Archibald Henry Grimké

“ But if one hundred thousand, or ten thousand, or even one thousand Negro cotton pickers desired to quit picking cotton and to seek their fortune in other states, does anyone imagine that they would be allowed to depart in peace, that they would not find rather by violent experience that they are not at liberty to make the change? The South does not regard the Negro laborer then as undesirable but quite the contrary—only it wants to retain possession of it on its own terms, not on those advantageous to that labor. ”

“ The disfranchised Negro operates in many ways to depreciate the rights of the enfranchised Negro, and to draw him by the invisible threads of race kinship and of race prejudice toward if not quite within the zone of his own limitations and disabilities. A disfranchised class in an industrial republic like ours is as much at the mercy of an enfranchised class as is a flock of shepherdless sheep at the mercy of a pack of wolves. ”

“ Nothing else can possibly come of it in the future than has come of it in the past but evil to the South, arrested development and a backward civilization. For the whites cannot advance in law and order, in private and public morals, in wealth and in industrial intelligence and efficiency with the speed commensurate with their social and sectional opportunity if they persist in wasting so much of their individual and collective energies in keeping the Negro down at the bottom of their social and political fabric without regard to his merits and abilities. ”

“ The whites of course will do what they can without injuring themselves or corrupting their race ideals, or affronting their race prejudices to alleviate the inevitably hard lot of this unfortunate people. But in what may be done for them there must be a care not to mix with it any foolish sentiment of human liberty and brotherhood lest it give offense to the South and so interrupt the flow of that beautiful and brotherly affection which is increasingly making the Southern whites and the Northern whites one people in the bonds of an indissoluble friendship and union. ”

“ There is no escape for the fly until its restless activities discover the right direction, and, to change the figure, there is none for the Negro out of his slough of despond until he can lay hold of the ballot. Wanting the ballot no amount of education and wealth in the South and of agitation in the North will of themselves be able to make Southern Governments responsive to the needs and the rights of the Negro as laborer and citizen. ”

“ Another of the sacred rights which appertain to the Negro’s American citizenship is the right of public assembly to consider his grievances and discuss measures for their redress. Well, if any group of Negroes in almost any part of the South are hunting for trouble, let them get up a public meeting for such a purpose, and give vent to the righteous indignation against oppressions which ought to stir the blood of any man who is not a slave, and then watch results. ”

“ It is a notorious fact that the Southern whites as a class will not affiliate with any political organization on terms of equality with the blacks—that is, they may be educated to accept the Negro as a voter but nothing can induce them to accept him as a leader. White and black party following with white leadership is therefore the only feasible proposition, which stands any show of success as a party of opposition in that section under existing conditions. ”

“ As an American citizen then the Negro has a paper right to move freely from one place to another, but in the South were he to attempt to realize on this right he would in all probability find himself realizing on a totally different proposition—maybe the chain gang at the hands of a prejudiced court on some trumped up charge of an employer, or death at the hands of a mob. ”

“ And politics is business, is the big business is it not, or ought it not to be the big business of all self governing peoples, who would maintain justice and freedom for themselves and transmit them unimpaired to their posterity? Colonel Roosevelt, as the leader of the new party, recognized at his full political value the Negro in states where his vote is counted, and perceived the very slight value, potential and actual, as a party asset of the Negro in states where his vote is not counted. ”

“ It is powerless to dissolve the solid South and to restore to that section bi-party in place of one-party governments. It is wholly incapable of attracting Southern whites in sufficient numbers to raise it to the rank of a party of opposition, or to give to it the barest chance of achieving success at the polls. ”

“ The colored passenger is, to be sure, an American citizen on paper, but what is it worth to him under the circumstances? Can it compel railroads to furnish him decent accommodations, which federal law provides shall be equal to those furnished to white passengers, and for which the colored passenger pays the same fare as the white one? It is notorious that the accommodations furnished by the railroads in interstate commerce to their colored passengers are inferior to those which they furnish white passengers for the same fare. ”

“ That the founder of the new political party, as a practical man, should discriminate between colored men with a vote and colored men without a vote seems to me to be altogether natural, to grow, in fact, out of the necessities of every Democracy which is governed first by one party and then by another. That colored men with the ballot should be rated in terms of the political game higher than other colored men who have it not, violates no rule of business ethics. ”

“ Surely there are American citizens and American citizens—citizens whom Government protects and enables to make good their claim to equality before the law, and other citizens whom Government does not protect or enable to make good their claim to equality before the law. And to this latter class belongs the Negro nearly every time and almost everywhere. ”

“ Freedom of the press is another of their rights, one of the boasted bulwarks of the Constitution. Does anyone suppose that they would be allowed to write as freely or anything like as freely about white men and women, especially the latter, as white men write about colored men and women? ”

“ The feeling has risen throughout the North that the white people of the country can not afford either in terms of business or of politics to quarrel among themselves over the rights and wrongs of another race, which in consequence of the injustices and inequalities suffered by it at their hands, is being pushed brutally to the wall. ”

“ The failure of the old master class to seize the opportunity which had come to them a second time, following the collapse of the Rebellion, for progressive and constructive leadership of their section on the race question was an egregious blunder. They set in motion instead the forces and passions which have at length wrested the ballot from the Negro. But they themselves have not escaped the consequences of their egregious blunder, for a new class of whites have in turn wrested from them their leadership in Southern affairs. ”

“ Such social injustice and political inequality as exist between the races in the South are bad for the whites as they are bad for the blacks—are very bad for their collective interests and for the National interests of the great industrial democracy of which they form a part. ”

“ A citizen without the ballot in America is in fact, whatever he may be in law, a de-citizenized man—exposed in consequence to the enmities, the jealousies, the insults and the violence of other citizens who are more fortunate in this regard. He is, whatever may be his legal status on paper, a proscribed man, subject to unmerited and unmeasured ignominies and injustices at the hands of his country, its society, its passions and prejudices. Governor Andrew was right, a disfranchised man, a disfranchised class must become ultimately, “The hopeless pariah of a merciless civilization.” ”

“ The Southern propaganda against the Negro is advancing apace in the North by many dark and devious ways and by many subtle and potent means. Northern capital and enterprise, which are exploiting the South industrially, assimilate very readily the Southern view of the Negro, who must be kept at the bottom of the white man’s labor system and civilization. Intermarriage of Northern men and women with Southern men and women helps tremendously the propagation of the Southern view and solution of the race problem. ”

“ To the wall the weak will be driven and harried and destroyed whether they be sheep or men, and this the strong will do every time whether they be men or wolves. The shepherd protects the sheep from the depredations of the wolves, and the ballot protects poverty against property, a weak race or class against the hate and aggressions of stronger ones within the same country. ”

“ For the Southern white man, and he is not different from any other white man or black man either for that matter who possesses irresponsible power over others, regulates his conduct toward the Negro in his midst by the law of might, which allows him with a good conscience to do to the Negro whatever he wants to do, and to take from him whatever he wants to take whether life or liberty, while it forbids his victim to do what he wants to do ”

“ The Negro in the mass is a disfranchised man. His political influence in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia is practically at the zero point. The mass of the disfranchised in those seven Southern States is so great that by the law of gravitation its very weight and number affect more or less adversely the status of the rest of the race in other states. ”

“ But perhaps it is because the whites choose to make believe that he is an alien, which comes nearer the real reason. Nevertheless no alien is he any more than are the whites themselves, if duration of occupancy of the soil has anything to do with making a race native and to the manner born. Is it because the Negro has proved himself an undesirable citizen? Certainly not if past services to the country of the greatest value are any proof to the contrary. In the Revolutionary War he was no insignificant factor in achieving American independence ”

“ He and the Progressive Party have not engaged in the big business of American politics for their health or amusement, but for the purpose of carrying forward to success great and far reaching measures of reform, which exclude from their benefits no race or class on account of color or sex but includes all American citizens, black and white alike. ”

“ There does not appear to be common honesty and decency enough in the railroads to give him what he pays for as an interstate traveller, human compassion to say nothing of common justice enough in the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce against the railroads the law made by the Government to conciliate the race prejudice of the South. The separate car feature of the Railroad Rate Bill was inserted in deference to the demand of the South, and the equal accommodation feature as an act of plain commercial justice to the Negro. ”

“ While they have done this they have managed at the same time to leave the ballot in the hands of every white man.
Under such unequal conditions, the white man is immune from legislation and administration unfriendly to his class, while the black man is exposed to the aggressions of this favored class; either directly through mobs or indirectly through hostile legislation and administration, which fix upon him the brand of a caste whose members have no rights in Southern society which white men are bound to respect. ”

“ In the community he is not of it. He neither belongs to a master nor to society.” The thing which John A. Andrew foresaw in 1866 as likely to come to pass in case of disfranchisement of the blacks, has been coming to pass ever since. And the cause which has reduced the Negro to his present anomalous position in the Republic of which he is a citizen, is his lack of the right to vote, which makes its possessor a part of the community in which he lives, and enables him to make that community respond to his needs as a vital part of its body social and politic. ”

“ But their hard lot as men would improve, their worth as citizens, their social and industrial value to their community, state and country would rise correspondingly in the scale of being and character, with the increased freedom, self-respect and security which in consequence would come to them as a race. ”

“ The colored man who has the temerity to agitate for his rights in the South may find himself agitating speedily at the end of a rope, unless he more speedily finds some hole in the ground to give him the protection which Government refuses him. ”

“ The whites of both sections make themselves believe, as a sort of salve to their conscience, I suppose, that the Negro in their midst is an alien race, is a non-assimilable element in the body politic, whose ejectment or isolation the health of that body and the race purity of the whites render necessary. Since ejectment is impracticable as involving too huge a displacement of or amputation from the productive labor of the South, isolation remains the only alternative. ”

“ Just at this point let me refer in passing to sundry causes which are affecting adversely the Negro’s status as a citizen, and are contributing by their collateral pressure to force him into a sort of political and industrial blind alley of our American civilization. ”