WASHINGTON, D. C.
1903
The Negro’s Traditional Place in Society.
Ridicule and contempt have characterized the habitual attitude of the American mind toward the Negro’s higher strivings. The African was brought to this country for the purpose of performing manual and menial labor. His bodily powers alone were required to accomplish this industrial mission. No more account was taken of his higher susceptibilities than of the mental and moral faculties of the lower animals. As the late Mr. Price used to say, the white man saw in the Negro’s mind only what was apparent in his face, “darkness there, and nothing more.” His usefulness in the world is still measured by physical faculties rather than by qualities of mind and soul. The merciless proposition of Carlyle that, the Negro is useful to God’s creation only as a servant, still finds wide acceptance. It is so natural to base a theory upon a long-established practice that one no longer wonders at the prevalence of this belief. The Negro has sustained servile relation to the Caucasian for so long a time that it is easy as it is agreeable to Aryan pride to conclude that servitude is his ordained place in society. When it was first proposed to furnish means for the higher development of this race, some, who assumed the wisdom of their day and generation, entertained the proposition with a sneer, others, with a smile.
MANIFESTATIONS OF HIGHER QUALITIES.
As the higher susceptibilities of the Negro were not wanted, their existence was at one time denied. The eternal inferiority of the race was assumed as a part of the cosmic order of things. History, literature, science, speculative conjecture, and even Holy Writ were ransacked for evidence and argument to support the ruling dogma. While the slave holder had proved beyond all possibility of doubt the incapacity of the Negro for knowledge, yet he, prudently enough, passed laws forbidding the attempt. His guilty conscience caused him to make assurance doubly sure by re-enacting the laws of the Almighty.
For three hundred years the Negro by his marvelous assimilative power and by striking individual emanations has been constantly manifesting the higher possibilities of his nature, until now whoever assumes to doubt his susceptibility for better things needs himself to be pitied for his incapacity to grasp the truth. The same Carlyle who regards the Negro as an “amiable blockhead,” and amenable only to the white man’s “beneficent whip,” also declares: “That one man should die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen forty times in a minute.” When it is known that the Negro has capacity for knowledge and virtue there can be no further justification for shutting him out from the higher cravings of his nature.