In the face of discouragement, 100,000 civilized negroes, of whom about 12,000 are American Christian immigrants and their descendants, now reside on the Liberian littoral; and Monrovia, its capital, has a population of 6,000 souls. A railroad running from Monrovia 150 miles up the St. Paul River, across waterfalls and into the hinterland, would open up a garden spot, with lowlands superior to our far South, with uplands equal in climate and elevation to our North Atlantic States.
As soon as we but make a co-operative start toward negro migration and colonization and cease the vain attempt to pour two gallons of water into a one-gallon vessel—to bestow citizenship upon the negro in the South—his condition will improve. What satisfaction does not get from reading documents like “The Negroes’ Progress in Fifty Years”? Of what avail are houses, land or education, forsooth, to one in a state of bondage? Better ignorance and poverty for him. Shall the promise be kept to the ear and broken to the hope? I cannot agree with Mecklen, in “Democracy and Race Conflict,” that the race question is essentially insoluble. The negroes are tractable and, looking upon themselves as a “peculiar people,” will follow such course as their leaders may map out for the “race”; a course which should be thought out, it must again be insisted, not along the impossible, makeshift lines of racial equality in the South, but in the quite opposite direction and in terms of hundreds of years. While permanent plans are under way, every energy should be exerted to educate and fit the negro for a new, a saner life under ampler skies. America may not justify herself at the Final Assize until she lives up to the truth that the white man is right, that the negro is also right, and that of these two contradictions neither is wrong.
Will the Black Man Go Back to His Country, Africa?
In order for me, in my book, to answer you that question, I will have to take up the words of God’s prophets, because they can answer that question better than I. For this reason I will call your attention to prophet Amos, 3:7. Surely the Lord God will do nothing but to reveal his secrets to his servants the prophets.
In this chapter, your question will be answered, send back the stolen goods, for justice is on your trail.
God has promised through his prophet Ezechial 36; 24:28:32.
For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.
And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and ye shall be my people and I will be your God.
Not for your sake do I do this, saith the Lord, be it known unto you be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel.
Ezek. 36; 5:9. Therefore thus saith the Lord God. Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen and against all Idumea, which have appointed my land into their possession with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds, to cast it out for a prey. For behold, I am for you and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown.