Blacks

“ Let us turn aside for a moment to consider the general conditions of the negroes and their relation to the white people. We have to-day about the same relative proportion of blacks to whites in the whole country as we had in 1860—about 12 per cent.—; and we have nearly the same in the South, about 40 per cent. What is to become of the negro for the next fifty years? No man would dare suggest an answer looking farther ahead than that: God only knows. Some say he will amalgamate with the whites. ”

“ Here are a few white men in the wilds of Africa, surrounded by the uncivilized children of the desert. They have money and valuable instruments, a large variety of gewgaws that possessed the power of charming the fancy of the average savage; and therefore the whites would have been a tempting prey to the blacks. ”

“ The poor whites were in bondage as well as the blacks, and to all appearance will remain so, while the natural buoyancy of the negro makes him rise readily to new exigencies; with freedom he is at once eager to obtain knowledge and acquire landed estates. ”

“ ALTHOUGH the first slaves, introduced into the American Colonies from the coast of Africa, were negroes of a very dark complexion with woolly hair, and it was thought that slavery would be confined to the blacks, yet the present slave population of America is far from being black. ”

“ The negroes I saw here, the majority of whom are natives, born of those imported from Africa, or of their descendants, are upon the whole the most comely race of blacks I ever met with. The men wear coarse jackets and trowsers, the women a sort of gown of blue cloth ”

“ When assured of their friendly attitude toward the Indians, the Negroes were accepted by them as equals, even during the days of slavery when the blacks on account of the cruelties of their masters escaped to the wilderness. ”

“ From the standpoint of the white South the liberation of the slaves had let loose upon the land what they considered a horde of half-savage blacks, descendants of jungle tribes, inferior in every respect to the white man and incapable of assimilating the knowledge of the dominant race or of becoming citizens except in name only. ”

“ A word in conclusion about the relations between the whites and the blacks. What must be the general character of the intercourse between them? Am I to treat the black man as my equal or as my inferior? I must show him that I can respect the dignity of human personality in every one, and this attitude in me he must be able to see for himself; but the essential thing is that there shall be a real feeling of brotherliness. How far this is to find complete expression in the sayings and doings of daily life must be settled by circumstances. ”

“ Soon after this, the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of aining the shore, which I now considered as friendly: and even wished for my former slavery, in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; ”

“ The law of 1790 providing that no one could become a citizen of the United States except free Whites was the law until the aftermath of the Civil War added the word "black" or "of African descent" to those who could be naturalized. This last provision should be repealed and the blacks with the South American and Central American Indians put on the same footing as the Orientals. ”

“ Already it is the ultimate fate of the negro that is in the balance, not the ultimate fate of 192the Southern States in consequence of the presence of the negro. The darkest day for the Southern whites has passed.... The darkest day for the Southern blacks has only just begun. ”

“ If all the negroes had come from Africa within six months, if they had the love of independence that the Indians have, I should own that force must be employed; but ninety-nine out of a hundred of the blacks are aware that without labor they cannot procure the things that are necessary for them; that there is no other method of satisfying their wants and their tastes. They know that they must work, they wish to do so, and they will do so. ”

“ Rankin, a highly intelligent traveller, who reports accurately and without prejudice the results of his personal observation, has recently given a similar testimony in regard to some of the numerous tribes of northern Negro-land, who frequent the English colony of Sierra Leone. In the skull of the more improved and civilized nations among the woolly-haired blacks of Africa, there is comparatively slight deviation from the form which may be looked upon as the common type of the human head. ”

“ No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen. ”

“ For the future of the freed slaves we may well be concerned; but the future of the whole country, involving the future of the blacks, urges a paramount claim upon our anxiety. Effective benignity, like the Nile, is not narrow in its bounty, and true policy is always broad. ”

“ The people of the South, young and old, who were brought up under that social regimen which embodied the negro as a prominent and necessary feature, will appreciate the feelings of the writer when he states that he has not, and never can have, any feeling of enmity towards this race. Some of the tenderest passages in his heart history he is glad to refer to that period when negroes were not only admitted en famille among the whites, but in innumerable instances given absolute control over the household affairs of their masters. ”

“ It has long appeared to the writer that the [Pg 159] prime necessity of the Negroes is to learn to distinguish between Negroes and Negroes; between the law-abiding and self-respecting Negro and the lawbreaker and blackguard; between the honest man and the thief; the decent man and the dive-frequenter; the good citizen and the “tough”—in other words, to create for themselves some standard of virtue and right living for both men and women according to which they shall be classified. ”

“ There is much truth in the saying that unless the whites lift the Negroes up, the Negroes will drag them down, though it is not true in the full sense in which it was intended. It is not true to the extent that the white must lift the Negro up to his own level ”

“ Let us take a broad, generous survey of the Negro race as it came into the country, represented by twenty savages, in 1619, and trace its progress through slavery, through the Civil War period, and through freedom to the present moment. Who will be brave enough to say that the colored race, as a whole, has not increased in numbers and grown stronger mentally, morally, religiously, industrially, and in the accumulation of property? In a word, has not the Negro, at every stage, shown a tendency to grow into harmony with the best type of American civilization? ”

“ I commit this work to the public, white and black, to the friends and foes of the Negro, in the hope that the obsolete antagonisms which grew out of the relation of master and slave may speedily sink as storms beneath the horizon; and that the day will hasten when there shall be no North, no South, no Black, no White,—but all be American citizens, with equal duties and equal rights. ”

“ Negro teachers and leaders, that the Negro yearns toward the white. This is strongly corroborated by the well-known fact that wherever the Negroes and the Southern whites are let alone, and are not affected by outside influences, they, for the most part, live in harmony. If we keep on and manage the race question with firmness and with equity, we shall yet show the Negro that his true interest lies in maintaining amity with the Southern white. ”

“ By State laws and the decision of the Supreme Court they belong to the negro or the American-African race. By the law of nature they belong, either to the Anglo-American race, or are a race within themselves. It is no longer a doubtful question; their constant increase in numbers shows that they are engenesic, and capable of maintaining within themselves a race of their own. Can such a people as this mixed race, imbued with the instincts, capabilities, and ambitions common to their white blood, be forever thrust back upon the negro race? ”

“ And yet, with all this, the Negro has held the stage. In the South he is everything. You cannot discuss religion, morals, politics, social life, science, earth or sky, God or devil without touching the Negro. It is a perennial and continuous and continual subject of books, editorials, sermons, lectures and smoking car confabs. In the north and west while seldom in the center, the Negro is always in the wings waiting to appear or screaming shrill lines off stage. ”

“ What are the racial endowments of these risen negroes whom we are urged by lofty example to invite into our drawing-rooms upon terms of broadest equality—for upon other terms would be a mockery—as eligible associates, companions, suitors, husbands for our sisters and daughters?—for a sensible father or brother does not admit white men to his home on any other basis. Of what essential racial elements and sources is the negro, risen and unrisen alike? ”

“ I look out of the window and see hundreds of acres of cotton-fields, with hundreds upon hundreds of negroes at work. I hear the songs they sing, faint echoes of them, even as I write. Yes, my black folk do sing, because they are well treated. ”

“ A few men of negro extraction, with white blood in their veins, not any more negro than white man, consequently not negroes in the true sense of the word, are sent from the negro colleges of the south to lecture northern congregations upon the needs of their race; and these one-quarter, or perhaps three-quarters, white men are, with their intelligence, and sometimes brilliant oratory, held up as true types of the negro race by northerners ”

“ How improved will be our condition when we have such white negroes as perform the servile labors of Europe, of old England, and he would add now of New England, when our body servants and our cart drivers, and our street sweepers, are white negroes instead of black. ”

“ And we shall now introduce to you, from acknowledged authority, a number of historical extracts, to prove that previous to the introduction of the black race upon this continent but little enterprise of any kind was successfully carried on. The African or negro was the first available contributor to the country, and consequently is by priority of right, and politically should be, entitled to the highest claims of an eligible citizen. ”

“ The longer one labors among the colored people and learns them and their surroundings, the more difficult seems the solution of the negro problem. Tourists in the South and people at a distance are very prolific in suggestions as to the best methods for elevating the negro. Why! visitors who have spent hardly twenty-four hours in a Southern city can write home marvellous letters as to the wonderful progress of the colored race, and prophesy a speedy settlement of the matter of negro education and race prejudice. ”

“ It is the custom throughout all the slave-holding States, amongst people of fashion, never to speak of their negroes as slaves, but always as servants; but I had never before met with the keeper of a public house, in the country, who had arrived at this degree of refinement. I had been accustomed to hear this order of men, and indeed the greater number of white people speak of the people of color as niggers. ”

“ Coming now to the slowly swelling stream of a distinct group literature, by and primarily for the Negro, we enter a realm only partially known to white Americans. First, there come the rich mass of Negro folk lore transplanted from Africa and developed in America. ”

“ Phillis Wheatley has been mentioned already. So, in the midst of darkness and oppression, the Negro race in America, without the use of the Christian church, schoolhouse, or printing-press, produced a poetess, an astronomer, a mathematician, and a physician, who, had they been white, would have received monuments and grateful memorials at the hands of their countrymen. But even their color cannot rob them of the immortality their genius earned. ”

“ The social heritage of the Negro has been described at great length and often with little regard for fact, by hundreds of writers. Only a glance can be given the subject here, but it may profitably be asked what the Negro did when he was left to himself in Africa. ”

“ Every year since the close of the Rebellion the Negro has been taking on better and purer traits of character. Possessed of an impressible nature, a discriminating sense of the beautiful, and a deep, pure taste for music, his progress has been phenomenal. Strong in his attachments, gentle in manners, confiding, hopeful, enduring in affection, and benevolent to a fault, there is no limit to the outcome of his character. ”

“ The negro, numbering almost four times the whites in South Africa [27-2] and one-eighth of the whites in America, [27-3] is a problem yet unsolved, for nature has not yet made it clear which, all things considered, is the most fit. ”

“ Pouring over the venerable mountain terraces, an abundant stream from an abundant and unknown source, into the malarial districts, the genuine African has gradually degenerated into the typical Negro. ”

“ And as the black third of the land grows in thrift and skill, unless skilfully guided in its larger philosophy, it must more and more brood over the red past and the creeping, crooked present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt and revenge and throws its new-found energies athwart the current of advance. Even to-day the masses of the Negroes see all too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crookedness of yours. ”