Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1903-09-17
Women's Peril in the South.

John Temple Grave, Of Atlanta,
Ca, delivered an address on 1.-The
Problem of the Races" last week
before the forty-eighth convocation of
the University of Chicago. He said,
in part:
1.-TWO opposite, unequal and antag-
onistic race. are set side by side for
government and destiny. One of
these, by the record, is the strongest
race on earth the other, by the rec
ord, is the weakest race on earth.
One, a race whose achievements make
IN large part the history of the world;
the other, a race which in all It's an
nails has written no history, bullded
no monuments, made no books and
recorded no achievement, and whose
only progress has been from contact
with the stronger race. One, a race
proud, progressive, dominant and his
torically free; the other, race that
came out of centuries Of savsgery into
centuries of slavery, and was trans
planted in one tropical and unnatural
night from barbarlsm and slavery
into liberty and equality. One, a
live, vital, twentieth century race,
pulsing the hope and progress OF the
world; the other, race without a
record, undeveloped, unframed, but
lately slaves and at the utmost sew
enth century civilization.
There they are-master and slave,
civilized and half-civilized, strong and
weak, conquering and servile, twenti-
eth century and seventh century
1900 years apart-set by strange
and incompreheneible edict of states
manehip or Of passion, set by the Con-
stitution and the law, the weakest
race on earth side by side on equal
terms to bear an equal part in the
conduct and responsibility Of the
greatest Government the world ever
saw
at was an experiment without a
precedent in history and without a
promise in the annals Of man.
"The experiment has had 38 years
Of trial, backed by the power of the
Federal Government and by the sym
pathy of the world. 1t has failed.
From the beginning to the hour that
hods us it has failed. The races are
wider apart and more antagonistic
than they were in 1865. There is
less of sympathy and more Of tension
than the races have known since the
terrible days Of Reconstruction made
chaos in the South.
"The Fifteenth Amendment is prac-
tically repealed. In nearly every
State of his numerical hsbitstion the
negro is disfranchised under the forms
of law. In ali the States where his
ballot is menace to white suprem-
acy it is restrained. With all these
wears and all these forces at his back
there has been an utter failure to es-
tablish the negro in a satisfactory and
,elf-reliant position under the law.
Four decades after his emancipation,
he is, in point of fact, less freeman
and infinitely less citizen than he
was in 1868.
"The tumult Of the times about US
proclaims the continued existence and
the unreconciled equations Of the
problem that be makes; and in the
common Judgment Of mankind the
legend Failure" is written large and
lowering above the tottering fabric Of
his civil rights.
"And yet the experiment goes on.
"In land Of light and liberty, in
an age of enlightenment and law, the
women of The South are prisoners to
danger and to fear. While your wom-
en- may walk from suburb to suburb
and from township to township, with
out escort and without alarm, there is
not woman Of the South-wife or
daughter-who would be permitted or
who would dare to walk at twilight
unguarded through the residence
streets of a pOpulOus town or to ride
the outside highways at midday.
THE terror of the twilight deepens
with the darkness, and in the rural
regions every farmer leaves his home
with apprehension in the morning and
thanks God when he comes from the
fields at evening to find all well with
the women of his home. For behind