The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-04-03
DIFFERENT VIEWS AS TO THE
NEGRO.

1t was the intention to supplement
the editorial of yesterday entitled The
Negro on Trial." with a quotation
from the late address of DR.. Paul B.
Barringer. a professor in the Univer-
+sity of Virginia, and a native North
Carolinian, at the meeting held recent
ly of the Tri-State Medical convention.
1t was an. elaborate, able, impressive
discussion of The Negro Problem"
We desired to copy this paragraph in
connection with the editorial, and it
was laid inside of the manuscript, in
tending to attach it properly. DR..
Barringer said this:
THE negro was in Thebes 5000 years
before the Christian era, he was in
Carthage and in Rome when these ma
ions fourished, and always as a slave.
He is the slave of the nations and ac-
ceptS hat condition c0ntantedly Il his
animal wants are supplied. Wherever
he has attained any circulation it has
been when he was u1de the control CT
a stronger will than his own, for in
Africa, where he has been left to him
self, he is still the cannibal and the
savage that he always has BEEN"
OF the young negro of the present
generation (there are many exceptions,
of ~course), he said this and it carries
with it a fearful warning not to be dis
regarded:
by the time he is fully grow he is
far from home and has almost forgot
ten the parents that CAV him birth.
He is a liar, a thief, a robber, gam
bier, perhaps murderer or highway
man, fearing neither God nor man.
This man is a unit of that dark cloud
which overhangS the black belt OF the
south. Before another generation of
the negro is allowed to arise, worse,
as we must see, than the present, the
people of the south must act. They
must remove the negro from politics
and give the ballot to him only when
it can be given as a reward or progress
and o as a Weapon of revenge. The
negro must be educated along new
lines.
One of two things may then be ex-
pected unless a remedy is found. Som
question of race will probably arise
which will stir h passions and there
will come a struggle, a day of judg-
ment for folly piled upon folly. AS all
classes of the south are of a pure
Saxon blood. the chronicles of their
Saxon ancestors will be human read
ing compared with the records of that
day."
The Messenger has said more thar
once that in the south there were dis
tinct classes among the negroes One
class is composed of decent, well be-
haved, fairly intelligent. industrious,
worthy, la~w-abiding, useful citizens.
They are respected by the whites and
trusted and employed and ~patronized.
They are very different from the 9TH
-er class. 1t is said to be a fact that
there is a marked difference in Africa
between tribal conditions and charac-
ter. The great traveller, and
the forever famous DR.. David Living
stone who died in the heart of Africa
among his trusty and sympathetic ne
gro friends found great difference
among the tribes. In South Carolina
and Georgia it is we'll known to observ-
ant, studious men that there was a
most marked difference in the char
acter OF the African natives first
brought into the south. To this day the
descendants of these tribes show the
same very distinctive qualities and
principles One class is vastly superior
to the other, and no amount of assocl-
alton with whites under a free and en-
lightened rule has been able to change
the spot or to heal the differences. One
remains low, mean, t~reacherouS, I'M
moral and dangerous. Their elevation
impossible in either the civic
or moral qualities. All this is wholly
to the north. 1t ook as if il
would take as long to teach the north
the real qualities of h negro race as
r. has taken in the south to bring the
negroes to whatever OF advancement
there is visible now.
Tho south has hundreds of thousand: