When the Negro again becomes a political factor and the court is made amenable to Negro public sentiment in common with the rest of the community, care will then be taken that evenhanded justice is meted out to all. Under such conditions the Negroes and white men of the South will be in a frame of mind to meet and join hands for the protection of womanhood, for the suppression of lynching, for the extirpation of criminality in general.
Chief among the reforms to be inaugurated will be the improvement of the very deplorable prison systems, which being operated with a view to producing revenue, are a blot upon our civilization.
When better feelings prevail, the laws regulating public utilities will be such as conform to the desires of the best citizens of all races.
Thus it will be seen how many of the ills that ramified the whole of Southern life were generated from the strife that had its origin at the ballot box.
THE PROBLEM OF THE OTHER MAN.
With our racial organization thus laboring to prepare the race to meet the highest requirements of civilization, the subjective phase of the problem is provided for, and we may now direct our attention to extrinsic factors, the forces without, that must be reckoned with.
In the midst of the study of our problem, our racial organization must bear in mind the fact that the Southern white man has his problem. He is the lineal descendant of the builders of our civilization. We are heirs thereof by adoption; the Southern white man by birth. It must be assumed that the instincts that make possible our civilization are more deeply written in his nature than in that of the Negro. To him primarily, therefore, is committed the task of preserving in the Southland characteristic Americanism. Thus while benefiting by the many noble traits which the Negro brings, the Southern white man must yet resist whatever Africanizing tendencies that anywhere show themselves. Such is the Southern white man's problem.
There are Negroes that can meet every test of civilization, while there are others upon whom residence in America has wrought but feebly. The Southern white man closes the door in the face of the prepared Negro, holding that to do otherwise would mean the influx of an uncontrollable mass of the unprepared. He also states that coercive methods are necessary to preserve in the South the Anglo-Saxon flavor to our civilization.
The virile elements in all communities are in duty bound to draw the weaker ones up to themselves, but indiscriminate repression and coercion are not the proper means to be employed in these modern times. The weak are to be elevated through the superior forces known to mind and morals.