A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem / The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4

by Charles C. Cook

But, as if the first obstacle was not great enough, I must add another which is even greater: we have not the disposition to follow England had we the opportunity to do so.

The modern state is the product of centuries of war. Its architectural model is the mediaeval castle. From that school of discipline we have been excluded for more than two hundred years. That we have not quite forgotten our early lessons, our fidelity to our leaders in battle and devotion to our cause, have put beyond question. It has been more than once shown that there are men among us who can charge up a hill in the face of a withering fire; but who among us is capable of jumping into the air, and falling with both knees upon a fellow-student in a college foot-ball game; or of using against a savage tribe, as England proposed to do, the mutilating dum dum bullet, forbidden by the rules of civilized warfare, but too expensive to throw away? Yet this is the spirit of the conqueror, careful, patient, exact, merciless, cool. One-third of a victory to-day belongs, it is said, to the treasury office, one-third to the war office, and only the remaining third, to the general and soldiers in the field.

Since both opportunity and disposition, therefore, are wanting, which would enable us to enter upon a political career, we must be content to live here, a voiceless figure at the council-board of the American nation. And yet, a mere element in the population (“Negroes and Indians untaxed”) we will never consent to be.

When de Toqueville wrote upon Democracy in America, he made the Negro problem a part of the history of civilization, and it has continued to increase in importance, as in difficulty, down to the present day. But that it should be other than a problem for the whites had not been thought of. How strange this seems to us, whose whole attention is concentrated upon it from morning till night, from childhood to the grave! We stand before it like Sisyphus before the great rock which he rolled so laboriously and so vainly up that Tartarean hill.

A few years ago, I had occasion to seek the advice of a distinguished member of the Board of Trustees of Howard University upon a school matter. After hearing a part of the tale of trouble, he said solemnly, “It is very unfortunate, but still true that your people are not united, you don’t act together.” Now, as it happened, it was otherwise in this instance, and I hastened to say that all of the colored teachers were on one side and the white teachers on the other. “Now that will never do,” he replied quickly. “You must never allow a color line to be drawn.” He spoke with such evident feeling that I realized that his last word was said. We cannot exaggerate the importance of this fundamental dilemma. If we hope to win in any contest, we must unite, but the unwisest thing we can do, is to unite and win.

During the past forty years a great many people in western countries have been deeply impressed by Darwin’s view of the animal and vegetable worlds as the theatre of a struggle for existence in which the fittest have survived; and have applied this doctrine unrestrictedly to the life of man. A deep tinge of Darwinism seems to have spread itself over our own discussions, and two schools are rising in our midst, one advocating an active, the other a passive part in the struggle.

In pursuance of the former policy, we are told to organize, and if need be, to arm, in defense of our political and social rights; in the pulpit, in the press and before the courts of law to defend ourselves; and above all, to get money, for this is the key to the whole situation. But nothing could be more unwise than willingly to match our strength with that of the American people. It is vain to hope for a fair fight, man against man. The whites will not fail to make use of every advantage which they possess. The struggle will always be one between an armed white man and an unarmed Negro; between a man on one hand, and a man and a giant on the other, a giant made of store-houses, arsenals and navies, railroads, organization, science and confidence. It is equally idle to demand an impartial administration of the law. The English common law is but a stepmother of justice; her own child is prosperity. The Saxon came to England a pirate. He grew to be a merchant, often returning, however, to his old trade. After turning merchant, he turned lawyer, and the law administered in our courts of justice is but his replication in his own case. But it is vainest of all to suppose that we can buy our way into the respect and liking of the American people. Somebody has been saying to us; Just let us own blocks of southern railroad stock and who will bid us ride on a Jim Crow car? Who could it have been, who offered us this advice? We should at least crown him king of jesters and prince of wits. Is there anything in the English or American past, to justify us in believing that they will part more willingly with wealth than with power? Are we not shortsightedly preparing for calamities far more destructive, and more enduring than the political murders of the last thirty years? The black miners at Virden could tell us something about the pursuit of wealth; and the Jews about its social and political value after it has been acquired.

But the worst result to-day of this kind of advice is that it is so quickly taken up by rash and evil-minded men, who shout it from the platform in its coarsest and most misleading form. After them follows the newspaper vulture seizing upon what is worst in the speaker’s address to scatter it in large headlines through thousands of homes.

More numerous than these who bid us strike for our rights are the counsellors of a pacific policy. Their aim is the same, survival, but our part in the struggle must be, they say, a humble, or at least, an inconspicuous one. We should stoop to conquer, one tells us; while another, phrasing technically the same thought, says, we must march along the path of least resistance.

That the second thought is only the first in another dress scarcely needs the proof which a few words will give. In order to determine in advance, which of many paths will offer the least resistance, we must know the nature of the body moving, and of the field through which the body moves; and also the changes which both the body and the field undergo during the passage; the problem being a somewhat different one at any moment from what it was at the preceding moment. Still, the variations would be comparatively few were not the body, our own chaotic mass, and the field, which is, in this case, the American people, such changeable factors. As it is, the determination of the path of least resistance for our eight millions is a task which a college of scientists could not hope to accomplish.