What is the remedy? Respect for the law of course, with proper enforcement of the same. All too frequently, however, the law is simply a subterfuge behind which officials take refuge; and this is a condition that applies to many things in our American life besides lynching. Asked a Georgia judge, however, in despair at the conditions that surrounded him: "If the grand jury won't indict lynchers, if the petit juries won't convict, and if soldiers won't shoot, what are we coming to?"
How this all works out from the stand-point of the Negro may be seen from the following. After the burning of M'Ilheron at Estill Springs the Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent a telegram to the President of the United States asking him to denounce such acts as disgraced the country at the very moment that we were fighting for justice and humanity abroad. The telegram was referred to the Attorney General, and the reply from his department was to the effect that "under the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Federal Government has absolutely no jurisdiction over matters of this kind; nor are they connected with the war in any such way as to justify the action of the Federal Government under the war power." The Association then appealed to Governor Rye of Tennessee to take action to bring to justice the perpetrators of the wrong against the honor of the state. The Governor replied in part as follows: "I could not anticipate that local officers, whose duty it is to take custody of prisoners would fail to accord protection, nor could any action upon my part be taken without being requested so to do by the local authorities or court officers." The Nashville Banner, however, printed an editorial, and the Chamber of Commerce in Chattanooga passed some resolutions, and at last accounts this was about all that had been done. The Negro citizen accordingly wonders about his general position when neither the Federal nor the State Government seems to have the power to protect him.
Meanwhile these outrages injure us abroad. We look upon Russia as benighted and chaotic; yet this was the country that hurled at a distinguished Baptist minister, Dr. R.S. MacArthur, the charge that his was the only civilized country in the world that tolerated lynching. We speak of Pan-Americanism and the Monroe Doctrine; but Professor Bingham informs us of a hostile paper in Lima, the government organ, that printed the following headlines to a two-column article: "NORTH AMERICAN EXCESSES—THE TERRIBLE LYNCHINGS—AND THEY TALK OF THE PUTEMAYO!" And the Peruvian editor says: "Do you realize that in the full twentieth century, when there is not a single country in the world whose inhabitants are permitted to supersede justice by summary punishment, there are repeatedly taking place, almost daily, in the United States, lynchings like that of which we are told in the telegraphic dispatch?" The natural result is to unite Latin America against us, especially when the United States draws a color-line offensive to South American sensibilities.
We call upon our country for a new consecration—to law, to order, to justice. Too long has the crime of lynching disgraced us in the eyes of the world. Too long have we eased our conscience with a specious thought of necessity or irresponsibility. What concerns our country's honor concerns every one of us; and as our Negro soldiers take up arms and embark for France, let them not think that their loved ones left behind are not protected. Let them rather feel that from our national escutcheon shall be washed away every stain, that justice shall yet be triumphant, and that democracy shall indeed find its true place in the world.
V
ASPECTS OF NEGRO EDUCATION[ToC]
No one who really studies the problem has any reason to be discouraged at the results of fifty years of education for the Negro people of America. In 1880 the percentage of illiterates among the race was approximately 70. By 1890 it was 57, by 1900 44.5, and by 1910 the figure had been reduced to 30.4. We may then not unreasonably affirm that at the present time (1918) not more than one-fourth of all the Negroes of the country are illiterate, and this in spite of the fact that thousands of persons who did not have early advantages are still living.