The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-04-03
An Open Letter to Rev. DR.. Gregg.
From the Boston Globe.

An Open Letter to Rev. DR.. Gregg.
From the Boston Globe.
My DEAR SIR have been very much
interested in your sermon on the negro
question, which was delivered last Sunday.
You treated it with much more breadth
and strength than the average DIT eacher,
politician or newspaper is accustomed to
give that interesting and important topic.
You delivered it in the city OF Boston,
where the colored man is supposed to have
found his best friends before the war, during
that struggle, and presumably since it was
closed. You assert with honesty and enthu-
slasm that you are entirely upon the side of
the negro. or, to use your own language:
To the defence of his rights l consecrate my
head, and my heart. and my hand, and my hl-
manitarian instincts and my time, and my
patriotism and my purse, and if need be, as
final resort, my rifle.
You further claim with eloquence and
force that the northern men who are send
ing their capital south have a grand oppor-
tunity and the power to fright the wrongs
of the south" Now as the southern people
simply ask their northern neighbors to let
them work out their own problem, how will
1t do to take them at their word for awhile
and let the north turn its attention to the
way the negro is treated here! Instead of
following your suggestion of having q solid
north tell the south what it should do, sup
pose the solid north looks at home. In
other words, before we call further atten-
tion to the mote in the southern brothers
eye, let us see what can be done with the
large black beam in the eye of the northern
brother.
assert that the negro is not SO well
treated in Boston or Massachusetts, or in
the north generally, as he is in the south.
You must know that i'll this city of Boston,
which processes to be the original and still
the chief headquarters of the friends Of the
cOlored man, he is ostraciSe6 in q more
effective manner than he is in the south.
Fewer occupations arc open to him here,
and he is not treated as well in many re-
spects as he is in the SOUTH
Do you not know that in tile city Of
Boston. as in every other city ard town in
the north, there are only three or four oc-
equations open to the colored man! He
must be either barber, e waiter. q janitor.
or porter In what other calling can he
succeed? There are exceptional cases where
he has succeeded i'll other lines, but they
simply prove the general rule, which ex-
cludes the colored man from other occupa-
tons by the force of general sentiment.
The white man in Boston does not admit
the negro to social equality. Take
the young colored man who is class orator
of Harvard this year, a graduate of the
Boston Latin school, young man of fine
attachments, and mentally well fitted for
the position to which he has been elected
Unless he becomes a teacher or a pre- lcher
among his own race, what occupation is
open 10 him i'll the city where he has been
raised? Can he become a merchant, phys-
ician, lawyer, a banker, or even a me-
chanlc? Nc. VIII Harvard college make
MIN one of its professors? No, certainly
not. Here he can only enter one of the oc-
equations which have named, and in which
college education is not worth two cents a
ton.
Just think for moment how completely
the colored men is shut out of the ordinary
vocations of life. How many coiored sex
tons are there in the white churches? How
would the members of your church like an
assistant pastor, a coloe I'd man, to help YOU
in your parish work and visit among themg
How many business men, lawyers, physi-
clans, or bankers, who sit in your cougre
cations, and are delighted to hear you
pound the south for its treatment of the
negro, will take colored man into business
partnership with themselves in this year of
our Lord 1890! How many storekeepers
who attend our churches, whose hearts are
warmed with the arguments in favor of the
colored man in the south. will take hin. in
as clerk in any one of their stores?
Mr.. Grady made an address to about 400
representative men IN Boston last Decem-
Der. What was the colored man doing on
that OCCASION! Was he among the guests
the merchants, the bankers, the lawyers or
the physicians who listened to Mr.. Grady
and applauded himi No. he was waiting
on the table. And not . colored man could
have secured a ticket 80 that banquet
Mind, am not blaming Jhe managers of
the feast; they simply represented public
sentiment, and their acts showed how thor
oughly they respected it.
Has the negro made any advance in Bos-
ton among the various vacations or in social
life since he has been emancipated2 If SO,
in what directions! Is not the reason because
the sentiment of Boston, like that of other
cities and towns CT the north, is against
him? The coloreG people make only about
per cent. of the population of the city. II
it was so. 40 or so per cent, as IL in some
southern cities and towns, 1ould these men
in the north. who now practically ostracise
the colored man, he any more liberal in
treating him politically, Think you, than the
men do i'll the southi
submit these point.. ny dear doctor, for
your consideration; because u nan who is
ready TO devote his life 70 the cause of the
black man has IN abundant field right here
in the city of Boston, and when he has made
the colored man the poiitcal, social and
business equal OK the ~Ei man in this CITY.
it seems to me that no Iaay more appro-
priataly and effectively take the stand and
tell tho people Of tbs south how they should
act in tho solution Of this problem. Yours
most respectfully,
The EDITOR OF THE GLOBE.