The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-06-07
RELIGIOUS ASPECT
 OF RACE PROBLEM
Prominent Preacher Brings Out Many Important Points
WHY SOUTH IS SENSITIVE
Rev pr. W. W. Landrum of Atlanta Voices the Conscience of the south--WhIte Supremacy
 Duty Owed to God.

Atlanta, June 5.-There Is no man who is better qualified to speak for the re- ligious element of the south than the Rev. Dr. W. W. Landrum, pastor of the First Baptist church of this city, and there is no part of the country where re- ligious influence is stronger or more far reaching than in the southern states.
 Dr. Landrum, in speaking upon the ne- gro problem, may fairly ana truthfully be said to voice the conscience of the re- ligious south on that vexed problem. Himself a Georgian by birth. his father and his grandfather before him were distinguished representatives of the pull pit In this state.
 As to the negro question Dr. Landrum has not only the advantage of intimate touch with the sentiment on the subject which emanates from all that is best and most conscientious In the southern social fabric, but he has also had special opportunities for studying the question in it's educational aspect. He is chair man of the executive board of Spellman college an institution endowed largely by northern money and devoted exclu- sivey to the education of young negro women. He Is a graduate of Brown Uni versity and is now president of the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.
 Under the title of "A Voice From the Silent South,' Dr. Landrum prepared es- pecially for the Sun the following pre- sentation views on the question of the negro:
 Sanity on the negro question is com- ing. There is now less heat and more light on the problem. Optimism, on the part of the negrophiles, vanishes after a generation of facts. Pessimism, cherish ed by negro phobists, Is proved to be a nightmare.
 'Melorism marks the present temper of the sober thinkers. The silent south, the men and women in this section who do most for the negro and say least about 1t, are more hopeful of the future than ever before
 This element are not gnostics on the one hand, or the doctrinaires who pro- fess to be able to forecast the outcome of the race during the twentieth centu- ry. nor are they easy-going agnostics on the other. They belong to the Pauline class of seers. They are Merognostic They say We know in part and we pro- phesy in part
 
 or the other, one century or twenty cen turies to come, does not greatly concern Present duty is plain.
 By common consent. north and south he is today not so much the ward of the nation as the charity pupil of the south ern Christianity and patriotism. Politi- cally, as the recent decisions of the Su- preme court clearly demonstrated, the negro disappears Socially, whatever abortive attempts may be put forth in Washington to reverse racial instincts the negro is universally shut out of An glo-Saxon homes.
 'lndustrially, educationally religiously, the black man may expect to receive not only justice, but generosity at the hands of the silent south. The sectional con- science awakes to find a new door of op- portunity to do rational and helpful work for the inferior race now that his polit- ical and social subordination are preach ed by the saints, sages and statesmen of the country from one end to the other For the first time since reconstruction the silent south feels the force of noble oblige.
 All Americans, unless there be one in the highest place in the nation who con- spieuously dissents, having agreed to let the south settle the local relations of the negro according to its own code of ethics and time-honored conventionalty, the