The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-07-23
IS THE BLACK MAN
 SUPERIOR TO THE WHITE?

son of racial progress, doctor, it is in order to note the fact that you ac- credit the negro with only thirty years of freedom. Why. doctor. the negro race, as a race. has enjoyed just as long a period of freedom as the Celts. the Latins, the Anglo-Ssxons and the Slavs.
 l The black race in Africa was as | free as the Indian race in North Amer ica
 During the thousand years in which the whites were painfully creating the I civilization which you now enjoy, your race, in its native home. was doing pretty much the same things which the red race was doing In North America. Your people were running about in the woods, naked. eating raw | meat. eternally at war-tribe with tribe-steeped in ignorance, vice and superstition, with an occasional lapse into human sacrifice and cannibalism Your race. as a race, Is free now | in Africa, as it has, been since the dawn of history-where Is the civilza- | tion which it worked out for itself? It does not exist, it never did exist. The negro has been absolutely una | ble to develop as race when left l to himself. Nowhere, ns any time. has he developed a system of agriculture, or commerce, or manufacture, made headway in mining or engineering, or conceived a system of laws, institutions of State, religious organization, or worked out a political ideal. Never has | he created a literature, or developed original capacity for the fine arts. His | foot has never even crossed the thres- hold of the world of creative painting. sculpture music, architecture. Into the l realism of science, in the domain of ' IL sl tr.. !, n of mental power where the human mind grapples with vast problems. ma terial and spiritual, the problems of time and eternity, the negro has never entered. No word has ever fallen from his lips that was not the echo of what some white man had already said He has sometimes put his foot in the whites mans track, but that is the best he has ever donc.
 Compare this initiative race with the great Latin stock-a stock from which sprang Rienzi and Garibaldi. Cavour and Napoleon. Da Vinci and Calico. Savonarola and Leo the Tenth, Titan and Bellini. Raphael and Mchaelan- gelo.
 The Latin race. whether in Spain, Italy or South America, has developed system of agriculture, finance, com
  ion, government-has created litera- ture. laws and institutions of state. has evidenced capacity in science and art.
 The negroes superior to the Latins? Heavens above!
 During the thousand years which Doctor Washington says that the Lat ins have done less than the negroes have done in thirty. Spain rose into world power. dominated the European Continent. shook England's throne to its base. broke the Turkish scimitar in the great sea fight of Lepanto, evolved a splendid literature, reached the highest development in the fine arts. launched Columbus upon his voy- age into unknown seas to test the suggestion of another Latin-Tosca- nelliJand thus took the first daring step in that marvellous chapter of dis covery whose sober facts are grander and stranger than Romance.
 Has the learned doctor ever studied the history of Mexico-the Latin coun- try south of us?
 Since foreign yoke was thrown off and Mexico found herself" what county has made nobler progress?
 The negro in Santo Domingo has had a hundred years of freedom; Mexico scarce half many; yet com pare the Mexico of today with the Santo Domingo of today. Left to themselves. the Latins of Mexico have built up a magnificent civilization.
 Left to themselves, the negroes of Santo Domingo have destroyed what the French had already built.
 In Mexico the conditions get bet ter, year after year.
 In Santo Domingo conditions grow worse, year after year.
 If the learned doctor wants to make a study in contrasts. let him first read Where Black Rules White" by Hesketh Prichard. and tim read The Awakening of a Nation," by Charles F. Lummis. and I venture to say that some of his cocky selfcomplacency as to the superiority of the negroes over the white will ooze out of him.
 As to Italy-can 1t be that Italy has done less in thousand years than the negroes have done in thirty?
 The greatest man that ever lived was of Italian extraction. Taine says that Napoleon was true Italian in character and intellect. If that be true, then the two greatest men the world ever saw were Latins. Where ever the civilized man lives today this environment, his thoughts, his ideals. his achievements are more or less in fluenCed by the llIe ana WOrk or Cae- sar and Napoleon. ~..-..
 If any two men may be said to have created the material modern world, those two Latins did 1t.
 If modern Europe is any one man, 1t is Napoleon. His laws, schools-soc- ial, political, financial, educational in- stitutions-have wrung from rulers ever since the homage of imitation.
 In literature how illustrious is Italy?
 I4fr ral, h4 70 lumbus of a new spiritual atmosphere, the discoverer of modern culture"
 It was he who broke away from monkish medievalism, created the hu- manistic impulse, treated man as a rational being apart from the logical determination" modernizing litera- ture.