It is a paradox indeed, this thing of a race's holding its identity at the same time that it is supposed to lose this in the larger civilization. Apply the principle to the Negro. Very soon after the Civil War, when conditions were chaotic and ignorance was rampant, the ideals constantly held before the race were those of white people. Some leaders indeed measured success primarily by the extent to which they became merged in the white man's life. At the time this was very natural. A struggling people wished to show that it could be judged by the standards of the highest civilization within sight, and it did so. To-day the tide has changed. The race now numbers a few millionaires. In almost every city there are beautiful homes owned by Negroes. Some men have reached high attainment in scholarship, and the promise grows greater and greater in art and science. Accordingly the Negro now loves his own, cherishes his own, teaches his boys about black heroes, and honors and glorifies his own black women. Schools and churches and all sorts of coöperative enterprises testify to the new racial self-respect, while a genuine Negro drama has begun to flourish. A whole people has been reborn; a whole race has found its soul.
3. [Face to Face]
Even when all that has been said is granted, it is still sometimes maintained that the Negro is the one race that can not and will not be permitted to enter into the full promise of American life. Other elements, it is said, even if difficult to assimilate, may gradually be brought into the body politic, but the Negro is the one element that may be tolerated but not assimilated, utilized but not welcomed to the fullness of the country's glory.
However, the Negro has no reason to be discouraged. If one will but remember that after all slavery was but an incident and recall the status of the Negro even in the free states ten years before the Civil War, he will be able to see a steady line of progress forward. After the great moral and economic awakening that gave the race its freedom, the pendulum swung backward, and finally it reached its farthest point of proscription, of lawlessness, and inhumanity. No obscuring of the vision for the time being should blind us to the reading of the great movement of history.
To-day in the whole question of the Negro problem there are some matters of pressing and general importance. One that is constantly thrust forward is that of the Negro criminal. On this the answer is clear. If a man—Negro or otherwise—is a criminal, he is an enemy of society, and society demands that he be placed where he will do the least harm. If execution is necessary, this should take place in private; and in no case should the criminal be so handled as to corrupt the morals or arouse the morbid sensibilities of the populace. At the same time simple patriotism would demand that by uplifting home surroundings, good schools, and wholesome recreation everything possible be done for Negro children as for other children of the Republic, so that just as few of them as possible may graduate into the criminal class.
Another matter, closely akin to this, is that of the astonishing lust for torture that more and more is actuating the American people. When in 1835 McIntosh was burned in St. Louis for the murder of an officer, the American people stood aghast, and Abraham Lincoln, just coming into local prominence, spoke as if the very foundations of the young republic had been shaken. After the Civil War, however, horrible lynchings became frequent; and within the last decade we have seen a Negro boy stabbed in numberless places while on his way to the stake, we have seen the eyes of a Negro man burned out with hot irons and pieces of his flesh cut off, and a Negro woman—whose only offense was a word of protest against the lynching of her husband—while in the state of advanced pregnancy hanged head downwards, her clothing burned from her body, and herself so disemboweled that her unborn babe fell to the ground. We submit that any citizens who commit such deeds as these are deserving of the most serious concern of their country; and when they bring their little children to behold their acts—when baby fingers handle mutilated flesh and baby eyes behold such pictures as we have suggested—a crime has been committed against the very name of childhood. Most frequently it will be found that the men who do these things have had only the most meager educational advantages, and that generally—but not always—they live in remote communities, away from centers of enlightenment, so that their whole course of life is such as to cultivate provincialism. With not the slightest touch of irony whatever we suggest that these men need a crusade of education in books and in the fundamental obligations of citizenship. At present their ignorance, their prejudice, and their lack of moral sense constitute a national menace.
It is full time to pause. We have already gone too far. The Negro problem is only an index to the ills of society in America. In our haste to get rich or to meet new conditions we are in danger of losing all of our old standards of conduct, of training, and of morality. Our courts need to summon a new respect for themselves. The average citizen knows only this about them, that he wants to keep away from them. So far we have not been assured of justice. The poor man has not stood an equal chance with the rich, nor the black with the white. Money has been freely used, even for the changing of laws if need be; and the sentencing of a man of means generally means only that he will have a new trial. The murders in any American city average each year fifteen or twenty times as many as in an English or French city of the same size. Our churches need a new baptism; they have lost the faith. The same principle applies in our home-life, in education, in literature. The family altar is almost extinct; learning is more easy than sound; and in literature as in other forms of art any passing fad is able to gain followers and pose as worthy achievement. All along the line we need more uprightness—more strength. Even when a man has committed a crime, he must receive justice in court. Within recent years we have heard too much about "speedy trials," which are often nothing more than legalized lynchings. If it has been decreed that a man is to wait for a trial one week or one year, the mob has nothing to do with the matter, and, if need be, all the soldiery of the United States must be called forth to prevent the storming of a jail. Fortunately the last few years have shown us several sheriffs who had this conception of their duty.
In the last analysis this may mean that more responsibility and more force will have to be lodged in the Federal Government. Within recent years the dignity of the United States has been seriously impaired. The time seems now to have come when the Government must make a new assertion of its integrity and its authority. No power in the country can be stronger than that of the United States of America.
For the time being, then, this is what we need—a stern adherence to law. If men will not be good, they must at least be made to behave. No one will pretend, however, that an adjustment on such a basis is finally satisfactory. Above the law of the state—above all law of man—is the law of God. It was given at Sinai thousands of years ago. It received new meaning at Calvary. To it we must all yet come. The way may be hard, and in the strife of the present the time may seem far distant; but some day the Messiah will reign and man to man the world over shall brothers be "for a' that."