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The Southern Situation, Some Suggestive Facts
First Fact. The condition of
the colored man In the South is becoming
more pitiable and precarious. Mr. Grady, in
his last speech, announced the unalterable
purpose of the Southern whites never to
submit to Negro rule, and we read not long
since of a "quiet election" held in a
Southern city, because the colored people,
duly warned, kept away from the polls. We
know something, also, of the struggles of
that people against almost insuperable
difficulties in trying to obtain food, homes
and education. In addition to all this, the
public press keeps us informed with sad
frequency of the repeated murders inflicted
upon the defenseless colored people.
Second Fact. We learn with gratification
that Southern people of high standing
denounce these outrages. Governor
Richardson, of South Carolina, assured a
colored delegation that called upon him,
that he had offered a reward for the
apprehension of the Barnwell murderers, and
pledged his sacred word that nothing would
be undone on his part to bring the lynchers
to condign punishment. Senator Wade Hampton
is said to have endorsed the sentiments of
the Governor, and leading Southern papers
have censured in unmeasured terms this
outrage.
But as yet these murderers have not been
arrested, and we presume that no one expects
they will be. The murderers of Mr. Clayton,
of Arkansas, who presumed to run as an
independent candidate for Congress, were
denounced by the authorities of the State,
and rewards were offered for their
apprehension. But, though many months have
elapsed, they have not been arrested, and no
one, North or South, imagines that they will
be punished. Kind words from Southern
officials will not solve the great problem.
Third Fact. The colored people bear up well
under all these trying circumstances. We
should suppose they would be utterly
discouraged, for they see little prospect of
securing their rights as men and citizens,
and even life and property are not safe.
They are allured to a change of location by
flaming handbills, making tempting but
deceptive offers of better wages and better
homes. They are hunted down and massacred,
and yet their wrongs are unredressed.
But in spite of all this, they struggle on,
constantly gaining property and homes, some
of them acquiring wealth. If they are
deceived on reaching some new Eldorado,
losing their all in making the change, they
do not give up, but strike in again. If they
are not safe in some rural districts, they
go to the cities. But best of all, their
educated men are showing great wisdom and
moderation, as witness the calm and
dispassionate action of the Convention of
the most intelligent and influential colored
men in Charleston, S.C., after the Barnwell
massacre. They passed resolutions of
dignified condemnation of the wrong, yet
urged their people to remain quiet, and let
the proper authorities vindicate the law.
The forbearance of that meeting has won the
commendations of leading white men in the
South.
And here let us say, that the white people
of the South make no greater mistake, than
when they imagine that it is a dangerous
thing to educate the colored people. On the
contrary, we believe that the facts make it
manifest that it is by these educated men
that their race will be guided wisely and
safely through this great crisis, and that
if a war of races is to be avoided, these
educated colored men will be a grand factor
in averting it.
Fourth Fact. It is conceded by all
right-thinking people, that the education of
the colored race is the only true solution
of the Southern problem. This has been
declared in Presidential messages, in the
utterances of such candid men as Dr. Curry,
Dr. Haygood and Colonel Keating, by writers
in all the Northern religious papers, and
is, we believe, the accepted and settled
opinion of Christian people at the North.
Everybody admits, also, that there is a
crisis coming, and that what is done for
Negro education must be done quickly. The
North has a duty in this matter, and admits
it. Our constituents have a special duty in
the case, and they feel it. They have done
nobly in the past, and have assumed great
responsibilities which cannot now be
neglected or deferred. But here is the
strangest of all the facts in this series:
With the urgency before them, our
constituents do not make a corresponding
increase in their donations.
We feel impelled to urge this upon the
attention of pastors, churches and
individuals. Brethren and friends, do not
delay as in the case of slavery, till the
conflict comes! Do not expect that everybody
else is doing what is needed. The
responsibility is personal and pressing, and
each individual and church can meet it only
by making larger gifts—not from an impulse,
but from a deliberate purpose formed under a
sense of obligation to the Negro, the Nation
and to Christ.
A Different "Watch Night"
Meeting Since the
foregoing article was in type, we have
received the following sketch of a "Watch
Night" meeting in one of the churches of our
Association.
It is quite a custom among the colored
people to hold "Watch Night" meetings. These
meetings are largely attended and are full
of fervor and interest. Our "Watch-Night"
was a very precious one—it was held from 10
to 12 o'clock: it was divided into four
half-hour services, viz: 1—Prayer and
praise; 2—Bible reading; 3—Address by
pastor, and 4—A testimony meeting. The last
five minutes was spent in silent prayer, and
at 12 o'clock, when the New Year was
announced by booming of cannon and the
ringing of bells throughout the city, we
united in singing our song of New Year
greeting, "What a Happy New Year," while
extending to one another the right hand of
fellowship. At the close of the service all
present pledged themselves, by standing, to
abstain from the use of intoxicating liquors
as a beverage during 1890.
The Future Of The Negro In
Our Country, Address at the Annual Meeting
in
Chicago
By The Rev. C.H. Richards, D.D.
Deeper than the question, what shall we do
with the Negro, lies the more fundamental
question: What does God mean to do with the
Negro in our country? Many a so-called
solution of the "race problem" has been a
foredoomed failure, because it ran counter
to the Providential plan. Some have hoped
that time would settle the burning question;
if people would only stop talking about it,
especially meddlesome people far away from
the real pinch of the trouble, they fancy
that somehow the mere flight of years would
adjust differences and secure to all their
rights. Others think the short way to peace
is by force, keeping the Negro down with a
strong hand, and keeping the Anglo Saxon on
top by any vigorous means that may be
needed. Others, again, think there never can
be any solution of the problem so long as
the two races occupy the same territory, and
they propose some mammoth scheme of
colonization to take the blacks away to some
quarter of the world where they can be by
themselves. But these and other remedies are
utterly futile, because they are in
collision with God's plan, as indicated by
certain manifest facts. Meantime, while men
are so busy trying to get around the
difficulty instead of solving it in a
straightforward way, the problem gets a
little bigger every year. The caste question
agitates our great religious assemblies. The
spoliation of the civil rights of the Negro
is one of the most menacing features in our
politics. Bitter race prejudices keep
Southern cities in a ferment, and even break
out in dreadful massacres. This race problem
will continue to be one of the most
momentous and disturbing questions in
American public life, until somehow we learn
how to get into line with Providence, and
find some solution that harmonizes with the
great movements that have the hand of God in
them.
It is time to ask then, with searching
inquiry, What is the divine plan with regard
to the Negro here, or, in other words, What
is to be the future of the Negro in America?
In certain significant facts and tendencies
of his past and present, we may see the
finger of Providence pointing on to that
future. Let us look at some of these facts
and their bearings.
First of all, the Negro is here, and that
not of his own consent. He has not forced
himself upon the country; he has been forced
to make this his home against his will. We
of the white race are responsible for his
presence. We invited him here in the most
pressing manner, and would not take "no" for
an answer.
And he is here to stay. All the ingenious
schemes for settling this troublesome
question by taking up the black race bodily
and dropping it in some roomy region far
away from all possible contact with white
people, are utterly delusive. The Negro does
not want to go elsewhere. Having been
compelled to make his home here for two
centuries, he is domesticated here, and has
as good a right to remain as the white man.
Moreover, he can see as well as any one that
this is the best country in the world to
live in—the land offering greatest
opportunity for advancement, the poor man's
Paradise. Brought by force, he will not
relinquish his rightful hold here except by
force. And we may be sure that our National
Government will never undertake the
chimerical experiment of deporting him to
some other land, and pay the enormous
expense of it out of the National Treasury.
Having been brought by the providence of God
to expiate its former wrongs to the black
man at such immense cost of treasure and
blood, the Nation will be slow to tax itself
enormously to do him another wrong.
Moreover, it is not necessary that the races
should be separated in order to settle the
difficulty that now disturbs us. All the
Negro asks is to be treated with justice and
equity, and to be given a fair chance in
life. We have simply to apply the elementary
principles of our common Christianity to the
problem and deal with the Negro in the
spirit of the Golden Rule and the whole
difficulty vanishes. It looks as though God
had made this a polychromatic country—red,
black, white and yellow—on purpose that we
might give a gospel illustration of the
essential unity of all races, and show how
these rainbow tints are to be blended in the
white light of Christian brotherhood.
Nor is it desirable that the black man
should leave us, even if he wanted to. It
would impoverish us in no small degree and
cripple us in our advancement. He is the
natural laborer of the South, and has added,
as we shall see, immensely to its prosperity
since the war, and he is to be one of the
chief factors in securing the future wealth
of the country. These reasons combine with
overwhelming force to show that an exodus is
undesirable and impossible, and that the
Negro is here to stay.
And he is to be here in greatly increased
numbers. The fecundity of the race is
remarkable. The 4,000,000 blacks that were
freed by the emancipation proclamation are
8,000,000 now. They multiply by births alone
7 per cent. faster than the whites by births
and immigration combined. It is estimated
that they are increasing at the rate of 500
a day and that their numbers are now
doubling every twenty years. This may be a
little exaggerated, but it is not far out of
the way. If they are increasing and continue
to increase at this rate, in twenty years
they will be 16,000,000 strong, or nearly as
many as the entire population of the whole
country in 1840; by 1930, they will number
32,000,000, or more than we had of all races
here at the outbreak of our Civil War; by
the middle of the next century they will
number 64,000,000, or more than our present
population within the borders of the
Republic. Discount this estimate as much as
you please, the increase in the colored race
is sure to be tremendous, and it is plain
that the race problem will increase in
difficulty and in momentous consequences to
the Nation until it is settled on Christian
principles. And the work of settling it
admits of no delay.
The Negro is to be a very important factor
in promoting the future prosperity of the
country. Already it is manifest that his
value to the South as a freed man is far
greater than the price formerly set upon him
as a chattel. The unrequited toil of the
slave is seen in the light of history to be
the dearest kind of labor. It was frequently
said after the war that the emancipated
Negro would be worthless as a laborer; that
he was naturally lazy, shiftless, and a
shirk, and that he would relapse into a
vagabond. But, as a matter of fact, far more
good work has been done in the South since
the war than before, and for the most part
the Negro has done it. Great crops of
cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, corn, and
other staples have been raised and marketed;
mines have been developed, railroads built,
manufactories established, and hundreds of
other industries opened and pushed in the
new era of prosperity which has dawned in
the South; and while the capital and brains
for this have been furnished by the whites,
and largely from the North, the manual labor
has been done mainly by the blacks. They
have made the New South possible. Take the
single item of the cotton they have raised:
The twenty-one cotton crops from 1841 to
1861, raised by slave labor, amounted to
58,500,000 bales; the twenty-one cotton
crops from 1865 to 1885, raised by free
labor, amounted to 93,500,000 bales. There
was a gain, with free labor, of nearly
35,000,000 bales, worth $2,000,000,000, or
about the full estimated value of all the
slaves set free by the war. These facts show
the value of the Negro to the South simply
as a common laborer.
But his importance as a factor in securing a
National prosperity is much enhanced when we
note his remarkable capacity for
improvement. Grant that the great bulk of
these eight millions are still in a pitiable
condition, poor, ignorant, sometimes
vicious, the victims often of barbaric
superstitions, living often in hovels rather
than houses, without thrift or cleanliness,
in crying need of kindly hands to help
uplift them to a better life. Yet, granting
all this physical and moral destitution
among them, it must be said that history
gives no record of a race, stripped and
stranded so completely as these freedmen
were in 1865, that has shown such marvelous
progress in a quarter of a century. They
have responded wonderfully to every effort
made to elevate them, and have shown in
themselves such versatility and vigor of
intellect as give high promise for their
future.
Their own advancement in material prosperity
is an indication of this. Never was there a
people left in worse plight than they were
at the close of the war. In a country
ravaged and denuded by a long and
destructive conflict, themselves penniless,
with none of the knowledge and training that
would fit them for competition with shrewder
and abler classes, there seemed small hope
of their getting more than a bare
livelihood. But ambition, mother wit, and a
rare aptitude for learning have helped them
on till the gains they have made for
themselves are quite astonishing. Not long
ago the New York Independent made extensive
inquiries through the Southern States with
regard to this matter, and the replies
showed that the disposition to accumulate
property was very strong among the colored
people, and that industry and economy and
forecast for this purpose were virtues
rapidly developing among them. A large
proportion of them are owners of their own
homes, the proportions differing widely in
different localities, ranging from 10 per
cent. in North Carolina, to 20 per cent. in
Virginia, 50 and 60 per cent. in some parts
of Georgia, and 75 per cent. in some parts
of Florida. A writer from Montgomery, Ala.,
even claimed 90 per cent. of home-owners
among his acquaintances.
Many, also, are coming into the ownership of
land. Mr. Morris stated four years ago that
colored people owned 680,000 acres of land
in Georgia, and 5,000,000 acres in the whole
South. Dr. Haygood estimates that they own
about $10,000,000 worth of taxable property
in Georgia, and it is stated that "within
twenty-five years the colored people of
sixteen Southern States have accumulated
real and personal property estimated at more
than $200,000,000." This, certainly, is a
most remarkable showing for a people of whom
it was freely prophesied that they would
never be more than an indolent race of
beggars. It shows that if they can only be
given "a white man's chance" they will be as
thrifty and prosperous as their Caucasian
brothers, and that the wealth which this
rapidly increasing race will produce in the
next half century will much of it be their
own property. Poverty is no more an
essential characteristic of the African than
of the white American, and it looks as
though the Negro was likely to win his fair
share of our prosperity in the years to
come.
The capacity for improvement is also
indicated by the large variety of
occupations which the Negro is successfully
pursuing. It has been imagined by some that
the work he could do is exceedingly limited
in its range, and that he must needs be a
barber, a waiter, or a small farmer. But at
the New Orleans Exposition not long ago, an
entire gallery across one end of the
building was assigned to the colored people,
and they more than filled it with an
astonishing array of their products in all
sorts of work. There were exhibits of
mechanical, agricultural and artistic skill;
specimens of millinery, tailoring, painting,
photography, sculpture; many useful
inventions; models of engines, steamboats,
rail-cars; specimens of all kinds of tools,
pianos, organs, pottery, tinware, and so on.
It was made manifest that the Negro can
succeed in any trade or occupation that the
white man follows. They are diversifying
their labor more and more. They are
physicians, lawyers, master-mechanics,
bridge-builders. They edit, own and manage a
hundred newspapers.
The avidity with which they receive
education, and profit by it, is another
indication of their capacity for
advancement. True, there is still an
appalling illiteracy among them, some 70 per
cent. of them in the South being unable to
write. But we must remember that hardly a
quarter of a century ago it was a crime to
teach one of them to read; they were
sedulously kept in compulsory ignorance, and
since the ban was removed, poverty, lack of
schools and teachers, and other causes have
prevented their advancement as rapidly as we
may expect in future. But much has been done
for them in this particular. Dr. Haygood
estimates that about $50,000,000 has been
spent for the education of the Negro since
the war, nearly half of which has come from
the benevolence of the North. Through the
American Missionary Association alone some
$10,000,000 has gone into the school and
church work for the Negro, both alike
educational. There are some 200 schools
carried on in the South by different
benevolent organizations, having over 28,000
colored youth in them. Of these, ninety are
colleges or high schools, and furnish
teachers and educated leaders for this race.
Three-quarters of a million dollars a year
flows southward from Northern generosity to
this work. And besides this, is the work
being done by the South itself for the
colored youth in its public schools. A
million Negroes are in the 15,000 colored
schools of the South to-day, being taught by
15,000 teachers of their own color, the best
of whom have been educated in these schools
nurtured by Northern benevolence. And what
is the result? The illiteracy in this race
diminished 10 per cent. between 1870 and
1880, showing the eagerness of the people
for improvement. It is estimated that two
millions of the blacks can now read the
Bible for themselves. And the universities
for higher education find the Negro as
susceptible to the best culture, as capable
of receiving thorough discipline and of
being highly educated as the white boys and
girls in our Northern colleges. The time is
not far distant when colored college
graduates, instead of being reckoned by
hundreds as now, will be numbered by
thousands, and when we shall see some Mark
Hopkins in ebony.
The time has gone by when intelligent men
can talk about the inferiority of this race.
When representative Southern men declare
that they were mistaken in their former
view, when such men as ex-Governor Brown, of
Georgia, convinced by the examinations of
our Atlanta University, publicly declares,
"I was wrong; I am converted," that ought to
be enough. But if not, the men of recognized
ability and success among the blacks refute
the old misrepresentation, now being revived
in some quarters. When our Government sends
its ministers abroad, Frederick Douglass and
John M. Langston; when Senator Bruce and
Representative Lynch are regarded as peers
of their white brethren in the political
arena; when college chairs are ably filled
by such men as Professor Gregory, of Howard
University; when colored delegates captivate
a National council by their eloquence and
ability; when Harvard University and Cornell
University, by the choice of the students
themselves, elect colored men to be their
representative orators, surely it is much
too late in the day to talk of the
inferiority of the colored race. They are as
well endowed by the Creator as any people in
the world, and with training, culture, and a
fair chance they will play their part in the
world as well as any. It is such a people
that we may predict will have a large share
in adding to our National prosperity in the
future.
Our first duty is to aid the Negro to attain
more of moral power. Whatever he wins in the
future he must secure because he deserves
to. It will not come to him by favoritism
nor by chance, but because he conquers the
situation, and by his own ability and
resolute endeavor fairly captures the prize
of success. This the weak, degraded,
untutored, semi-barbarous Negro can never
do. He must develop a strong, clean manhood,
equipped with the virtues to which success
is fore-ordained, if he would be master of
the future in a large way. Providence is
helping him by the discipline of present
exigencies, making even the wrongs and
hardships he is suffering a gymnastic to
eliminate weakness and develop moral power.
His ambition is chastened, his indolence is
rebuked, his patience, courage, and
persistence are being trained. But
Providence waits for us to give him more
direct assistance in this matter. We can
re-enforce him in certain directions where
he is now in great need of help. There are
certain vices against which he needs to be
armed and aided. In answer to the inquiry,
What is the greatest hindrance to the
advancement of the colored race? the answer
comes promptly from several sources,
"Drink." This is one of the new perils of
his freedom, for in the old days of bondage
it was a penal offense to sell liquor to a
slave; but since the war, drunkenness has
been a widespread curse among them, and
to-day hangs like a mill-stone to the neck
of many a Negro to prevent his rising. The
sin of licentiousness prevails also to an
alarming degree in many quarters. And
wherever intemperance and social immorality
abound, you find also the kindred vices of
dishonesty, lying and laziness. No people
can possibly have a great future in whose
life these iniquities burn like a consuming
fire. The manhood will be utterly burnt out
of them before it can bear fruit in a large
success. We need to send apostles of reform
among them to turn them from their vices. We
need to erect barriers of defense to protect
them from temptation. Above all, we need to
teach them a religion indissolubly joined
with morality, a religion that means
character and virtue, whose daily experience
will mean the constant increase of moral
power. The Negroes, like the Athenians of
Paul's day, are very religious. They revel
in camp meetings and fairly wallow in
revivals. But too often their piety is the
mere gush of emotion, and in hideous
conjunction with gross evils. They need an
intelligent piety and an educated ministry.
As Dr. Powell said, they ought to have 7,000
educated ministers, when now in our sense of
the word educated, they have hardly 500. The
church work of this Association is a
powerful aid to their moral upliftment.
Our next duty is to furnish the Negro
plentifully with opportunities for
education. An ignorant race can have no
future, save one of degradation for
themselves, and of increasing danger for the
nation of which it is a part. The ignorant
Negro must be abolished by the school-house.
Training for the mind, training for the
hand, the development and drill of all the
powers of life are necessary to make the
Negro no more a peril, but a factor of
immense value in securing the future
prosperity of this country. We must do far
more in this direction than has ever yet
been done. The South is still poor and
cannot furnish adequately the means for
doing this work as it should be done. The
benevolence of the North must furnish still
larger sums for education, that the colored
race may be made safe for us and for
themselves.
And, last but not least, we must secure to
the Negro the full enjoyment of all his
rights and privileges in church and State.
He cannot attain the measure of success and
usefulness toward which Providence points,
if he is to be kept in a state of peonage. A
black man is no better for being black, but
he is none the less a man on that account.
The simple thing to be insisted on is that
he shall be treated as a man, entitled to
the same rights as other men, and protected
in his enjoyment of them. This is no time to
relax our emphasis on this point, when the
bitterness of the caste spirit is venting
itself in violence, and in assertion that
white supremacy must be maintained by
illegal means if it cannot be by legal. We
maintain that the only safety for the South,
and the only way to its large prosperity, is
by securing fair play to every man within
its borders. There must not be one law for
the white man and another for the black.
There must not be one standard of legal
protection in the North and another in the
South. Anarchy in Chicago is not a whit
worse nor more dangerous than anarchy in the
South, that defies law and rules by the mob
in order to gratify race prejudice.
Conspiracy to murder in Chicago is not more
outrageous and perilous than the conspiracy
of men of one color in the South to get rid
of obnoxious men of another color by the
shot-gun. Injustice and wrong will always
bring forth a harvest of disaster in any
part of the country. Fair play for every man
must be our motto. We must have no
color-line in politics, no color-line in the
church; but equal rights for all before the
law, and in the church equal privileges of
Christian brotherhood.
It is for us to clear the way thus for
Providence to carry out its wise designs for
this race. And if we fulfill our part of the
work faithfully, what may not this people,
educated and regenerated, add of blessing
and benefit to our common country. If out of
a race of slaves God in the old time could
raise up a Moses, if out of a rude race of
sea pirates and robber chiefs, who drank
their mead from the skulls of their enemies,
He could raise up a Shakespeare, what may He
not develop out of this long despised and
defrauded people? Let us furnish freely the
channels through which God may work, that in
His providence "the weak things of the world
may become mighty" for good to our land.
This site includes some historical
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American Missionary Association, 1888-1895
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