The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1898-10-09
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE NEGRO

Hcan party III the Eastern FUFl OF THIS
State has posed as the patron of the
negro. 1t has avowed its purpose and
intention to put the negro in office over
white men and pointed to its history in
proof that it would make Its promise
good when opportunity offered. 1t has
told the negro that he was being de-
prived of his rights, that he was as fit
for and well entitled to office as the
white man. 1t has regarded the title OF
negro party as praise not odium. In
return it has been rewarded with prac-
tically the solid vote of the negro.
When the Republican party came into
power through chance and a division Of
the white men of the State it did put
the negro in office. Not only that, but
with thirty years of training under white
politicians who constantly dinned in his
ears his power and Importance, the negro
undertook to put himself IN office and
demanded and secured the help of the
white men who had been using him as a
tool, to that end, and did put himself in
office. This the Republican party admits
and does not seek to deny.
Yesterday we showed by facts that are
now in existence, and by recent occur
rences, to what an appalling degree the
negrolzing of the State has been car
ried. Utterances of negro leaders were
quoted showing that they are bent on
pushing their demands for office to the
last extreme-even threatening violence
if necessary. The negro has broken the
bounds that even white Republicans
would set to Lis ambition. Tht white men
and women of the State staud face to
face with conditions that are intolcrable
and dangers that are portentous. The
Democratic party alone recognizes the
gravity of the crisis and has thrown
itself into the breach.
But though the Republican leaders adj
NIT the facts that are charged against
them, though they boldly promise the
negro office in return for votes, though
they admit that within the past two
years 900 and odd negroes have been
put in office in North Carolina, there
are other men in the State who come
forward, in the very glare and focus of
publicity, to make denial for the Repub-
lican party And who are these men
who thus charge to the rescue, lance in
rest? They are the sworn, and fore
sworn, enemies of the Republican party.
They are men who have declared within
the recent past that the Republican
party sought to put the negro in office
in the State and that.White Supremacy
was and ever must be the paramount
issue in State politics, so long as negro
domination was IN impending menace.
They are the men who declare that the
Republican party, nationally, is the
enemy Of the people and the friend of
those who are robbing the people.
Do these men content themselves with
a defence of their enemies? Do these
Self-constituted attorneys content them
selves with denying their clients plea Of
guilty? DO they stop at declaring that
the hundred thousand men and women
Of Eastern Carolina are liars when they
charge that the negro has been placed
over them by the Republican, party? Nor
they. The hard facts Of a. quarter of a
century of history, the. stern realities OF
present conditions, are all but as the
wild phantasies of a Gisordered brain,
all false as dicers' oats" There are
not many negroes in office. not nearly SO
many as used to be. The Democratic,
not the Republican party, is the negro
party!
Do these swashbucking barriers Of the
pie-counter stop with the mere assertion
that the Democratic party is the party
Of negro domination? They essay to
prove it by spry imagination and ilimi-
table wind. They have found that by n
disregard of those customs that prevail
among honorable men, Republicans in 4
Legislature twenty years buried took adj
vantage OF a courtesy extended them and
betrayed some Democratic legislators
INTO voting, unsuspectingly, for a few
negro magistrates. GadzoolSs; man,
don't that convince YOU that the Demo
cratic party is the real genuine negro
party? They also find that once in the
bailiwick of n Democratic sheriff there
was II white woman who was convicted
Of fornication and adultery with negroes,
who lived with negroes and negroes only,
who was the mother of negro children,
who was in hiding among negroes and
whose whereabouts nobody but negroes
knew; this white sheriff employed a negro
to find the woman, who was supposed by
him and all others to be Il negro, and he
did find her and arrested her. Does
this not show that the Democratic party
Is the real negro party? Does this not
show that in turning over whole towns to
be bullied and looted by negroes; that
in appointing forty negro magistrates in