The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1889-04-09
WORKING ON THE GREAT
PROBLEM.
The Race War in Ohio

AN~S wv 40 ON4O
THE New York Times of the 3lst
n ult. shows a bad state of affairs in
several of the counties of Ohio, grow
ing out of the law abolishing separate
schools for the colored people. "School
rows" have been frequent and the
court dockets are crowded with cases
growing out of them. In one place a
man was shot, several wounded and a
house demolished, in an effort to
forcibly eject the colored children. In
New Richmond, a town of 5000 in
habitants, there are about 700 white
and 200 colored school children. All
the blacks consented for their children
to remain in separate school rooms ex-
eept one, who was determined to force
his children into the white rooms. 1t
resulted in his suing the superintend.
ent and thirteen prominent citizens
for $4,000 damages, and the court
gave him one cent and costs. Where
upon the colored people created such
q row that the board declared the
schools closed until September, though
three months of the present term re-
mains, and all the teachers will sue
for their salaries for the remainder of
the term. The dispatch to the Times
indicates intense feeling and great ex-
element.
Here is an outbreak founded in
open resistance to a plain statute, and
in open defiance of a protested senti-
ment which for long years has been
proclaimed from the press, the ros.
trum, the pulpit, and from the house
tops of all the Northern States, and
that outbreak is located in the State
of Ohio, and is the legitimate out
growth of race prejudice, pure and
simple.
VIZ do not transfer the picture to
these columns for the purpose of
taunting our Northern brethren with
an inconsistency, which from any
standpoint of their position on the
social and political status Of the negro,
cannot be explained or justified, nor
to discuss the significant silence of the
Northern press on this ordinarily
fruitful theme of Northern editors
and orators.
The PROGRESSIVE FARMER would
allay, rather than irritate sectional feel
ing. 1t would fraternize and strengthen,
rather than ALLEVIATE and weaken the
bonds which should draw US together in
&great national brotherhood, and it re-
fers to this unfortunate occurrence
simply to reiterate and emphasize its
conviction that this great question:
the race problem-has simply been
stated on the blackboard of DESTINY. |
No advance has been made towards |
its solution, and we stand to-day con.
fronted with the most stupendous
question that ver engaged the minds
and hearts of a people in all history.
To the people of the South, it is a
question of great moment, involving
our civilization and our destiny. Two
peoples, with distinctive race charac.
teristics, living in the most intimate
industrial contact and upon terms of
absolute civil equality, the situation
to us, means more than to those of the
North, who view it from a purely
theoretical standpoint. Especially is
the Southern farmer forced to brood
over it hourly and constantly. He
breathes and moves and lives in a
sitting atmosphere of uncertainty, and
SO it will be, so long as the two races
shall maintain their present anoma-
NOUS relations to each other. To him,
there "a never be- any marked i'm.
Provement Or permanent prosperity in
the agriculture of the South, so long
rs we must depend on free-negro ten.
Antry for the cultivation of our fields.
The complex and complicated condi-
IONS arising from this forced and
unnatural experiment, by and through