But, God sent the ne- 
 gro here through his negative providence, to imbibe 
 civilization and Christianity from this giant white race, 
 and then redeem the land of his ancestors, and he 
 must do it and will, ultimately, do it."
 
 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 An Address by BISHOP Lucius H. HOLSEY, D.D., of the C. 
 
 M. E. Church, before the National Sociological Society, 
 
 at the I/incoln Temple Congregational Church. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, and Fellow Citizens : Per- 
 haps there is no question or problem that confronts 
 the wisdom, the patriotism, and philanthropy of Amer- 
 ican citizenship, greater and farther reaching in effect 
 and results than the perplexing and momentous ques- 
 tion of the racial problem. 
 
 According to public sentiment and private judg- 
 ment, according to the construction of the fabric of 
 .society, the enactment of its laws and their execution, 
 there is a serious racial question ; a question that 
 strikes deep into the recesses of American life, taking 
 hold of the basis of government and its advancing 
 and expanding civilization ; a profound question, upon 
 which hinges the peace, happiness, and prosperity of 
 all the people, and the possibilities and destiny of a 
 great African race. 
 
 From any view-point we may take, it is silly, if not 
 madness, to ignore or set at naught this great prob- 
 lem of the races. That there is a problem, no one, 
 who has surveyed the field and weighed and meas- 
 ured the active and operative factors therein contain- 
 ed, can deny. Seeking for the permanent adjustment 
 of this question, and its satisfactory solution, a multi- 
 plicity of theories, of many degrees and forms, have 
 been presented for consideration. It also appeals to 
 the candid thought of the North and of the South, 
 
 (99)
 
 100 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 and to the patience of the black race, who, by no de- 
 sign of their own, are yet the cause of conflicting 
 forces. It may be presumed as axiomatic that to ev- 
 ery problem that arises out of the government of a 
 nation there may be found a method of adjustment 
 and solution. Just as sure as all the parties concerned 
 seek the solution with patriotism and philanthropic 
 impulse, any question thus arising may be settled in 
 a way to preserve the peace, protect the civil order, 
 and advance the interest of all. 
 
 As our subject is "race segregation," or the separa- 
 tion of the races, we shall state what is meant. Segre- 
 gation does not mean colonization, exportation or 
 emigration. It does not mean the banishment of Afro- 
 Americans to any foreign country or realm, within 
 the limits or beyond the limits of our flag. Neither 
 does it mean for Afro-Americans to be sent to tht 
 Pacific islands, acquired and held by our Federal gov- 
 ernment, but it means that the government set apart 
 some territory, or parts of some of the public domain,, 
 for the specific purpose of forming a State or States 
 for qualified Afro-American citizens. This is what we 
 understand and advocate as segregation, and this is 
 what we shall proceed to elaborate and set forth as 
 clearly and briefly as we can. 
 
 The first reason for segregation lies in the domi- 
 nant fact that the infinite volume of racial prejudice 
 makes it impossible for the two separate and distinct 
 races to live together in the same territory in harmo- 
 nious relations, each demanding equal political rights 
 and equal citizenship. Whether prejudice is an at- 
 tribute of human nature or the cultivated and cher- 
 ished adjunct of circumstances is a subtle question 
 which we do not now attempt to discuss. But we 
 know from history and by experience that it does ex- 
 ist, and it is as old as those racial traits of physical
 
 RACE SEGREGATION. 101 
 
 character by which one race is distinguished from an- 
 other. Whether fundamental or cultivated, it has 
 played a great part in the world's civilization and the 
 history of the nations, often affecting the interests of 
 universal humanity. It is deepest and bitterest and 
 has its most prolonged conflict when it hinges upon 
 opposite racial peculiarities and characteristics. In 
 other words, prejudice is the strongest and the most 
 enduring where extremes in natural racial physical 
 distinctions meet, and where it is assumed that one is 
 inferior to the other, because of color, previous condi- 
 tion or of tribal or natural origin and relation. Al- 
 though it is difficult to assimilate very distinct and 
 dissimilar races and peoples, yet it is the clearest thing 
 to impartial decision that the Afro-American people 
 .accept and absorb very readily the pith and germs of 
 civic life or take on the present civilization. It also 
 seems that, so far as the Southern portion of our 
 country is concerned, this prejudice is not only des- 
 tined to continue indefinitely, but is on the increase 
 and growing in volume, force and depth. The ruling 
 people of the South not only make it a special end to 
 be obtained and to dominate the South with it, but 
 efforts are made to spread it in the North and circulate 
 it through all parts of the nation, so as to make the 
 down-trodden African people to be despised by those 
 who have shown their friendship for them in the past. 
 The bitterness, the antagonisms, the racial feuds and 
 bloody riots in which the black man is the extreme 
 sufferer, grow out of this fearful element in human 
 nature. As the races now stand, and as they must 
 stand in the South, there is no power inherent in gov- 
 ernment to remove it or destroy it, or even to ameli- 
 orate or soften its force or ferocity. Those elements 
 .and factors by which the phases of social and political 
 life have been changed and made to fit and harmonize
 
 102 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 with new relations and conditions have no perceptible 
 effect or bearing in the present case. Time measured 
 by decades and years, the recognized agency and the 
 ancient power that revolutionize thought, opinions, 
 judgment and actions, cannot change or destroy this 
 old gory monster of the centuries. It is deaf to rea- 
 son and to all appeals upon grounds of justice, equity 
 and the high principles of righteousness and mercy, 
 which are the only true bases of a just government. 
 Christianity, like other religions, stands appalled in 
 its massive shadow and quails before its grim visage. 
 It denies and despises "the brotherhood of man and 
 the fatherhood of God," even while it professes the 
 religion of the lowly Nazarene. The force of arms, 
 the triumph of conquering armies, the commands and 
 edicts of governments neither destroy nor control its 
 savage nature nor reduce the plenitude of its power. 
 
 Not only does prejudice lead to oppression, the 
 subversion of justice and right, but there is nothing 
 more serious and more in evidence than the fact that 
 there is a vast legalized scheme throughout the South 
 to set the iron heel more permanently and desperately 
 upon the head of the black man as a race, and as in- 
 dividual characters. There would be hope to the re- 
 jected and aspiring Afro-American if good character 
 and becoming behavior would or could count for any- 
 thing in the civic arena. But we are now confronted 
 by conditions where merit in the black man does not 
 weigh one iota in human rights, and very little in hu- 
 man life, if that life and character is under a black or 
 brown skin. Learning, personal accomplishments, 
 the achievement of wealth, the reign of morality, and 
 skilled handicraft amount to nothing whatever in the 
 black man. Merit and fitness for citizenship and ad- 
 vanced qualifications for the high and holy functions 
 of civil life cannot win for him the rights and safety
 
 EACE SEGREGATION. 103 
 
 that is the natural and God-given inheritance of all. 
 Nowhere in the South is the black man as safe in his 
 person and property as is the white man. No negro 
 can feel the same assurance of protection and safety, 
 even in the absence of the mob, as those of the oppo- 
 site or ruling race. The laws and police regulations 
 are one thing to the white people, but quite another 
 thing to the black people. 
 
 Black men and black women, though cultured and 
 refined, are treated as serfs and subjected to every 
 imaginable insult and degradation that can be invent- 
 ed or discovered by an ill-plighted and perverse in- 
 genuity. 
 
 But especially do we see and feel the power of op- 
 pression in the construction and operation of the laws 
 and that sentiment that gave them birth and execu- 
 tion, and which is stronger, more exacting than the 
 written laws themselves. Ever since President Hayes 
 had his seat in the White House, when the State gov- 
 ernments reverted to the control of the original South, 
 step by step, the legislative enactments have drawn 
 the cords of discrimination and oppression with in- 
 creasing stringency and an intensifying vindictiveness 
 that seem phenomenal and inhuman. If by these 
 methods of oppression and hardship entailed on black 
 citizens anything could be gained or added to the 
 happiness and prosperity of the dominant people, 
 there might be some reason or cause for its existence. 
 No morals are to be improved by it, no greater degree 
 of polished manners is to be achieved, and nothing 
 but self-debauchment to the oppressor and degrada- 
 tion to the oppressed are to be gained. And since 
 there is nothing to be gained, it is evident that the 
 only object in view is to oppress and destroy the prog- 
 ress and development of the Afro-American people, 
 a people who have never sought to do them a wrong
 
 104 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 or an injury. The desire on their part is to make ne- 
 gro freedom and possibilities a total and signal fail- 
 ure, and defeat the ends of a better negro manhood, 
 and prove as true the oft-repeated assertion that "the 
 black race is incapable of rising to the dignity of a 
 full-fledged common citizenship." They believe that 
 it is wrong to educate the negroes beyond a small 
 degree of handicraft, suitable only for the most me- 
 nial service and the smallest wages. 
 
 It is a fact, now universally known and acknowl- 
 edged, that the political rights and privileges con- 
 ferred on the black race by the general government 
 have been totally and irretrievably annihilated in al- 
 most every part of the South. Where they have failed 
 in total destruction of these rights by direct legisla- 
 tion, they have annulled them by a system of eva- 
 sions and subterfuges. The votes of black citizens 
 are no longer factors of consideration in the political 
 equation, and they are shorn of all those sacred func- 
 tions and agencies by which the highest and best citi- 
 zenship is attained. This not only helps to degrade 
 and destroy legitimate aspiration and subverts the 
 operating faculties of respectable and decent man- 
 hood, but reduces the millions of the black race to a 
 growing and enlarging system of serfdom and politi- 
 cal peonage that is but a little short of abject slavery. 
 Neither does it appear that there is any remedy or ap- 
 peal by which these flagrant wrongs and perversions 
 of civil rights can be adjusted and made to comply 
 with the demands of true American citizenship. It 
 may be stated as axiomatic, that no people can advance 
 in true American citizenship and reach high moral and 
 political ideals in the functions and practices of the fran- 
 chise, when they are excluded from it and from those re- 
 sponsibilities that must follow its exercise. The destruc- 
 tion of a "free ballot and a fair count" not only de-
 
 RACE SEGREGATION 105 
 
 stroys the national guarantee of protection, of liberty, 
 person and property, but must prove in the end a 
 threatening calamity to the Federal compact of States 
 and dangerous to the freedom of its citizens. In the 
 South the millions of black people are denied this 
 guarantee of protection to life, liberty and property, 
 with no hope or chance of redress. There is no ap- 
 peal, unless from Caesar to Caesar, which is equiva- 
 lent to no appeal at all. At the same time the general 
 government does nothing to defend and preserve its 
 great and majestic acts of sovereign right embodied 
 in the Constitution of the United States, but allows 
 the evil to fasten its grip upon all the States of the 
 South. 
 
 This puts the negro race not only in a state of semi- 
 serfdom, but the methods employed and the efforts to 
 further submerge the natural and political rights of 
 negro manhood grow apace as the days go by. How, 
 then, can the Afro-American rise to the dignity of 
 good citizenship and aspire to its possibilities, when 
 political rights, privileges and agencies are taken from 
 him? Can he make bricks without straw, or do the 
 impossible? Indeed, he is in a deplorable condition, 
 from whatever standpoint we view the situation. 
 
 It has been supposed by most of the leading negro 
 men, as well as many philanthropic friends in the 
 North, that whenever the negro is prepared for the 
 duties and responsibilities of citizenship, by culture, 
 wealth and moral standing, and that whenever he be- 
 -comes a skilled artisan and scientific farmer, then as 
 a race the white people of the South will bestow upon 
 him equal political privileges with themselves. And 
 thus it is claimed that a certain sort of education and 
 training is calculated to settle the problem of the 
 races. At first glimpse this seems a fair presumption, 
 and maybe it ought to be SO', and we heartily wish
 
 106 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 that it might so result. But experience contradicts it 
 and leaves us hopeless of obtaining the rights and 
 privileges of suffrage and cognate rights of citizen- 
 ship. 
 
 To make this clearer, no man of color, no matter 
 how cultured and worthy, or however accomplished, 
 refined and fitted, has ever been allowed to occupy the 
 same civic plane with the white man of the South for 
 a single hour. In this respect Bishop Turner, Frederick 
 Douglass, or Dr. Booker T. Washington has no more 
 chance than the most degraded of our race. It would 
 approximate a small riot should such negro celebri- 
 ties attempt to enter a hotel or public resort, assuming 
 the airs of equality on the civic plane. Hence all ne- 
 groes are excluded from positions and places of lucra- 
 tive employment, with the irrevocable negation, "No- 
 negroes are wanted." He may be better prepared 
 than the white applicant, but prejudice forbids the 
 black race to enter. As the black man of the South 
 approximates the standard of Anglo-Saxon civic life 
 in its best phases and highest standard of excellence, 
 race feelings, antagonisms, and antipathies will in- 
 crease in bitterness, extent and intensity. And this 
 will be so as long as one race is white and the other 
 black, both occupying the same physical territory. 
 
 There is no force or power, apparently, at command 
 to regulate and harmonize diverse elements and social 
 agencies so dissimilar as are seen in the racial phase 
 of the body politic. As long as the negro is a black 
 man, and as long as the opposite individual is a white 
 man, so long must the social factors and political en- 
 tities war against each other. 
 
 Race traits and race peculiarities are the natural 
 and enduring faculties that prolong the war and the 
 bitter strife of inharmonious relations. 
 
 It is true, legally allowed amalgamation would set-
 
 EACE SEGREGATION. 107 
 
 tie all racial difficulties by the natural process of ab- 
 sorption and disintegration of racial characteristics, 
 but that is a thing unthinkable, unlegalizable and be- 
 yond the realms of debate. It is undeniable that amal- 
 gamation is going on in the South, and legal mar- 
 riages to some extent in the North ; but in both sec- 
 tions of the country it is slow, while the products 
 of the same are rejected by the ruling race to the 
 same extent as the typical negro. Where it is illegal 
 it is a crime, and conflicts with the code of decency 
 and morality. It debauches the moral sense and de- 
 stroys the purity and dignity of young negro mother- 
 hood, and debases both sexes in their moral natures. 
 Legal intermarriage in the South, although not wrong 
 in its consummation, is a matter as yet undebatable, 
 and belongs only to the future. 
 
 But comparing the present situation with the his- 
 tory of Anglo-Saxon life, we see no chance for the 
 negro race to hold its identity of racial traits and char- 
 acteristics, while the percentage of Negro blood in- 
 fused into Anglo-Saxon veins is too small to change, 
 to any perceptible degree, the distinctive features of 
 visible or physical character. 
 
 As long as the two races live in. the same territory in 
 immediate eontact, their relations will be such as to inter- 
 mingle to that degree where "half-bloods," quarter-bloods, 
 and a mongrel progeny will result. This is not only go- 
 ing on now, but is destined to annihilate the 
 true typical antebellum negro type, and put in his 
 place a stronger, a longer lived, and a more Anglo- 
 Saxon-like, homogeneous race. In other words, the 
 negro to come will not be the negro of the emancipa- 
 tion proclamation, but he will be the Anglo-Saxon- 
 ized Afro-American. It seems true, as has been said, 
 "No race can look the Anglo-Saxon in the face and 
 live." Certainly no other race can hold its own in
 
 108 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 his immediate presence. Being in immediate contact, 
 and underrating the mental and moral virtues of oth- 
 ers and exercising a sovereignty over them, his oppor- 
 tunities are enlarged to make other races his own in 
 consanguinity. This he never fails to do. 
 
 It is often said the difficulties, growing out of the 
 race problem, would be greatly reduced in enormity 
 if the negro would remain in the rural districts and on 
 the farms. At first view this assertion seems to accord 
 with reason, common sense and the best interest of 
 the race. Certainly it appears that such conditions 
 are the best for the negro masses, and most promotive 
 of moral and physical health, as well as advancement 
 in social and material economics. Indeed, it is to be 
 regretted, if not lamented, that great masses of ne- 
 groes leave the country districts and farms and herd 
 and cluster in the towns and cities. But since this is 
 done, there must be some real cause for it, a cause 
 that enters deeply into the interest and material wel- 
 fare. Neither is it strange when we consider the fact 
 that in the country or rural districts of the South, no 
 negro, or at best few negroes, feel safe in their person 
 and property. Often they are ruthlessly and unnec- 
 essarily insulted, abused, lynched, killed, or driven 
 from their homes without the slightest hope of protec- 
 tion or redress. Often their mothers, sisters and 
 daughters are corrupted and debauched almost before 
 their eyes, yet nothing is done to stop the wicked and 
 nefarious practice or bring to punishment the evil 
 doer. Besides wages are small, and in many instances 
 are a mere pittance to keep soul and body together. 
 Of course, there are some honorable exceptions, but 
 they are few and far between. 
 
 The school system in the country is a mere shadow 
 and a real farce. The very fact that negroes in great 
 masses leave the country and resort to towns and
 
 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 x 
 
 cities shows an unrest and a fervid disquietude that 
 rest upon apprehension and real cause. Even those 
 who have been able to procure homes of their own, 
 along with other substantial belongings, are in a state 
 of uneasiness and mental perturbation. They do not 
 know how soon they may be falsely accused by some 
 trifling and envious white man and lynched by the 
 cruel and bloody mob. For as soon as the black man 
 in the rural districts gets a home with a farm attached 
 and reaches a state of prosperity, then the jealousies 
 of the white people are aroused and excited, and the 
 prosperous negro is watched and criticised. Here the 
 conflict of opposite races begins and ends in total de- 
 feat for the black man. Indeed, there is little or no 
 chance for the black man in the country if he grows 
 rich, polished, and puts on style, or tries to be equal 
 to the white neighbor in civic attainments. Good 
 breeding, politeness, kindness, self-respect and all the 
 virtues may be added and retained by a black man, as 
 have been attained by many, but these, instead of help- 
 ing him to live in the esteem of his white neighbor, 
 actually put him in a precarious condition, and endan- 
 gers his life and property. Thus we see, from this 
 view, there is absolutely no chance for the negro race 
 in the country districts to live and prosper without a 
 state of incertitude and unrest. 
 
 It approximates the largest truth as well as covers 
 the most dogmatic and momentous phase of this great 
 question that now confronts and perplexes us, when 
 we say that two distinct peoples can never live together in 
 the South in peace, when the one is Anglo-Saxon and the 
 other negro, unless the negro, as a race or en masse, lives 
 in the submerged realm of serfdom and slavery. 
 
 It is true, there is room enough in territorial ex- 
 tent ; there is abundance of water, sky and land, but on 
 the social and political plane there is not room enough
 
 110 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 for both races as civil equals. The white people of the 
 South have not been willing in the past ; they are less 
 willing now, and reason and experience teach us that 
 they will not be willing at any time in the endless fut- 
 ure for the race of black men to become their polit- 
 ical equals, or occupy the same plane of freedom and 
 citizenship, with themselves, no matter how well qual- 
 ified they may be for it. It is folly, if not idiotic, un- 
 less the supernatural intervenes, of which we have 
 promise, to expect it at all. 
 
 One of the most far-reaching and fatal attributes ot 
 the great problem, now considered, is the constant and 
 wide-spread practice of debauching the young mother- 
 hood of the negro race by the ruling people. Perhaps 
 there is nothing connected with a life of a race so dam- 
 aging and destructive to its morals, mental expansion 
 and physical development as to have its mothers cor- 
 rupted and despoiled of their procreative sanctity. It 
 can but beget a race of weaklings and effeminates in 
 moral, mental and physical health. How a people are 
 to become wise, upright and healthy in body and mind 
 while their mothers, daughters and sisters are pol- 
 luted in their genital powers is hard to see. As like 
 begets like, and as criminals beget criminals, and as 
 the parent is reflected and duplicated in the natural 
 offsprings, so the race, thus corrupted by miscegena- 
 tion and clandestine production, must ride to its down- 
 fall and racial dissolution. It does not help the case 
 to argue that the black women ought to resist, or 
 that their virtue ought to be a guarantee of successful 
 resistance against attack. True, it ought to be so, 
 and yet it was never so. But environments and condi- 
 tions have much to do with it. Wisdom and philan- 
 thropy would suggest that the best situation be as- 
 sumed and the best conditions arranged so as to make
 
 EACE SEGREGATION. Ill 
 
 the resisting power stronger by diminishing the op- 
 portunities of the advancing foe. 
 
 But a serious phase and a damaging factor of this 
 question are the constant and universal tendency in 
 the South to gradually reduce the great bulk of the 
 negro race to a state of serfdom and peonage. So 
 usual and constant is the progressive work of this form 
 of degradation and oppression that even negroes them- 
 selves seem to accept it as a matter of course, or as 
 what is expected, while philanthropic people have no 
 knowledge of it, or in some way pass it by unheeded. 
 None but those who have lived and traveled through 
 the rural district's of the South and made it a study 
 can enter its many-threaded details, and comprehend 
 the subtle and evasive methods by which the negroes 
 are kept at the lowest ebb of civil life. It is in the 
 small details of every-day life, with the customs, sen- 
 timent and tendencies, by which the true state. of the 
 race is seen in connection with the ruling people. 
 Prejudice, discrimination and double dealing crop out 
 in almost every business transaction. White men ex- 
 pect to be treated differently from black men, while 
 black men never expect to be treated with the same 
 degree of civility as white people receive. There is 
 one code of morals and civil ethics for the white- 
 skinned man and another for the black-skinned man, 
 with the heaviest of its iron hand resting upon the 
 head of the black man, on his children and his civiliza- 
 tion, if civilization it be. It is both terrible and mon- 
 strous, and perhaps the greatest phenomenon of the 
 whole racial problem, that black men, or any other 
 race of men, would or could stand quietly by and neg- 
 lect the opportunities of the golden hour to throw off 
 the yoke and repel the smiting hand that enwreathes 
 and rivets the heavy steel upon their necks. Even 
 evasions and the signalizing and the ponderous stroke
 
 112 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 of universal aversion are neglected, and the slow death 
 is left in the coils of the always forging links and 
 lengthening chains of a second form of old slavery. 
 There are those who believe that the South can and 
 ought to be allowed to settle the race problem in her 
 own way. For this she clamors and pleads to be "let 
 alone." The white people of the South vehemently 
 declare that they can settle it, and we do not doubt 
 their willingness and ability to do so. But how? 
 Where will the black man stand if he stands at all? 
 Let the history of the great past and the transactions 
 of the present answer. 
 
 To allow the South to settle this great question ill 
 its own way simply means to degrade the black race 
 and remand and doom the black people to an inexor- 
 able peonage and eternal serfdom. The proposition is 
 utterly incompatible with reason and what should be 
 expected. Colleges and schools of high grade, and 
 such enabling facilities of human development would 
 become obsolete, and a liberal and substantial cultural 
 process, that alone can develop a people, will become 
 things of the past, known only as facts of an historic 
 age. 
 
 The great majority of the Southern white people 
 hold that education ruins the negro, and especially the 
 higher education or collegiate training, and more es- 
 pecially under Northern white teachers. They make 
 the claim that it unfits him for usefulness and that 
 kind of citizenship that belongs to him as an inferior. 
 Anything that takes the black man from the ditch, the 
 cane farm or the cotton field as a mere menial laborer, 
 as a "hewer of wood and drawer of water," is adverse 
 to his best estate, God-given and ordained, and who- 
 ever, therefore, attempts to do it, or whoever succeeds 
 or partially succeeds in doing so, is the negro's great- 
 est enemy and a giant foe to the South ; that the friend
 
 RACE SEGREGATION. 113 
 
 of the negro is absolutely and necessarily an enemy of 
 the South. This is so absurd, and contrary to fact, 
 reason and history that it requires no serious attempt 
 for signal and complete contradiction. Education and 
 training help every creature to fulfill better the ends 
 of being and the onerous duties of life. The trained 
 horse, the cultured dog, the domiciled and domesti- 
 cated animals are all made better and more useful in 
 their operating sphere by the cultural process. Whv 
 not the negro? Is he any less than the beast of the 
 field? 
 
 But the South cannot settle this problem any more than 
 it could settle the long and bloody problem of slavery. In 
 the very nature of the case it is a national question, a 
 question too big for the South. It belongs before the 
 bar of the whole nation. Even if it were not national 
 in its scope and depth, the South would be an incom- 
 petent juror, because she is not willing for all of her 
 people, black and white, to enjoy equal privileges and 
 rights, even when given by the central government. 
 Such a juror could not render an impartial verdict. 
 
 Again, it is national because none but the nation has 
 the strong hand and fullness of power competent to 
 meet the issue and adjust relations. Then, again, it 
 involves national honor and national law. Neither can 
 it rest where it is. It is an historic as well as a philo- 
 sophical truism that no question in government can 
 be settled until it is settled right. It must be settled 
 right in the native fundamentals and cohesive ele- 
 ments and faculties. All of the people must be free 
 and allowed to enjoy their natural and lawful rights, 
 or else the conflict must and will continue'. So long 
 as there is a part of the people oppressed and denied 
 the rights and privileges of citizenship that is designed 
 to be universal and applicable to all, the problem can- 
 
 8 DS
 
 114 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 not be settled. It cannot be settled any more than the 
 question of slavery could have been settled, leaving 
 the slaves in slavery. Slavery, which stood and tow- 
 ered and lifted its hideous form, dripping with the in- 
 nocent blood of the slave, stood for awhile in the em- 
 blazoned arena of American liberty, but it fell and sent 
 the tremor of its fall through the approaching decades, 
 with whose blighting shadow we are fighting to-day ! 
 And until right triumphs and oppression and wrong 
 cease, the unity of truth and the reign of God forbid 
 a cessation of hostilities. 
 
 But, as we see no chance for the black man to ar- 
 rive at his best and highest possibilities and the noble 
 ends of the best citizenship in the same territory with 
 the white people of the South, segregation is proposed 
 as the best, the most practicable and desirable meth- 
 od in the solution of the racial problem. Black men 
 are as much citizens of the American federation of 
 States as white men. They should never rest or cease 
 legitimate efforts until full and plenipotent citizenship 
 is given to them, the same as white men. They should 
 contend for it as the dearest, as the highest privilege, 
 and the most sacred part of their national inheritance ! 
 If the white people of the South would accord to the 
 African people the full measure of citizenship with 
 themselves, allowing them to live upon the same plane 
 of civil life, we could ask no more, and the racial prob- 
 lem would cease to be a problem. But since this is 
 not done, and since it seems to be clear that it will not 
 be done, then we ask for a settlement of our racial 
 troubles by separation and segregation of the races in 
 the South, at least. 
 
 We ask for a State or States, or a Territory, or a 
 part or parts of Territories within the limits of the 
 United States, our great country. To reach these
 
 RACE SEGREGATION. 115 
 
 ends, the following propositions may be considered 
 within the limits of possibilities : 
 
 I. There is a great problem growing out of the fact 
 that two distinct races or peoples are occupying the 
 same territory under the same government and laws ; 
 that they are so distinct and dissimilar in racial traits, 
 instincts and character, that it is impossible for them 
 to live together on equal terms of social and political 
 relation, or on terms of equal citizenship. 
 
 II. The problem of the races is inter-racial and na- 
 tional, affecting the entire country in its vast interests, 
 prosperity and progress. And, therefore, it is the duty 
 of the general government to settle it, as that is the 
 only power that can do it. 
 
 III. The segregation of the races is the most practi- 
 cable, logical, and equitable solution of the problem. 
 
 IV. Segregation and separation should be gradual 
 and classified by a qualified citizenship, and non-com- 
 pulsory, so as not to injure or retard labor, capital, 
 and commerce in those States where the negro is an 
 important factor of production and consumption. 
 
 V. To make the movement operative and effective, 
 the negro population of the Southern States should 
 send petitions to the President and the Congress of the 
 United States of America asking for segregation. 
 They should ask for suitable territory in the great re- 
 public, as legal and equal citizens of the Union, and 
 not go out of their country to be exposed to doubtful 
 experiment and foreign complications. Afro-Ameri- 
 cans should remain in their own country, and in the 
 zone of greatness, and in the latitude of progress. 
 
 VI. The government would, providing segregation 
 materializes, establish and maintain suitable laws, reg- 
 ulations, and safe grounds for the maintenance of the 
 civil order, peace, progress, and prosperity. 
 
 VII. The place or places, or the territory may be
 
 116 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 selected by competent authority from the western parr 
 of the public domain, such as a part of the Indian Ter- 
 ritory, New Mexico, or other parts of the great West. 
 
 VIII. No white person or persons should be al- 
 lowed to obtain citizenship in such a State or Terri- 
 tory, unless identified with the negro race by marriage, 
 and those who may be appointed by the government 
 to expedite and control the Federal interests, provid- 
 ed also that the general public have the same privi- 
 leges, rights, protection and safety in the segregated 
 Territory as in the other States of the Union. 
 
 IX. There should be some easy and practical qual- 
 ifications required of those who are to become citizens 
 of the segregated Territory. They should have, at 
 least, a reputable character, some degree of education, 
 and perhaps a competency for one year's support. 
 Criminals and undesirable persons should be kept out, 
 as far as possible, until they are properly qualified to 
 meet the requirements. 
 
 It may be said and will be said that it will be impos- 
 sible to keep the white man out and the black man in. 
 But let it be remembered that the object is not to keep- 
 the white man out or the black man in, but to estab- 
 lish a State or States in which alone the Afro-Ameri- 
 can people may dominate by eligibility to political of- 
 fice, the public trust and control ; thus conferring upon 
 them all the rights of full and free citizenship enjoyed 
 by others, and which is denied them in the Southern 
 States. 
 
 Of course, citizens of all States would be free to 
 come and go, but none to acquire citizenship unless 
 identified with the negro race. Afro-Americans have- 
 no desire, as a race, to create friction, antagonisms and 
 strife, but ask and demand at this time the rights and 
 privileges authorized by the government. 
 
 It is to be admitted that the plan of segregation here
 
 RACE SEGREGATION. 117 
 
 presented is environed and beset with many difficul- 
 ties. We realize the stern fact that any plan to settle 
 the racial problem, which may be presented, will have 
 not only its difficulties, but its objectors. But any 
 plan which may be proposed for the solution of the 
 question cannot be surrounded nor carry more difficul- 
 ties and perplexities than the present state and condi- 
 tion of the races. No plan or method of solution can 
 produce more bitterness, alienation, degradation, 
 bloodshed and death than the present state of affairs. 
 
 But especially will it be urged by friends as well as 
 "by the enemies of the Afro-American people that the 
 negro is incapable of self-government and control. 
 But how do they know ? Where has it ever been tried 
 under conditions that may be obtained within the Fed- 
 eral Union ? Besides, if the government of the United 
 States cannot control and direct a few millions of its 
 citizens who may be segregated for the peaceful solu- 
 tion of a great national problem, it would be too weak 
 and ephemeral to hold its parts together. The idea is 
 preposterous and fallacious in the extreme. 
 
 Not only has the negro some degree of American 
 civilization engrafted upon his progressive and devel- 
 oping manhood, but he has a large and increasing per- 
 centage of Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins, and conse- 
 quently Anglo-Saxon life. He is not only patriotic 
 and devoted to his country, but the trend of events and 
 the stern logic of fact and principle show him to be ca- 
 pable of civilization and susceptible of being wrought 
 into the social and political compact. What is most 
 needed for his development is a chance to be a man, 
 an open door Tor his possibilities. 
 
 It is often affirmed in the South that "this is a white 
 man's country." This is freely admitted, but it is equal- 
 ly true that it is also the black man's country. The 
 country belongs to every man born on its soil, black
 
 118 RACE SEGREGATION. 
 
 or white. If it is the white man's country in any su- 
 preme or particular sense, it furnishes an important 
 reason why he should be just and humane to all, most 
 especially to under-graduates in civil life. 
 
 It may be argued that many Southern people will 
 oppose the separation of the races upon the ground 
 that such would destroy the labor element of the South 
 and thus retard expansion and progress. This may be 
 or will be found to be true in some degree, but it ij> 
 becoming more and more evident that negro labor is 
 growing less important as a factor of production in 
 the South. It is not now more than one-half of the 
 labor employed in field and shop. A large proportion 
 of it has gone North, East and West, and is still going, 
 until ere long the great black belts of the South must 
 be numbered with the things of the past. 
 
 As a laborer in the South, the negro has been the 
 dearest and most expensive that a country has ever 
 had in the history of nations. The Southern people 
 have already paid an enormous price for the negro as 
 a slave, and still the astounding debt bears interest, 
 compounding itself as the years go by. Heaps of 
 gold and almost endless treasure have been paid for 
 his blood and bones as a labor element. Brave sons, 
 noble sires, and intrepid chieftains, queenly women, 
 with the flower of the land have been slain upon its 
 high places. Millions of drops of blood have been 
 poured out as a bloody libation at the shrine of the 
 swarthy Moloch. And it seems apparent that the un- 
 ion of States that has cost so much will never be one 
 with a tenacious integrity until black Ham and white 
 Japheth shall dwell in separate tents. 
 
 In a State to themselves, within the Federal Union, 
 the negro would become a free and full-fledged citizen, 
 with all the immunities, privileges and political rights 
 that belong to American citizens without friction, envy
 
 RACE SEGREGATION. 119 
 
 and jealousies. Then the negro, as a man and a race, 
 would have a chance to develop his mental powers, 
 his physical character, and his essential responsibilities 
 as an American citizen. The responsibilities that 
 would come with a degree of self-government would 
 inspire, qualify and stimulate to supreme effort in life, 
 and thus help the Anglo-Saxon man and brother to 
 carry his great civilization to a higher plane and a 
 loftier altitude of ideal perfection. 
 
 Indeed, the Union of the States will never be fully 
 and perfectly recemented with tenacious integrity until 
 black Ham and white Japheth dwell together in sepa- 
 rate tents.
 
 BURDEN OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 BY RICHARD H. EDMONDS, 
 Editor "Manufacturers' Record." 
 
 Chief of the burdens of the negro problem is the 
 heed given to words of exploiters of the negro. 
 
 As long as the intelligence of the country fails to 
 dicountenance the discussion of the negro by profes- 
 sional orators, Chautauqua or lyceum lecturers, edu- 
 cationalists, confirmed philanthropists and designing 
 politicians who find therein more or less personal prof- 
 it, so long will the difficulties of the problem persist. 
 
 Could it be left to men of the character, the stand- 
 ing, the experience, the mental calibre and the com- 
 mon sense of Stuyvesant Fish, of New York ; T. G. 
 Bush, of Alabama; William A. Courtenay, of South 
 Carolina ; John L. Williams, of Virginia ; D. A. Tomp- 
 kins, of North Carolina; J. B. Killebrew, of Tennes- 
 see; W. J. Northen, of Georgia, and John H. Kirby, 
 of Texas, the happy solution of the problem could be 
 offered in a trice. 
 
 Fundamentally it is, as it has always been, an eco- 
 nomic problem to be dealt with, not in ignorance, 
 prejudice or passion, but in knowledge, wisdom and 
 judgment, and in sober conviction of responsibility to 
 the White race and to the black. Essentially there 
 should be an attitude toward the negro no whit dif- 
 ferent from that toward the hordes of aliens that are 
 crowding into the country through its eastern ports. 
 The latter are really the more difficult to be handled, 
 in that they have never had the negro's advantage of 
 (120)
 
 BURDEN OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 121 
 
 contact with American whites of pure stock. Their 
 future as affecting for good or ill the history of this 
 land is inextricably involved with the future of the 
 negro as he shall be hampered or helped. 
 
 As the negro is mistreated or is unimpeded in work- 
 ing out his own career, the menace in foreign fugi- 
 tives from oppression or poverty will wax or wane. To 
 the extent that the South shall be relieved from the 
 unnecessary embarrassments in negro development, 
 to that extent will the South be free to aid more un- 
 fortunate parts of the country solving their more pon - 
 derous problems. 
 
 Alternatives proposed as solutions of the negro 
 problem are amalgamation, annihilation, deportation, 
 Each means mistreatment of the negro ; each is im- 
 practicable. 
 
 Deportation was tried forty years ago under condi- 
 tions where alone it could approach possibility. At 
 the instigation of Abraham Lincoln attempt was made 
 to supplement emancipation with exodus, under gov- 
 ernment auspices. It failed signally in an odor of 
 graft. Of the hundred thousand dollars available for 
 the experiment, the account rendered of two or three 
 years' expenditures was for about thirty-three thou- 
 .sand dollars, the bulk of which had gone to agents, 
 with a government vessel sent to bring back a hand- 
 ful of colonists who had been induced to go to another 
 land. If the plan could not but fail for four million 
 negroes with Lincoln as a leading promoter, at a time 
 when the Constitution of the country was in abeyance, 
 why should sanity consider it to-day when more than 
 eight million negroes are to be taken into account, in 
 addition to the whites or the whole country ? 
 
 The negro is doing too much for the prosperity of 
 the country for him to desire to leave it or for the
 
 122 BURDEN OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 whites to give encouragement to anybody who would 
 force or persuade him to leave. 
 
 Amalgamation has within itself the elements of its 
 own destruction. Miscegenation carries with it its 
 own punishment. Its effects are reducing to the min- 
 imum the number of whites and blacks who will sub- 
 mit to it. 
 
 Some of the members of that race, seething with the 
 passions in which they were begotten, are openly or 
 covertly leading a few negroes to inevitable ruin with 
 themselves. Extremists among the amalgamates may 
 in the course of time subject themselves to deportation 
 to penal settlements or to more speedy ends at the 
 hands of the law or outside the law, while a rapidly 
 growing sentiment in favor of a humane surgical op- 
 eration, to be added to the punishment of the peni- 
 tentiary, will, to a certain degree, annihilate a part of 
 the negro stock by making it incapable of propagation. 
 This, enforced as to criminal whites as well as to crim- 
 inal negroes, would not only have a deterrent influ- 
 ence to prevent crime, but it would gradually lessen 
 the reproduction of criminals. But it is puerile and 
 cowardly to talk of annihilating a people who, inter- 
 rupted by force, and practically without action on their 
 own part, in their reasonable, healthy development 
 forty years ago, and since then the victims of experi- 
 ments that would have crippled forever almost any 
 race, have more than doubled in number and still dis- 
 play traces of the excellent education of their race 
 made possible in the change from slavery in Africa to 
 bondage in America. 
 
 A suggestion of comparatively recent publicity is 
 that negro vexations be overcome by opening the 
 gates to Mongolian labor. There is a charm about 
 that for the economic politician, in that the element 
 in American politics that is largely responsible for the
 
 BURDEN OP THE NEGRO PROBLEM.! 123 
 
 ills of the negro, created in the use of him as a polit- 
 ical issue to crystalize the low order intellect of voters 
 in close elections, is most strenuous for Chinese ex- 
 clusion. That element may be gagged against negr<> 
 agitation by the threat of Chinese agitation. But that 
 would be politics; and there has been already too 
 much politics about the negro. Statesmanship is de- 
 manded, and statesmanship will not jump, from the 
 frying pan into the fire. 
 
 Statesmanship sees a solution of the negro problem 
 in removing the obstacles from the way of the devel- 
 opment of the negro's aptitude, and in encouraging 
 him in cultivation of those habits which have become 
 second nature with the white race for its advancement. 
 
 Such a policy recognizes these facts emphasized by 
 the experience of the past forty years. 
 
 The negro race is not the Caucasian race merely 
 colored black. 
 
 The negro race, mentally and morally, is centuries 
 behind the Caucasian and has never given evidence 
 of ability to advance in that respect of its own initia- 
 tive. 
 
 Crossed upon white stock the negro is given great- 
 er mental strength, but a strength likely to be exerted 
 in manifestation of the vices rather than of the virtues 
 of the original stocks. 
 
 The negro race, physically, is a powerful race, and 
 fit to work under proper guidance. 
 
 To seek to give the negro child, but three centuries 
 removed from the jungle, the start in schooling similar 
 to that given the white child, with a thousand years of 
 the education of individual effort behind it, was worse 
 than foolhardy. It was not unlike placing a loaded 
 magazine rifle in the arms of a chimpanzee. 
 
 To give the negro male the ballot, a privilege won 
 by the white man in centuries of struggle and, after
 
 124 BURDEN OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 all, not always exercised in a manner justifying his vic- 
 tory, was worse than criminal. It was not unlike pois- 
 oning a stream at its very source. 
 
 Like education for whites and blacks, education 
 without distinction of race, are the baneful theories 
 which, applied for nearly two generations, have not 
 only injured the negro in weaning him from incentives 
 to productive and beneficial exertions into sloth, vice 
 and crime, but have even twisted the training of whites 
 upon right lines. In forcing the suffrage upon the ne- 
 gro there was injected into the whole body politic a 
 virus of corruption in party practices and in municipal, 
 State and national administrations flatly disproving 
 much of the theory of public education. 
 
 It is but a step from mendicant methods in negro 
 education to mendicant methods in white education. 
 Such pauperization is but the fertilization of the soil 
 of graft in quarters high and low. So, the negro prob- 
 lem belongs to us all. The intelligence and patriotism 
 of the whole country must combine for its solution, 
 in permitting the South, most affected by it at present, 
 to determine the way and supply the means. Broad, 
 well-defined principles must guide us. 
 
 Efforts to educate the rising generation of negroes 
 must recognize, for avoidance, the mistakes of the 
 past manifested by negro youth of to-day. Expendi- 
 tures of time, energy and money must be per capacity 
 of the negro instead of per capita. 
 
 Negroes who have been miseducated must be 
 brought back to the proper starting point before it is 
 too late. They must not only be allowed in other parts 
 of the country the opportunities to work enjoyed by 
 them in the South, but they must be sharply taught 
 that unless they work they will starve. The machin- 
 ery for such instruction is to be had in a stringent va- 
 grancy law, enforced completely by an effective rural
 
 BURDEN OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 125 
 
 police or patrol, with provision that individuals who 
 will not work for themselves and for others shall be 
 forced to work for the State in fields not conflicting 
 with honest labor. 
 
 The way must be kept open for the natural diffu- 
 sion of the negroes among the white population until 
 they become an element inconsequential from the so- 
 cial, political or any other standpoint. At present 
 there is one negro for every 8.6 of the total population 
 of the country. That ratio would be a safe one if it 
 was common to all parts of the country. But it is 
 not. In the South there is one negro for every 
 three of the population, the ratio ranging from one 
 in twenty^two in West Virginia to I in 1.7 in Missis- 
 sippi and South Carolina. At the same time in the 
 fifteen States east of the Mississippi and north of the 
 Ohio and Mason and Dixon line, the proportion is I 
 negro for every 55.2 of the population, the range 
 being from i in 6 in Deleware to i in 621 in New 
 Hampshire. In the eleven mountain and Pacific 
 states the proportion is i in 163, and in 9 other States 
 and territories it is i in 36. 
 
 As long as any distinct race is massed in one sec- 
 tion of the country, so long will that race be hampered 
 and so long will it be a drag upon the whole country. 
 
 The politician, the sensation monger or any other 
 individual in any part of the country who, in using 
 the negro for every other purpose but the negro's 
 good, retards the natural diffusion of the negro re- 
 vealed in the fact that near 1,000,000 negroes are now 
 living outside the South in a total of 8,834,000, is an 
 enemy to his country and must be suppressed. Those 
 who would suppress him have only to bear in mind 
 the significant 'fact that the race question is invariably 
 brought to the front when the leading political parties 
 of the country lack the courage to formulate and sup-
 
 126 BURDEN OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 port policies appealing to the intelligence of the peo- 
 ple, or when the movement carrying more negroes te 
 other parts of the country and more whites to the 
 South is most pronounced. 
 
 Of all persons, Southern men should have no part 
 in giving life to negro agitation. The negro is in 
 this country for good. We must meet this situation 
 not with impracticable theories, supported by over- 
 drawn pictures of danger from his presence. No 
 reasonable man could, with prophetic sight, have 
 viewed the influences exerted upon negroes for forty 
 years without expecting even more trouble than we 
 have had. Suddenly freed from the restraining power 
 which had controlled and civilized them, taught by 
 the most unscrupulous white scoundrels that ever 
 ^cursed a land, as well as by misguided philanthropists 
 from other sections, that they must demand social 
 equality, who could expect aught but a generation of 
 -criminal instincts. But this criminality is less than 
 might have been anticipated. Upon the white people 
 -of the South rests the responsibility of being permit- 
 ted to deal with infinite patience with a race, millions 
 of which have proved that they\could be honest, vir- 
 tuous, hard working and faithful to every trust. The 
 demons in human shape whose horrible acts are fol- 
 lowed by swift punishment, which, however severe, 
 can never be severe enough to atone for the crime, 
 .should not arouse resentment against the whole race. 
 The mad dog is a terror, but the fact that some dogs 
 go mad is never taken as a sufficient reason for driv- 
 ing every dog out of the country. 
 
 The negro is with us, and he is going to stay with 
 us. How shall we get the best for him and for our- 
 selves out of the situation? Not by deportation, not 
 by amalgamation, but by the same tireless work which 
 the South has for forty years given to this question,
 
 BURDEN OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 127 
 
 freed, however, from the visionary theories of outsid- 
 ers, who know nothing about the conditions in the 
 South, and the equally visionary theories of imprac- 
 ticable Southern men. With the marked increase of 
 white immigration to the South now under way, the 
 tendency of the negroes to dispersion throughout the 
 country, the enactment and enforcement of vagrancy 
 laws, the establishment of country patrol systems, and 
 the gradual elimination of 'the criminal classes in re- 
 production, the negro question will no longer afford 
 profitable employment for public speakers and maga- 
 zine writers.
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM PSY- 
 CHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. 
 
 BY WILLIS B. PARKS, M.D. 
 
 In this treatise it is proposed to present the negro 
 problem in its various aspects, on a different basis and 
 from a different standpoint from that which it has 
 hitherto been treated. It will be shown that the ex- 
 isting conditions are the logical and unfailing conse- 
 quence of cause and effect. This question is by no 
 means local or sectional, but is universal in its scope 
 and application. It is, therefore, not a Southern prob- 
 lem that we are dealing with, but a national one, far- 
 reaching and vast. 
 
 The most important part of man is mind, and, there- 
 fore, any treatment of the negro problem that ignores 
 that faculty, is lacking from a philosophical viewpoint. 
 Hudson truly says, "The laws of suggestion are the 
 most important factor of man's make-up." Hence it 
 is to that faculty that a scientific inquiry must address 
 itself. In using the expression "suggestion," it is not 
 the intention to mystify, but rather to simplify. It is 
 obvious that there are several kinds of suggestions, 
 and that they are different in their manifestations, but 
 from whatever source they emanate, they are subject 
 to the same fixed laws. We recognize direct as well 
 as indirect suggestions, and suggestions may be con- 
 scious and unconscious. 
 
 To illustrate : When the negro was freed and given 
 the right of suffrage, he was given the indirect sug- 
 
 (128)
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 129 
 
 gestion of social equality ; to receive him into the fam- 
 ily and give him the best room in the house, would be 
 a direct suggestion of social equality. To give the 
 negro advantages of education and then not to find a 
 niche to fit him in after life, is also to give him the 
 suggestion of equality, but, at the same time, to pre- 
 pare him for ultimate and grievous disappointment. 
 
 In the light of the above illustrations, the term 
 Auto-Suggestion might also be understood. The old 
 slave negro had the idea of slavery so indelibly im- 
 pressed upon him, that nothing else suggested itself, 
 from this view-point, to him, and so, even after he 
 had been freed, the before-the-war negro acts now and 
 talks like a slave, and is most comfortable in that con- 
 dition. 
 
 Another very important point, with reference to 
 suggestion, is to be observed, namely, that it can be 
 both given and received unconsciously. Moreover, it 
 may be given consciously and received unconsciously. 
 
 Finally, it should be understood that suggestif/n, 
 when directly received or when suddenly aroused to 
 new life and called into activity after existing long in 
 a dormant state, is not a weakling attribute of man's 
 nature. It becomes a power, moving with resistless 
 force and dominating the will with such energy as to 
 sometimes override every opposing influence, trans- 
 form the being and strike down all opposition to his 
 sway. 
 
 What better illustration than the mob? Here we 
 see suggestion playing upon the passions of men, un- 
 til reason becomes dethroned, for the once peaceable, 
 quiet and law-respecting citizens become a maddened 
 mass of death-dealing animals. Men who would not 
 only scorn to strike a foe when he is down, but who 
 would succor the imperiled even at the risk of life it- 
 self, become forgetful of every rational influence, and 
 
 9 ns
 
 130 A SOLUTION' OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 join in the taking of the life of a helpless human bo- 
 ing. 
 
 And this is a fair illustration. The thought of sum- 
 mary punishment may have originated in a single 
 mind auto-suggestive but how quickly suggestion, 
 conscious, direct, is imparted from the lips or by a 
 flash of the eyes, or by a gesture from one to another, 
 until, in a trice, the first mutterings of the storm hav< 
 gathered such force that it has become a whirling, 
 seething cyclone of wrath, and impaled within the 
 vortex of its fury, writhes the doomed victim. 
 
 Let it be at last remembered, that the negro was 
 brought here in a state of savagery and ignorance and 
 subjected to the suggestions, conscious and uncon- 
 scious, of a highly organized civilization. It is with 
 these things in view that we propose to treat this sub- 
 ject, under the following heads : The Semi-Savage 
 Negro ; The Slave Negro ; The Ex-Slave Negro ; 
 The New Negro. 
 
 THE SEMI-SAVAGE NEGRO. 
 
 Historically, about 290 years ago the negro was 
 brought from Africa in a semi-savage condition to the 
 United States. The object being not to civilize him, 
 but to enslave him. It was purely from mercenary 
 motives, and not on account of a desire to elevate him 
 from a barbaric state and civilize and enlighten and 
 Christianize him. 
 
 At first, the negro did not prove profitable in the 
 hands of his masters. The cold climate of the North- 
 ern States of the Union, where he was first domiciled, 
 was too rigorous for the thin-skinned Africans, and 
 the great majority of them were later transferred to 
 Southern territory, where not only the climate suited 
 them the best, but they were best adapted to the field 
 culture of the section.
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 131 
 
 Thus the new importation proved valueless to the 
 original importers, except as a speculative commodity. 
 But in his new hbme he rapidly became domesticated, 
 and the imitative being a strong faculty of his nature, 
 he was enabled soon to adapt himself to his surround- 
 ings, and he proved a ready learner to do work of a 
 more or less simple character. Indeed, his progress 
 was more rapid along this line than was his mental 
 development; hence, the negro was a first-rate field 
 hand before his jargon became barely intelligible. 
 And, as an illustration of the tardiness of the negro as 
 a linguist, it is only necessary to refer to the low- 
 country negro (as the Southern people term him) on 
 the rice plantations of the South, and along the whole 
 south coasts. Their feeble vocabulary of English is 
 so interspersed with their own peculiar jargon, half 
 English and half barbaric, as to render it unintelligi- 
 ble, except to one long used to hearing it. 
 
 It is this creature, in his new surroundings ; simple, 
 pliable and peculiarly susceptible to whatever influ- 
 fluences that are brought to bear upon his untutored 
 mind, that we shall undertake to deal with, from a 
 psychological view-point. 
 
 According to Hudson, a recognized authority upon 
 psychology, every human being is endowed with a 
 dual mind; the objective, or the reasoning mind is 
 '"controlled by the five senses (seeing, hearing, feel- 
 ing, etc.); it is the outgrowth of man's physical ne- 
 cessities. It is his guide in his struggles with mate- 
 rial environment. Its highest function is that of rea- 
 soning." 
 
 "The Subjective takes cognizance," says the same 
 authority, "of its environments by means independent 
 of the five physical senses. It perceives by intuition. 
 It is the seat of the emotions, and the storehouse of 
 memory, etc." This duality of the mind renders man
 
 132 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 susceptible to all kinds of suggestions known to the 
 realms of psychology. Boris Sidis says, "The soil 
 favorable for the seeds of suggestion exists in all indi- 
 viduals. The suggestible element is a constituent of 
 our nature it never leaves us." 
 
 The following will illustrate the manner in which 
 suggestion is received by the subjective mind in a 
 normal, or waking, state. Before, or when such sug- 
 gestion finds lodgment, the ideas and beliefs existing, 
 that have come through the objective mind, and that 
 are antagonistic to such suggestion, must be over- 
 come. If the subject be in a hypnotic state the objec- 
 tive mind is passive, and the suggestion is imparted, 
 direct, to the subjective, without having to overcome 
 the objective mind, i. e., the auto-suggestion that al- 
 ready exists. And as it is while in the normal or wak- 
 ing state of the negro, only, that we propose to deal 
 with the subject, the sleeping or hypnotic side of psy- 
 chology or suggestion will receive no further consid- 
 eration. 
 
 THE SLAVE NEGRO. 
 
 With the advancement of the slavery period the 
 negro progressed even more rapidly than might have 
 been expected along many lines. He became more 
 and more desirable as a servant, and, correspondingly, 
 his money value was enhanced. He was, as a rule, 
 the recipient of humane treatment ; his food was plen- 
 tiful and wholesome, his clothing comfortable, and 
 when sick he was provided with the best medical 
 treatment. His money value demanded all this, even 
 if the demand came from no higher or more humane 
 motives. But soon there did arise a bond of sympa- 
 thy between master and slave call it affection if you 
 please that widened and deepened as the years 
 passed ; and this bond, so subtle as to elude the grasp 
 of poet and philosopher alike, who would portray its
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 133 
 
 character, survived, even after the slave became a 
 freedman, and although suggestion, of a baleful and 
 poisonous character, promptly followed the emanci- 
 pation of the slaves, uprooting and destroying much 
 of that feeling existing between the races, yet it still 
 lingers in the breasts of many of the ex-slaves of to- 
 day, and, certainly, there is a feeling of tender regard 
 in the hearts of their former masters for those who 
 were once their slaves. 
 
 During the existence of slavery the surroundings, 
 the occupation, the every environment of the negro 
 .strengthened, each day, the first and only conscious 
 .suggestion of the relation of the races, the one 
 toward the other, in the mind of the negro 
 that of master and slave. There was a gulf, deep and 
 impassable, fixed by the laws of nature, and illustrated 
 in the color of the skin of each race, that separated 
 them as completely and effectually, socially, as if the 
 breadth of a continent lay between. 
 
 The slave negro realized this, accepted it, and lived 
 up to the conditions. And, even after the President of 
 the United States in 1863 had issued his emancipation 
 proclamation, and all the world waited in breathless 
 expectancy for the blow, so strongly suggested in that 
 document, to fall, that would inaugurate a reign of 
 bloodshed, butchery and rapine all over the South, the 
 terrors of which men could not conceive of, this prin- 
 ciple, so well grounded by suggestion in the con- 
 science of these slaves, stayed the hand, and palsied 
 the arm of any that might have contemplated the 
 dreadful uprising, and, in the hands of the black man, 
 the lives and homes of the women and children, whose 
 slave he was, were a sacred charge, and not an act of 
 lawlessness mars the black man's history during that 
 dark period. What an illustration of right sugges- 
 tion!
 
 134 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 And who shall say that, left to themselves, unin- 
 fluenced by conscious counter suggestions coming 
 from designing and insincere persons, whose sole ob- 
 ject was personal gain and political preference, the 
 conditions of to-day would have been the same? But 
 the fire once ignited, conditions were such as to fan 
 the flame into intense heat at once, and suggestions, 
 oftentime unconsciously received, perhaps, which, like 
 the deadly microbe that lays dormant in the humaa 
 system until aroused to action by influences favorable 
 to its ravages, became dominating influences in the 
 mind of the negro, transforming him into a being full 
 of suspicion, mistrust and, sometimes, hatred against 
 the former trusted and respected master. 
 
 As before stated, the negro during his slave period 
 was trustworthy and loyal to his master and his mas- 
 ter's interests, and while it is claimed that he had 
 great thieving proclivities, yet they usuallv pertained 
 to something trivial ; he would naturally say to him- 
 self: "Master's nigger and master's taters." Such 
 privileges of taking something to eat could hardly be 
 regarded in a strict sense as theft. This hereditary 
 trait, born so innocently in slavery, might account for 
 his great tendency to steal after slavery. For, how 
 often the claim : "We worked and made it ; it's as 
 much ours as anybody's else !" A kind of community 
 of interests feeling. 
 
 It is well known that the crime of rape was not 
 heard of during slave-days, and many reasons have 
 been offered to explain why this was, especially during 
 and about the close of the Civil War when most of the 
 white men were away, and the white women and chil- 
 dren were left to the mercy of the negro. And even- 
 after he well knew that he would soon be set free, he 
 still remained true to his trust, and was ready to de-
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 135 
 
 fend, even at the cost of his life, the women and chil- 
 dren left to his care. 
 
 It would not be amiss to say that the South should, 
 as a fitting mark of gratitude and respect, erect a 
 monument to the memory of the slave who was true 
 and loyal to his invaluable trust. 
 
 THE EX-SLAVE NEGRO. 
 
 The influences must, indeed, have been strong that 
 could transform the faithful and loyal slave of yester- 
 day into the unfriendly, sullen and vindictive freed- 
 man of to-day. But such was the transformation. 
 But while he hailed the announcement of liberation 
 from bondage with outward demonstrations of joy, it 
 is an undisputed fact that many of the race accepted 
 the change of condition with some misgivings and 
 fear, lest after all, the blessings of freedom might prove 
 a curse in disguise. And it is well known that many 
 did linger upon the old plantation, accepting such 
 terms and upon such conditions as their former own- 
 ers, in their impoverished state, could offer them ; 
 some of them never leaving, but being borne from 
 their old cabin homes to the grave-yard on the hill 
 hard by, where their ashes rest under the sod their feet 
 in life had pressed. 
 
 Whether the negro, left free from extraneous influ- 
 ences, could have realized the truth so forcibly ut- 
 tered recently by a negro orator from Yale, that ''free- 
 dom is a process, and no man can be free until he has 
 established for himself a character," is a question ; but 
 certain it is, that, without character or preparation 
 this race was called upon to assume the role of a free 
 man not only unprepared, but hedged about with ev- 
 ery hindrance that could arise from innumerable ad- 
 verse suggestions.
 
 136 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 It is a well established scientific fact that those used 
 to rendering obedience are the most susceptible to 
 suggestion, both conscious and unconscious ; hence, 
 we have in the freedman a shining mark for a design- 
 ing, mischief-making element, and how thoroughly 
 and effectively the work was done, the conditions of 
 to-day attest. And it may be as well understood now 
 that we claim that to these agencies of discord, more 
 than to all else, is due the deplorable position which 
 this race occupies before the world to-day. Left to 
 himself, the freedman was not a vicious person. There 
 was nothing of malice in his nature toward the white 
 race. But he was a creature easily duped, and his 
 simple, untutored mind was a fertile soil for the re- 
 ception of the seeds of wrong suggestion, and the 
 ground was well sown. And how subtly were they 
 sown! And how promptly did the tillers of this soil 
 begin their work ! Simultaneous with the home-com- 
 ing of the remnants of Lee's and Johnson's armies 
 was the arrival of these alien agitators. It is a matter 
 of history, and, therefore, it is not necessary to quib- 
 ble at this point, lest we display a sectional feeling, 
 the South was absolutely overrun by designing poli- 
 ticians, over zealous and misguided philanthropists, 
 and a horde of fortune hunters. And as we shall in- 
 sist that, to the baleful suggestions received by the 
 freedman, direct and indirect, intentionally given 
 sometimes, and unintentionally at others, but always 
 hurtful, is traceable, to a very large extent, the pres- 
 ent unhappy state of the negro race, it is well to make 
 our position plain. 
 
 The first suggestions the ex-slave received were of 
 a material character. They were told that their labors 
 had accumulated the wealth of the South prior to the 
 v/ar. What was left after the war was theirs, by right 
 of conquest of the Union arms, and that the govern-
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 137 
 
 ment would apportion it to them under a rule some- 
 thing like this : As one is to forty acres and a mule, 
 so is the whole number to everything left. It was an 
 adroit piece of calculation, and if the entire wealth of 
 the country had been summed up at that time and ap- 
 portioned according to the above calculation, the title 
 to the bulk of the assets of the South would have been 
 vested in the negro, however surprising this may have 
 been to the inventor of the 4O-acres-and-a-mule prop- 
 osition. And this feeling of ownership was never 
 eradicated ; and if the negro has gained an unenvia- 
 ble reputation as a purloiner and a thief, it is but fair 
 to say that, paradoxical as it may sound, he was and 
 is, to a great extent, honestly so. It is well known 
 that the Southern penitentiaries and chaingangs rap- 
 idly filled up just after the war between the States, 
 and the inmates were largely negroes ; and the records 
 show that a large percentage of these were sent up for 
 horse-stealing. Indeed, it became almost a mania 
 among the race. Had the 4O-acre-and-a-mule fallacy 
 proven an indirect suggestion? 
 
 Along political lines was another avenue through 
 which suggestion found easy access to the ex-slave's 
 subjective mind. He was recognized as a full-fledged 
 American citizen. He voted, held office, and was priv- 
 ileged to have a white man " 'rested " if he, the said 
 white man, dared to molest him in the exercise of any 
 of these political rights. And this state of being sug- 
 gested to him the displacement of white rule entirely, 
 and the usurpation of all authority of government 
 indeed, to the mind of the average negro, the South 
 was soon to become the promised Canaan of the race, 
 owned and dominated by the African contingent of 
 American citizenship. 
 
 But the most baleful and fallacious of all direct sug- 
 gestions that the ex-slave received about the time of
 
 138 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 his emancipation was that of social equality. We are 
 not prepared to claim that, left to himself, the negro 
 would never have entertained the thought, auto-sug- 
 gestively. That faculty of imitation before referred 
 to had enabled him to ape, in a crude way, as a rule, 
 many of the manners and customs of the white folk. 
 And many of his race had become men and women of 
 intelligence ; some had received more or less of an 
 elementary education, and there were among them 
 skilled workmen in all lines of mechanics. So that 
 the recently liberated slave was far removed, in every 
 respect, from his semi-savage forefathers. 
 
 Hence, what might have developed can only be sur- 
 mised. But the correction of such suggestions, if they 
 had arisen, would have been an easy matter, with the 
 negro free from the false, devilish and, to his own bet- 
 ter judgment, untenable suggestions. 
 
 The suggestion of social equality was received first 
 from that same alien element who went among the 
 freedmen immediately after the close of the Civil War, 
 and, professing solicitude for their welfare, undertook 
 to direct the recently liberated slaves in the setting in 
 order of their social house. They discovered to the 
 negro the fact that he was "Mister" So-and-so, not 
 plain "Dick" or "Tom" of yesterday. They gave 
 practical suggestive illustration then and there, bv 
 addressing him so, and sometimes the poor darkey 
 was taken off his feet by being asked what his name 
 was, that they might address him properly. He would 
 blurt out some name hurriedly in his embarrassment, 
 for he rarely ever assumed his late owner's name, to 
 find later that, upon reflection, the name did not suit 
 the cut of his jib and changed it, sometimes more 
 than once. They further gave practical suggestion of 
 equality by visiting the negroes in their cabins (gen- 
 erally under cover of darkness for obvious reasons),
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 139 
 
 eating at table with them, and otherwise recognizing 
 these relations. They were blarnied and cajoled by 
 politicians and railroaded into office and given con- 
 stant assurance of their superiority of caste. 
 
 All of these had a damaging effect, and while n 
 thousands of instances the agitator failed to create a 
 very high regard for himself in the estimation of the 
 negro, yet, the feeling of disgust, often engendered, 
 did not always afford counter suggestion sufficient to 
 overcome the direct ; for the reason, perhaps mainly, 
 that the latter were in comport with the desires of the 
 freedman. 
 
 Then there were other conditions that proved 
 strong suggestions to the negro's mind, of the equality 
 of the races socially. The mulatto was a living evi- 
 dence of the maintenance of relations between the 
 races in the past that should never exist between a 
 superior and an inferior, between master and slave. 
 And the sadness of the picture is intensified in the fact 
 that the white man knew not how disastrously he was 
 sowing the seeds of depravity, discord and disgrace. 
 Sadly enough, they have had their reflex influence 
 upon the white man. On account of these degrading 
 and unhallowed relations the negro race came out 
 of bondage, their women under clouds of unchastity, 
 and both sexes alike holding the marriage relation !n 
 light esteem. This was the rule ; of course, there were 
 exceptions. Had the negro slaves been trained along 
 lines of morality, chastity and right regard for thes-i 
 things, and had the whites maintained a proper moral 
 relation to the blacks, the state of affairs above re- 
 ferred to would not have existed. To have encour- 
 aged the propagation of the species through promis- 
 cuous relations of the sexes was reprehensible, al- 
 though justified on the ground of self-interest every 
 piccaninny represented so much assets of an estate.
 
 140 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 And it is well known that healthy negro women were 
 in demand for child-bearing. 
 
 And, while the ex-slave was slow in overt action 
 upon these poisonous suggestions, they served to ren- 
 der him morose and sullen. He became restless, as 
 if under a great restraint. He was suspicious of the 
 white man, and incapacitated to enter into any busi- 
 ness relations with his former master, with that feel- 
 ing of confidence and desire for mutual good that is 
 50 essential to successful business intercourse. The 
 suggestions he had received, both consciously and un- 
 consciously, were to the effect that whatever of profit 
 he proved to the white man thereafter, even in mat- 
 ters upon which his own subsistence depended, was 
 undeserved; hence, there was, generally speaking, 
 only a perfunctory rendering of service. 
 
 But time has righted many wrong suggestions iv 
 the case of the ex-slaves, at least. Unfortunately, 
 their descendants have profited little by it. The 
 years of constant association and business contact with 
 Southern white men have brought about more amica- 
 ble relations. Confidence has been restored in the 
 mind of the ex-slave, and there exists a better under- 
 standing. And few of this class of negroes ever think 
 of, or care for, closer social relations. And it is not 
 this element that is responsible for the deplorable state 
 of affairs existing ; with the ex-slave only to deal with, 
 the nation would have no "problem" for solution. 
 
 THE NEW NEGRO. 
 
 We have shown in preceding chapters some of the 
 influences that surrounded the negro in slavery, and 
 others that quickly followed emancipation ; and, as 
 we come to consider the "New Negro" of to-day, the 
 question arises, has the progress of the race been 
 commensurate with the opportunities? Has the ad-
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 141 
 
 vancement made during the first forty years of his 
 freedom kept pace with his development during the 
 slave period? 
 
 In order to arrive at a fair conclusion, let us see 
 what progress had been made during the slave pe- 
 riod. We have men of the race skilled in all lines of 
 mechanics every "quarter" had its carpenters, black- 
 smiths, tanners, harness and shoemakers, coopers, 
 wagon-makers, etc. and a majority of these had ac- 
 quired more or less elementary learning. There were 
 preachers, many of whom could read thtir texts and 
 "line" the hymns, and, around every "big house" were 
 butlers, coachmen, housekeepers, chambermaids and 
 nurses who had, by close contact with their "white 
 folks," learned much of the ways of the world outside 
 of the slave domain. Few, comparatively, of the 
 slave owners proscribed education among their slaves, 
 and the children of these families were often the 
 teachers from which their domestics and others often 
 learned much that was of incalculable value in the 
 years that followed. The youngsters or Miss of tender 
 years seated at the nursery fireside, or in the play- 
 yard shade, teaching a favorite servant, sometimes 
 more than one, was a familiar picture in slavery days, 
 and the heart of many an old ex-slave of to-day warms 
 up, and there is seen a tender, far-away look of yearn- 
 ing, as if he would fain glance backward through tha 
 intervening years of the past half century or more, 
 and once more contemplate the scene, long ago en- 
 acted, of young Marster or young Missus with dili- 
 gence and patience unfolding to eager minds the mys- 
 teries of Webster's "blue back." How vividly is re- 
 called the look of severity that for an instant beclouds 
 the face of the young teacher, but is soon chased 
 away by the sunshine of genuine interest aye, affec- 
 tion for the pupil who has failed to recite satisfac-
 
 142 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 iorily, or did not comprehend readily enough, the 
 elucidation of some important lesson help ! Perhaps 
 it was that "K" might easily be recognized at any 
 time, if the fact that its back was broken was kept m 
 mind by the student. 
 
 Young master's body-servant was another favored 
 slave, who profited much in many ways by his posi- 
 tion. Sometimes he followed his master into profes- 
 sional life, and the opportunities for learning were ex- 
 ceptional. Indeed, it is safe to claim that hundreds of 
 the race enjoyed these and like advantages. One 
 thing we know : They were not all illiterate when they 
 became freedmen. This is attested in the fact that a 1 ! 
 over the South, when martial law and bayonet rule 
 essayed to fill many offices with negroes, there was an 
 overflow of applicants for the "jobs" to let. Within 
 a few months, Southern legislatures were overrun and 
 dominated by negro politicians, courts were officered, 
 and in all lines of public service the negro was in 
 evidence. 
 
 From the semi-savage to the freedman, then, we 
 find the negro well on the way to civilization, and 
 somewhat enlightened, though he had been centuries 
 learning the lesson. 
 
 Now the question recurs, what of the progress since 
 emancipation ? 
 
 In many respects the record is disappointing. In 
 morals and in physical vigor the New Negro is far 
 below the average of the ex-slave. And his intellect 
 does not tower above that of his progenitors. True, 
 he has enjoyed educational advantages opportuni- 
 ties is, perhaps, a better word, for the greater body 
 of the negro race is, comparatively, illiterate, and the 
 census showing along this line is misleading. The 
 "book-learning" of the freedman and his descendants 
 is of a very shallow character, as applied to the masses.
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 143 
 
 There are a number of reasons for this. Short school 
 terms in rural districts, the indisposition of the pa- 
 rents to take the children from the fields during the 
 "cropping season," and too many colleges, are some 
 of the potent reasons. The expenditure of vast sums 
 in educational channels, upon comparatively few, 
 whereas, if differently employed, the many would have 
 received substantial profit, and all would have been 
 benefited some, was a grave error. And the sugges- 
 tion to the race thereby was unfortunate and dam- 
 aging. 
 
 There have been established throughout the South 
 too many colleges, universities and other institutions 
 for the higher education of the negro. There is too 
 much of display and glamor for the real article in 
 learning. There are too many negroes who have been 
 "thro' college," know much that is in books, and have 
 imbibed a smattering of polish that are absolutely 
 handicapped on account of the possession of a diplo- 
 ma. Why ? The answer is simple : Auto-suggestion 
 stands as a barrier between them and the only pur- 
 suits open to them. To these, "out in service" is not 
 the thing. "It is too menial," says their auto-sugges- 
 tion. "And this applies, in large part, to those pa^- 
 tially educated in the higher branches of learning, as 
 well as to the graduate. 
 
 Writers and orators of the race, as well as others, 
 lay great stress upon what education has done and is 
 doing for the negro, but statistics, gathered and com- 
 piled from all the colleges, show that at the end of a 
 generation of freedom only about 2.300 graduates 
 have gone out from all the institutions of learning 
 open to the race, including those graduated before 
 the Civil War, and the tab kept upon the movements 
 of these showed that little more than half of them 
 were reported to be engaged in profitable pursuits.
 
 144 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 Fifty-three per cent, of these were engaged in teach- 
 ing, and sixteen per cent, were preachers. And this 
 is the showing of a generation ! This the returns of 
 the millions that have been given with a free hand by 
 benevolent and philanthropic people, individually and 
 organic, for the sole purpose of education. Add to 
 this the national schools and the school fund expended 
 annually by every Southern State upon negro educa- 
 tion, and the returns upon this fabulous expenditure 
 are meagre indeed. The beginnings of the second 
 generation found the race in about this condition: 
 Two and seven-ninths per cent, graduates of colleges, 
 and less than 50 per cent, with any education at ail, 
 while of this number a small percentage only were 
 turning their education to account in their daily avo- 
 cations. And many, as above shown, find their learn- 
 ing a drawback oftener than a help. 
 
 This, we admit, is an unfortunate state of affairs 
 and to be deplored, but by it, the unwisdom of the 
 plan of negro education adopted and pursued for forty 
 years seems to be most clearly demonstrated. To at- 
 tempt to charge the mind of the negro child, less than 
 three centuries removed from the savage state, with 
 schooling such as the white child is given, with twenty 
 centuries of Christian civilization and enlightenment 
 behind it, supplemented by constant intelligent indi- 
 vidual effort, was, palpaMy, an impossibility, and a 
 cruel exaction made upon a weakling intellect; and 
 like many other conditions existing in our race rela- 
 tions, it is without a parallel in the history of nations. 
 
 Now, from these same institutions of learning have 
 gone out some of the most hurtful and deplorable 
 suggestions, as poisonous as they were fallacious, that 
 have been imparted to the negro race through any 
 medium, and by any agency. And they have been 
 doubly damaging, in that they have begotten in a
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 145 
 
 certain element of the white race counter suggestions, 
 combative in their nature. When a negro boy or girl 
 is taught to regard himself or herself as the social 
 equal of white children, when his inner consciousness 
 voices a counter suggestion, based upon his common 
 sense, a state of feeling is engendered in the breast of 
 that pupil that is to curse his or her life for all time, 
 and that will work serious damage both to the indi- 
 vidual and to the body politic of the race. Yet these 
 suggestions, direct and indirect, are a part and parcel 
 of the curriculum, if not laid down in the catalogue, 
 well understood, of many such institutions ; more 
 prominent perhaps in some than in others. And, <t 
 seems that intelligent people white teachers, many 
 of them even if no other motive than a desire for the 
 welfare of the pupil prompted them, would modify 
 that curriculum, at least. They are too intelligent to 
 charge with ignorance in the matter. They are not 
 blind to the results. It is one of the causes of the 
 unfitness of the negro with an education, partial or 
 finished, for the avocations open to his race. No self- 
 respecting Southern white man will take a negro wo- 
 man into his home, give her sleeping quarters upon 
 the same floor with his family and conform to many 
 other conditions precedent, as prescribed by some ot 
 these colleges which have an employment bureau at- 
 tachment, and which furnish educated and trained 
 domestics, because, forsooth, these conditions are de- 
 signed as a moral safeguard for the servant. North- 
 ern sojourners in the South refuse to subscribe to 
 such terms, and certainly Southern homes are not, as 
 a rule, so constructed. Servants' quarters are so ar- 
 ranged as to prevent social contact. There must b? 
 no intercourse except as between employer and em- 
 ployee a superior and an inferior. Other women of 
 their race fill such positions without such "safeguards" 
 
 10 ns
 
 146 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 and maintain their respectability, and are the equals 
 of the college-bred domestics, barring- education. But 
 the educated or partially educated negro is but a slight 
 percentage and not, bv any means, the most danger- 
 ous element of the race. He has not heretofore fig- 
 ured much as a law-breaker, and, to be frank, he 
 stands in more amicable relations to his white fellow- 
 citizens than he has aforetime. There is more evi- 
 dence of a desire on his part to co-operate in the ef- 
 forts to suppress crime and bring criminals to ac- 
 count. And the time is short before the country will 
 realize marked results from that co-operation. The ex- 
 ample of a leading colored man, editor of a paper 
 published in the interests of his race, prosecuting 1 a 
 colored woman before the courts in a Southern citv 
 for an alleged infraction of law, after repeated efforts 
 to restrain her had been made, is an inspiring one. 
 And he is on record as intending to keep it up. I: 
 is, he claims, in the interest of good morals among 
 the race. 
 
 But it is more far-reaching than mere individual 
 effort. Let the race the vicious element, of course- - 
 learn that a few such men of their race in every com- 
 munity are on their tracks, and one of the most pow- 
 erful counter suggestions to lawlessness and crime 
 would take hold of the minds of the lawless and the 
 restraining influences would be incalculably strong. 
 Three determined and fearless leaders like this editor 
 would do more toward putting a police recorder out 
 of business than any city's "picked squad" of patrol- 
 men. 
 
 So far, the influences of suggestion upon the col- 
 ored race has been considered in a general way, with- 
 out regard to any specific conditions or set of circum- 
 stances. There is a phase of the subject to which we 
 now advert with the hope and belief that, though an
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 147 
 
 oft threshed question, we shall be able to present some 
 views upon a line hitherto disregarded, that may prove 
 helpful in future discussions. It is that of 
 
 ASSAULT UPON WHITE WOMEN BY NEGRO MEN ; 
 ITS CAUSES AND PROPOSED RATIONAL REMEDIES. 
 
 The fa:t was mentiond, incidentally, in a former 
 connection, that the crime of rape was seldom heard 
 of during- the slave period, and we will here add that 
 this is accounted for most satisfactorily upon psycho- 
 logical grounds. 
 
 First, the "crime f rape," as used above, may be 
 taken in a broader sense than the subject under dis- 
 cussion embraces. Let it apply to colored as well as 
 white women, to facilitate the elucidation of the mat- 
 ter, and we shall see that there was an utter lack of 
 -suggestion in, or to, the negro man regarding the 
 crime against either race of women, but upon entirely 
 different hypotheses. 
 
 In the case of negro women there was absolutely 
 no grounds for the basis of wrong suggestion, be- 
 cause none of the avenues of intercourse between the 
 sexes were closed. While the marriage relations weri 
 entered into and maintained between negro men and 
 negro women, these relations, on account of prevail- 
 ing sentiment based upon customs, already referred 
 to as wrong and degrading, were not essential to sex- 
 ual intercourse. Hence, the conditions that might 
 suggest rape were too remote to consider. The mind 
 of the negro man was, therefore, free from improper 
 suggestions as regards the women of his race. Th; 
 other feature of the question, however, is as fraught 
 with suggestion as this is devoid of it. 
 
 The first impression that found lodgment in the 
 mind of the semi-savage when his foot pressed Amer- 
 ican soil was a conscious suggestion of inferiority.
 
 148 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 (This is a conclusion fully justified upon several 
 grounds. The fact that he was a slave, descended 
 from the slave of black masters is sufficient to citi 
 here.) And, above all else, the white Mistress of his 
 new world was more an ideal object of worship than 
 one to desecrate. And, as his sojourn lengthened int > 
 years, the queenly relations his white Mistress bore to 
 the home, as well as to the whole social fabric, so far 
 as his observation extended, fixed and strengthened 
 this suggestion in his sub-conscious mind; so that 
 the suggestion became a principle to be transmitted 
 in a genealogical sequence, and, as the centuries 
 passed, it became a bulwark of safety behind which 
 was sheltered, unharmed, white women and children 
 during the fateful sixties, when true and loyal black 
 men all over the South not only worked faithfully for 
 their subsistence, but bared their own brawny arms 
 in defense of any of their "white folk" when danger 
 was nigh. 
 
 Fortunate it is for the black man of the slave period 
 that conditions were such as to preclude the idea or 
 assumption that through fear a brutish nature was 
 curbed and not because of his devotion to right and 
 duty that the white Mistress passed through the slave 
 period unassailed. During the Civil War the slaves 
 at home, as a rule, were at all times fully apprised of 
 the situation. There was (as a negro writer recently 
 expressed it) a "free masonry" means of communica- 
 tion that kept them always informed. 
 
 Furthermore, in view of subsequent history, are we 
 not justified in claiming that the war-time darkey 
 the ex-slave has maintained a fair respectability since 
 his emancipation? Some of their number have gone 
 in forbidden ways, and penitentiaries have gathered 
 many within their walls or on chaingangs, but the 
 great body of the ex-slave element presents a fair
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 149 
 
 record upon this question. In support of this claim, 
 we cite the fact, which seems to have escaped obser- 
 vation, that the crime of rape does not belong- to the 
 slave period, neither is it a fruit of the ex-slave period 
 proper. While there had been a few offenses of this 
 character before, the crime was not so frequent as to 
 arouse comment or create widespread alarm and con- 
 sternation until many years after the emancipation of 
 slavery. Therefore, it is fair and just to claim that the 
 crime of assault is the crime of the "New Negro" 
 not of the slave nor of the ex-slave. 
 
 The grounds upon which we base the claim that 
 ""assault upon white women by negro men" is the 
 crime of the "New Negro' we shall endeavor to make 
 plain first ; then we shall offer the proposed "Rational 
 Remedies." 
 
 Suggestion, that subtlest of all agencies influencing, 
 if not wholly dominating the human mind dual in 
 its nature when rightly employed, is a great and 
 moving power for good to the subject receiving it; 
 and, through the subject, to everything with which it 
 comes in touch, as illustrated in the career of the col- 
 ored race, from the first importation of a slave to the 
 emancipation of the race. 
 
 In striking, and sometimes alarming, contrast are 
 the results of misdirected suggestion, or wrong sug- 
 gestion of any form, whether direct of indirect; con- 
 scious or unconscious ; intentional or unintentional. 
 And to this influence of wrong suggestion we shall 
 attempt to trace the source of the problem, at first 
 sectional in its nature, but now involving the whole 
 nation. 
 
 And it may be well to reiterate the claim before 
 made, that to the alien element that overran the South 
 immediately after the Civil War, and the influences 
 that element set agoing in the minds of the negroes,
 
 150 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 more than to all else is traceable the trouble with the 
 negro of to-day. 
 
 During the reconstruction period in the South,, 
 when the Federal authorities at Washington were en- 
 gaged in amending the Constitution, passing civil 
 rights bills, and otherwise working assiduously to 
 bring about the fullest equality of races (some of these 
 same leaders illustrating it in their private life) and 
 their "officers of the line" were on the ground preach- 
 ing this doctrine to the negroes, the very atmosphere 
 in which the recently liberated slaves moved and 
 which they breathed, was surcharged with the theme 
 of race equality, and suggestions of future elevation 
 ranging from "eating at the white folk's table" to 
 amalgamation of the races, and even to a supremacy 
 of the negro, were inhaled with every breath by the 
 negro youth of the day, as well as the elders of his 
 people. While the fathers among them were less sus- 
 ceptible to the infection, by virtue of a lifetime of 
 positive direct counter suggestion, minds of the youth 
 of the day were free and open to take in and assimi- 
 late the poison of the suggestions so assiduously sown- 
 by alien political emissaries of the powers at Wash- 
 ington, and so faithfully taught in the schools by white 
 men and women from the North, who, also, main- 
 tained these social relations toward the negro in their 
 private lives, so far as the laws of the land would per- 
 mit and publicly, so far as Southern sentiment wouLI 
 tolerate. 
 
 Subsidiary to the work of the agitator, was the 
 mother's influence in implanting these seeds of social 
 equality suggestions in the minds of her children. But 
 a great degree of tolerance should be employed in 
 considering this phase of the subject. The mother- 
 heart of the slave woman must have thrilled with un- 
 wonted emotions of joy at the thought that the dawr*
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 151 
 
 of liberty had opened upon her race while her off- 
 spring were just entering upon life, and even if she 
 had passed by youth and middle life in slavery, she 
 had the happy consciousness that, in her declining 
 years, the home of a freeman would be to her a shel- 
 ter, and out of it she would be borne to her grave. 
 This, she knew, was a reality; and with the reality 
 had come the promise of higher ascension in the scale 
 of social life for her children ; they were "good as any 
 white children" better than "po' white trash." That 
 she should strengthen these suggestions by every 
 means possible, in the minds of her children, was 
 natural, and she did more, the infant of the day drew 
 the inspiration from the mother's breast with ever/ 
 drop of its milk food. And, while there were doubts 
 and misgivings in the mind of the intelligent colored 
 man, he hesitated to discountenance these sugges- 
 tions. His intelligence suggested strongly to his mind 
 that the only logical outcome of the policy of recon- 
 structionists at Washington was social equality, mis- 
 cegenation and amalgamation. Of course, this car- 
 ried with it a terrible conviction ; it meant bloodshed 
 as well ; but were not the Federal armies behind the 
 movement? thought he. 
 
 Amid these surroundings the young negro began 
 life. Schools all over the South were established and 
 with their establishment every influence that could be 
 conceived was brought to play upon the mind of ne- 
 gro children to create the impression that they, as 
 beneficiaries of the school privileges, were indebted 
 solely to their Northern white friends for them ; that 
 the Southern whites were not only antagonistic to ne- 
 gro education, but were hostile to everything that 
 tended to the betterment of the race. And, in many 
 instances, the jealousy of the white people of the ne- 
 gro's advancement was charged on the ground that
 
 152 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 they feared the negro's development would result 
 finally in the superiority of the negro race ; thus, the 
 suggestion of negro supremacy obtained a strong po- 
 sition in the minds of many negroes. How familiar 
 became the claim that "the bottom rail" would soon 
 be "on top." 
 
 In all of these things the negro felt that the people 
 at the North were in full sympathy and accord with all 
 that was being done. That the policy pursued by the 
 Johnson administration, for the establishment of a 
 social scale in the South that recognized and tolerated 
 no distinction on account of race, color, etc., met the 
 unqualified approval of every Northern citizen. But, 
 if such was the case, then (and we are not disposed to 
 believe it) there came in due time a revulsion of feel- 
 ing. There came a time when the mismanagement of 
 the misguided extremists at the North, and the false 
 and (sometimes) incendiary suggestions of their emis- 
 saries at the South, became apparent. It was when 
 the habitation of the black race was no longer circum- 
 scribed to the country south of the Ohio river. When 
 he had gained a footing more or less well established 
 in almost all of the States in the Union. Then it was 
 that the people of the whole country began to under- 
 stand the situation, and sentiment became changed. 
 
 Growing up in this atmosphere of training the New 
 Negro was wholly unprepared to meet the actual real- 
 ities that the future developed. Social elevation did 
 not come to him, along with the education he had re- 
 ceived. His black skin was, as much as ever, the 
 mark of inferiority of race. Years passed, he became 
 a man physically. Instead of an open field in the so- 
 cial realm, he was as much circumscribed as ever; the 
 white man had maintained that superiority which, by 
 every right vested in a superior race, he claimed was 
 his. Public sentiment at the same time at the North
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 153 
 
 was overwhelmingly with the Southern white men. 
 (although it was some years later before it became ac- 
 tive), and the negro realized in the situation as it was 
 that the foolish fallacies implanted in his young mind 
 were but bubbles that burst before the blasts of reason 
 in later years. And, with this revelation, came a most 
 dangerous suggestion. It was, that the negro was 
 being robbed of a right that, according to suggestions 
 in a thousand ways imparted, he had come to regard 
 as his ; that, on account of the duplicity of the white 
 race, he still occupied an inferior position, and never 
 once admitting to himself that former suggestions 
 were perhaps erroneous. And, brooding over these 
 imaginary wrongs (being unable rather than unwil- 
 ling to apply the light of reason), the deadly and 
 damning suggestion of the employment of force to 
 accomplish a right of which sentiment robs him and 
 not law forbids him, was implanted in his mind. We 
 say "his mind" advisedly, for the outcropping does 
 not by any means discover to view the extent of the 
 existence of these dark suggestions. They are mani- 
 fested upon the streets, along the highways, around 
 the homes everywhere throughout the South, daily, 
 and in an unmistakable manner. These manifesta- 
 tions are not unnoticed by the whites, and doubtless 
 many a tragedy is averted, and many a dark crime is 
 forestalled because they are noted. Lack of oppor- 
 tunity often, and lack of brute courage sometimes, 
 and an increasing watchfulness all the time, has pre- 
 served the honor of far more white women of the 
 country than have suffered the loss of it at the hands 
 of the rapist. 
 
 SUGGESTION AS A SOLUTION. 
 
 We come now to consider a solution for this most 
 absorbing problem with a degree of satisfaction on
 
 154 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 account of the fact that the change of sentiment re- 
 garding the race question, which has been very 
 marked, even radical, during the past few years in cer- 
 tain sections, will contribute much towards that solu- 
 tion. During recent years the people of the other sec- 
 tions of the Union have had a meed of the experience 
 in dealing with the rapist negro, that the South has so 
 long contended with. The country at large has come 
 to a knowledge of the situation in a sense most cal- 
 culated to carry conviction. The sojourn of the ne- 
 groes at <tihe North (and by this term is meant all sec- 
 tions before unused to the negro as he is known at 
 the South), has proven a revelation to the masses. 
 Seeing him as he is has been a convincing proof of 
 his unfitness for social equality. The horror at the 
 thought of miscegenation and amalgamation experi- 
 enced only at the South at first, is shared now through- 
 out the country. The expediency of it is not only de- 
 nied at jthe North, but the proposition is revolting 
 alike to the respectable white element everywhere. 
 
 The formula of the remedy for the malady once 
 agreed upon, its faithful application and patience will 
 bring the desired results. For, it may be well borne 
 in mind, that the disease not being at an acute stage,, 
 but of a chronic type, it can not be overcome in a day,, 
 but will require time for its eradication. 
 
 First, as an all-important basis : If, as we have 
 shown, suggestion has played so important a part in 
 shaping the destiny of the negro race, figuring in 
 every phase of his career, from the semi-savage state 
 until this day, then, through the same medium, much 
 toward the solution of the problem may be accom- 
 plished. 
 
 While the problem has become a national one, in a 
 strict sense, it must be admitted that upon the South 
 mainly, devolves the responsibility of a solution. This
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 155 
 
 may appear paradoxical, taken in connection with the 
 claim, heretofore made, that to northern sentiment 
 and northern interference with local affairs was 
 chargeable the present status of the race. But in our 
 support of that claim, the distinction between the 
 two was made clear, and the change of sentiment a': 
 the North has not only removed all 'support of the 
 claim to social equality for the negro, but has gone a 
 long way toward creating a strong counter suggestion 
 in the mind of the New Negro upon that subject. In 
 fact, there is less of a desire upon the part of the re- 
 spectable element of the race for social equality than 
 ever before. The conviction, once so thoroughly en- 
 trenched in the mind of the negro, that such relations 
 should not exist, and never eradicated, but rather 
 overshadowed, for the time being, is rapidly reassert- 
 ing itself and claiming recognition how ? Auto-sug- 
 gestively. 
 
 One of the first steps employed in furtherance of the 
 radical plans adopted for the reconstruction of the 
 Southern States, was the wholesale enfranchisement 
 of the negro, without regard to his fitness for the ex- 
 ercise of suffrage. Subsequent history has demon- 
 strated that this was a grievous error, and his right 
 of suffrage should have been admitted only after he 
 had demonstrated such qualifications, moral and men- 
 tal, as would enable him to exercise it intelligently. 
 This would have been fair to all classes of the race. 
 The negro who possessed such qualifications at the 
 outset would have been enfranchised, while the igno- 
 rant and incompetent element so largely in the ma- 
 jority, would have been barred until such time as he 
 was enabled to subscribe to the conditions of quali- 
 fication. Had this been done, the suggestions of right 
 deportment, and high moral snd mentnl attainment, 
 in other words, the suggestion of good citizenship
 
 156 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 would have been paramount in the mind of the negro, 
 instead of the seriously erroneous suggestions he did 
 receive in this connection, to which we have referred. 
 But the proposition to repeal the voting clause of the 
 Constitution of the United States relative to the ne- 
 gro, at this late day, is as manifestly wrong as the act 
 was erroneous at first. 
 
 First, it would work a hardship upon a strong ele- 
 ment of the race who, by thrift and enterprise, have 
 property rights at stake, and until more of the race 
 not so fortunate, perhaps, but whose intelligence and 
 learning, as well as their moral status, entitle them 
 to recognition as good citizens ; and, second, because 
 every State in the Union enjoys the rights necessary 
 to regulate suffrage by legislation, and all of them af- 
 fected do enact such laws as are necessary to regulate 
 the franchise of its citizens, "without regard to race, 
 color," etc., it is true, but quite effective in eliminat- 
 ing the incompetent voters, both white and colored, 
 Disfranchisement, therefore, is not expedient. 
 
 It is unfortunate that intelligent negro writers and 
 speakers keep up such a fusilade of attack upon white 
 people for alleged suppression of the negro ballot, 
 when their common sense teaches them that such is 
 not the case. There is no effort on the part of the 
 whites to suppress a single legal vote of the race in 
 any regular election. Democratic primary, or nomi- 
 nating elections in practice in the South, are not 
 "regular" legal elections, and if the negro is excluded 
 in these, so is his white brother of the Republican 
 party. And these always have the right to bring out 
 a Republican ticket and contest in the election proper, 
 the election of the ticket endorsed by the opposition. 
 These are political party questions and not race ques- 
 tions. The negro is simply afflicted with the weaker 
 party in politics. And this, from a choice made years
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 157 
 
 ago, and it is unfair to the weaker element of his race 
 that these practices are resorted to by his intellectually 
 stronger brother; for they are taken seriously by these 
 auditors, and if the applause they receive is gratify- 
 in^, they should understand it is at great cost to the 
 cause they represent. Suggestion of a damaging 
 character is begotten half suppressed truth, becomes 
 blatant falsehood. Open, fair dealing with all ques- 
 tions by negro leaders is demanded by every sense of 
 right. 
 
 The negro's status before the law is wrongly dealt 
 with by this same element. Every intelligent being 
 shows that the courts of the country, from the desk- 
 room notary publics, to the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, are open to him, and legal counsel is 
 his, upon demand, before any one of these tribunals. 
 The preaching of negro oppression by the courts 
 should be restrained, if necessary, by the broadening 
 of jurisdiction in contempt proceedings, so as to take 
 in the agitator, and thus suppress a very strong and 
 hurtful suggestion. 
 
 A recent enactment of a very stringent vagrancy 
 law by the Georgia Legislature was vigorously at- 
 tacked by a leading Atlanta negro preacher, on the 
 ground that it was "aimed at" the colored race ; when 
 he well knew that not a syllable of the act applied to 
 'the negro that did not mean as much to the white 
 race. That, if it affected the negro more seriously 
 than it did the whites, it was because there were more 
 negro vagrants than white vagrants. Therefore, the 
 course of the preacher was attacked in the columns of 
 a newspaper and his utterances were given wide pub- 
 licity among the negroes. The more strongly to be 
 condemed are these utterances, because they were so 
 widely at variance with the spirit of the occasion, 
 which was a gathering of leading white and colored
 
 158 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 men engaged in the discussion of ways and means 
 for the elevation and betterment of his race ; a notable 
 and leading spirit present being his own church 
 bishop. The closing of dance-halls, where vice and 
 immorality prevailed among his race, was as strongly 
 protested against on this same occasion by the 
 preacher, because, he claimed, it was the oppression 
 of the negro, and it abridged his rights. This in the 
 face of the fact that reputable people of his own race 
 joined in invoking the law's action on the grounds of 
 it being a nuisance and a menace to the peace and 
 good order of the city. 
 
 While it is not probable that there were present 
 many of the class that could be seriously affected by 
 the preacher's inopportune and foolish remarks, it is 
 true that a newspaper comment was a vehicle that 
 -carried them broadcast, and the damage done was 
 serious and far-reaching, counteracting much of the 
 real good accomplished at the series of meetings, of 
 which this was one. 
 
 What a revolution of sentiment the cessation of 
 these and like practices would work ! What a strong 
 current of counter-suggestion would be set in motion 
 if these same gifted writers and eloquent speakers 
 turned their efforts into more rational and conserva- 
 tive channels ! 
 
 In the South, at least, the rapist in almost all in- 
 stances of outbreak, comes from the ranks of the 
 vagrant the lowest element of the negro race. The 
 rural districts are his field of operations, and he wan- 
 ders through the country, ostensibly in search of em- 
 ployment, but in reality bent only upon mischief. He 
 does not hesitate at theft, burglary, arson, or criminal 
 outrage whatever seems to promise success, even 
 murder, if necessary to accomplish any of these de- 
 signs, or to cover up a crime. This is the rule ; oc-
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 159 
 
 casionally he is one well known in the community, and 
 often he is one of the migratory class, whose stay on 
 some man's plantation has been of a sufficient dura- 
 tion to localize him enough to be regarded as a mem- 
 ber of the community, but which stay was only Ion-; 
 enough to enable him to accomplish some deep an.l 
 devilish purpose. 
 
 The remedy for this class is: First, clean towns and 
 cities where such low resorts as afford them shelter, 
 can not exist; strict laws against idleness, and a no- 
 madic life, and fearless execution of those laws. Sec- 
 ond, the respectable working colored man and woman 
 should discountenance these people in their worthless 
 manner of living. Let these understand that they can 
 no longer expect shield or support from this better 
 class, and the effect would be marvelous. It is inex- 
 plicable, but true, that it is the disposition of negroes 
 generally, to aid the criminal of the race to escape, 
 rather than to hand him over to justice. It is a well- 
 known fact that it is almost impossible for a white 
 man to go into any quarter of a city where negroes 
 live, and ascertain the whereabouts of a negro, though 
 he may inquire of those living in the immediate vicin- 
 ity, even of next-door neighbors. Negroes will shield 
 the worst criminal of their race from detection am! 
 arrest, though a stranger, while the white man wiU 
 hand his next-door neighbor over to justice when 
 implicated in crime. 
 
 We have in the foregoing an illustration of a sug- 
 gestion implanted during the slave period, and doub*:- 
 less at an early date. But the negroes should put away 
 those old slave-time customs of shielding the "run- 
 away nigger." How tenacious the hold of a sugges- 
 tion when once rooted in the human mind! 
 
 The law to put down and drive out the loafer, and 
 suppress his rendezvous, and the respectable negroes
 
 160 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 upholding that law, by every suggestion to the va- 
 grant, that he may no longer look for or expect recog- 
 nition and aid in his manner of living, are the coun- 
 try's strongest levers for uprooting this incubus on 
 society. 
 
 Then there is that other element of the rapist negro, 
 less numerous, but dangerous, because, under the 
 guise of respectability, the negro servant who, by vir- 
 tue of his domestic employment, is constantly in con- 
 tact with the women of the home. Unfortunately, 
 these are often less careful of his presence than they 
 should be. The old slavery-day customs of careless 
 indifference to the presence of the morning fire-build- 
 er in female apartments, and like opportunities for ob- 
 servation of the persons of the white Mistress and the 
 young Misses of the home, may have been responsible 
 in a far greater measure for the latter day crime than 
 it would be pleasant to admit. The suggestion of 
 safety then implanted in the white Mistress' mind has 
 been handed down even to the present day, and it is a 
 fact that there is too much indifference yet existing 
 along this line, in the face of the dangers that menace 
 the safety of white women. It is unfortunate, and the 
 source of much harm, that the Southern Mistress 
 failed to recognize that the freedman was not her slave, 
 but her former slave, and to treat him as such. But 
 instead, old customs prevailed, and while the freed- 
 man maintained his integrity as a rule (many did not), 
 the new negro received and cherished strong sug- 
 gestions from this source. 
 
 Remove the contact, often too close, in the home ; 
 in business relations ; in close-seated vehicles "buiit 
 for two"; on the farm, where too often girls and 
 young women "hoe their rows," or pick cotton along- 
 side the negro man sometimes wholly at his mercy, 
 (and often becoming his victim) and separate the
 
 A SOLUTION OP THE NEdRO PROBLEM. 16 1 
 
 races in factories and workshops ; let the negro jani- 
 tor go from schools and colleges where girls are in 
 attendance, and female teachers are employed; in a 
 word, let Southern people recognize in the "New Ne- 
 gro" a person far removed from the darkey of other 
 days, and a suggestion that breeds deadliest poison 
 in the mind of this new creature will be removed. 
 
 It is this class of negroes most subject to the sug- 
 gestion begotten by disapppointment in the develop- 
 ment of race conditions, that the race has been robbed 
 of rights by unfair methods, and he is impelled by a 
 desire to possess and drag down the object of his lust 
 to his own low level, not only by lutsful desires, but by 
 a spirit of revengeful hatred. 
 
 Race separation upon any conceivable plan, al- 
 though strongly advocated by a few, among whom is 
 a leading negro bishop of the African Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church, and a Southern newspaper editor of 
 note as a platform speaker, seems too chimerical to 
 consider as a remedy in this connection. The negro 
 does not wish to leave the country not many of his 
 race and there are no legal avenues open to deporta- 
 tion ; and unless he could be legally deported, or could 
 be induced to voluntarily clear our shores, in a body, 
 the proposition fails of materialization. 
 
 From the first proposition there is little to expect. 
 And as regards the latter, an incident illustrative of 
 the negro's resourcefulness in expediencies, aptly sets 
 forth his position in the premises : An old negro who 
 was serving a term in prison for the offense of horse- 
 stealing, was constantly upbraiding his fellow- prison- 
 ers for their deeds, which had brought them into pris- 
 on. He was particularly abusive of a certain one who 
 happened to be serving a term for perhaps the same 
 offense as his own. After submitting to a round of 
 abuse, one day, more severe than usual, the fellow- 
 
 11 ns
 
 162 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 
 
 prisoner stopped the old man and said : "Now, look 
 here, I admit you are right ; my crime was a bad one, 
 but what did you come here for?" This was sudden 
 and unexpected, but the old fellow was equal to the 
 demands upon him, and he replied: "Didn't come 
 here ; white folks fetch me here." 
 
 With the negro here to stay, whatever is accom- 
 plished in the way of a solution of this vexed problem 
 must, to prove successful, have his co-operation. In 
 the pulpit, in the public prints, in politics and at home, 
 a demand is upon him to bend his intelligent efforts 
 in the direction of bringing the weaker element of 
 his race up to his own level of moral and intellectual 
 standing. The hurtful and vicious suggestions that 
 have so strongly figured in the past, must be met and 
 overcome by counter-suggestions. 
 
 The intensely religious nature of the negro is an 
 excellent avenue through which to inculcate the re- 
 ligious principle that demands good citizenship. The 
 Divine command : "Let every soul be subject unto the 
 Higher Powers," carries with it no qualification. We 
 should not "despise those in authority." To cease from 
 abuse of governmental institutions and men in au- 
 thority would convey strong suggestion. In a word, 
 counter-suggestion that will stop decline, arrest and 
 restrain the vicious before actual outbreak, is the hope. 
 
 Neither social nor political relations of a close na- 
 ture are desirable to the intellectual colored man. 
 The stamp that differentiates the races is as apparent 
 to the negro as to the white man. There is a rela- 
 tion, however, that is most desirable to both the fair- 
 minded negro and the honest white man. It is a cor- 
 dial, neighborly relation, that admits of free, open 
 business intercourse, without any apprehension on the 
 part of either of unfair methods being employed. 
 Upon the white man more than upon the black, rests
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 163 
 
 the responsibility. He is in position to invite this, by 
 indirect suggestion, which must, and surely will, flow 
 out of earnest effort upon his part. Let the negro un- 
 derstand that he will receive honest compensation for 
 services rendered, and how readily he will respond ! 
 He is so constituted; his confidence once won, his 
 faithfulness is as strong as his emotional nature can 
 make it. Let the negro understand that the white 
 man is not jealous of his attainments. The fact that 
 he does favor education among the race is strongly 
 suggested by his willingness to pay taxes for that pur- 
 pose. 
 
 There is an element that has received no notice dur- 
 ing this discussion, because his influence is of no ef- 
 fect, pro or con, upon the race problem ; it is the low 
 white class. His vacillating and unstable character 
 robs him of any influence among the intelligent, up- 
 right citizens of either race, and the law that restrains 
 and punishes the vicious blacks, operates with equal 
 force in his case. 
 
 The intelligent and upright people of the two races 
 must meet this question, each in his particular sphere, 
 and honest effort and patient waiting upon right sug- 
 gestion will bring about a happy solution. 
 
 THE NEGRO NOT A BEAST. 
 
 A solution of the negro problem psychologically con- 
 sidered has, without any special effort, proved that the 
 negro is not "a beast," notwithstanding an effort has 
 been made to prove otherwise by distorting the Bible 
 with disconnected sentences and phrases which are 
 used for Biblical proof. The whole religious world 
 may hide its face in shame and disgust at the thought 
 that any one should be so sacrilegious as to try to use 
 the Bible for such an unhallowed purpose. 
 
 As we have pointed out in the first part of this psy-
 
 164 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGKO PROBLEM. 
 
 chological treatise, "every human being is endowed 
 with a dual mind, namely, objective and subjective. 
 The objective, or reasoning mind, is controlled by the 
 five senses (seeing, hearing, feeling, etc.), and is the 
 outgrowth of man's physical necessities. It is his 
 guide in his struggles with material environments. 
 The objective mind has for its highest function, rea- 
 soning. The subjective mind takes cognizance of its 
 environment by means independent of the five phys- 
 ical senses. It perceives by intuition. It is the seat 
 of emotions ; it is the storehouse of memory. This 
 duality of the mind renders man susceptible to all 
 kinds of suggestions known to the realm of psychol- 
 
 ogy." 
 
 If we wish to draw an analogy from the Bible, it 
 would be more in keeping with the eternal fitness of 
 things to show that the internal evidences of the Bible 
 are a greater and more conclusive argument of its own 
 authenticity than the evidences deduced by natural 
 theology ,or by prophecy, or by reasoning, so with the 
 negro it did not seem necessary to prove that he was 
 a man, or of the genus homo, because this is not only 
 an admitted fact, but it is a self-evident fact. 
 
 In the chapter on his semi-savage state, where he 
 is viewed in his lowest mental development, it is 
 clearly shown that he is highly susceptible to sugges- 
 tion, under the same psychological laws as all other 
 human beings, and by the immutable laws of sug- 
 gestion, he has made progress along the lines of men- 
 tal development. His objective mind has increased 
 in proportion that his physical necessities have dic- 
 tated. His subjective mind seems to predominate in 
 his semi-savage state, owing to the fact that his rea- 
 soning faculties were weak for want of cultivation and 
 a chance to develop. Hence, the proverbial intuition
 
 A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 165 
 
 of the old darkey, which is often imitated by writers, 
 and quoted as "Uncle Dick's Philosophy." 
 
 Since the negro has had an opportunity to cultivate 
 his objective or reasoning mind, like all other human 
 beings, he does not depend so much on his intuition 
 or subjective mind, but is able to employ his reason- 
 ing faculties according to the same laws that govern 
 his Caucasian friend. It is under this law that the 
 negro is capable, if not hindered by wrong suggestion, 
 to attain to still higher development, mentally, morally 
 and religiously. If too much is expected of him, the 
 responsibilities will have a tendency to dethrone his 
 reason from the fact that he is only in the primary or 
 undeveloped mental stage. 
 
 It is hoped that all good people, both white and 
 black, will realize that a great problem confronts 
 them, and in proportion with the right suggestion, as 
 given to the weaker race, only a few years removed 
 from savagery, in that proportion will the problem be 
 solved.
 
 II