The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-03-29
THE NEGRo's coUNsELoRs.
His Defeat or Success Depends Upon
 Individual Effort.

His Defeat or Success Depends Upon
 Individual Effort.
 w. E. Burghardt Dubois has lately
 finished his series of advisory lectures
 to the negroes. Just now our poor
 black brother is the most advised man
 in Chrstendom. First of all he has as
 counselor, Booker T, Washington,
 whom God has sent to pull him out of
 the slough as surely as he sent Moses
 to bring his people to the promised
 land. The next generation may appre-
 ciate the common sense, the piercing
 sagacity the moderation of this black
 leader, but his race do not appreciate it now. Each man among them who has
 achieved any kind of an education shouts out differing order to the
 struggling dumb hosts below him
 Aim at the highest" cries one. Get a college education get Greek, mathe- matfcs, logic, though you have to earn your bread as a barber or baker" 1 Learn trade" commands another l 'Go to the north"
 Stay in the south.
 Make friends of your old masters. To follow peace with all men is Chris | tan and eXperient.
 Fight for your rights! Organize! l Drill! Form into companies. Be ready to strike when the hour comes!' | Is it any wonder that the negro, | dazed and perplexed by this multitude | of counsel, staggers this way and that on his upward road? The miracle is | that he goes up at all,
 Invite men are equally noisy concern | ing him. The negro" is the one theme on which every American feels oompe- tent to pronounce a final judgment, Down to the unwashed emigrant limp ing on shore in his rags each one of them is ready to decide the place and future of the negro. Is he not black? Are they not white? What other au- thority do you want? The ignorant white finds down among his squalid mean thoughts dislike to dark skin just as he may dislike a harellp or a hunchback, But he parades it as 'ra- cial instinct" God given, irremovable, and because he has this peurile ipreju- dice, demands that whole nation. no- ble in their high aim, their courage and their patience, shall be sentenced to perpetual defeat and ignominy,
 Could anything have been more ludi crous than the spasm which convulsed the country the other day when the president asked MT. Washington to din- ner? Your white American will sit calmly every day while a negro slaves him rubs his face and hair, touches his eyes and lips with his black fingers; or he will eat bread kneaded by other black fingers, or meat which they have seasoned and cooked; he will put his child into the arms of black nurse, he will come, in a word, into the closest personal contact with the ignorant and often unclean low class of negro, and yet. when Mr. Roosevelt asks of the foremost leaders of thought and action among Americans, a gentleman by in- stinct and habit, to sit down near him and be helped to the same mutton and potatoes he shrieks with dismay the re- public is in peril UninagnabIe hor- TOTS will follow this recognition of the fact that man with dark skin is a leader in thought or a gentleman in in- stinct and habit.
 The most absurd explanation of this action was given by certain southern editors who graveiy assured us that as soon as the negro was admitted to the table of the white, general missegena tion would follow! Nothing could stop | the white woman sof the south from him. The white woman of | the south certainly had no reason that | day to thank her champion for his de- | fense
 It is a significant fact that the negro journals were much more calm and | temperate in their comments on this in- f cident than were those of their white brethren. They were not unduly up- lifted by the invitation to dinner from the president to one of their race The fact is, the negro is less excited by the desire for social recognition than the whites imagine. This is partly due to a dignified self-respect common to the upper class of coored people, and per haps to a certain funny trait of self esteem common to the lower class-a vanity which makes them ridiculous, perhaps but which comforts them 1 in their desperate climb up- ward. It Is like the conceit and self confidence of child which carries him over obstacles in youth, but which he and at which he laughs when { is no longer necessary to him
 MT. Dubois in the papers lately fin shed takes his usual pessimistc view If the fortunes of his race, but his ad- 1ice to them is good except as it seems Q me, when, after acknowledging that he negro can find work in the south, which he cannot find in the north, he insists that he must not for that req son remain there. "A certain sort of ;oul,' he says, "a certain kind of spirit inds the narrow repression. the pro Iincialism of the south almost unbear- ,ble,''
 This may be true of the young educa- ed negro who has ambitions and long ngs in him for--he scarcely knows Hhat-although Booker T. Washington -