It is a notorious fact that the Southern whites as a class will not affiliate with any political organization on terms of equality with the blacks—that is, they may be educated to accept the Negro as a voter but nothing can induce them to accept him as a leader. White and black party following with white leadership is therefore the only feasible proposition, which stands any show of success as a party of opposition in that section under existing conditions. Such a proposition, the Republican Party is incapable of making for reasons already pointed out, and the Democratic Party for other and obvious reasons is precluded from offering. And yet if relief is ever to come to the Negro in the South, it must come to him by the way of an opposition party, which will put an end to the political solidity of that section by introducing into it bi-party in place of its one-party governments.
This, I take it, is the meaning of Colonel Roosevelt’s action at Chicago last August relative to the representation of Southern colored men in the Bull Moose Convention, which launched the Progressive Party, and for which he was widely commended and as widely censured by white and colored people alike in all parts of the country. Some of the white people who commended his action did so undoubtedly in the belief that the leader of the new party gave thereby his approval to the Southern solution of the race problem. This group is made up, speaking generally, of Southern Bourbons and Northern Doughfaces. Their interpretation of the ex-President’s action is a total misapprehension of his far seeing and statesmanlike purpose, and of the tremendous consequences for good which it holds for both races at the South, and for the people of the whole nation likewise—tremendous consequences for good which are as surely enfolded within the great man’s purpose as the fertilizing principle is contained within the egg.
Many of those on the other hand, who censured him did so because, obsessed by their hate or dread of him, they failed to eliminate their imaginary tyrant or dictator, their fixed idea of the man from consideration of the immense value and far-seeing statesmanship of his act. To such men it was but another example of the brutal and colossal selfishness of the Third-Term Candidate. For did he not welcome to his Convention colored men as delegates from states where the colored vote counts, and reject certain other colored men as delegates from states where the colored vote does not count? Now this view of Colonel Roosevelt’s action seems to me to miss the mark quite as widely as did that of our Southern Bourbons and Northern Doughfaces.
That the founder of the new political party, as a practical man, should discriminate between colored men with a vote and colored men without a vote seems to me to be altogether natural, to grow, in fact, out of the necessities of every Democracy which is governed first by one party and then by another. That colored men with the ballot should be rated in terms of the political game higher than other colored men who have it not, violates no rule of business ethics. And politics is business, is the big business is it not, or ought it not to be the big business of all self governing peoples, who would maintain justice and freedom for themselves and transmit them unimpaired to their posterity? Colonel Roosevelt, as the leader of the new party, recognized at his full political value the Negro in states where his vote is counted, and perceived the very slight value, potential and actual, as a party asset of the Negro in states where his vote is not counted. He and the Progressive Party have not engaged in the big business of American politics for their health or amusement, but for the purpose of carrying forward to success great and far reaching measures of reform, which exclude from their benefits no race or class on account of color or sex but includes all American citizens, black and white alike. But to do this, to realize on their party promises and pledges to the people, they must have votes, not mere good will which can not translate itself into effective support on election day.
But the ex-President’s action at Chicago goes deeper than this primal need of his party for votes. It reaches down to the springs of fundamental social and political changes at the South in relation to its race question, and sets in motion the healing waters of its pool of Bethesda, which will in time heal it of its sickness and cleanse it of its sins against law, justice and democracy. I do not mean to belittle in any way other agencies now at work on the solution of our terrible race problem, such as education or wealth or agitation. Not at all, for they are most important, but without the ballot they are impotent to give the relief so much needed in the South. There must be added to them this something else, this one thing needful to render them effective to save the blacks from the evil consequences of their race ignorance, and the whites from the evil consequences of their race prejudice. And this one thing needful, I believe, the Progressive Party brings to the solution of the problem, and that it formed the underlying motive and the statesmanlike purpose of the action at Chicago last August of Theodore Roosevelt.
ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE,
1415 CORCORAN STREET N. W.,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
Transcriber’s Note: The words “today” and “to-day” both appear in the original text.