The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

A respectable element among the white Republicans of the South have given it up. One of the most distinguished and thoughtful Northern men in the country, a life-long Republican, a man of approved Republicanism, declared before the leading Republican club of the country not long ago, that the “experiment entered on with so much enthusiasm” had undoubtedly proved a failure.

Looking back on this period, it is impossible for the open-minded student not to see that whatever the motive, the result was, as Mr. Root declared before the Union League Club, a miserable failure, disastrous to both races. The South was devastated and humiliated beyond belief; the Negroes were hopelessly misled in matters where right direction was vitally necessary to their permanent progress. And the consequence was a riot of civic debauchery which must bring shame to every honest man of the African race and will always prove a bar to the possibility of Negro domination hereafter.[50]

Whether it be recognized as yet or not, the whole country owes a debt to the Southern people who withstood to the end the policy of the misguided fanatics and politicians who would have put the South permanently under Negro domination. But for the resolution and constancy of the Southern whites, one-sixth of the then existing States of the Union would have become Negroized and we should possibly have had by this time several States of the Union substantially what Santo Domingo is to-day.

As the realization is becoming more common that the “experiment” which was entered on with so much enthusiasm a generation ago, of arming the Negro with “the weapon” of the ballot, has proved a disastrous failure, it is also gradually being recognized that the kind of education on which so much money, both from public taxation and from private philanthropy, has been lavished, and so much care has been expended, has not only failed to bring about the results which had been expected, but has, so far as the great body of the race is concerned, proved an absolute failure. The Negroes at large and the doctrinaires will not accept this, but nevertheless it is recognized by those who know the Negro best and have sufficient breadth of knowledge to look at things as they are. The sanest and most broad-minded among the Negro leaders of to-day has recognized it, and the foundation of his success is his recognition of it—the recognition of it by him and the recognition of it by the whites of the South, who have, because of it, sustained him by their sympathy and their aid. It is because of this that Booker T. Washington has become the best proof of what the Negro race at its best may produce, and is the most unanswerable argument adduced since the war of the value of Negro education.

He believes that the Negroes at large should be taught, first of all, to work; that they should begin by being made trained laborers and skilled artisans, and that then they will develop themselves. This principle, though sound, is strongly repudiated by a considerable element among the more advanced Negroes. And the riot in the Boston church in July, 1903, when the Principal of Tuskegee spoke on the industrial training of the Negro, was precipitated by an educated element who believe in agitation rather than in Principal Washington’s pacific and rational methods. The latter acts on the theory that, in the main, the education of the Negroes as hitherto conducted has not been generally a success. Those who espouse the other view assert, on the contrary, that the education has been a marked success and that the Negro is in every way the equal of the white. And to prove their case they use red pepper and razors.

The limits of this paper do not admit of even the most cursory discussion of the comparative equality of the two races. It may be stated, however, that, notwithstanding exceptional instances, the case of the South rests frankly on the present demonstrable inferiority of the Negro race to the White race. Its superiority is a dogma of the White race wherever it may have established itself, and without doubt, as Mr. Chamberlain recently pointed out in his address at Birmingham, this profound conviction has been one of the sources of its strength.

Much injury has been done the Negro race by the misdirected zeal of those who continually prate about their right to equality with the whites.

In 1865, when the Negro was set free, he held without a rival the entire field of industrial labor throughout the South. Ninety-five per cent. of all the industrial work of the Southern States was in his hands. And he was fully competent to do it. Every adult was either a skilled laborer or a trained mechanic. It was the fallacious teaching of equality which deluded him into dropping the substance for the shadow. To-day their wisest leader is trying to emulate his great teacher, Armstrong, and lead them back to the field which they so carelessly abandoned. Men who are the equals of others do not go about continually asserting it. They show their equality by the fruits of their intellect and character. Among the whites, the poor class are not always haranguing and adopting resolutions as to their equality with the other classes, any more than are the well-to-do class always insisting upon their equality with the wealthy class. They know that they are equal, if not superior, and do not feel continually called on to assert it offensively. The same may be said about the best educated, best behaved, and most worthy among the Negroes. It is the blatant demagogue and “mouthy” Negro—a term that was well known during the period of slavery—who is mainly heard on this subject. Happily for the Negroes, the major portion of them have retired from the struggle for political power, and, except when excited by agitators, live harmoniously enough with the whites; and the industrious element are saving, and are building themselves homes.

While, however, the body of the Negro race are going about their business in good-humored content, generally in good fellowship with the people on whose friendship they are most dependent, the so-called “leaders” and their so-called “friends” are spending their time in stirring them up, adopting lurid resolutions, asserting their equality and calling on everybody outside of the South to help them establish it.

The phrase usually employed is that the Negro is “robbed of his vote,” this formula being equally applied whether he is restrained from voting by the unlawful act of one or more individuals or by the most solemn act that a people can perform—the provision of a duly ordained constitution.