THE THREE STAGES OF NEGRO PERSECUTION. THEIR OBJECT--HIS
DISFRANCHISEMENT.
But I come to another fact, and an all important fact, bearing upon
this case. You will remember that during all the first years of
reconstruction, and long after the war, Negroes were slain by scores.
The world was shocked by these murders, so that the Southern press
and people found it necessary to invent, adopt and propagate almost
every species of falsehood to create sympathy for themselves, and to
formulate excuses for thus gratifying their brutal instincts against
the Negro; there was never at that time a charge made against any Negro
involving an assault upon any white woman or upon little white children
in all the South. During all this time the white women and children
were absolutely safe. During all this time there was no call for Miss
Willard’s pity, or for Bishop Haygood’s defence of burning Negroes to
death, but killing Negroes went on all the same.
You will remember also that during this time the justification for
the murder of Negroes was said to be Negro conspiracies, Negro
insurrections, Negro schemes to murder all the white people, Negro
plots to burn the town and to commit violence generally. These were
the excuses then depended upon, but never a word was then said or
whispered about Negro outrages upon white women and children. So far
as the history of that time is concerned, white women and children
were absolutely safe, and husbands and fathers could leave their homes
without the slightest anxiety for the safety of their families. But
now mark the change and the reasons for the change. When events proved
that no such conspiracies, no such insurrections as were then pretended
to exist, and which were then paraded before the world in glaring
headlines in the columns of nearly all our newspapers, had ever existed
or were even meditated--when these excuses had run their course and
had served their wicked purpose, when the huts of the Negroes had been
searched, and searched in vain for guns and ammunition to prove these
charges against the Negro, and no such proof was found, when there
was no way open thereafter to prove these charges against the Negro,
and no way to make the North believe in them, they did not even then
bring forward the present allegation, but went on harassing and killing
Negroes just the same. But this time they based their right to kill on
the ground that it was necessary to check the domination and supremacy
of the Negro and to secure the absolute rule of the Anglo-Saxon race.
It is important to notice and emphasize here the significant fact that
there has been three distinct periods of persecutions of the Negroes
in the South, and three distinct sets of excuses for this persecution.
They have come along precisely in the order they were most needed. Each
was made to fit its special place. First, you remember, as I have said,
it was insurrection. When that wore out, Negro supremacy became the
excuse. When that was worn out, then came the charge of assault upon
defenceless women. I undertake to say that this orderly arrangement and
periodicity of excuses are significant. They mean something, and should
not be overlooked. They show design, plan, purpose and invention.
And now that Negro insurrection and Negro domination are no longer
defensible as an excuse for Negro persecution, there has come in due
course another suited to the occasion, and that is the heart-rending
cry of the white women and little white children.
Now, my friends, I ask what is the manifest meaning of this charge at
this time? What is the meaning of the singular omission of this charge
during the two periods preceding the present? Why was not this charge
made at that time as now? The Negro was the same man then as to-day.
Why, I ask again, was not this dreadful charge brought forward against
the Negro in war times and in reconstruction times? Had it existed
either in war times or during reconstruction, does any man doubt that
it would have been added to the other charges and proclaimed upon the
house-tops and at the street corners, as this charge is at present?
I will answer the question: or you yourselves have already given the
true answer. For the plain and only rational explanation is that there
was at the times specified no foundation for such a charge, or that the
charge itself was either not thought of, or if thought of it was not
deemed necessary to excuse the lawless violence with which the Negro
was then pursued and killed. The old charges already enumerated were
deemed all sufficient.
Things have changed since then, and the old excuses are not now
available. The times have changed, and the Negro’s accusers have
found it necessary to change with them. They have been compelled to
invent a new charge to suit the times. The old charges are no longer
valid. Upon them the good opinion of the North and of mankind cannot
be secured. Honest men no longer believe that there is any ground to
apprehend Negro supremacy. Times and events have swept away these old
refuges of lies. They were once powerful. They did their work in their
day and did it with terrible energy and effect, but they are now cast
aside as useless. The lie has lost its ability to deceive. The altered
times and circumstances have made necessary a sterner, stronger and
more effective justification of Southern barbarism, and hence we have,
according to my theory, to look into the face of a more shocking and
blasting charge than either Negro supremacy or Negro insurrection.
I insist upon it that this new charge has come at the call of new
conditions, and that nothing could have been hit upon better calculated
to accomplish its brutal purpose. It clouds the character of the Negro
with a crime the most shocking that men can commit, and is fitted to
drive from the criminal all pity and all fair play and all mercy. It
is a crime that places him outside of the pale of the law, and settles
upon his shoulders a mantle of wrath and fire, that blisters and burns
into his very soul.
It is for this purpose, it seems to me, that this new charge, unthought
of and unknown in the times to which I have referred, has been largely
invented and thundered against us. It is for this purpose that it has
been constantly reiterated and adopted. It was intended to blast and
ruin the Negro’s character as a man and a citizen. I need not tell you
how thoroughly it has already done its work. The Negro may and does
feel its malign influence in the very air he breathes. He may read it
in the faces of men among whom he moves. It has cooled his friends;
it has heated his enemies and arrested at home and abroad, in some
measure, the generous efforts that good men were wont to make for his
improvement and elevation. It has deceived his friends at the North
and many good friends at the South, for nearly all of them, in some
measure, have accepted this charge against the Negro as true. Its
perpetual reiteration in our newspapers and magazines has led men and
women to regard him with averted eyes, dark suspicion and increasing
hate.
Some of the Southern papers have denounced me for my unbelief in this
charge and in this new crusade against the Negro, but I repeat I do
not believe it, and firmly deny the grounds upon which it is based.
I reject it because I see in it evidence of an invention called into
being by a well-defined motive, a motive sufficient to stamp it as a
gross expedient to justify murderous assault upon a long enslaved and
hence a hated people.
I not only reject it because it bears upon its face the marks of being
a fraud, a make-shift for a malignant purpose, but because it has
sprung upon the country simultaneously, and in manifest co-operation
with a declared purpose and a well-known effort, and I may say a
fixed determination to degrade the Negro by judicial decisions, by
legislative enactments, by repealing all laws for the protection of the
ballot, by drawing the colour line in all railroad cars and stations
and in all other public places in the South, thus to pave the way to
a final consummation which is nothing less than the Negro’s entire
disenfranchisement as an American citizen. It is to this great end
that all the charges and complaints against the Negro are directed
and are made to converge. This is and has been from first to last the
grand and all-commanding object in view. It is a part of a well-devised
reactionary movement against the Negro as a citizen. The old master
class are wise in their day and generation. They know if they can once
divest the Negro of the elective franchise and nullify his citizenship,
the partition wall between him and slavery will no longer exist, and no
man can tell where the reaction will stop.