The daily banner. (Cambridge, Md.) 1897-2008, 1912-10-09
CASTE VERSUS RACE.
Written By Miss Helen O'Sullivan
Dixon For The Brooklyn
Daily Eagle.

The recent suicide of the white
wife of the negro, Jack Johnson,
champion heavyweight pugilist prize
fighter, confronts the humanitarian
and thinker with a moral social
problem of gravest import. Tragic
and pathetic death. The obliga-
lions of caste, or race, are mex
orable; their revenges many and
sure. The mills of the gods grind
slow, but they grind exceeding
small"
He who covers the gulf of social
ostracism with one foot must later
trail over the other, fall into the
| waters of despair, drink of their
very great bitterness. What is the
cause of these constant falls of
| women?
First-The absence of home train
| ing, moral example. There are no
homes. The corrosive pressure to
make the daily bread, to keep
clean roof, has up-ripped the hearth
stone, the cubiculum.
Second-The unholy ambitions of
mothers, their Itching palm
Third-The Unsuitable vanity of
wives, their sinful extravaganza.
Fourth-The horrible laxity be-
| tween the sexes.
| Fifth--The appalling liberty given
to children.
| distinctions between the decent and
the indecent.
Seventh-The want of religious
faith.
Eighth-The open contempt, flag
rant violation Of the marriage vow.
| Where really lies the dividing line
between white and black? Study
and question, psychologically, BIZ
ologically, physiologically complex
The mulatto differs from the oc-
| toroom, the octoroom from the
quadroon. Many peoples of India,
China, Japan, Northern Asia, of
Tartar race, have resemblance with
the negro. The American Indian
has also. The Amazons of Cen
trail, South America, certain far
northern Russian districts, alike.
They are not negroes. Inhabitants
of the South Pacific, ct cetera,
Isles, have offspring, from their
own blood, hardly distinguishable
from the pure white. So, whichever
way the prober and analyst turns
he is beset by this ever complex,
this, tragic condition. The very
black negro of the southern slave
colonial time is the real negro in
that he has conserved the color
and characteristics of his African
pedigree. This type wants no half
breeds; the mother, like certain saw
age beasts, won't suckle an alien
cub. This negro is devoted to, is
proud of, his children. He looks
to others, casting upon them no slur.
He reverences, looks up to, is ad-
vised, guided by the gentle-woman
of tradition and caste. She is not
a being for. him to mutilate, de-
grade, ,soil. Exactly the contrary.
The negro, is a great artist. He is
I a true musician. He has tempera-
ment to supreme degree. He is
unhappy outside his kind. His love
feast, his watchings, his cake-walk,
| his prayer meetings, his coon and
possum hunt, his johnny hoe cake,
| his banjo compose his life and
creed. This very engaging, poeti-
cal and valuable specimen is dis
appearing fast. From present out
look its replacing is undesirable.
|, This suicide in question has to
do with the mating of real black,
! real white. Was such mating a
| marriage? such as is set forth by
the Scriptures? Was it not rather
a physical creation? Certain peo-
pie of Russia believe that the mu-
tual consent of both parties consti-
| tute a marriage; that the breaking
of said bond can only be by persona
| brutality of the man to the woman.
This death was particularly dis
tressing in that the woman once
knew holier, happier things. Men
| and women are so born, as to be
| only content, only happy when hav-
| ing the respect of their fellows. The
negro is particularly sensitive to
| this condition. Perhaps the good
God has so decreed this respect
that men and women may pause
at the dark frontier of transgres-
sion. His people openly insulted,
repudiated her There must have
been some who once, at least, at
the yuletide and birthday feast
broke her bread, lifted the wine
cup to her happiness and wifehood.
She was solitary, isolated, despised
a corpse living, yet dead, encased
into coffin of departed joys, where
in was no comrade lamp.
Her husband found ample recre-
alton elsewhere. He was, nor is,
stunned, insulted. He is followed,
toadied to, flattered. And so will
he be, by white and black, just so
long as his money lasts.
| She possessed neither the moral
nor physical power to hold this
man. Their abnormal relation as
CHASTITY spectre stood, like the
cherubim at the celestial gates,
forever between. He refused her
death call. So she dragged her
| self, having sacrificed for him all
| that life had of honor and happi-
| ness, to the brink of the black
| chasm of woman's degradation and