: Shadow and Light An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century by Gibbs Mifflin Wistar Washington Booker T Commentator - African Americans African American Writers

@FreeBooks

Posted in: #FreeBooks #FreeBooksIndia #FreeBooksApp #gg

Vote Up Vote Down   0 Reactions

Login to give Reaction!

pit as a Presbyterian minister. The stress of reconstruction and obvious necessity for ability in secular matters induced him to enter official life. Naturally indomitable, he more than fulfilled the expectations of his friends and supporters by rare ability as a thinker and speaker, with unflinching fidelity to his party principles. I found him at Tallahassee, the capital, in a well-appointed residence, but his sleeping place in the attic contracted, and, as I perceived, considerable of an arsenal. He said that for better vantage it had been his resting place for several months, as his life had been threatened by the "Ku Klux," that band of midnight assassins whose deeds of blood and carnage darken so many pages of our national history, and was the constant terror of white and black adherents to the national Government's policy of enfranchisement. He was hopeful of better conditions in Florida, and introduced me to Governor Hart. Both urged me to locate in the State, promising me their support. I highly appreciated the affection of the one and the proffered friendship of the other. But the feeling paramount was that my brother had "won his spurs" by assiduity and fidelity through the scathing and fiery ordeal of those troublesome times; that it would ill become me to profit or serenely rest beneath the laurels he had won. It was the last interview or sight of my brother. Subsequently after a three hours' speech, he went to his office and suddenly died of apoplexy.

I continued my tour of observation, and, having been appointed a delegate from Ohio to a national convention to be held in Charleston, South Carolina, I attended. It was the first assembly of the kind at which I had been present since emancipation. I had hitherto met many conventions of colored men having for their object the amelioration of oppressive conditions. This gathering was unlike any similar meeting. The deliberations of the convention presented a combination of a strong intellectual grasp of present needs and their solution, with much uninformed groping and strife for prominence, features of procedure I have observed not confined to Negro assemblies.

The majority were unlettered, but earnest in their mental toiling for protection to life and equality before the law. Hitherto the purpose had been to make earnest appeals to the law-making power for such legislation as would abolish slavery and award equal justice--the first supported by the national conscience, but mainly as a military necessity, was a "fait accompli;" the other had been legislatively awarded, but for its realization much more was necessary than its simple identification on the statute books of a nation, when public sentiment is law. More than a third of a century has now passed, enabling a view more dispassionate and accurate of the conditions surrounding the freedmen directly after emancipation and the instrumentalities designed for fitting him for citizenship.

It is not surprising, neither is he blameworthy, if in the incipiency of joy for freedom bestowed he could not properly estimate the factors necessary to form an homogenous citizenship. The ways for two centuries had been divergent paths. The dominant claiming and exercising, as an heirloom, every civil and political right; the subordinate, with knowledge the most meager of their application or limits, by compulsion was made to concede the claim. Neither is it singular that participation in the exercise of these rights by the freedman should have created a determined opposition in a majority of the former, who claimed their fitness to rule as the embodiment of the wealth and intelligence , and would have at an early date derived a just "power from the consent of the governed," did not history record the unnecessary and inhuman means resorted to to extort it, the obliquity of which can be erased only by according him the rights of an American citizen. Mutual hostility, opposition on the one hand to the assumption and exercise of these rights, and consequent distrust by the freedman, often fostered by unscrupulous leaders, have been alike detrimental to both classes, but especially so to the Negro, for his constant need in the Southland is the cordial friendship and helping hand of "his brother in white." He deserves it for his century of unrequited labor in peace and in war for fidelity to the tender ties committed to his care. Anti-revolutionist in his nature, he will continue to merit it and possibly save the industrial life in the South in the coming conflict of capital and labor.

That, as a class, they are in antagonism to the prevailing political sentiment is the legitimate result of the manner of their emancipation and a commendable gratitude and kinship for the party through which they obtained their freedom. But Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall of Rome," has said that "gratitude is expensive," and so the Negro has found it, and is beginning to echo the sentiment and would gladly hail conditions and opportunity where he could, after thirty-five years of blood and fidelity, be less partisan and more fraternal politically, conscious his united affiliation with his early alliance, and consequent ostracism of the opposition has given him a "hard road to travel." Commendable as has been his devotion, he finds commendation a limited currency and not negotiable for the protection and benefits that should accompany the paladium of citizenship. While his treatment by the Democratic party has made a continuous political relation compulsory, it is unfortunate; for the political affinity of no other class of American citizens is judged by the accident of birth. It is detrimental to the voter whose proclivity is thereby determined. Wherever the Negro vote, in the estimation of any party, is an uncertain quantity, its value as a factor will have increased, consolidated, and in numbers controlling, it has been considered a menace and vigorously eliminated.

This view has to an extent an auxiliary in certain Republican circles, where it is avowed that the party could get in the South a large accession of hitherto Democratic voters, giving it a commanding influence, but for its colored contingent, which is averred to be repellant. There may be difference of opinion as to the merit of such conclusions and the fitness of their rehearsal "to the marines;" but none as to the measure of welcome of those that hold them. However, given that they are correct. Self-respect and a desire to help the old party can go hand in hand, and when possible in a manly way, room should be made for such anticipated accession.

There is another phase of present conditions that deserves, and I have no doubt has claimed, attention. It is the emphatic trend of the national leaders of the party to conciliate the hitherto discordant elements in the South in the interest of national harmony, an object lesson of which was presented by the late President on his Southern tour. But few years have elapsed since no man seeking a renomination on the Republican ticket would have put on and worn a Confederate badge. This President McKinley did, receiving the indiscriminate applause and the concurrence of his own party. Such an act, which is not only allowable, but commendable, would formerly have been political suicide. This being a movement in the house of his political alliance, it is up to the Negro to consider which is his best interest, should the olive branch of political friendship be extended by those from whom he receives his chief support. Under like conditions, his white brother would have no hesitancy.

There is yet another phase which indicates the Negro in jeopardy on industrial lines. A few years hence the South will have ceased to be chiefly agricultural. Mills for cotton, iron, and other factories will have dotted hilltop and valley, and with them will come the Northern operative with his exclusive "unions" and trade prejudice, shutting the doors of mills and foundries against him. To meet this scramble for favor from the wealth and intelligence of the Southland--the ruling factors--he should avail himself of every appliance for fostering harmony and co-operation along all the lines of contact. In slavery and in his subsequent journey in freedom he has suffered much. But what nation or people have escaped that ordeal who have made mark in the world's history? There is now prospective unfriendly legislation in several Southern States; also the lowest of the whites, as they deem occasion may require, go, often undisturbed, on shooting and lynching expeditions.

The problem that continues to force itself for solution is, How the innocent are to receive immunity from these outrages or a fair trial, when accused of crime. These being under the purview of State sovereignty, the Federal arm is not only powerless, but there exists no Northern sentiment favoring drastic means for their correction. Hence it is evident that relief can only come from those who fashion the sentiment that crystallizes into law. But with the bitter is mingled the sweet; much of his advancement along educational and material lines is due to the liberality of the white people of the South, who, it has been computed, have contributed one hundred millions of dollars since emancipation by taxes and donations for his education, and there are many evidences that the best thought of the South is in line with Negro employment and his educational advancement in the belief that the more general the intelligence the greater the State's progress, morally and materially. This conviction was emphatically expressed by an overwhelming negative vote in the Arkansas Legislature recently, where a measure was introduced to abandon him to his own taxable resources for education. The ratio of his moral and material product will be the measure of his gratitude for this great boon. For, after all, many of "our great dangers are not from without."

I replied I had thought the highest ideal of patriotism was adherence to measures materially as well as politically that were for the benefit of the whole people.

He said: "I know your party preach that they have a monopoly of wisdom; but the fact is the wisest statesmen of the world are divided in opinion as to the benefits claimed for the leading policies of your party. But how do they benefit you, as a dependent class? Your immediate need is employment and good educational facilities. You should be less sentimental and more practical. You may honestly believe in a protective tariff, having for its object the protection of the American working-man, but does it help you when you know that the doors of mills, foundries, and manufactories are shut against you? As to the currency, you are at a disadvantage when you attempt to antagonize the financial views of your employers.

"It reminds me of an incident," he continued, "in my native town in Virginia, not long after reconstruction. There had been a drought and short crop, succeeded by a pretty hard winter. My father, whose politics, you may well judge, I being 'a chip of the old block,' without soliciting money or favor, threw open his cellar, wherein was stowed many bushels of sweet potatoes; invited all the destitute to come. It is needless to say they came. In the spring Tobey, the Negro minister of the Baptist Church--a man illiterate, but with much native sense--after morning service, said: 'Brethren, there's gwine to be a 'lection here next week, and I wants you all to vote in de light dat God has gin you to see de light, but I spects to vote wid de taters.' Now, this may seem ludicrous, but Tobey, in that act, was a fit representative of the white man in politics--for every class of American citizens except the Negro divide their vote and put it where to them personally it will do the most good."

Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg

(0)

Login to post a comment!