There are in the South, men and women, white and colored, who are endeavoring to meet every issue that arises upon the highest possible plane. The sentiments of such people found expression in the following editorial which accompanied Dorlan's pronunciamento. It ran as follows:
"A Negro has been found to display political independence and moral courage of a high order. He has placed himself in a position where the unthinking will liken him unto the serpent that buried its fangs in the bosom that warmed it. None the less, his act is one of marked heroism. While not endorsing his third party scheme (our party is good enough) we endorse the spirit of initiative and independence that prompts it. We would that this spirit of rebellion against party slavery characterized all the voters of the Southland.
"It is an open secret that the great body of the people of both races in the South are prone to regard elections as nothing more nor less than a perennial struggle for supremacy between the two races. This one issue has been allowed to dwarf all other considerations. Indeed, the South is deaf to all appeals, however urgent, to give consideration to the grave questions arising from time to time affecting the welfare of us all and determining our destiny. Such a condition of isolation from the centers of thought activity is deplorable in the extreme.
"Think of it: by birth a man comes into possession of a full set of political opinions. He is born into a condition of intellectual serfdom; the mind dares not to wander by a hair's breadth from the narrow estate of thought on which it is born. He who elects to devote his attention to the questions of State must reduce his mentality to the level of the parrot and feel that his life's work will consist in learning to repeat glibly and without alteration whatever party managers may promulgate. What a crime against the human mind whose native air is freedom, to secure which bonfires have been lighted with the thrones of kings!
"What the South needs is a new emancipation. Her giant minds must be allowed to enter the arena of intellectual conflict unfettered, if they are to bring back to the South her departed glory. The Negroes can help to bring about this emancipation. When they cease to vote en masse; when they cease going to the polls as a mark of gratitude to the invaders of the South who now sleep their last sleep and would discountenance, if they could, the perpetuation of race hatred over past issues; when the sentiment within the Negro race is sufficiently liberal to allow each Negro his manhood right to record with his vote his own best judgment; when, we say, these desirable conditions obtain among the Negroes, we whites will have an opportunity to escape the scourge with which the party magnates herd us together even as gratitude has herded the Negroes.
"With joy we hail the advent of Dorlan Warthell in his new role. May he succeed in inaugurating an era of independent thought among the Negroes. Let us all hope that we are now beholding a streak of dawn, instead of the trail of a falling star, whose soon fading light will leave our skies but the darker. Let us hope that the hour is upon us when the sober torch of reason and not the withering flames of passion, may guide all of our voters, white and colored, to the polls."
There are many people in the South who never read, who never ponder grave questions, but assume the right to wreak vengeance on the heads of those who perchance wander from beaten paths in search of truth. In the above editorial the more enlightened element had spoken; but the unthinking were also to be heard from.
If Dorlan is depending upon his exalted patriotism, his broad love of humanity, his eager, unselfish striving after the good of all—if, we say, he is depending upon these things to shield him from the wrath of those whom his act affronted, let him remember that virtue was no shield to Him whose blood, in the days of yore, anointed the spear of a Roman soldier upon a hillside on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
