Unfettered: A Novel

by Sutton E. Griggs

WHERE THE TROUBLE ARISES.

The Negro is a human being. He has manifested every essential trait of human nature. The following words from Emerson, spoken of each individual member of the human family, may be specially affirmed with regard to the Negro: "What Plato has thought he may think; what a saint has felt he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand."

The general laws governing the physical and psychic natures of men; that unfold the workings of the human body and the mental, moral, religious, social and æsthetic processes of the soul—the general laws governing these operations may be applied with as much force to the Negro as to any other human being.

This has been an age of astounding discoveries; but the physiologist, the psychist, the ethical writer, the ecclesiastic, the sociologist, the investigator of æsthetic manifestations, the ethnologist, the philologist, the natural scientist, though searching eagerly, have discovered naught to controvert or in anywise impair the doctrine of the unity of the human race as set forth in the declaration of Paul, "that all nations of men" have been "made of one blood to dwell on all the face of the earth."

Those who concede to the humanity of the Negro and hold to the theory that man is upon the earth through the direct, specific, creative fiat of God, are forced to admit that the Negro's certificate of membership in the human family is signed by the Deity, and by virtue of that fact must be received at face value.

He who holds with the evolutionist that man is the product of evolutionary forces, working incessantly through the countless ages that lie behind us, must perceive that, in that event, the Negro can point to the fact that his presence in the human family has the sanction of the multiplied myriads of experiences that, from one forge, out of one material, through the one process, made him along with other human beings. If God is represented as presiding over the forces of evolution, the Negro may claim that God and nature have fixed his status as a human being.

Being forever established by the Supreme Architect of the universe within the line drawn to encircle humanity to the exclusion of all things else, the Negro is entitled to every right that inheres in the fact of his humanity. He is entitled to all the benefits of the feeling of distinctive fellowship—that feeling which operates to bind ant to ant, bird to bird, and man to man, as apart from other orders of beings. He is entitled to the designation, Brother. The Negro has identically the same right to live as other human beings; the same right as they to tread unfettered any and all of the pathways that destiny has marked out for human feet.

It is this conception of the basic, inherent right of the Negro to share on equal terms with all other human beings all the rights and privileges appertaining to membership in the human family that gives rise to the Race Problem in the United States of America. For, while the claim is passionately cherished by the Negroes and is espoused with varying degrees of warmth by one section of the American whites, it is most vigorously opposed by another.