“That they will have the support of the Church there can be no doubt. For while the Church may be willing to yield something to prejudice and custom, and agree that some of its schools may be properly classified as white, and others as colored, it will not sacrifice the principle of equality of rights among its members. No General Conference could be convened that would rescind the action of the last General Conference, when it declared that no student shall be excluded from ‘instruction in any and every school under the supervision of the Church because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.’ We do not call in question the desire of the authorities of the Chattanooga University to secure the highest interest of the Church and of the two races. They do not design to perpetuate caste, but to bridge over the present till a better condition shall be established; and the Church intended to assist them in so worthy a work. But they did not take into account, as they should have done, the feeling of the Church. They misinterpreted the phrase ‘expediency,’ when they attempted to establish a rule which excluded all colored persons from the university.
“We regret that they did not put to the actual test their conviction, that the admission of colored students of the class that could claim entrance to a school of its grade ‘would be fatal to the prosperity of the institution.’ There are many persons who do not believe this. They do not doubt the honesty of the university authorities, but believe that they have taken counsel of their fears. They believe it possible to maintain a university in the South under the same conditions as in the North. This would have gone far towards settling the question, for some years at least. As it is, the question has to be taken up again under less favorable conditions for its determination. But we shall not fail in the end. So long as our hearts are right, blunder as we may, we will make certain progress in the right direction; for this question of justice and equal rights to the colored race has been thrust upon us by God himself, and he will lead us on, if we will suffer ourselves to be led, to a decision that will be approved in heaven.”
The Northwestern Advocate of March 2, 1887, contained the following by J. B. Stair:
“Dr. Smart, in a short article on the caste question, asks some very pertinent questions concerning our Church in the South, but does not answer them so satisfactorily. The implication, however, is that we are there because the Methodist Church already there is so permeated by that ‘devilish’ and ‘unfraternal spirit’ [of caste] ‘worthy to be accursed of God and good men,’ that she can no longer do efficient evangelistic work. It would seem that a Church so afflicted would not only be incapacitated for any good, but would necessarily be without the pale of fellowship with any other Christian body; and yet somehow we continue to recognize our Southern sister as one of us, send to and receive from her Christian and fraternal greetings on every proper occasion, receive her pastors into our pulpits, hang by the thousands upon their words, profit numerically and spiritually by their labors, and devote half pages of our great Church weeklies to an advertisement of their sermons. Are we justified in thus figuratively taking to our arms a Church possessed of a spirit ‘worthy to be accursed of God’—a Church whose course is so radically incompetent and wrong that able missions from our own Church are demanded to counteract it? If somebody can, will he please point out the consistency in all this? If we are in the South to convert people to our view of the caste question, we are there for a laudable purpose perhaps, but one doomed to failure. That question was not involved in Adam’s fall, nor is our view of it necessary to salvation. If the politicians among us would stop a moment and consider the fact that caste exists elsewhere than in the South, and with reference to the colored race, it might at least furnish us with the occasion to divide our missionary forces with a view to a better distribution. Perhaps no country under Christian influence is more painfully afflicted with this ‘curse’ than England is, and yet Dr. Smart evidently fails to find a reason for sending missionaries there. True, the Negro is not there involved, nor are ante and post bellum rivalries; but that ought not to be an essential circumstance. The fact seems to be that caste exists about everywhere, even in our own dear Church. We have, and might again see, a form of it manifested, should the powers that be so far forget themselves as to send a doctor of divinity to a three hundred-dollar appointment in the backwoods; and instances are not beyond our own ken in which good Methodist families persistently forget to ask the servants to eat with them in the dining-room, even when the table is not crowded. It is remarkable how much color and climate have to do with the question of caste. Social relations, morally clean, are not a fit subject for the missionary works of a great Church. The legitimacy of our errand in the South will depend much upon the question whether we find there territory unoccupied, or whether we are there as rivals merely, of a Church with whom we have long been at political swords’ points. Politicians, Church or other, should not be allowed to decide. If we are in the South, as are other evangelical Churches, for the purpose of saving the souls of men, we deserve Godspeed. But if the only reason we can give for being there is to eradicate caste, social prejudice between races, the foundation for our errand will deservedly be alike unsubstantial with its completed results.”
The intention in thus presenting the Chattanooga affair, like that of the rest of this work, has been to sustain the facts: (1) There has never been a disposition on the part of the Methodist Episcopal Church to ignore its obligations to the colored man, but it has, in every conceivable way, aided him intellectually, financially, and spiritually. (2) That the Church, as such, has always not only respected his manhood, but encouraged him, where circumstances or previous condition persuaded him to believe he possessed none, to respect his manhood and feel himself somebody. (3) That the Methodist Episcopal Church, as such, has done this to a greater degree, and with as much, if not more, consistency than any other Church in this country, and at greater cost. It is quite a different thing to say that she has always declared that none but mixed schools should be supported by the Freedmen’s Aid Society. The simple and unambiguous statement, “the question of separate or mixed schools is one of expediency, which is to be left to those on the ground and more immediately concerned,” forever excludes any such idea. If the mind of the Church can be known at all, it certainly is best known by the enactments of the several General Conferences on this question. From these we conclude that it is not the policy of the Church to truckle to caste prejudice in any form anywhere. It has declared that as a Church it favors “equal rights to the best facilities for intellectual and spiritual culture, equal rights in the eligibility to every position of honor and trust, and equal rights in the exercise of a free and unconstrained choice in all social relations.” But the whole is greater than any part; therefore there is not, nor can there be, any Church or school conducted under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church into which any member or pupil may not enter, or from which any proper person can be excluded “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This is the declared policy of the Church; also, the letter of the law on this question. The apostle Paul, a man of profound learning and great piety, as well as keen foresight—a man that so spurned caste prejudice as to withstand his brother Peter to his face concerning caste—says: “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient. The letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth.” It is true of the colored man in the Methodist Episcopal Church that “all things are lawful” unto him that are lawful unto any other man within the Church. It is equally true for the colored man that “all things are not expedient” for him any more than they are for white men within the Church.
We do not believe, nor do we wish to believe, that our Church intended, by anything done in the General Conference of 1884, or desired at that time to annul any of its hitherto impartial acts; to give any particular class of its members any indulgence in wrong-doing; to yield to any kind of race or class prejudice; that it attempted or desired to elevate any class of its members above another; or, on the other hand, that, while it slept, an enemy sowed “tares” in the field. We think no one believes that it was the intention of the Church to dishearten or disband or leave to themselves the schools among our white membership in the South, organized and conducted, as well as supported in part, by conferences of our Church, in the which there are no colored members. The Church must have seen and felt that it is an utter impossibility for any Church, indeed for the United States government, to mix promiscuously, perforce, the schools in the South; that if the two races there are to be educated by our Church, in some sort they must be allowed a “free and unconstrained choice in all social matters.” Rome was not built in a day. Diseases that have become chronic, and remain within a system for two hundred and fifty-eight years, can not be eradicated in a month, even though an entire college of physicians attempt it. When the Church requested the Freedmen’s Aid Society “to give such aid to the above-named schools during the next quadrennium as can be done without embarrassment to the schools among the freedmen,” it recognized not only the existence of exclusively white schools, but provided for their perpetuation. The situation of affairs is peculiar indeed. The above action was not intended (though we candidly believe that those who claimed the opposite had a right to, and did think so) to recognize the right to exclude any pupil on account of race, color, or previous condition, on the plea of exercising their “free and unconstrained choice.” That General Conference, however, did intend to allow the two races in the South to have the privilege of separate schools, if they desired them, as it had not interposed objection to separate annual conferences. As proof of this, the General Conference put the entire educational work of the Church in the South under the direct management of the Freedmen’s Aid Society.
The wisdom of this, to our mind, does not appear on the surface; for, if the Church should at any time in the future call a colored man to the office of corresponding or assistant corresponding secretary in that society, Banquo’s ghost will rise again. Again, it was made, and is now, the duty of each pastor, when asking for collections or presenting the claims of the society, to state plainly that “the funds collected are to be used for both races, and where contributors express the desire, they shall be allowed to say where their funds shall go.” Here, again, we come face to face with a knotty problem as to the wisest method evenly to balance those funds. It is natural to suppose that the prejudiced class in each race will turn all funds into the channel into which his prejudices run. Now, to keep even financially, the two races within the Church in the South must do one of two things, viz.: Either drop the question of races, and let the funds collected be proportionately appropriated, or keep up the race question, and thus keep their funds separate. Which will be done? Does it require the wisdom of a philosopher to guess? Neither can, under the present régime, without financial loss, afford to be less prejudiced than the other; for the reason that the funds raised by the unprejudiced class will be equally divided, and it will get only its part of its collection, while the prejudiced class will not only receive its own collections but an equal proportion of the unprejudiced class’s funds. These complications are but the legitimate outgrowth of the animated discussions in the General Conference of 1884 touching the race question. We do not believe the Church intends to lessen its interest, lag in its zeal, or retard the progress and prosperity, or circumscribe the usefulness of our schools where only colored pupils have chosen to matriculate, or to allow the children of our white membership in the South to grow up in ignorance and superstition while it is able materially to succor both at the same time and in the same way. Is this view not reasonable, equitable, and best? Is it not a reflection upon Methodism to view it otherwise, in the light of the past history of the Church on the race question? While we say “in the same way,” we do not intend to say in the same school-building or recitation-room. To-day it certainly appears utterly impossible to mix promiscuously our Church schools in the South after having founded one class of them upon an entirely different basis. It might be done in the North. Might it not? We can not, however, argue along the same lines for Church schools of any denomination for any particular class of students in the South that we can for those in the North. The two cases are as dissimilar ecclesiastically as the two sections of country are politically.
The training has been different. In the first place, the relations of the two races in the two sections have always been, and are to-day, different; the training of the whites in both these sections has been different—a different class of text-books, as well as a different class of teachers, who were educated differently; the changed relations of the two races in late years from master and servant to citizen and freeman, and the modus operandi of the other Churches which are engaged in the same work in the South. What Church, engaged in the education of the colored man in the South, does not maintain separate schools for the colored and white? Not because they favor caste, nor because they think it would not be better, if possible, to educate them together, but they are doing the best they can under the circumstances. There may be beautiful exceptions, but they are exceptions few and far between. I am sorry it is true; but ’tis true. The promiscuous mixing of our Church schools in the South, if practicable, would now be inconsistent in the face of our separate conferences. There are two influences in the South to-day that are coeval with it—and we came near saying co-eternal—that are as despicable as invincible; the one is the miasma of the swamps, and the other is caste prejudice. Neither the wisdom nor skill of physicians has been able to overcome the one, nor the armies of Cæsar nor of Christ have been able to eradicate the other. Death—the common leveler—has thus far been the only sure remedy. But why frown at this when you remember that the latter of these evils finds congenial soil, if not some cultivation, in some Northern latitudes? If up North it is “the arrow that flieth by night,” we should not be surprised to find it “the pestilence that walketh at noonday” in the South. While all this, and more, is true concerning caste, it does not, for a moment, lessen the crime in the South because it crops out now and then in the North.
ART DEPARTMENT OF CLAFLIN UNIVERSITY.