Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1901-05-04

jessie Lawson vice president Of the
American council, a prominent man
| in the councils Of his race, ~
speech delivered at Washington, y. @.
Oh Sunday last offers what he be-
| lieyes to be the solution Of the prob
lem in the following quotation
As one Of the leaders in a local
Baptist Church and speaking to an
audience Of Baptists. ! saw now that
only the great and powerful Catholic
Church can help us (Applause J ]
think it must be Gods will that we
affect our salvation through the
agency Of the Catholic Church. The
! leaders have offered MS protection and
political rights within the folds Of the
Catholic Church We are assured our
rights as citizens and as human be-
ings, and see no other way in which
we may save ourselves and save our
future. Let us take matters into our
own hands now and let MS act.
1--WE are abont 36 years removed
from slaveryyand have had hand in
politics for about quarter of CEN
turv. We ere first made welcome by
the Republican party and in our
early power we bad Senators and Rep
resentatives in Congress. The North
and South have joined hands and babe
The negro farewell. His valedictory
/ L A 10,
member OF Cleveland Cabinet, in
a speech made few weeks ago, stated
| that the greatest crime of the century
was the adoption of the fifteenth
amendment to the constitution, which
gave to the negro freedom from slavery
and gives him the right of suffrage.
This is the feeling against Us at pres
emit The Democratic and Republican
| parties have agreed that the negro
must go and that he cannot be trusted
with the ballot. f"
! On the same day in speaking on
the anniversary of the birth of Cen
eral Grant a I Chicago the Rev. DR..
| Gunsaulus, who was for some yea1 S
pastor of Brown Memorial Church,
Baltimore dwelt almost exclusively
on the taking away of the ballot from
the negro.
Justice must be done to the negro
who h as the ballot in his hands, and
the franchise must be protected, - he
said, "or we must at last sink into
abyssses of hypocrisy with Grant,
monument casting a shadow over us.
cit will require a stern heroism at
the North to beat back wave of
supercilious and unmsnly prejudice
against the negro which will as prac-
tieally deprive him of his civil rights
as that same prejudice once enslaved
him to the South.
80 long as State sovereignty may
annul constitutional amendments and
destroy the liberty or threaten the bal
lot of an American citizen, be he black
CT white, we are utterly unworthy of
the memory of Grant. "
Speaking at Boston, Mass. on the
same Sabbath day United States Dis
trict Attorney Hugh Gordon Miller,
of Norfolk, in a speech at the Grant
anniversary banquet of the Mlddl esex
Club, after landing Grant and Lee and
Virginia, took up the negro suffrage,
1.-THE principle of a free suffrage,
he said, "does not seem to be appli-
cable to the section from whence |
come. The Goebel law of Kentucky
/ assure you, was not one whit
worse than the Election law now III
force in Virginia.
'Thls question of the franchise in
the Southern States is now the
greatest of them all. for it is neces-
sarily and vitality connected with all
other public questions Without the
protection and the fearless use of
that ballot there can be no proper
lem nf of any of the issues that
c IAt the people of a republican
government like this
Help us by your sympathy and
your good will, if nothing else, while
our coming constitutional convention
grapples with it, "
From the speeches quoted and vari
Gus sections of this country in which
they were delivered in the same day,
would indicate that it is time for
American craftsmanship to rise
above party, and devise some means
by which we can govern the black
race in such manner as will be fair
and just to both, especially now that
we are called to govern the brown
race IN our distant possessions.
Shall the race question be the rock
on which the ship of state will go to
wreck?
BIG MINsTRELS COMING.
! mn