The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1905-07-26

piano and Verdi's I'll Trovatore," but
does that entitle the negroes to class
themselves with the Italian composer.
My thought is this the negro, assist
ed in every possible way by the whites
is copying the ways and learning the
arts of the white man; but the fact
he can learn to read the white mans
book does not make him The equal OF
the white race which produced the
book. The fact that he may learn
from us how to practice law or medi-
cine does not make him equal to the
white rece which created the code of
laws and the science of medicine. 1t
may have required thousand years
for us to learn that which we can
teach him in one year, but the point
is that the negro, in his native home,
had just as much time and oppO Ortun-
ity to evolve a civilization as we had,
and he did not do it.
Let me repeat to you, doctor the
unvarnished truth for it may do you
good:
The advance made by your race iu
America is the reflection OF the white
man's civilization. Just that and
nothing more. The negro lives in the
light of the white mans civiization
and reflects part of that light.
He initiates an example kept before
his eyes; copies models never out of
sight; echoes tqe words the white man
utters; patterns after the manners
and the methods Of. The whites around
him, ard thus reflects our civilization.
He has originated nothing, and if
the copy, the patterns, the example
were taken away he would fall back
as he did in Haiti.
He has never either evolved nor
sustained a civilization of his own.
Fortunately tor the Afro American,
he finds himself better situated thau
his brethren elsewhere. In Africa
and Haiti they have to scutfle for
themselves. Result barbarism.
In America he swells the ran ks Of
civilizations ad vancing army, and he
has to go forward. We not only sup
port him with aid of all sorts, we COM
pei him to live better life than he
would live in Africa or Haiti. This
compulsion is of two kinds, the fear
of punishment and the hope of reward
thus enlisting two of the most power
full passions of the human being.
1t should be significant to Doctor
Washington that the only portion OF
his race which has ever made any
development is that which has the
vast advantage of being sustained,
encouraged, taught, led and coerced
by the Whiles among whom they live.
Not long ago negro preacher
whose self. appreciation was as great
as that of Doctor Washington went
out to Liberia to subue the heather,
in the home of the negro race.
The heather were not subdued, but
the preacher was. He threw off his
store clothes, gave Whoop, gathered
up an armful of wives and broke for
the woods; the "Call of the Wild"
was too much for his newly soldiered
civilization.
Now, l don't mean to say that Doc
tor Washington would relapse, under
similar circumstances; but when |
hear him call his Lew race Afro
Americans and listen while he sober
ly tells them that they are superior to
the whites, I beg that he will remem-
ber his kin across the sea. his brethren
in Santo Domingo, the decadents of
Liberia, and the tens Of thousands OF
his race here in this country who de-
voutly believe in witch doctors, in
ghosts, in the Conjure bag, and in the
power of one negro to Judo another
by the mysterious but invincible
"Trick.n
Remember this, Doctor, education
is a good thing, but it never did, and
never will, alter the essentiol charac.
ter of man or a race.
OF course, doctor, if you think your
race the equal of ours, you have the
right to say it. It's a free country,
you know. But, really, you ought
not to "crowd the mons ey" by put
ting in claim for superiority.
Such claim does your race no good.
1t may do them harm. 1t may
cultivate spirit of truculent self-as-
sertion which even your warmest ad-
mirers, north and south, might find
it hard to tolerate,
In the History of Civilization"
Buckle says:
"Above all this, there is far high
er movement; and as the tide rolls on,
now advancing, now receding, there
us,amid its endless AUCTIONS, one thing
the actions of bad men produce only
temporary evil, the actions of good
men only temporary good; and even
tually the good and the evil altogeth-
er subside, are neutralized by subse-
puent generations. absorbed by the
incessant movement of future ages.
But the discoveries of great men
never leave us; they are immortal,
they contain those eternal truths
which survive the shock of empires,
out live the struggle of rival creeds
and witness the decay Of successive
religions. All these have their differ
ent measures and their different stand
ards; one set of opinions for one age,
another set for another They pass
away like dream; they are as fabric
of a vision, which leaves not rack
behind. The discoveries of genius
alone remain; it is TO them we owe all
that We now have, they are for all
ages and for all times; never young,
and never old, they bear the seeds of
their own life, they flow on in per-
ennial and undying stream; they are
essentially cumulative, and giving
birth to the additions which they sub
sequently receive, they thus influence
the most distant posterity, and after
the lapse of centuries produce more
effect than they were able to do even
at the moment of their PRONUNCIATION.
Noble lines!
And amid these "discoveries OF
genius" to which 1--WE owe all that we
now have" bsaring the seeds ofin-