White Americans

“ Washington's position is the object of criticism by two classes of colored Americans. One class is spiritually descended from Toussaint the Savior, through Gabriel, Vesey, and Turner, and they represent the attitude of revolt and revenge; they hate the white South blindly and distrust the white race generally, and so far as they agree on definite action, think that the Negro's only hope lies in emigration beyond the borders of the United States. ”

“ One is the determination of the white man to keep for himself his own countries, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and many of the smaller islands. With this determination Americans sympathize and sooner or later we may be called on to help protect the White race and the English language in these countries. It seems to be a part of our destiny. The other phase of white supremacy is the white man's effort to benefit the backward races and raise them to civilization by instilling his language, his religion, and his culture into Asiatics and Africans. ”

“ Invidious distinctions among the colored people of this continent have done more to keep us oppressed than all other efforts of white men combined. By this rule we have ever been unable to wring from this government the acknowledgment of black genius, adequate to the successful competition of whites, in governmental power. White men have ever made us believe that the interests of black men in Mexico, Hayti, Jamaica, Canada, and even in Africa, were really as dissimilar to the interests of colored Americans, as is the difference in the respective statures of the giraffe and dormouse. ”

“ And it is both natural and right that colored Americans, entitled to the rights of citizens, should claim their exercise. They should persist in this claim respectfully, but firmly, taking care to bring no discredit upon it by their own action. Its justice is already acknowledged by great numbers of their white fellow-citizens, and these numbers constantly increase. ”

“ All great dreams come in the spring, and the Spring Maiden who brought Big Ivan's Dream was more than ordinarily beautiful. She swept up the Beresina, trailing wondrous draperies of vivid green. Her feet touched the snow-hardened ground, and armies of little white and blue flowers sprang up in her footsteps. Soft breezes escorted her, velvety breezes that carried the aromas of the far-off places from which they came, places far to the southward, and more distant towns beyond the Black Sea whose people were not under the sway of the Great Czar. ”

“ As servants they are welcome, but as equal citizens they are not. It is also seen in the further fact that nowhere else on the globe, except in the United States, are colored people subject to insult and outrage on account of color. The colored traveler in Europe does not meet it, and we denounce it here as a disgrace to American civilization and American religion and as a violation of the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ Kenneth, what you and all the rest of Negroes need is to learn that you belong to a race that was centuries old when the first white man came into the world. You’ve got to learn that a large part of this thing they call ‘white civilization’ was made by black hands, as well as by yellow and brown and red hands, too, besides what white hands have created. You’ve got to learn that the Negro to-day is contributing as much of the work that makes this civilization possible as the white race, if not more. ”

“ The American negro is in America to stay. The ever pressing problem of his relationship to the white man involves questions of education, labor, politics and religion, which will take infinite patience, insight, forbearance and wisdom to settle justly. ”

“ I became convinced that a history of the Colored people in America was required, because of the ample historically trustworthy material at hand; because the Colored people themselves had been the most vexatious problem in North America, from the time of its discovery down to the present day; because that in every attempt upon the life of the nation, whether by foes from without or within, the Colored people had always displayed a matchless patriotism and an incomparable heroism in the cause of Americans ”

“ No Negro who has given earnest thought to the situation of his people in America has failed, at some time in life, to find himself at these cross-roads; has failed to ask himself at some time: What, after all, am I? Am I an American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be a Negro as soon as possible and be an American? If I strive as a Negro, am I not perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates Black and White America? Is not my only possible practical aim the subduction of all that is Negro in me to the American? ”

“ A few such men, well known to us and the country, happening to be more fortunate in the possession of wealth, education, and position than their humbler brethren, have found it convenient to chime in with the popular cry against our assembling, on the ground that we have no valid reason for this measure or for any other separate from the whites ”

“ Not before has a composite and proportionate presentation of the entire race, embracing all of its various groups and elements, showing their relations with each other and to the whites, been made.
It is very likely that the Negroes of the United States have a fairly correct idea of what the white people of the country think of them, for that opinion has for a long time been and is still being constantly stated; but they are themselves more or less a sphinx to the whites. ”

“ But I ask why should there be a negro problem any more than a problem for any other class of the American people? We need not go far to seek the answer. It is found in the fact that in certain parts of our country the people are not willing to receive the negro into full fellowship and to grant him the civil and political rights enjoyed in common by other citizens. ”

“ At the beginning of his freedom it was unfortunate that those of the white race who won the political confidence of the Negro were not, with few exceptions, men of such high character as would lead them to assist him in laying a firm foundation for his development. ”

“ Foreigners, seeking employment, have gone to the South in large numbers during the last five years, and finding there the typical poor whites, who are the ancient enemies of the Colored people and ever ready to do them harm, have united with them on the color line and raised that old familiar cry that “this is a white man’s country, that white men must and shall rule it; no Negro domination over white men.” ”

“ It has been urged that the Negro has inherent in him certain traits of character that will prevent his ever reaching the standard of civilisation set by the whites, and taking his place among them as an equal. It may be some time before the Negro race as a whole can stand comparison with the white in all respects,—it would be most remarkable, considering the past, if it were not so ”

“ The person is a Negro every time. So it will be a very difficult task for the white man to absorb the Negro.
Somebody else conceived the idea of colonising the coloured people, of getting territory where nobody lived, putting the coloured people there, and letting them be a nation all by themselves. ”

“ I have always considered it unfortunate that the Southern white man did not make more of an effort during the period of reconstruction to get the confidence and sympathy of the Negro, and thus have been able to keep him in close touch and sympathy in politics. ”

“ In many respects the next twenty years are going to be the most serious in the history of the race. Within this period it will be largely decided whether the Negro will be able to retain the hold which he now has upon the industries of the South or whether his place will be filled by white people from a distance. ”

“ Now, under the elevating and cherishing influence of the American Anti-slavery Society, the colored race, like the white, furnishes Corinthian capitals for the noblest temples. Aroused by the American Anti-slavery Society, the very white men who had forgotten and denied the claim of the black man to the rights of humanity, now thunder that claim at every gate, from cottage to capitol, from school-house to university, from the railroad carriage to the house of God. He has a place at their firesides, a place in their hearts—the man whom they once cruelly hated for his color. ”

“ Forced upon themselves, every point of contact with the white race becomes to the Negro a story of peculiar human interest. The view they get from the outside or underneath of white civilisation is not, to say the least, altogether our view. ”

“ Folks like you and me could live here for a hundred years and there’d never be no trouble. There’d never be no race problem if they was only like us. But”—and his voice took on a doubtful and sorrowful sound—“the most of this trouble we’re havin’ is caused by fool Negroes who go up No’th to school and run around with those coloured folks in New York and Chicago who tell ‘em how bad we po’ coloured folks are bein’ treated in the South. ”

“ Nothing else so soon brings about right relations between the two races in the South as the commercial progress of the Negro. Friction between the races [Pg 87] will pass away as the black man, by reason of his skill, intelligence, and character, can produce something that the white man wants or respects in the commercial world. ”

“ but no white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion. ”

“ It is the general understanding that all white men are Democrats or the equivalent, and that all black men are Republicans. So long as the colour line is the dividing line in politics, so long will there be trouble.
The white man feels that he owns most of the property, furnishes the Negro most of his employment, thinks he pays most of the taxes, and has had years of experience in government. ”

“ Living in the same communities, pursuing identical avocations, and subject to the same fundamental laws, however these may differ in construction and application in the several States, it is as much, if not even more, the interest of the white man that the black should be given every possible opportunity to better his mental, material and civil condition. ”

“ We must admit the stern fact that at present the Negro, through no choice of his own, is living among another race which is far ahead of him in education, property, experience, and favourable condition; further, that the Negro's present condition makes him dependent upon the white people for most of the things necessary to sustain life, as well as for his common school education. In all history, those who have possessed the property and intelligence have exercised the greatest control in government, regardless of colour, race, or geographical location. ”

“ In some of the Departments, I am sorry to say, there have been many dismissals, but, even in this respect, colored men have not suffered much more than one-armed soldiers, and other loyal white men, whose places were wanted by deserving Democrats. ”

“ We are Americans, [Pg 12] not only by birth and by citizenship, but by our political ideals, our language, our religion. Farther than that, our Americanism does not go. At that point, we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland. We are the first fruits of this new nation, the harbinger of that black to-morrow which is yet destined to soften the whiteness of the Teutonic to-day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They have taught me—in spite of wrongs and injustices to which members of my race are frequently subjected—to look with confidence to the future and to believe that the Negro has the power within himself to become an indispensable part of the life of the South, not feared and merely tolerated, but trusted and respected by the members of the white race by whom he is surrounded. ”

“ The average white man in the United States has the idea that the average Negro spends most of his time in bemoaning the fact that he is not a white man, or in trying to devise some way by which he will be permitted to mingle, in a purely social way, with white people. This is far from the truth. In my intercourse with all classes of the Negro, North and South, it is a rare occurrence when the matter of getting away from the race, or of social intermingling with the white people, is so much as mentioned. ”

“ In contemplating the little progress made by the colored people in the acquisition of property in the South, and their present wretched condition, the circumstances of their emancipation should not be forgotten. ”

“ In spite of a common nature and the equality framed into law, this hate works injustice, of which each in their own name and under their own color may justly complain. The apology for observing the color line in the composition of our State and National conventions is in its necessity and in the fact that we must do this or nothing, for if we move our color is recognized and must be. It has its foundation in the exceptional relation we sustain to the white people of the country. A simple statement of our position vindicates at once our convention and our cause. ”

“ The first negro fact for white thought is—that my clients, the colored people here in America, are not responsible for being here any more than they are responsible for their conditions of ignorance and poverty. ”