Birmingham state herald., 1895-12-15
OVERRIDING IT.
party.

Booker Washington is very sensible negro, but our northern friends are over doing it when they set him up as dis tinguished intellect. His address at Att lanta was very creditable for one of his race, but hardly worthy of notice if it had been made by white man. At Phil adelphia in his public address he said: S
 ''The great injury that slavery did my people was to deprive them of that exec utive power, that sense of self-depend-- enee which are the glory and distinction of the Angfo-SaXon race. For 25O years we were taught to depend on some one else for food. clothing. shelter and every move in life. and you cannot expect what was 250 years in getting into race can be gotten out in twenty-five or thirty years, unless we at best put into their midst Christian leaders"
 In answer to this the Commercial-Her- aid comments at some length. It very we'll says: t,'.--e ea
 We have no wish to controvert over slavery or the race question further than to expose error which initiates against the welfare of the country on Which the shadow of the one and the problem of the other rests. With this view, the falla- cies which are fundamental as well as fragrant of the speech quoted are made the subject of comment. In the first place the people spoken or, lfle HeSIo, never had the power and the sense of sef-reliance of which the speaker charges slavery with having deprived him. This is proven on every page or history, clear back to the beginning. But unfortunately this is not the worst that history teaches. Another of its lessons is that the farther the dark race gets away from slavery, the lower the descent in the moral scale. In the British West. Indies, more especially in Jamaica, the chief colony where the yoke was taken off sixty years ago., the race has sunk all most to it's original state of barbarlsm. For the first thirty years of/emanc1pa- tion there, as here, race equality was as sumed by law and enforced. Indeed, the treatment which reconstruction meted out in this country of forcing the recog- nition. of the negro as civil ana pollti- cal equal was there carried to an extreme never witnessed in the southern states. The importation of eoole labor which saved Barbadoes from utter decay, was forbidden in the larger and more import ant colony. This policy underwent de- cided change after the '65 outbreak. But it was again tried until of recent years, since when the negro as political fac- tor has disappeared.s Now coolies are imported from which some improvement is hoped But the negro population IS steadily sinking. A recent letter to the New York Post from the island gives
  the richest colony of all Englands pos sessions Describing the situation, this letter says
 Former rich plantations have grown up in bush, while idle negroes roam over the island in search of food. Now the news comes from the interior that there is a great famine. and that many of the people are actually dying of starvation.' ,
 "On this fertile island, where the soil waits but the planting of the seed and a very short lapse of time to produce harvest, it seems an anomaly that any of its habitants should suffer hunger. In the Naira, Content Upper Portsea, and other districts, the people have no food, and are roaming the country in search of assistance. In the district known as Chocolate Hole the people are not only suffering the bangs of hun ger, but many of them are actually dying of want. A report recently published in the Cleaner states:
 "It is positively appalling to hear the cries of hunger and distress among the inhab bitants of Pedro Plains and that DOT tion of the Santa Cruz district on to Long Hill. The inhabitants are all in great want ~'t3 .-
 "rhe Kingston papers are loud in their complaints at the apathy of the govern ment while these reports of suffering and distress continue to come in. It is claimed that owing to the immigration
 
 the planter to bring in coolies from the east by the ship load the native laborer is unable to find work at wages that would barely keep him alive. Nothing is said by these papers of the fertile lands which the negro is free to culti= vate and raise therefrom abundant crops the sustenance of himself and family, but the cry is. no work for our native laborer and vile Immigration laws.
 'In Hayti. where emancipation was achieved by revolt 100 years ago, and where the negro possessed himself of the then most productive and highly inn proved province of the western world, q worse and more hopeless condition thap barbarism has supervened. There 250 years of slavery had prevailed. A large proportion of the negroes were of African birth. still clothed with whatever sense of self-dependence they had been en- dowed with by nature f AS stated above, these errors are exr posed because they have a practical and deeply important bearing on our state and section. It is a subject where we cannot afford to hug delusions. The plea quoted appeals strongly to the sympa- thies: but in a true sense humanity even | forbids the entertainment of the fallacy it embraces" No statesmanship will, in the care and adjustment of affairs of a state l like Mississippi. fail to rid itself of the | theory that all that is needed to have equality in fact Is to have it In law. The | sooner and ,completer we give practical | recognition to the truth of negro incapac- | ity, the better for the country, and es- | pecially for the negro. It is the only | hope. the just limitations of his sphere of citizenship of preserving him from | the fate which has overtaken his race