the Constitution show that the party of freedom never paused; and the
bond forged during the long years of struggle and riveted by
emancipation was indissolubly welded when that party crowned the
freedman with the glorious rights and privileges of citizenship. Ah,
what lamentations loud and long filled the land! What dire predictions
smote the nation's ear! What a multitude of evils imagination turned
loose like a horde of Furies! What a war of opinion raged 'twixt friends
and foes of the race that drew the first full breath of freedom! More
than three decades have passed. Have these dismal prophecies been
fulfilled? No race under the sun has been so patient under calumny,
under oppression, under mob violence; no race has ever shown itself so
free from resentment.
But it has been said the Negro was not worth the struggle. Not worth the
struggle when, at every call to arms in the nation's history, the black
man has nobly responded, whether slave or freeman? Not worth the
struggle when, in the Revolution, on Lake Erie with Perry, at Port
Hudson, at Millikens Bend, in that fearful crater at Petersburg, he shed
his blood freely in the nation's behalf? Not worth the struggle, when he
won his way from spade to epaulet in the defense of the nation's honor?
_The freedmen fathers were neither cowards nor traitors. Nor do the sons
disgrace their sires._
Who saved the Rough Riders from annihilation at Las Guasimas? Who
stormed with unparalleled bravery the heights at El Caney and swept
gallantly foremost in that magnificent charge up San Juan hill?
Comrades, leaders, onlookers--all with one voice have made reply: "The
Negro soldier." Aye; the race has proved its worth, and the whole
country, irrespective of party or section, owes it a debt, not only for
its heroic service on the battle-field in times of national peril, which
was its duty, but for its splendid self-control generally, under the
most harassing situations, under most inexcusable assaults.
No; the faith of the party of freedom in the Negro has not been
unfounded. In all these years the race has been steadily gaining wealth,
education, refinement, places of responsibility and power. It might have
done far more for the lasting good of all concerned, had it learned that
in all things the
"... Heights are not gained by a single bound,
But we built the ladder by which we rise,...
And we mount to its summit round by round."
But the prophecies of the past are far behind us. The world has passed
its verdict on what has been. Mistakes must yield us profit as the
problems of the future confront us. We are to look forward with hope.
And in preparation for that future,
"The riddling Sphynx puts dim things from our minds,
And sets us to the questions at our doors."
As the Republican party and the Negro face the coming years, one
question is of equal moment to both. What shall be the mutual relations
in the future? Shall the party of freedom declare at an end its duty
toward the party it made men and citizens? On the other hand, shall the
Negro say: "Indebtedness ceased with our fathers; we are free to make
alliance where we will"?
In view of the blood shed so freely for Republican principles by the
Negro as slave and freeman; in view of the loyalty, the courage, the
patriotism, the strength, and the needs of the race; in view of this
country's prospective broadened domain and the millions of dusky wards
to be added to the nation o'er which the American eagle hovers to-day;
and in view of the principles that inhere in Republicanism, the party of
freedom should find but one answer: "It is and shall be our duty to view
you ever as men and citizens, to see that no chain of our forging
manacles you to lower planes, that no bar is thrown by us across your
pathway up the hill of progress, to help maintain your rights, to throw
the weight of our influence for fair treatment, for the side of law and
order and justice. The Republican party must not forget for a moment the
truth of the argument that Demosthenes once made against Philip with
such striking force,--"_All power is unstable that is founded on
injustice._" This party cannot afford to be less than just. The Negro
should not ask for more.
This duty laid upon itself on the one hand, it becomes incumbent upon
the Negro to reciprocate, and the reciprocation calls for his support of
the party. This should be a support, wise and open-eyed, born of
appreciation and intelligence. It should be a support, steadfast and
loyal, based upon faith in the party's motives and the knowledge that it
has stood and still stands for all that the Negro holds most dear. It
should be a support that frees itself from selfish leaders and ranting
demagogues, that puts aside all mere personal gain, and seeks the good
of the race as a whole that it, too, may be lifted up. And lastly, it
should be a support that looks for no reward but that which comes
because of true worth and ability.
Reciprocity becomes a mutual duty, for there are mutual needs. The
Negro's strength is not to be ignored by the party; but the race cannot
stand alone. It needs alliance with friendly power; and there is no
friend like the tried friend, no party for the freedman like the party
that stands upon the high, broad platform of freedom and human rights,
irrespective of race, or color, or previous condition.
But having said this, I would be false to the race and my own
convictions did I not pause to give the warning that, after all, neither
parties nor politics alone can save the Negro. He needs to make a new
start in his civil and political career. He must pay less attention to
politics and more to business, to industry, to education, to the
building up of a strong and sturdy manhood everywhere--to the
assimilation generally of all that goes to demand the world's respect
and consideration. He must lop off, as so many _incubi_, the
professional Negro office-seeker, the professional Negro office-holder,
and the Negro politician who aspires to lead the race, for the revenue
that is in it. The best men, the wisest, the most unselfish, and above
all, the men of the most profound integrity and uprightness, must take
the helm or retrogression will be the inevitable result. Politics
followed as an end has been the curse of the race. Under it problems
have multiplied, and under it the masses have remained longer than they
should in the lower stages of development. Only in the hands of men of
noble mold, and used only as a _means_ to an end, can politics
accomplish the highest good for all the race.
The Negro can keep all this in view and yet yield loyal support to the
party that set him free.
Let the party of freedom and the freedmen recognize and observe these
duties as reciprocal, and a force may be created, having its basis on
undying principles, that will pave the way for the ultimate success of
the highest aspirations of each--a force that will stretch southward and
westward bearing, wherever Old Glory floats, the promise to the
oppressed: Freedom, equality, prosperity. And though men may apostatize,
this mutual righteous cause shall live to sway for unnumbered years the
fortunes of this grand Republic, for the God who reared the continents
above the seas and peopled them with nations, who gave these nations
freedom of conscience and will, and who has watched their rise and fall
from the dawn of creation, still guides the destinies of races and of
parties, and standeth
"... within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own."
THE TEACHINGS OF HISTORY CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO RACE PROBLEMS IN
AMERICA[26]
BY NATHAN F. MOSSELL, A. M., M. D.
_Surgeon-in-Chief, Frederick Douglass Hospital, Philadelphia, Pa._
[Note 26: From _Howard's American Magazine_.]
Those who are familiar with history will testify that the blacks were a
fundamental element in the civilized races of antiquity, as also of the
primitive races of southern Europe. In fact, all history is pregnant
with traces of the Negro element. The world will ever look with wonder
and amazement upon the marks of ancient culture in the valley of the
Nile, and we may continue to look as far back as records and
inscriptions lend us light, only to find the black man, above all
others, leading in the ancient arts and sciences.
History places the earliest civilization in Egypt. The ruling tribes
among the people were called the Hamites, the "sunburnt race," according
to Dr. Winchell. Says Professor J. Boughton: "The wanderings of these
people since prehistoric history began has not been confined to the
American continent. In Paleolithic times the black man roamed all over
the fairer portions of the Old World; Europe, as well as Asia and
Africa, acknowledged his sway. No white man had, so far, appeared to
dispute his authority in the vine-clad valleys of France or Germany, or
upon the classic hills of Greece or Rome. The black man preceded all
others, and carried Paleolithic culture to its very height."
The history of all the lands has been but the history of succeeding
races; more often, however, by fusion of different racial types and by
the mingling of various tribes and peoples, have been evolved new races,
superior to any of the original types. Greece and Rome, the study of
history will tell you, had their race and social problems.
Inter-marriage at last settled the question. The ethnology of Spain
tells the same story. There is not a nation on the globe of pure ethnic
character. From the ethnic standpoint, the blood of the black race is
everywhere apparent. Ask the Frenchman, the Italian, the Spaniard,
whence comes his dark skin and hair; it surely does not come from the
Aryan blonde. Ethnology alone can give the answer. In considering the
future of our racial problems, it is fitting that we shall recall these
facts of history to know the Negro's past place in the world's annals.
* * * * *
American slavery, the most accursed institution the world has ever
known, did more to degrade the master than the slave, a truth most often
overlooked. It is here I take strong exception to the literal
interpretation of the injunction, "Whosoever will smite thee on the
right cheek, turn to him the other also," and "If any man take away thy
coat, let him have thy cloak also." Not so; but, on the contrary, we
should resist evil with our energy. The tyrant who smites you on one
cheek is only made more of a brute by permitting him to continue in the
practise by smiting you on the other. It is our moral duty, therefore,
to resist him, and not more for our own sake than for his. The
brutalizing influence of slavery upon the master class is the curse of
the Southern States to-day, and has much more to do with the
difficulties of solving the race problems than does the ignorance of the
blacks. The Government is not guiltless in this matter of interpretation
of the scriptural injunction. In the matter of State rights, Southern
election laws, and mob violence, our Government has turned the other
cheek also. What has been the result? Why the tyrants continue to become
more and more brutal, until they are not only running black men out, but
they have recently, at the muzzle of the shot gun, forced their own kith
and kin, men to the manor born, to leave the States. I have no hesitancy
in proclaiming that this brutality is a legacy left us by slavery,
against which we have to contend, making itself felt in the organized
mob and in disregard of constituted authority.
In these days of imperialism and territorial expansion, when there is,
likewise, much discussion on the subject of inferior races, it is
fitting that we should place ourselves aright upon the question of
suffrage and rights of franchise. William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., says:
"Whosoever laments the scope of suffrage, and talks of disfranchising
men on account of ignorance or poverty, has as little comprehension of
the meaning of self-government as a blind man has of the colors of the
rainbow. I declare my belief that we are suffering, not from a too
extended ballot, but from one too limited and unrepresentative. We
enunciate a principle of government, and then deny it in practise. If
experience has established anything, it is that the interest of one
class is never safe in the hands of another. There is no class so poor
or ignorant in a republic that it does not know its own suffering and
needs better than the wealthy or educated classes. By the rule of
justice, it has the same right precisely to give it legal expression.
That expression is bound to come, and it is wiser to have it come
through the ballot-box than through mobs and violence, born of a feeling
of despair and misery." Those States in the South which are passing laws
restricting suffrage, to promote the selfish ends of a class, are sowing
to the wind and will surely reap the whirlwind. In a republican
government, supposed to be ruled by the popular vote, a people's liberty
has practically been taken when the right to vote is denied them. In
such States, personal liberty, the right to testify in courts of law,
the right to hold, buy, and sell real estate, and, in fact, all other
rights, become mere privileges, held at the option of others. People are
no longer free when the rights of franchise have been annulled. Slavery
is truly re-enacted in those States which have succeeded in
disfranchising the Negro.
I have neither patience nor respect for those among us who are truckling
to the prejudice of our enemies by giving credence to the lie that the
ballot was placed in the black man's hand too soon. Lowell was right
when he said: "The right to vote makes a safety-valve of every voter,
and the best way to teach a man to vote is to give him a chance to
practise. It is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them
down; the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to society than a
sense of wrong in their heads." The so-called Negro domination of the
reconstruction period has no record of misrule such as exists in most of
the Southern States to-day. It is our privilege (an oppressed people,
who know by bitter experience whereof we speak) to give this government
timely warnings as to its duties toward the inhabitants of our newly
acquired territory.
I have no confidence in the Government's ability to ameliorate the race
conflicts of the South through the course recently outlined by the
President of this nation in speeches of flattery and encomiums upon the
dead and living heroes of the Southern Confederacy. This policy of
conciliation was repeatedly attempted before the war, with the results
that the slave influence continued to spread further north and west. It
was proved then, as it ever shall be, that no nation can succeed by
making a compact with the devil. One must tremble for this country's
future when they read upon the statute-books of the Southern States
these diabolical laws against social purity, against the civil and
political rights of our citizens. It is hoped that the coming Congress
will rise to a sense of our impending danger, and see to it that the
strong arm of the Government is brought forward to protect each and
every citizen in his civil and political rights. Until this is done, we
are by no means prepared to add nine millions more of a dark race to
those with which we now have to deal. There are those already high in
the nation's council who predict that the result of our present war[27]
will be a _curse_ instead of a _blessing_, that the nation's incapacity
to deal justly with our recently liberated slaves proves our inability
to deal with nine millions more of untutored and so-called inferior
people.
[Note 27: War with Spain.]
* * * * *
The final conclusion of the whole matter may be forecasted thus: The
Negro element in this country is permanent and indestructible. So great
are the numbers of the Negroes, and so intimate their relations with the
white people, that it is safe to say without fear of contradiction that
the status of the Negro element will determine in a large degree the
future of the white. Let this truth once be learned. Let the thoughtful
people of the nation cease trying to deceive themselves. The inevitable
teachings of history will not be reversed. The blood of these varied
races will finally be mingled until race distinctions will ultimately be
obliterated. The docile nature of the Negro race, his intimate domestic
and other relations with the whites, make this conclusion inevitable.
The two races are complements of each other and cannot be separated.
A DEFENSE OF THE NEGRO RACE[28]
BY HON. GEORGE H. WHITE
_Member of Congress from North Carolina_
[Note 28: Extracts from a speech delivered in the House of
Representatives, January 29, 1901.]
_Mr. Chairman:_
I want to enter a plea for the colored man, the colored woman, the
colored boy, and the colored girl of this country. I would not thus
digress from the question at issue and detain the House in a discussion
of the interests of this particular people at this time but for the
constant and the persistent efforts of certain gentlemen upon this floor
to mold and rivet public sentiment against us as a people, and to lose
no opportunity to hold up the unfortunate few, who commit crimes and
depredations and lead lives of infamy and shame, as other races do, as
fair specimens of representatives of the entire colored race. And at no
time, perhaps, during the 56th Congress were these charges and
countercharges, containing, as they do, slanderous statements, more
persistently magnified and pressed upon the attention of the nation than
during the consideration of the recent reapportionment bill, which is
now a law. As stated some days ago on this floor by me, I then sought
diligently to obtain an opportunity to answer some of the statements
made by gentlemen from different States, but the privilege was denied
me; and I therefore must embrace this opportunity to say, out of season,
perhaps, that which I was not permitted to say in season.
In the catalogue of members of Congress in this House perhaps none have
been more persistent in their determination to bring the black man into
disrepute and, with a labored effort, to show that he was unworthy of
the right of citizenship than my colleague from North Carolina, Mr.
Kitchin. During the first session of this Congress, while the
Constitutional amendment was pending in North Carolina, he labored long
and hard to show that the white race was at all times and under all
circumstances superior to the Negro by inheritance if not otherwise, and
the excuse for his party supporting that amendment, which has since been
adopted, was that an illiterate Negro was unfit to participate in making
the laws of a sovereign State and the administration and execution of
them; but an illiterate white man living by his side, with no more or
perhaps not as much property, with no more exalted character, no higher
thoughts of civilization, no more knowledge of the handicraft of
government, had by birth, because he was white, inherited some peculiar
qualification, clear, I presume, only in the mind of the gentleman who
endeavored to impress it upon others, that entitled him to vote, though
he knew nothing whatever of letters. It is true, in my opinion, that men
brood over things at times which they would have exist until they delude
themselves and actually, sometimes honestly, believe that such things do
exist.
I would like to call the gentleman's attention to the fact that the
Constitution of the United States forbids the granting of any title of
nobility to any citizen thereof, and while it does not in letters forbid
the inheritance of this superior caste, I believe in the fertile
imagination of the gentleman promulgating it, his position is at least
in conflict with the spirit of that organic law of the land. He insists
and, I believe, has introduced a resolution in this House for the repeal
of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution.
* * * * *
It would be unfair, however, for me to leave the inference upon the
minds of those who hear me that all of the white people of the State of
North Carolina hold views with Mr. Kitchin and think as he does. Thank
God there are many noble exceptions to the example he sets, that, too,
in the Democratic party; men who have never been afraid that one
uneducated, poor, depressed Negro could put to flight and chase into
degradation two educated, wealthy, thrifty white men. There never has
been, nor ever will be, any Negro domination in that State, and no one
knows it any better than the Democratic party. It is a convenient howl,
however, often resorted to in order to consummate a diabolical purpose
by scaring the weak and gullible whites into support of measures and men
suitable to the demagogue and the ambitious office-seeker, whose craving
for office overshadows and puts to flight all other considerations, fair
or unfair.
As I stated on a former occasion, this young statesman has ample time to
learn better and more useful knowledge than he has exhibited in many of
his speeches upon this floor, and I again plead for him the statute of
youth for the wild and spasmodic notions which he has endeavored to
rivet upon his colleagues and this country. But I regret that Mr.
Kitchin is not alone upon this floor in these peculiar notions advanced.
I refer to another young member of Congress, hailing from the State of
Alabama, Mr. Underwood.
* * * * *
It is an undisputed fact that the Negro vote in the State of Alabama, as
well as most of the other Southern States, has been effectively
suppressed, either one way or the other--in some instances by
constitutional amendment and State legislation, in others by
cold-blooded fraud and intimidation, but whatever the method pursued, it
is not denied, but frankly admitted in the speeches in this House, that
the black vote has been eliminated to a large extent. Then, when some of
us insist that the plain letter of the Constitution of the United
States, which all of us have sworn to support, should be carried out, as
expressed in the second section of the fourteenth amendment thereof.
That section makes the duty of every member of Congress plain, and yet
the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Underwood] says that the attempt to
enforce this section of the organic law is the throwing down of
fire-brands, and notifies the world that this attempt to execute the
highest law of the land will be retaliated by the South, and the
inference is that the Negro will be even more severely punished than
the horrors through which he has already come.
Let me make it plain: The divine law, as well as most of the State laws,
says, in substance: "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his
blood be shed." A highwayman commits murder, and when the officers of
the law undertake to arrest, try, and punish him commensurate with the
enormity of his crime, he straightens himself up to his full height and
defiantly says to them: "Let me alone; I will not be arrested, I will
not be tried, I'll have none of the execution of your laws, and in the
event you attempt to execute your laws upon me, I will see to it many
more men, women, or children are murdered."
Here's the plain letter of the Constitution, the plain, simple, sworn
duty of every member of Congress; yet these gentlemen from the South say
"Yes, we have violated your Constitution of the nation; we regarded it
as a local necessity; and now, if you undertake to punish us as the
Constitution prescribes, we will see to it that our former deeds of
disloyalty to that instrument, our former acts of disfranchisement and
opposition to the highest law of the land will be repeated manifoldly."
Not content with all that has been done to the black man, not because of
any deeds that he has done, Mr. Underwood advances the startling
information that these people have been thrust upon the whites of the
South, forgetting, perhaps, the horrors of the slave-trade, the
unspeakable horrors of the transit from the shores of Africa by means of
the middle passage to the American clime; the enforced bondage of the
blacks and their descendants for two and a half centuries in the United
States. Now, for the first time perhaps in the history of our lives, the
information comes that these poor, helpless, and in the main inoffensive
people were thrust upon our Southern brethren.
* * * * *