The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1906-05-08

Race.
In a remarkable article in the Cen
fury Magazine, incorporating the fruits
OF his observations on a recent trip
els Adams records how all his ideas
regarding the negro were suddenly
metamorphosed. The scales" he
writes fell from my eyes. found
myself most impressed by q realizin.
Of the appalling amount OF er-
ror and a in which We OF the United
States have INDUCED on this topic
The familiar statement that all the ne
gro needs is a chance he now regards ali
the sheerest OF ~delusion, due to pure
ignorance of rudimentary facts yet we
built upon it in reconstruction days as
upon a foundation stone-a self-eri-
dent truth
Omdurman, the commercial capitai
Of Black Africa. did much 10 help Mr..
Adams to this new understanding. il
brought close home to him what those
people were and how they lived" His
minds eye cOntrasted this metropolis
Of a race with the large centers of
other civilizations, with London, Paris.
New York. For races, he truly says,
must be measured by their visible
output; and as Omdurman is TO Lon
don, SO is the African to the Anglo
Saxon"
Tho rh01IOht u-0c CIR TUQCfInn Lon n
ing to other and more OmpleX ones.
The whole experience he found "un-
disputably educational" Mr.. Adams
in short, had met the African in his
home and he thus ~dispoSes Of him.
He is distinguished from the brute
creation only by the fact of articulate
speech, the use Of tools and weapons Of
the most primitive kind, and a know
ledge of the properties of fire. In such
matters as clothes, food or sanitation
he is in no essential respect better than
various kinds of animals. A savage,
he admits like nearly all known negro
savages of an initiative domestica-
ton"
If Africa is now to be opened up
by the white man
One thing seems clear: without
being reduced to servitude the infer
iOr race must be recognized in such.
and, in some way, SO dealt with.
Facts are facts, and only confusion
results when things essentially not
equal are dealt with on the basis OF
natural equality.T
Pondering further in the light Of
these new thoughts upon the negro
problem here in America, III author
reverts to the point that evidently
Impressed him mOst-the races appar-
ent disqualification for any real de-
veIopment. Among the Soudanese.
probably the finest type of the whole
African species, mot the slightest in
herent power Of development has as
yet come to the surface" And he
quotes with approval the significant die
tUm Of Baker, who lived with the Afri-
cans for years. "In no instance has
he evinced other than a reIrOgressiOH,
when once freed from restraint" The
situation in the Unied States is ad-
mittedly intricate. Mr.. Adams does not
attenlnt to solve it. But
meanwhile one thing is clear: the
work done by those who were in politi-
cal control at the close Of the Civil
War was work done in the utter i@-
Rorlnce of ~ethnOlOgic law and total
disregard of unalterable fact. Start
ing the movement wrong, it will be yet
productive of i~ncalculable injury to US
= : * EQUALITY results not from law, but
exists because things are in essential
like"
We have contended ourselves, as will
be seen, merely with making a few ex-
tracts from Mr.. Adams Illuminating
paper. Comment upon them is quite
superfous. Simply set donw here
they tell as plainly as language is cap
able of doing, how an ingrained. New
En- lander, saturated with the tradi-
to- and sentiments of the North
Of C-1lition days, has come to see,
after my years, that the Southern
view G. he negro was, after all, the
true one. The Ditiful part of this is,
obviously that the knowledge now At
last glittering to the North comes forty
years too late to help those States
upon whom, stricken helpless by the
ravages of war, were unloaded the
terrible injustice of reconstruction.
Mr.. Adams long ago endeared him.
self to Virginia by the sympathy and
understanding with which he wrote Of
Robert E. Lee and the rights of Sc
cession. His Century article may we'll
cement this kindly feeling. While nc
great credit is due a man, perhaps,
for merely seeing facts as they are and
setting them down as he sees, them,
yet it is not ~unbecoming to cherish a
feeling Of gratitude for one VINO
a feeling of gratitude for one who
has so CALAMITY brought a distinguish
ed name to the support of a cause that
lies so close to our daily lives. 1t is
not every man who, discovering al
most overnight that he and his whole
generation had been laboring steadily
in blind error, would have the candor
and courage to come forward and say
so.-Richmond Times-Dispatch.