The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-09-02
A SENSIBLE NEGRO

some negro euitorS nave SENSE, Whatever
they may lack In other respects. There
is a negro paper in Charleston. s. c..
called The Messenger. and from a recent
issue we copy the following. Just as it
appears:
1t 10 a notable fact that Ave out of every
ten Negroes who happen by chance to
stop work and study and expect to get
a living by telling the world that they
are scholars and teachers, and by shak-
ing their sheepskin in the face of men
as a proof OF what they know. They
defy men to assail their most corruptible
character and at the same time doing
their best to gst away from their race.
They kick up and curse the white men
upon the ground of social ostracism.
This same set of jackasses cry down the
white man and by their chickering's make
the illiterate Negro feel unhappy in the
belief that the white man Is his blacklist
against, while on the other hand, the
same negro who Is crying out discrimi-
nation is the worst Discrimination on the
face Of the earth.
The English OF that extract Is nothing
to Drag on, but the sense Ii there all
right. and 1t is directly in line with an
article in The Advertiser few days ago.
As we then stated, the efforts OF Booker
Washington and q few others to educate
the negro on industrial lines is meeting
with considerable success. but the criti-
cisms of The Messenger. caustic as they
are, are largely true. The negroes of the
class alluded to by that paper are enc
mics to themselves and to their race, and
~ xwht e. Ea
much more appropriate. If applied to
themselves.
AS might have been expected. this kind
OF looking at home is not pleasing to
some other members of the race, and
prominent among these Is The New York
Age. one Of the most prominent negro
papers in the country. 1t declares that
the editor Of The Messenger is not the
only fool we have. who Ii engaged In the
arduous work Of editing a newspaper
when Nature explicitly designed that he
should be rail-splitter." and then in
dulges In this characteristic bit of bra
vado:
Great papers in the North and West
may abandon the Afro-American people
70 liz IucICICS8 Ol&DOklBtu Oh southern
white men. the Republican Party may
abandon the race as 1t has done since
1875. from base cowardtce on the one
hand and commercial greed on the other;
but God lives. and the great Christian
heart which controls In the affairs Of
this country will yet speak in thunder
tones as 1t did in the anti-slavery contest
to the political artful dodgers and money
changers who have secured control of
public AFFAIRS unaer false pretenses. We
do not despair as long as there Is a fl-
ture. for Truth has nothing to fear as
long as 1t IL left free to fight Error. But
the race should not deceive itself. The
crisis which we predicted twenty years
ago is upon US. A campaign of educa-
ton, not unlike tlat begun by Benjamin
Lundy ad William Lloyd Garrison in
1915. confronts us. And we shall have
God on our side, because we shall fight
for the right.
That. we presume. is primarily intended
for the Republicans and we do not feel
called on to defend them from a member
of their own Party. for We are not sure
that they do not deserve what The Age
says Of them. They made the negro a
free man and took him to their bosoms.
coddling him as long as they could make
anything out of him and then dropping
him. Let them tight 1t out. but while
we read such illusions. we are inclined
to agree with The Ages other statement