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
“What God is it whose mind Mr. Graves is thus revealing? Surely it
can’t be the God of the Bible--for He allowed the Jews to live 400
years among the Egyptians; then over 500 years in and out of captivity
among the Canaanites; then in captivity nearly 100 years in Babylon;
then under the Romans; then sold by the Romans; and from then to now
the Jews--the most separate and exclusive of peoples--God’s chosen
people of the Old Covenant--they have lived anywhere, among all
people. Surely Mr. Graves is not revealing the mind of the God to whom
the original thirteen colonies bowed down in prayer; the God of the
Declaration of Independence and the God of George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson. For how many different races were planted in this new world?
English, Dutch, Swedes, Quakers, Puritans, Catholics, French Huguenots,
the poor, the rich--more antagonism than you can find between ‘Buckra’
and the ‘nigger.’ Yet all these antagonisms, such as they were, did not
prevent our forefathers from uniting in one country, under one flag,
in the common desire for political freedom, moral intelligence and
individual nobility of character.
“Under Mr. Graves’ God every colony would have become a petty nation,
with a Chinese wall around it. Mr. Graves’ inconsistencies reached a
climax when he said in one breath, ‘I appeal for the imperial destiny
of our mighty race,’ and then in the next breath says, ‘let us put the
Negro out.’ Is it any more imperial to boss the Filipino abroad than it
is to boss the Negro at home?
“The God of the Bible commands peace among races and nations, not war;
friendship, not antagonism and hatred. Did not Paul, a Jew, become a
messenger to the Gentiles? Did he not write the greater part of the New
Testament of Christianity while living in Gentile and pagan Rome? Did
not Christ set example to the world when He, a Jew, at Jacob’s well,
preached His most beautiful sermon to a poor Samaritan woman? Winding
up that great sermon by telling the woman and the world that not the
place of his abode and worship, but the good character of man--‘in
spirit and in truth’--was the only true worship. And that is the only
exclusive place whose metes and bounds God has set for any man to live,
‘in spirit and in truth.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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