The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1914-07-12
An Ardent ApostIe of Uplift for the
American Negro.

1t is a grotesque title that Mrs. l.. II.
HAMMOND has chosen for her earnest
and eloquent appeal for the elevation by
education of the negro race in America,
In Black and white (Flemlng II. Revell
Company; but the author. member OF
a one time slave owning family in the
South, has happy faculty OF clear
statement and a first hand knowledge OF
the nature and needs OF the black
people that go far toward counteracting
a certain homiletic sentimentality that
characterizes her plea.
The day when Liberian or other Afri-
can colonization could be talked abeut
with sense has gone by. The colored
race. injected into the American social
compound through no wish or will OF its
own. brought hither in slavery, adjusted
into the circumstantial scheme and then
set free, poses a problem not, as Mr..
James A. billiard says In the Introduction,
matter for blind and hopeless pessi-
m!sm or weak and watery optimism, but
challenge TO fact facing Statesman
ship" and hard practical sense: problems
inevitable, imperative. For all her
yearnng after a sociological ideal Mrs.
Hammond sees the means to It's realiZa-
ton in economic readjustment, better
housing conditions and practical educa-
ton. There is no laissez faire in her
economies: she wants to enlist law
makers and cent. per cent. capitalists
as we'll as philanthropists and mission
aries. She makes the mistake. COM
mon enough with idealists, and espe-
cially in times when departure from
established forms IL the fashion. Of
urging the accomplishment by gentle
means of good things actually attain
able only in the slow course of nature
or by application of revolutionary
force.
A true Southerner, mono the less n
true American nationalist, speaks in
these pages. There Is a Southern con-
verse to the Northern proposition that
the war was not fought for abolition
but for the preservation of the Union:
The South did not fight for slavery. but
for the right to secede. "its consttu-
tional right to get out of the Union
| when It no longer desired TO stay in it,"
and the author thinks II would need a
pile driver to hammer that fact into
Northern heads. The war, after four
years OF fighting and half a century of
| fighting over, Is at last really ended,
| the matter that actually engages the
| feeling of this Southern writer is the in
| terruption by the Northern invasion
in the war and in Reconstruction Of
| the South's development of "a con-
science about slavery" 1t was "a true
social conscience in the germ" Thou
sands OF slave owners were looking for
ward TO emancipation by the South
Itself. The conscience" of the North
| about the negroes was "vlcarious";
i a.. - 1.
healthy and bade fair to be etiicacious
| In remedy. After the war the South
was child hurt by the injustice Of its
big brother. Reconstruction days left a
SHOCK deep in the South's nerves to
this day. Much which the North calls
by a harsher name is "A resurgence OF
an almost physical hysteria," But now
the negro problem" cannot longer he
regarded as an excrescence on South
ern life. a menace to American civiliza-
ton. The American negro has travelled
| far in the last fifty years.
In sociologic symbolism. the poverty
line" and the color line" must not be
confused. The burden is not peculiar
to this land; all the world over. people
living under such conditions as those
in which the bulk of our negro popula-
ton Is placed are affected by their en-
vironment, and react upon II. just as the
American negro does. Poverty and ig-
norance are no respecters of social diff
ferentiation. But race consciousness is
not merely ineradicable. 1t Is desir-
able thing, 1t is a beneficial necessity:
Life does not develop toward uniform
ity hut toward richness of variety In a
unity OF beauty and service. In the
light Of natural law the ultimate phys-
cal oneness of the human races becomes
as chimerical as the disappearance of
the rich diversity of winged forms IN
favor of an Ultimate Bird" Racial diff
ferences are not marks of superiority
and inferiority. The white race needs
to lose not its regard for racial purity
and differentiation but Its prejudice
and the black race needs to cherish its
entity. with faith in its own fitness for
some peculiar Service which it, and II
alone, can render in richest measure 10
the great Brotherhood of Man" AL
though she does not say so, the author
would probably indorse as q motto for