Light Ahead for the NegroJohnson, Edward A. (Edward Austin)
Science
Light Ahead for the Negro
Johnson, Edward A. (Edward Austin)
African Americans; United States -- Race relations
“John Temple Graves’ address in Chicago contains more errors and
inconsistencies about the so-called Negro problem than any recent
utterance on the subject.
“He says that God has established the ‘metes and bounds’ of the Negro’s
habitation, but he never pointed out a single mete nor a single bound.
He says, ‘Let us put the Negro kindly and humanely out of the way;’ but
his vision again faded and he never told us where to put the darkey.
“If Mr. Graves’ inspiration had not been as short as a clam’s ear and
he had gone on and given us the particular spot on the globe to which
we should ‘kindly and humanely’ kick the darkey ‘out of the way,’ then
we might have asked, who will take the darkey’s place in the South? Who
will plow and hoe and pick out 12,000,000 bales of cotton? Who will
sing in the rice fields? Who will raise the sugar cane? Who will make
our ’lasses and syrup? Who will box and dip our turpentine? Who will
cut and saw the logs, and on his body bear away the planks from our
thousands of sawmills? Who will get down into the mud and swamps and
build railroads for rich contractors? Who will work out their lives in
our phosphate mines and factories, and in iron and coal mines? Who will
be roustabouts on our rivers and on our wharves to be conscripted when
too hot for whites to work? Who will fill the darkey’s place in the
Southern home?
“Oh, I suppose Mr. Graves would say, we will get Dutch and Poles, and
Hungarians, Swedes or other foreigners; or we will ourselves do all the
work of the Negro. To me this is neither possible nor desirable.
“The South don’t want to kick the Negro out, as I understand
it. The separation of the Negro from us now--his exile, _nolens
volens_--would be a greater calamity to us than his emancipation or his
enfranchisement ever has been. We need him and he needs us.
“Mr. Graves says that God never did intend that ‘opposite and
antagonistic races should live together.’
“That seems to me to be as wild as to say that God intended all dogs to
stay on one island; all sheep on another; all lions on another; or to
say that all corn should grow in America and all wheat in Russia.
“Mr. Graves cites no ‘thus saith the Lord’ to back up his new
revelation that antagonistic races must live separated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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