Pressed to the wall—dying—but fighting back.
Why is the negro not right? Self determination is of God, not of man. But the black race must not underrate the task. They are lined up against descendants of men who fought a four years’ war against the world without salt, shoes or powder, and whose courage and endurance no man questions. Men of the South place race integrity above politics, property, religion, or life itself. The South alone among nations is today making a fight against a universal ethnological law of race-blending. The mistake is in not boldly admitting the facts, flinging defiance to the future, spurning representation based on negro population in the electoral college.
The Solution
This, then, is the line-up. Can actual warfare be avoided? I think that it can. There is nothing strange or alarming about the situation. The negro desires to be free and he is right. The white man claims that the South is his to rule and control, and he, too, is right. But a head-on collision need not come from every paradox. While man has busied himself in the endeavor to solve matters, in the wrong way, the God of nations seems to have taken a hand, pointing the way of escape, even as He pointed it out to Abraham and Lot in the land of Bethel: “And Abraham said unto Lot, let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee. Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me.” Even so today is God moving the black man to separate himself from the Southern white man, and, by the thousands, are negroes leaving the South.
Let the census tables again speak. The white population of the United States in the last four decades has increased 100 per cent, while the negro population in the same period has increased but 40 per cent. In the far South during the decade 1910-1920 the negro population either stood still or diminished. Alabama and Mississippi having 8,000 and 75,000 fewer negroes respectively in 1920 than in 1910. The way out, therefore, is to change our mental attitude on this subject and vitalize every legitimate movement for negro migration North, East and West. Let those States welcoming the negroes to equal rights make known the fact, opening wide their doors, and negroes will continue to leave the South as they are now doing, in great numbers, thus relieving race friction. Undoubtedly the Southern States should cooperate in the movement, instantly repealing such laws as impose fine and imprisonment on emigration agents and giving up negro labor for the general welfare. (The only good of the Ku Klux is to frighten negroes from Southern States to other sections—and this is unintentional.)
Organizations and associations for race betterment, heretofore assuming that the race issue must be settled in the South and not elsewhere, have given little attention to negro migrations, which have been haphazard affairs conducted along business and not along racial lines. With intelligent and sympathetic direction negro migration will be greatly accelerated; and then, but not till then, the “Solid South” with all its embarrassing consequences will cease to be.
But I go further. Were I a negro, facing the future, concerned about children and children’s children, I would cease to fight against white prejudice, but raising the banner of “Pan-Africa,” I would herald that “Unity of the Colored Races, sensed by far-seeing negroes,” as Dr. Burghardt Du Bois phrases it, until my last breath. And why shall not the National Government sponsor negro exodus, making ready a suitable home for the race? President Lincoln recommended colonization “in some place or places of suitable climate”; President Grant recommended to Congress colonization on the Island of Santo Domingo. Why may not French Guinea and Sierra Leone be added to Liberia, creating an ample fatherland for such Afro-Americans as choose to go?
But has not colonization in Liberia failed? By no means; it has never been given a trial. In the ’70s a ship with about one thousand negro emigrants sailed from Savannah for Liberia. Standing amid 10,000 of his race and raising his black face heavenward, Bishop Turner prayed that God would safely speed the little craft to a land where the color of a man’s skin was not a crime. Ten thousand negro voices sobbed “Amen”; an aged colored woman shouted for very joy. What has been America’s attitude to such heroic incidents? Either indifference or disapproval and ridicule. Our colonization societies have ceased to function, and we give no further thought to Liberia, being content that the negro shall remain in the South, “a people within a people.”
Shall we not, I earnestly ask, speedily revive the old colonization society, send another Goethals with means and equipment and make Liberia as healthy as Panama—and above all, shall we not tell the truth about Liberia? Plucky little republic, at our request, she jumped into the great war and lost shipping and commerce; her towns were shelled by German gunboats, and yet the United States is haggling about making a loan of $5,000,000, promised by President Wilson and recommended by President Harding.
During the present year a British commission after nine months’ travel reported to its Government that in the three essentials—climate, productivity and health (with proper attention)—Africa is the most favored of continents, that it possesses marvelous flora, wonderful water-power, fertile soil, extensive mineral deposits, abundant hardwood.