The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-04-26

tempting reward that can be offered 10
the natural instincts of a people-the
reward of political power.
The incentive of the educational qualifi-
cation is going to build up the black race;
but build it up toward stronger desire
and greater efficiency for ruling the
country in which it lives. All upbuilding
tends toward that. Some of us may sup
noes that we can upbuild the negroes in
manliness and still retain them as willing
subservients and political slaves, who
when thew are in a majority in a State,
will not claim the rights which under
our system belong to that majority. But
in that we are doomed to disappoint-
ment. We have rather heavy negro
nroblem now. when more than three
fourths t,f the blacks cannot read or
write. Wait and see what Will happen
when hree-fourths of them are able to
read and write, and are carrying on the
same business occupations that we are
now carrying on.
We hear much of the Negroes crimes
against the white people, and of our
crimes against the negro, of burning him
to death at the stake intimidation and
insult. But there is one great crime or
mistake. whichever you choose to call it,
at the bottom of all, and that one great
mistake controls everything else. When
the negro was brought here, when too
utterly diverse and irreconcilable races
were placed to live together in the same
country, then the original crime or mis-
take was committed from which all the
other crimes and mistakes flow, and from
which they will keep on flowing forever.
We have had, perhaps, better success
with our black problem than was to be
expected, but after all we are failing in
it. We freed the black man from do
nestle slavery, and that was right.
Then we gave him the right to vote, and
that seemed to be right. But we have
been obliged to withdraw the right to
vote. and we do not yet realize the full
meaning of that failure. When we en-
ancipated the black man from domestic
| slavery we also emancipated him from
/ political slavery by giving him the right
| to vote. Now we have put him back
again into political slavery. We have
gone half way back in our tracks.
The black and white are now farther
apart than in the days of slavery or i'm
medately after the Civil War. The negro
/ is being given everything separate and
apart from the white-separate schools,
separate churches, separate cars, and as
more of them become educated and
wealthy, they will have separate hotels
SEPARATION THE SOLUTION.
AS the process of separation advances
and reaches separate hotels let us pray
night and day that the providence of God
will show us how to give the black man
a separate territory or country 10 live
in, and end the whole cursed business
which has been nothing but injustice
cruelty inequality, wrong and a strain to
our institution ever since that Dutch
ship brought the first cargo of slaves to
Virginia.
AS to giving the negroes a separate
country to themselves, that is an old and
apparently hopeless remedy which was
discussed many years ago, and one is
often told in the South that if we were
to offer to the negro the whole State of
Texas or tho whole of England to have
all to himself he would not take it, He
would prefer to stay with the white man,
hang on to his skirts, initiate him and
try to force equality with him. There is
d great ucdi VI CIV iucHItl VI Illlos ali Ltlu-
ing to show that the negro we have here
is parasitical and wants to live on the
superior race Fred Douglass is reported
to have once said: 1--WE love the white
man, and will remain with him. We like
him too we'll to leave him. but we must
possess with him the rights of free
DOM
While this strong parasitical tendency
of the negro undoubtedly exists and is
only too evident in the South, l am in
clned to think that it is altogether the
result of slavery. l believe that educa-
zion, self-support and the acquisition of
property are destroying it, 1t is unna-
tural for any race to be parasitical I'M
less it has sunk to the lowest depths.
/ cannot understand how race can be
as parasitical as the negroes seem to be
unless it is the artificial result of arbi-
trary restraint and serfdom lasting
; through many generations. 1 believe that
present conditions are wearing it off and
that in the end the negro will be no more
parastical than other people or than we
were when We fought in 1876 to get away
from England's apron strings.
But as at present constituted with his
pdi dSAhlAdi ltuutAIy AOlilbihtu VIII las
shiftlessness, bad manners, oyerconsci-
BUSINESS of freedom and desire to domi-
nate where he is in the majority, the
situation in the South is one which ]
think the white people endure with more
patience and forbearance than would be
shown by any other people in the world
They naturally felt very uncomfortable
when President Roosevelt invited Booker
. T. Washington to luncheon, with the i'm
plieation that the whites in the South
must cultivate social equality with the
negro. Not that the President intended
such an application; far from it, His
motive was to recognize the sterlne
worth of a man who born a slave had
raised himself to an educational equal.
ty with white men. He did not realize
what his act would mean in the Soutl
; to white and black.
| would take pleasure in recognizing
merit in an educated negro. | believe
Southern white men would also TAX,
pleasure in it; but situated as they art
they cannot yield to such feeling If