Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-09-01
The Negro and Politics.


The unbiased fairness and even generosity
with which The Star deals with the race
question always commend 1t to fair think
ing people, and especially to the negroes
of this country. who Just feel
sorely the need of men who can lift them
selves above malice or apparent public
sentiment and speak the naked truth from
a clean sense of justice between man and
man in the cause of humanity. l desire,
however, to refer at present to The Stars
editorial of the Goth instant on the colored
democrats. The Star thinks 1t a curious
feature of the present campaign that the
negroes are reported unfriendly toward the
administration. While | acknowledge with
sincere regret an alarming prevalence of
the feeling to which The Star refers, l am
not entirely prepared to see it a very
curious feature. 1t is the common custom
to hold political parties responsible for
even the droughts that occur during their
administrations. This administration has
been marked by the most incessant and
bloody chain of outrages against the prop
erty, rights and lives of the negroes of
this country that ever disgraced nation
in the time of peace. The President didn't
do it, the republican party didn't do it; but
how easy it is for those who did it to send
some to praise the President for being
as deaf as a gravestone to the bitter walls
of destitute women and children whose
husbands and fathers had been shot to
death for trying to cast republican bal
lot, while they send other messengers
among the negroes to point out the inabil-
ity and indisposition of the republican par
ty to enforce the laws, and refer to the
Presidents silence as most convincing evil
dence of these facts.
So far the two parties relate to the
negro in this country, there is no choice for
the negro between the republican and dem
ocratic parties. The republican party has
always stood, and now stands, for impair
tial justice to all men, while those who
mainly compose the democratic party in
sst that nobody except white democrat
Is fit to exercise the rights of American
citizen. l agree with The Star that it
would be a sad reflection indeed upon the
negroes sense of fair play if any noticeable
per cent of them could be induced to enter
the democratic party under these condi-
lions. Those who advise the negro to vote
with the southern democrats for the sake
of peace, especially in local affairs know
not whereof they speak. The respectable
fair-thinking white people Of the south
never appeal to the negroes to help them
to sustain local measure but that it is
promptly done; but the fleshpot element of
the south simply insist that the negroes
must come out and vote for them-not with
them-and go back to work. Against this
sort of exercise of his right Of franchise
the most illiterate negro positively revolts
Saying nothing of the declaration of prin-
cipleS of the two parties toward the negro,
to insist that he should, for the sake Of
peace, choose to aid In inflicting upon the
racy, rather than do his duty in helping
maintain the practical principles of repub-
lfcanism that have made prosperous the
humblest homes of the nation, is to insist
that he should unfit himself for the right
to vote.
If the Presidents course has not been the
best for the negro in the south it was evil
IDENTIFY not his intention that 1t should not
be, and whether his silence has been due
to mercifu intention to cultivate a more
friendly feeling with the south as the best
means Of helping the negro, or to a callous
Indifference to the negros rights does not
alter the principles of the parties. 1t does
not make the republican party wear red
shirts and shoot men to keep them from
voting. 1t does not make starvation as
pleasant as prosperity. The plain duty of
the negro to himself and to the nation is
to stick to the republican party. That par
ty is composed of the men to whom the
negro owes everything for his elevation to
citizenship and certainly but very few ne
groes can be so bereft of common sense as
to desert them and fly to the party of Ben
Tillmans. red shirts and lynchers
w. r. PATTERSON