Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1883-1938, 1904-04-09


hundred millions Of India, that, through
the Pilgrim Fathers, in America first
Tell on its knees. AMI then ON the
Aboriginees,' cruelty robbing them of
their lands. that laid its hands ON Aus
tralia and drove its inhabitants from it's
coasts; that has almost wiped out the
native population of New Zealand:-a
race, the vices Of whose civilization have
deceminated, yea, almost destroyed, the
Sandwich Islanders; race that has now
It's hand on Africa benefcent and
clvilizing hand, but a mailed hand: a
naughty and imperial race which.
though it comprises only one-fifteenth
part of mankind, now rules one third of
the earth's surface, and one fourth of all
its people.
This is the race with which the Negro
of America stands face to face, and
must wrestle, hand to hand, and brain
with brain, in working out its destiny.
No race ever faced a sterner problem"
The above is caustic condemnation
of the righteousness of the Saxon race
He tells the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth.
He continued;
Mr.. Blair, of Virginia, an ex-Oon-
tederate, ten years ago, with candor and
truthfulness, thus emphasized the sit
uatlon: What is the Southern problem.
and it's solution? The southern problem
is the settled determination of the
whites to ignore the equality of Negroes.
deprive them of rights, keep them i'm
absolute subsection, and suppress them
as men and citizens. Coercion is ruin
ing the South
''Think of their environment, And.
in the long run, this means more than
heredity. Thoughtful Southern men
see alarming elements in the situation
The masses of the people are being
gradually crowded down into the Black
Belt, away from civilizations down into
the dark deltas of the Mississippi, and
into horrible swamps of Arkansas, and
into the bayous of Louisiana, where
even the light is darkness, and where
lien laws bind a million to the soil in
practical peonage. These millions of
the race are SO cowed down by enforced
servility to the white man. who has the
wealth and power in his hands; so cut
off are these masses from all knowledge
of the world and civic aspiration and
rational religious life, that the danger
is that as mere tillers of the soil, or hire
Hpgs of men, all hope for q competency.
be crushed out of them, till they cry
out in the hopelessness of despair, in the
language of Mrs. Browning's Runaway
Slave
81 am black, 1 am black, but God
made me they say
But IL He did so. smiling back, He
must have cast his work away
Under the feet of His white creatures
with look of scorn,
That dusky features might be trod-
den again to clay"
The above statement is a word picture
of existing conditions.
He tells of the needs of the Negro and
does it in the following graceful Ian
guage.
The Negro race, facing such con-
ditions, needs body of educated men
as their leaders and helpers. Men in
touch with the higher life of the world;
men who know history; men who know
Of the struggles aud triumphs of oppres-
sed peoples in past ages; men who have
intelligent trust and strength of pur-
pose, based on a large knowledge of the
part which Providence has played in
the destinies of nations and peoples;
large-minded, vIrile men, who can feel
with Gladstone, in crucial hours, exult.
ing over opponents, even in defeat:
Time and almighty truth are on our
side; by their aid we will eventually
carry the banner of triumph unstained,
without rent or latter, through the
Storm men who can hold aloft tn
torch of hope, lighted on the flaming
altar of the worlds undying literature
of liberty; men who, in the struggle for
human rights and freedom can sing;
Milton is for us, Shakespeare is for
us,
Burns, Shelley, they speak from
their graves
men who, in the fiery ordeal through
which every race that has risen to power
has had to march, have singing in their
souls the spirit of Wordsworth, in his
ode TO Touissant L'Overture:
Thou hast pnwers that shall work
for thee,
Air, earth and skies;
There is not II breathing of the
common wind
That can forget thee;
Thou asst great allies;
The friends are emulation, agon-
les prayers and love,
And mans uuconquerable mind.
And again:
ut is the man of courage and faith
a courage not ply steal but moral; a
high souled courage in which the sense
of Immortality Is strong; "a courage, the
very sinews of which have been wrought
into steel bv his mental wrestllngs with
the mighty problems of thought and
destiny, forced OH him in the higher life
and education-that will sustain the Ne
gro in the hard and strenuous battle Ter
che higher lie, for civil rights and polir;-
cal en;ranchisement aud for industrial
emancipation.
" Line DIN may break chains that fet-
ter the feet and enslave the body, but
the emancipation of mind and spirit
must be wrought out by the Negro for
himself. Aud the emancipators of the
human race, the mighty men VINO nave
wrought OUT civil and religious freedom
for oppressed peoples, have come Lot
from the gymnasia OF the workshops, !
not from the preparatory or industrial