Unfettered: A Novel

by Sutton E. Griggs

A political party, aspiring for control of the Government, may choose a paramount issue, but one in power labors to take care of all interests committed to it. Now that the Republican party has won a place in the hearts of the American people, the business interests of the country are insistent that they be cared for first and foremost. The nation is making an effort to extend its commerce into all parts of the earth, and the Republican party is implored to be the agency through which this is to be accomplished.

In view of the many interests committed to its care, the Republican party seems disinclined to make a specialty of the Negro Problem. While reaffirming its old time position on that subject, it does not see its way clear to jeopardize all other interests for the sake of that one plank of its platform. While the friendship and moral support of that party is to be retained, and while Negroes who sympathize with its economic policies should abide with it, it is not wise for the race to rely upon it solely for the proper adjustment of the Race Problem.

In fact, the hour has come when the race must take the matter of its salvation into its own hands. In times past, when the battles of the race were to be fought, others led and the trusting Negro followed. In this new era the Negroes must lead, must bear the main brunt of the battle. Thus, while estranging no friends of the past, and fully appreciating the continued necessity of outside assistance wherever attainable, the foreword of our new propaganda shall be Self-Reliance.

Having hitherto been concerned with the task of comprehending and imbibing a civilization which we had no appreciable share in developing, our passivity, quiescence, docility, the readiness to follow others, were the characteristics which we mainly manifested.

Now that we are to cast off the role of a nursling and take our place as co-creators of whatever the future has in store for the human race, a new order of talents must be called into operation and a new mode of procedure adopted.

Fortunately for us we have the incentive of a largely inglorious past to be redeemed, and the light of all of man's past to serve as our guide.

REVISITING THE ORIENT.

To gain our first lesson in the work before us, we transport ourselves over land and sea until, standing in the valley of the Nile, we can pause and gaze upon the pyramids of Egypt, reminders of the day when our ancestral home held aloft the torch of civilization. In those pyramids, we behold that stones of enormous size and weight have been lifted to such distances from the earth as to stagger the imagination and inspire wonder in the hearts of all generations of all races that have seen or heard of the feat unparalleled in ancient or modern times.

Some African genius of the long ago constructed a device, now unknown to earth, whereby the several strengths of individuals could be conjoined and the sum of their strengths thus obtained applied to the task of lifting the ponderous stones. Innumerable hosts would have failed in lifting those pyramidal stones to the positions which they occupy had it not been for the aid of the device that enabled them to work conjointly. From these pyramids, eloquent in their silence, persistent reminders of the departed glory of Africa, let the scattered sons of that soil learn their first great need—Co-operation.