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150      THE CRISIS

clause' are strongly to be condemned, not only because they deprive a large number of our citizens of their well-established rights, but because they are educating white people in the way of deceit and fraud, in the way of legal illegality. They teach us to obey the letter and break the spirit of the law, and in a country where laws are as little respected as they are in this country, this is a most insidious danger.

"Now we approach the last phase, the Negro's position in our society. It is here that the Dixons and Vardamans raise their most strenuous cry, resurrecting that old ghost of 'social equality,' answer every argument with the retort, 'How would you like your daughter to marry a nigger.' The advocates of the uplift plan do not urge social equality, they do not believe that the Negro is a social equal, but they do believe that in his right to walk down the street without being jeered at, in his right to earn an honest living, in whatever trade or profession he makes himself proficient in, he is your equal and the equal of any man alive.  There are plenty of educated, refined Negroes in this town, yet they never intrude, nor ever desire to mix with the whites. They do not ask to attend your receptions, they do not ask to marry your daughters, but they do ask a square deal in the struggle of life.

"I have tried to show wherein it is expedient that we succor these people we brought to our shores, but there is a greater reason than that of expediency, there is a higher law than that of dollars and cents. We are strong and they are weak, we are rich and they are poor. The oppressor suffers more by his actions than does the oppressed, the benefactor reaps a greater reward than does the benefited. Remember, that when you choose, you choose for yourselves no less than for the Negro."

A SOUTHERNER SPEAKS.

Mr. Joseph C. Manning, formerly a member of the Alabama Legislature, has been touring New England to speak against the "Let the South Alone" policy. From the Brockton (Mass.) Times we take a report of some things he said:

"This issue in the South is a national problem, and knowing the conditions as I do I am trying to make the people of the North realize what the condition of politics is in the South and to know the seriousness of the situation. It is popularly believed that the big majority of white voters in the South are Democrats. The opposition vote to the Democratic party, the white vote and the black vote, has been kept down through frauds of many kinds. Ballot-box stuffing and other things have been resorted to by the Democrats, causing the adoption of a new system, whereby the tricks of that party could be met and overcome. The conditions demanded this.

"In the last Presidential election, out of the 300,000 white men in the State of Alabama over 21 years of age, but 125,000 were qualified voters. Of the 200,000 colored men of voting age less than 3,000 of them were at the polls to vote. It is not enough. The last Governor of Alabama was elected on a ballot showing about 75,000 votes, whereas there are, combining whites and blacks, 500,000 male citizens in the State of voting age. The last Presidential election showed twelve Southern States voting for the Democracy on a total vote from these States of less than 1,200,000, which is 800,000 less than the total of colored men of voting age alone, saying nothing of the 4,000,000 whites.

"It was not many years ago that white men enslaved the Negro. Now some of these white men, bent on bossism, are using the Negro to aid in the enslaving of other white men. This is in the form of ballot-box stuffing that is looming up in Alabama.

"I have taken this matter up because I am of the South; I have lived among the conditions and have seen them. The Negro should vote. The same God that created the white man created the black man, and God intended, I believe, that every man should have equal opportunity under the law to protect his own. I have made some pretty definite charges against the Bourbon Democracy, and I have been sustained by the Federal authorities after investigations, but certain localities in the South were made pretty hot for me as a result. To critics who have condemned me in my work I have always replied, as I now say to you, 'What I am doing is for the sake of the South itself.'"

THE OPEN DOOR.

President Taft, in his letter to Fisk University, observed that industrial education will be the salvation of the colored people, although there should be a few colleges where those who are to "lead the people" may be trained.

The New York World thinks this would have been better left unsaid

"We do not dislike this expression because it is new or because it is false but because it falls from the President of the United States- the President of whites as well as the President of blacks. We have in this country plenty of men and women learned in pedagogy and sociology who are perfectly able to give us all that we care to read or hear on the subject of selected classes.

"It is obviously true that no great nation can be made up wholly of members of the learned professions, but in a republic of equal rights and supposedly


OPINION     151

of equal opportunities, if an element or a race is to be set aside and devoted forever to the hard tasks of labor, we should prefer to have the sentence pronounced by somebody other than the Chief Magistrate.

"Too many Americans have acquired the habit of condemning universal education. They fancy a peasantry, ignorant, respectful and content. They fancy also an aristocratic social organization in which they would take places near the top. No doubt we shall have these superior theorizers, philosophers, snobs, or whatever they may be called, always at our elbows, but they will exert little influence except as they occasionally bedevil men in great positions who ought to know better.

"We advise Mr. Taft to let the subject of education alone. There is no compulsion about college training. You men and young women, whether white or black, who get it by their own exertions are not to be stopped by anybody's ideas on the subject."

MUSIC.

The St. Louis Republic prints a tribute to the Negro as a musician. It points out that when Dvorak wanted melodies for his New World Symphony he could get them only from the American Negro. "Alone of the three racial strains, the Negro has an inalienable native musical inheritance; black laborers in the field and forest, black mothers in the whitewashed cabins of the South have a great store of song which belongs to them by right of creation. It has come out of the soul of the race; it is distilled of its melodies and its joys, its oppressions and achievements.

"The citizen of St. Louis doubtful of the musical capacity of the Negro would do well to visit the schoolhouse which stands near Jefferson Avenue, on the floor of the Mill Creek Valley at Papin Street. This school, named for L'Ouverture, the black liberator of Haiti, enrolls 1,600 pupils, which is more than any other in St. Louis. Principal Gordon realizes the importance of cultivating the musical gift the children of his race possess and takes an active personal interest in the work. Two things are specially notable- the quality of tone and the responsiveness to musical ideas. These colored boys and girls sing fortissimo without splitting their throats, like so many blackbirds (no witticism intended). And the beauty and effectiveness of their crescendo passages must be heard to be appreciated.

"Caucasians might as well admit the artistic superiority of the Negro in the matter of susceptibility to music."

The Manassas (Va.) Journal says there is no race problem in that part of the country, and pays a tribute to the influence of the colored industrial school there, and the capacity of the students for hard work and good manners.

"No matter how large the attendance may be at any of their public meetings, neither town nor county has ever found it necessary to appoint a single extra policeman or deputy sheriff, and nobody ever dreams of peril of either life or property in consequence of the presence of the school. The school itself, conducted in the manner in which it is, is a safeguard to both. As to the great racial bugbear about which theorists exploit theories and dreamers dream dreams- social equality. This is purely a personal and private matter about which neither white man nor black man here bothers himself. There is no such thing as social equality among the members of any race itself on the face of the globe. Men and women choose their likes and ignore their dislikes in every community in the world. Men and women who do things in the world never trouble themselves about any question of equality."

"The Afro-American Ledger, or Baltimore, says that the accommodations in the colored school of that city are insufficient. The trouble is, it thinks, that there is no one on the School Board who represents the colored race and knows personally the school's needs. There are fair men, it admits, on the board. "And yet, with all this in our favor the fact still remains that, as a separation exists in the entire social and economic life of the Negroes so that the ordinary facilities of gaining a real insight into conditions among them do not obtain, it is essential for the community at large, as well for the Negroes themselves, that some sympathetic and adequately intelligent representative of that race should be a member of the board of administration. Until this obtains the board must be at a serious disadvantage in satisfying the real needs of the situation."

The Portland (Ore.) Leader says: "A Louisiana Negro stole a watering trough, worth $5. He resisted arrest, and a mob finally effected his capture. He was hanged without a trial, and without authority of law. The mob resolved itself into the courts, the law and the State, and acted summarily. Life at the price of a $5 watering trough is very cheap. In no country in the world is it held more lightly than in the United States. If citizens, acting in a mob capacity, take life in defiance of law, what can we expect but that the crooks will also ignore the law, the courts, justice and constituted authority?"

Transcription Notes:
how to indicate that the text is in two columns? not sure how to transcribe the vertical lines which divide the sections as well