A Glance at the Past and Present of the Negro: An Address

by Robert H. Terrell

None but those who can recall these days of terror can fully appreciate what the elective franchise did for the Negro at that time. Under the circumstances, freedom for him without the ballot would have been the merest mockery. The terrible persecutions inflicted upon loyal white men and upon Negroes determined Congress as Oliver P. Morton said, “in the last resort, and as the last thing to be done, to dig through all the rubbish, dig through the soil and the shifting sands and go down to the eternal rock, and there upon the basis of the everlasting principle of equal and exact justice to all men, plant the column of reconstruction.” The charge that Congress intended to establish Negro political supremacy in the southern states is false. For, if it had been the purpose of Congress to do this, the suggestion of Charles Sumner would have been adopted and all men who had been concerned in the rebellion would have been excluded from the suffrage. “Negro domination” has always been a false alarm and a myth. It has never existed. Even when the black man’s vote was honestly counted it was cast so as to make the white man the dominating influence in the political life of the state.

It is a popular thing nowadays to say that the ballot was given the Negro too soon, or he would be better off, if it had not been given him at all. I know not by what system of reasoning these conclusions are reached. For “freedom is the school in which freemen are taught, and the ballot box is the educator.” A man must have his political rights, in order to protect his natural rights. It is most fortunate that the elective franchise was given to the Negro so soon after his emancipation. At that time, the North, at least, was friendly to him. It looked upon him as a ward. But when we consider the attitude of hostility which the white American in all parts of the country has assumed towards the colored American in recent years, we must conclude that if the ballot had not already been given him, it would not be granted for a long time to come.

It will take time, it will require tact, self restraint and infinite patience on the part of the colored people to create a public sentiment which will finally assure them a fair and honest exercise of the ballot. They are only forty years removed from slavery. It is not a day in the life of a people. We are told that it took the Romans three centuries and a half of hard fighting to get control of the principalities about them, measuring only twenty-four miles around. But when they once got a foothold, they began their conquests, and did not stop until the world was subject to Rome’s domination.

The Negro has had his day of mushroom growth. It was one of sad experiences. He is beginning life again and moving along the lines of a natural evolution. He will win his way, not by statutes so much as by a public sentiment which will see that he gets equal and exact justice as a man and as a citizen. This may be the work of years, but the day will come when we shall see its accomplishment. There will no longer be one law for the Negro and one for the white man; one Constitution for the North and one for the South. What Charles Sumner said will then be true in practice as well as in theory: “It is vain to say this is the country of the white man. It is the country of man.”

Three centuries ago the ancestors of American Negroes were savages, inhabiting a vast continent dark with the shadow of an unrecorded past. Today the descendants of these savages dwelling in our country number ten millions. They have come in contact with a great civilization and have absorbed its elements with a marvellous rapidity. They have learned to work, have acquired the language and adopted the religion of a great people. The world knows amid what trials and sacrifices all of this has been accomplished. Though his new life and upward career did not begin until 1865, the Negro has impressed the country with his innate worth as a factor in a great civilization. He has thoroughly vindicated his capacity for indefinite improvement. The beneficiary of a splendid philanthropy, he has more than justified the hopes of his friends, and he has belied the predictions of his foes. The material progress of the former slaves in forty years is one of the marvels of a wonderful country. They have 130,000 farms worth $400,000,000; homes, not including the farms mentioned, valued at $325,000,000, and personal property worth $165,000,000, making a grand total of $899,000,000 which they present to the world for their first generation of freedom.

The race has developed in the meantime 30,000 school teachers, 700 physicians and more than 700 lawyers. There are 1,800,000 Negro children enrolled in the schools; 40,000 students in higher institutions of learning; 30,000 students learning trades; 12,000 pursuing classical courses; 12,000 taking scientific courses and 1,000 in business courses. 40,000 young men and women have graduated from secondary institutions of learning and 4,000 from colleges. The Negro has $12,000,000 worth of school property, and church property valued at $40,000,000.

The capacity, the thrift and the frugality of the black man need no encomium. The record speaks for itself. In its comment on similar statistics the Boston Herald recently said, “When we think that forty years ago the Negroes were the poorest people on the face of the earth, that their only home was the wide, wide world and their roof was an expanse of blue sky, is it not wonderful that within a short generation they have not only been able to house and clothe themselves and children, but to educate in part nearly one half of their number, and still pile up a large competence to lay by for a rainy day.”

The progress of the Negro since his emancipation is a marvellous story. It reflects credit upon himself and it is a lasting tribute to the Northern philanthropists and those broad-minded Southerners who environed him with effective helps and valuable opportunities, and who gave him such stimulating encouragement. By and through these elements the Negro has been able to give a striking evidence of his ability for a self-developing American citizenship.

And yet, all of his splendid progress in education and all of the useful qualities developed in him as an industrial factor have not protected him against terrible outrages and unspeakable cruelties. When he was eliminated from the field of politics by state constitutions, adopted for that sole purpose, it was our hope and prayer that he would at least find some compensation for the wrong in safety from the mob and in the enjoyment of that peace which should attend every law abiding citizen, whether white or black. Our hopes have not been realized and we are forced to the conclusion that the brutal treatment of the Negro is not due to the fact that he was in politics. Nothing less than an intolerant race hatred could be the moving influence of such ferocity and fiendishness as characterize the lynchings of the black man in this country. Where Negroes are concerned mob law too often has displaced judges and juries and terrorized sheriffs and done away with prison walls. Its ravages are confined to no section of the country. Occasionally white men are the victims of its awful fury—but only for the most terrible crimes; but let the Negro’s offence be great or small, he is not secure from its vengeance. Our enemies succeeded for a long time in making the country believe that the black man was lynched only for the unspeakable crime. The record has always belied this charge. Bishop Candler of the Southern Methodist Church said the other day that two years ago the figures for a year showed only sixteen cases of rape against 128 lynchings. He gave, too, this significant warning, “If the people will not control the mob, the mob will soon control the people.” That best and fairest of men President Roosevelt, sees the danger. He knows that they who violate the rights of one race of men, unrestrained, will soon violate the rights of another. In his own vigorous way he has spoken to the country on the subject of mob law. It is to be hoped that one speaking from so exalted a place will arouse the American conscience from the slumber into which it has been lulled by an unconcern dangerous to individuals and to the country alike. Referring to the crime of rape he has given us the wisest and best advice. “In such cases,” says he “the colored people throughout the land should in every possible way show their belief that they, more than all others in the community are horrified at the commission of such crime and are peculiarly concerned in taking every possible measure to prevent its recurrence and bring the criminal to immediate justice. The slightest lack of vigor, either in denunciation of the crime or in bringing the criminal to justice is itself unpardonable.” In his wisdom the President has struck the note to which we must readily and willingly respond. No man, black or white, who commits a crime is entitled to our sympathy or to our protection. It is our duty both in speech and in conduct to endeavor to impress the communities in which we live with two things; first, that we are unalterably opposed to mob law; secondly, that we are anxious to have Negro criminals punished, but in accordance with legal methods.

Unfortunately and unjustly, the white man chooses to judge the whole Negro race by its bad, vicious, shiftless, unreliable members. He does not measure it by the multitude who have learned and who practice the common moralities of every day life. He does not take into account that there are thousands of black men and women among us who have made for themselves a place among the most orderly and the most industrious elements in their communities. For some reason it seems to suit the purpose of a great and powerful people with all of the machinery of publication and circulation under their control to expose to the world and to emphasize the faults of the Negro.