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Page 12
The time has gone by when intelligent men can talk about the inferiority
of this race. When representative Southern men declare that they were
mistaken in their former view, when such men as ex-Governor Brown, of
Georgia, convinced by the examinations of our Atlanta University,
publicly declares, "I was wrong; I am converted," that ought to be
enough. But if not, the men of recognized ability and success among the
blacks refute the old misrepresentation, now being revived in some
quarters. When our Government sends its ministers abroad, Frederick
Douglass and John M. Langston; when Senator Bruce and Representative
Lynch are regarded as peers of their white brethren in the political
arena; when college chairs are ably filled by such men as Professor
Gregory, of Howard University; when colored delegates captivate a
National council by their eloquence and ability; when Harvard University
and Cornell University, by the choice of the students themselves, elect
colored men to be their representative orators, surely it is much too
late in the day to talk of the inferiority of the colored race. They are
as well endowed by the Creator as any people in the world, and with
training, culture, and a fair chance they will play their part in the
world as well as any. It is such a people that we may predict will have
a large share in adding to our National prosperity in the future.
Our first duty is to aid the Negro to attain more of moral power.
Whatever he wins in the future he must secure because he deserves to. It
will not come to him by favoritism nor by chance, but because he
conquers the situation, and by his own ability and resolute endeavor
fairly captures the prize of success. This the weak, degraded,
untutored, semi-barbarous Negro can never do. He must develop a strong,
clean manhood, equipped with the virtues to which success is
fore-ordained, if he would be master of the future in a large way.
Providence is helping him by the discipline of present exigences,
making even the wrongs and hardships he is suffering a gymnastic to
eliminate weakness and develop moral power. His ambition is chastened,
his indolence is rebuked, his patience, courage, and persistence are
being trained. But Providence waits for us to give him more direct
assistance in this matter. We can re-enforce him in certain directions
where he is now in great need of help. There are certain vices against
which he needs to be armed and aided. In answer to the inquiry, What is
the greatest hindrance to the advancement of the colored race? the
answer comes promptly from several sources, "Drink." This is one of the
new perils of his freedom, for in the old days of bondage it was a penal
offense to sell liquor to a slave; but since the war, drunkenness has
been a widespread curse among them, and to-day hangs like a mill-stone
to the neck of many a Negro to prevent his rising. The sin of
licentiousness prevails also to an alarming degree in many quarters. And
wherever intemperance and social immorality abound, you find also the
kindred vices of dishonesty, lying and laziness. No people can possibly
have a great future in whose life these iniquities burn like a consuming
fire. The manhood will be utterly burnt out of them before it can bear
fruit in a large success. We need to send apostles of reform among them
to turn them from their vices. We need to erect barriers of defense to
protect them from temptation. Above all, we need to teach them a
religion indissolubly joined with morality, a religion that means
character and virtue, whose daily experience will mean the constant
increase of moral power. The Negroes, like the Athenians of Paul's day,
are very religious. They revel in camp meetings and fairly wallow in
revivals. But too often their piety is the mere gush of emotion, and in
hideous conjunction with gross evils. They need an intelligent piety and
an educated ministry. As Dr. Powell said, they ought to have 7,000
educated ministers, when now in our sense of the word educated, they
have hardly 500. The church work of this Association is a powerful aid
to their moral upliftment.
Our next duty is to furnish the Negro plentifully with opportunities for
education. An ignorant race can have no future, save one of degradation
for themselves, and of increasing danger for the nation of which it is a
part. The ignorant Negro must be abolished by the school-house. Training
for the mind, training for the hand, the development and drill of all
the powers of life are necessary to make the Negro no more a peril, but
a factor of immense value in securing the future prosperity of this
country. We must do far more in this direction than has ever yet been
done. The South is still poor and cannot furnish adequately the means
for doing this work as it should be done. The benevolence of the North
must furnish still larger sums for education, that the colored race may
be made safe for us and for themselves.
And, last but not least, we must secure to the Negro the full enjoyment
of all his rights and privileges in church and State. He cannot attain
the measure of success and usefulness toward which Providence points, if
he is to be kept in a state of peonage. A black man is no better for
being black, but he is none the less a man on that account. The simple
thing to be insisted on is that he shall be treated as a man, entitled
to the same rights as other men, and protected in his enjoyment of them.
This is no time to relax our emphasis on this point, when the bitterness
of the caste spirit is venting itself in violence, and in assertion that
white supremacy must be maintained by illegal means if it cannot be by
legal. We maintain that the only safety for the South, and the only way
to its large prosperity, is by securing fair play to every man within
its borders. There must not be one law for the white man and another for
the black. There must not be one standard of legal protection in the
North and another in the South. Anarchy in Chicago is not a whit worse
nor more dangerous than anarchy in the South, that defies law and rules
by the mob in order to gratify race prejudice. Conspiracy to murder in
Chicago is not more outrageous and perilous than the conspiracy of men
of one color in the South to get rid of obnoxious men of another color
by the shot-gun. Injustice and wrong will always bring forth a harvest
of disaster in any part of the country. Fair play for every man must be
our motto. We must have no color-line in politics, no color-line in the
church; but equal rights for all before the law, and in the church equal
privileges of Christian brotherhood.
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