The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1898-12-23
A NEGRO WOMAN'S VIEW
TAKES CLERGYMEN TO TASK
ON RACE QUESTION.
scores Them for Their Expressions
on What Should Be Done with
the Coiored Man.

Chicago Times-Herald: Last SUNDAYS
postum on the question: What shall we
do with the negro?' That symposium
represented many creeds and almost al!
nationalities of our mixed population
save that Of the race under considera-
ton. l have no doubt whatever that
this was a mere oversight, an indica-
ton that the white American purposes
to settle this question without let or
hindrance Of the negro.
Smaller things than these are enough
half a century after the civil war finds
men who stand for Christianity, justice
and the law Observation-Disclosures who
fought to make the constitution of our
great country true in practice as well
as in profession-gravely announce they
made a mistake by so doing and indi-
rectly giving the weight of their tes-
timony for Acknowledgement. True.
this has already been done, illegally, in
most southern states. and legally in
three, but when six out of eight of the
leading divines of a great city recon-
mend it, it does indeed seem that we
have fallen upon evil times. Even the
Jew, whose race has unloaded thou
sands Of Russian Jews, as ignorant, as
poor and degraded as the negro, upon
this country, says take away his (the
negro's) political privileges"
AMERICAS BIBLE IGNORED.
This, too, notwithstanding the con-
s~titution-the American bible-declares
that the right of citizens to vote shall
not be denied Or abridged by the United
States or by any state on account Of
race, color or previous condition.. If
this cannot be done, how, then, shall
Of the gospel preach political
and social heresy and the
lawlessness, murder and outrage which
nave taken place in North and South
Carolina within the past thirty days?
History is surely repeating itself. I
have heard Frederick Douglass say
how leading divines in the north had
preached to uphold slavery, finding their
81 Kill III lllS JUN VI UOOhS,
how they deliberately closed their eyes
and ears to the appeals of the helpless
and the groans of the dying, the sting
of the lash and the clank of the chain,
in order to be on the popular side-and
that against such a panoply it took the
labor and persecution of a faithful lit
tie band of abolitionists fifty years and
the treason of South Carolina to leaven
the lump Of American indifference
against wrong, oppression and injustice
at home.
For $50 years the negro's right to
life, liberty and the pursuit of hap
piness' was denied him in the country
whose people boosted of their love for
liberty. When that liberty was given
him as n of the results of the war
the former slaves were left penniless,
ignorant and helpless, dependent even
for bread upon those who wreaked
upon them the resentment and revenge
they had unsuccessfully tried to infict
upon the union. The only protection
given h negro was the ballot. The
only obligation exacted of those who
plunged the country into a fratracidal
strife was that they should make good
that guarantee of protection and obey
the constitution.
SHEER AT THEIR OATH.
They took the oath Of allegiance, but
the bloody years since 1865 attest how.
we'll they kept it. They had superior
ity Of numbers, of intelligence and of
wealth, yet with the cry Of negro DOM
ination there has been no year Of these
thirty-f1ve which has not seen from
fifty to $50 negroes murdered. The
freedmen had nothing save the ballot
with which to protect themselves, and
the southern whites tool that. They
strewed the valleys with corpses and
decorated the trees with human bodies
until the negro was afraid to vote, until
the white regained political supremacy,
until n white mans vote in the south
was worth five, seven, ten white mems
votes in the north, east or west; until
men all over the country have
shut their eyes to the sickening slaugh-
ter and passed the cry negro domina-
ton" along the line as the reason they
stand by and utter no word
save that Of excuse.
This, too, notwithstanding the fact
that, save the states of Mississippi,
and South Carolina, in no
state does the negro population equal
by one-half or al NEST three-fourths
Of the white. The last census
shows II, 600, 900 whites in the ten south
ern states and $500, 900 blacks. Every