Edward A. Johnson

“ In the ten years culminating with the decade ending in 1902, the American Negroes have witnessed well nigh their every civil right invaded. They commenced the struggle as freemen in 1865; at the close of the civil war both races in the South began life anew, under changed conditions—neither one the slave of the other, except in so far as he who toils, as Carlyle says, is slave to him who thinks. Under the slave system the white man had been the thinker and the Negro the toiler. The idea that governed both master and slave was that the slave should have no will but that of his master. ”

“ The good nature of the Negro soldier is remarkable. He is always fond of a joke and never too tired to enjoy one. Officers have wondered to see a whole company of them, at the close of a long practice march, made with heavy baggage, chasing a rabbit which some one may have started. They will run for several hundred yards whooping and yelling and laughing, and come back to camp feeling as if they had had lots of fun, the white soldier, even if not tired, would never see any joke in rushing after a rabbit. To the colored man the diversion is a delight. ”

“ He implores its leading men to bestir themselves to prevent the lamentable injustice which is threatened, and partly executed. By withstanding the mob; by upholding the law; by ridding themselves of the silly dread of ‘social equality’; by contending for Negro education of the broadest sort; by hailing every step upward which the black man may take; by insisting upon the equality of all men before the law, they can, Mr. Schurz argues forcibly, do much to save the South and the country from the disgrace and calamity of a new slavery. ”

“ Criminal assaults were not characteristic of the Negro in the days of slavery, because as a rule there was friendship between master and slave-the slave was too fond of his master's family but to do otherwise than protect it; but the situation is changed-instead of kindness the Negro sees nothing but rebuff on every hand; he feels himself a hated and despised race without country or protection anywhere, and the brute-spirit rises in those, who, by their make-up and training, cannot keep it down-then follows murder, outrage, rape. ”

“ The Negro, being held up as a terrible hobgoblin to political white folks, it was necessary to destroy his citizenship; which was accomplished by wily and cruel means. About one and a half million citizens were disfranchised and yet we have a paradox. This vast mass of manhood is represented in Congress—in what way? By arbitrarily nullifying the constitution of the Nation. It was the boast in 1861 that one Southern man could whip ten Yankees. May not this same class of Southern politicians now proudly and truly boast that one Southern vote is equal to ten Yankee votes? ”

“ Graves could no more teach us this error than could he reverse the decree of Christ to let the wheat and tares grow together until harvest. The seclusion or isolation of an individual or a race is not the road that God has blazed out for the highest attainments. The Levite of the great parable drew his robes close about him and ‘passed by on the other side’—like Mr. Graves would have us do the Negro, except that instead of passing him by we would ‘put him behind us’—a mere difference of words. ”

“ You know the noise one black man can make when he gets right down to the business of yelling. Well, these two troops of blacks started their terrific whoop in unison when they were a mile away from the waiting Sioux, and they got warmed up and in better practice with every jump their horses made. I give you my solemn word that in the ears of us of the white outfit, stationed three miles away, the yelps those two Negro troops of cavalry gave sounded like the carnival whooping of ten thousand devils. ”

“ To deprive him of this right, for no other reason than that he is a Negro, is to nullify the fundamental law of the land, discredit one of the most sacred results of Emancipation, and flaunt contempt in the face of the idea of a government of the people and by the people and for the people. ”

“ Excepting a few impudent, half-educated, and pestiferous pretenders, the Negro masses of the South are honest, well-meaning, industrious, and safe citizens. They are in sympathy with the superior race; they find protection and encouragement with the old slave-holding class; if left alone, they would furnish the bone and sinew of a secure and progressive civilization. To disfranchise this class and leave the degraded whites in possession of the ballot would, as we see the matter, be a blunder, if not a crime. ”

“ The custom of burning human beings has become so common as scarcely to attract interest or unusual attention. I have always been among those who condemned in the strongest terms crimes of whatever character committed by members of my race, and I condemn them now with equal severity, but I maintain that the only protection to our civilization is a fair and calm trial of all people charged with crime, and in their legal punishment, if proved guilty. ”

“ There was not better fighting done during the civil war than was done by some of the Negro troops. With my experience, in command of 5,000 Negro soldiers, I would, on the whole, prefer, I think, the command of a corps of Negro troops to that of a corps of white troops. With the magnificent record of their fighting qualities on many a hard-contested field, it is not unreasonable to ask that a still further opportunity shall be extended to them in commissioning them as officers, as well as enlisting them as soldiers. ”

“ There is no excuse to depart from legal methods. The laws are, as a rule, made by the white people, and their execution is by the hands of the white people so that there is little probability of any guilty colored man escaping. These burnings without trial are in the deepest sense unjust to my race, but it is not this injustice alone which stirs my heart. ”

“ Public opinion was on the Insurgents' side and against Spain from the beginning. This feeling of sympathy for the fighting Cubans knew no North nor South; and strange as it may seem the Southerner who quails before the mob spirit that disfranchises, ostracises and lynches an American Negro who seeks his liberty at home, became a loud champion of the Insurgent cause in Cuba, which was, in fact, the cause of Cuban Negroes and mulattoes. ”

“ As I remember the past, the laboring people in coal and iron mines earned barely enough for subsistence and their hours of toil were so long that anything like self-improvement was impossible. They were in a continual row with their employers, who revelled in luxury and rebelled against a 10 per cent. increase in wages, and who in many instances, rather than pay it, would close down the mines until their workmen were starved into submission. I never could reconcile myself to the logic of the principle that it was lawful for capital to thus oppress labor. ”

“ The amendment to the Constitution of North Carolina, which has for its object the limitation of the suffrage in the State, appears to have been modeled on the new Louisiana laws and operate a gross oppression and injustice. It is easy to see that the amendment is not intended to disfranchise the ignorant, but to stop short with the Negro; to deny to the illiterate black man the right of access to the ballot box and yet to leave the way wide open to the equally illiterate whites. In our opinion the policy thus indicated is both dangerous and unjust. ”

“ The idea that white supremacy will be endangered by Negro education does not deserve an answer. The claim that their enlightenment will lead to social equality and amalgamation is equally untenable. The more intelligent the Negro becomes the better he understands the true relations and divergences of the races, the less he is inclined to social intermingling with the whites. ”

“ The race has done well in thirty years of freedom, but it could have done better; banking on the progress already made the next thirty years will no doubt show greater improvement than the past--TIME, TIME, TIME, which some people seem to take so little into account, will be the great adjuster of all such problems in the future as it has been in the past. Many children of the white fathers of the present day will read the writing of their parents and wonder at their short-sightedness in attempting to fix the metes and bounds of the American Negro's status. ”

“ A body of high-minded and enlightened Southerners may gradually succeed in convincing even many of the most prejudiced of their people that white ignorance and lawlessness are just as bad and dangerous as black ignorance and lawlessness; that black patriotism, integrity, ability, industry, usefulness, good citizenship and public spirit are just as good and as much entitled to respect and reward as capabilities and virtues of the same name among whites; that the rights of the white man under the Constitution are no more sacred than those of the black man ”

“ The aim of this class of people seems to be to show that the Negro Race withers under the influence of freedom, which is by no means true. It is possibly true that filth and disease does its fatal work in the Negro Race, the same as in other races among the filthy and corrupt, but the filthy and corrupt in the Negro Race, as a class, are growing fewer every year--for which we can thank the philantropy of the American people who are doing something to better the condition of the Negro rather than hurling at him enernating criticisms and complaints. ”

“ I noticed that the subdued look of the old time Negro was absent and that, without any attempt at display, this man possessed “le grande air” which is a coveted attribute in the highest walks of life. I had already observed that an advance in civilization produced more individuality and more personal freedom in choosing one’s associates. It was not expected that a man was the social equal of another because he worked at the same bench with him, or rode in the same car on the railroad. ”

“ It is not effete, looking back to Confucius; it is looking forward; it does not think its best days have been in the past, but that they are yet to come in the future; it is a hopeful race, teachable race; a race that absorbs readily the arts and accomplishments of civilization; a race that has made progress in spite of mountains of obstacles; a race whose temperament defied the worst evils of slavery, both African and American; a race of great vitality, a race of the future, a race of destiny. ”

“ We constantly read articles in Southern newspapers and reports of public speeches made by Southern men which bear a striking resemblance to the pro-slavery arguments I remember to have heard before the Civil War, and they are brought forth with the same passionate heat and dogmatic assurance to which we were then accustomed—the same assertion of the Negro’s predestination for serfdom; the same certainty that he will not work without ‘physical compulsion’; the same contemptuous rejection of Negro education as a thing that will only unfit him for work ”

“ Whether public sentiment will continue to endorse these local revolutions is the question that can be answered only by time. Just so long as the Negro's citizenship is written in the Constitution and he believes himself entitled to it, just so long will he seek to exercise it. The white man's revolution will be needed every now and then to beat back the Negro's aspirations with the Winchester. The Negro race loves progress, it is fond of seeing itself elevated, it loves office for the honor it brings and the emoluments thereof, just as other progressive races do. ”

“ Too much of blood and treasure has been spent now to go backwards. These principles have been established at too great a cost to abandon them so soon. It is true that the white supremacy advocates seem now in control of the situation, but that also seemed true of the advocates of slavery before the war. While the enemies of liberty have always been cunning, yet like all other advocates of false doctrines who get power, they usually abuse it; the South might have held her slaves for many years longer, had she not overstepped the mark by trying to force the institution on the North. ”

“ The Negroes know that white men have been known to rape colored girls, but that never has there been a suggestion of lynching or burning for that, and they feel despondent, for they know the courts are useless in such cases, and this jug-handle enforcement of lynch law is breeding its own bad fruits on the Negro race as well as making more brutal the whites. ”

“ Negro suffrage is plausibly objected to on the ground that the great bulk of the colored population of the South are very ignorant. This is true. But the same is true of a large portion of the white population. If the suffrage is dangerous in the hands of certain voters on account of their ignorance, it is as dangerous in the hands of ignorant whites as in the hands of ignorant blacks. ”

“ They should be the counselors of peace and not the advocates of bloodshed. Most of them, no doubt, do regret the terrible deeds committed by mobs on helpless and innocent people, but it is a question as to whether or not they would be suffered by public sentiment to "cry aloud" against them. It takes moral courage to face any evil, but it must be faced or dire consequences will follow of its own breeding. Our last word then, is an appeal to our BROTHERS IN WHITE, in the pulpit, that they should rally the people together for justice and; condemn mob violence. ”

“ White labor began to see that it would be better to lift the Negro up to the same scale with itself, by admitting him into their organization, than to seek his debasement. If Negroes were in a condition to work for fifty cents per day and would do so, and capital would employ them, then white men must accept the same terms or get no work! ”

“ There was Sergeant Berry, for instance, of the Tenth Cavalry, who might have boasted his meed of kisses, too, had he been a white man. At any rate, he rescued the colors of a white regiment from unseemly trampling and bore them safely through the bullets to the top of San Juan hill. Now, every one knows that the standard of a troop is guarded like a man's own soul, or should be, and how it came that this Third Cavalry banner was lying on the ground that day is something that may never be rightly known. ”

“ No Negro gained any national reputation without first having been recognized by the white race, instead of his own. The Negroes recognized their leaders after the whites picked them out—not before.
“The Negro nature at this time was still a pliable one, after many years of drill training, but it was much more plastic in the days of slavery, and for the first forty years after reconstruction. The master labored to subordinate the will of the slave to his own, to make him like clay in the hands of the potter. ”

“ It is all that the American Negro may expect, and it is safe to say that his ambitions do not run higher, and ought not to run higher. Money and birth in themselves have created some unwritten laws that are much stronger than those decreed and promulgated by governments. It would be the height of presumption to strike at these, to some extent privileged classes. It is to be hoped that the good fortunes of war will produce sanity and stability in the race, contending for abstract justice.--Freeman. ”

“ The labor leaders, however, yielded in the end more from a sense of necessity than of justice to the Negro. As Lincoln said, the nation could not exist half slave and half free, and as Blaine said, in his famous Augusta speech, no imaginary line could continue to divide free labor from serf labor. The labor leaders found, after serious second thought, that it would be better to emancipate Negro labor than to lend their efforts towards keeping it in serfdom. For a long time the labor organizations desired the Negroes deported, as a solution of the problem for themselves alone. ”