It is this conception of the basic, inherent right of the Negro to share on equal terms with all other human beings all the rights and privileges appertaining to membership in the human family that gives rise to the Race Problem in the United States of America. For, while the claim is passionately cherished by the Negroes and is espoused with varying degrees of warmth by one section of the American whites, it is most vigorously opposed by another.
OUR PROBLEM.
It is our task to so utilize the forces at our command as to nullify all artificial hindrances to the development of the Negro; to remove from his soul the man-imposed fetters; to so open the way that the man with a black skin shall have his opportunities limited solely by his capacity, as is the case with those not of his color. We are to institute merit as the test of preferment; mind, as the measure of the man. To reverse the standard of measurement, to transfer it from color to culture, is our problem.
The plan to be submitted must take cognizance of all the factors in the situation; must be capable of being operated by the race constituted, environed and conditioned as it is. With this conception of our task we begin our labors.
THE INSPIRATION OF THE OPPOSITION.
It is well in every species of combat for a man to seek to know the exact nature of the opposing force. Knowing this, one understands the better how to gauge his efforts. With this aim in view, we shall make a reconnoitre to discover just what is arrayed against us.
Mr. Herbert Spencer says: "It has come to be a maxim of science that in the causes still at work, are to be identified the causes which, similarly at work during past times, have produced the state of things now existing."
We would expect, therefore, to find the past yet affecting the Negro, and such is indeed the case. From the year 1619 until the close of the civil war, the white people of the South held the Negroes in slavery.