OUR LAST FOE.
When all essential factors in the situation have been cancelled our racial organization will find that there remains to be overthrown pride of race, prejudice and self-interest. The Anglo-Saxon race has so long enjoyed the thought of superiority over the Negro, that there will be those to oppose the unfettering of the Negro through the sheer force of race pride. There will be others who will continue in opposition, as a result of prejudice, for which they can assign absolutely no reason. There will still be others who have profited by race antagonisms, who have come into place and power by their ability to crush out Negro aspirations. An era of peace would rob this class of an occupation, and self-interest will influence them to oppose the untrammeling of the Negro.
Against pride of race, prejudice and selfishness, then, our racial organization will find itself pitted in the last instance.
Here, again, we are face to face with a situation that calls for somewhat of a change of front on the part of the Negro. In the days of slavery the Negro who sought for freedom fixed his eye upon the "North Star" and journeyed thitherward. When freedom at last came to the Negro in the South it came from Northern climes. His mind has grown accustomed to looking to forces external to the South to bring him his desires.
Enlightened communities are in great measure self-governing, and too much reliance must not be placed on foreign forces. The Negro must more largely seek to utilize forces present in the Southland. There are broadminded men there that are able to rise above all considerations of pride, prejudice and selfishness, and deal with all men according to the mandates of the Golden Rule.
Our racial organization must form an alliance with such white neighbors—must labor with them in matters looking to the highest interests of our common country. As evidence that there is a possibility of such an alliance, we quote the following from "The Washington Post," a leading newspaper in the nation's capital, and a recognized champion of Southern interests: "So far as we are concerned—and we believe that the best element of the South in every State will sustain our proposition—we hold that, as between the ignorant of the two races, the Negroes are preferable. They are conservative; they are good citizens; they take no stock in social schisms and vagaries; they do not consort with anarchists; they cannot be made the tools and agents of incendiaries. * * * Their influence in government would be infinitely more wholesome than the influence of the white sansculotte, the riffraff, the idlers, the rowdies, and the outlaws."
