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
“How idle to talk of shutting off each race, as it were, into pens like
pigs to fatten them. This penning process will neither fatten their
bodies, enlighten their minds nor ennoble their souls. Can Mr. Graves
tell us how much good the great Chinese wall has done for man? If he
can, he can tell us how much good will come to us by putting the darkey
out, and locking the door. Mr. Graves’ idea would reverse all the
maxims of Christianity. It would be much better for Mr. Graves’ idea
of the separation of antagonisms to be applied to different classes
of occupations, of persons that are antagonistic. For instance, the
dram-seller is antagonistic to all homes and boys and girls; therefore,
put all dram-sellers and dram-shops on one island, and all the homes
and boys and girls on another island, far, far away! Now there is your
idea, Mr. Graves! Then, again, all horse thieves, bank breakers, train
robbers, forgers, counterfeiters are antagonistic to honest men; so
here, we will put them all in the District of Columbia and all the
honest men in Ohio, and build a high wall between. All the bad boys we
would put in a pen; and all us good boys, we will go to the park and
have a picnic and laugh at the nincompoop bad boys whose destiny we
have penned up! Ah, Mr. Graves could no more teach us this error than
could he reverse the decree of Christ to let the wheat and tares grow
together until harvest. The seclusion or isolation of an individual
or a race is not the road that God has blazed out for the highest
attainments. The Levite of the great parable drew his robes close about
him and ‘passed by on the other side’--like Mr. Graves would have us
do the Negro, except that instead of passing him by we would ‘put him
behind us’--a mere difference of words. But the good Samaritan got down
and nursed the dirty, wounded bleeding Jew; sacrificed his time and
money to heal his wounds. Now that Levite must be Mr. Graves’ ideal
Southerner! He says the Negro is an unwilling, blameless, unwholesome,
unwelcome element. So was the robbed and bleeding Jew to the Levite;
but did that excuse the Levite’s wrong? Ought the Levite to have put
the groaning man ‘out of the way’ of his ‘imperial destiny’ by kicking
him out of the road?
“Nay, verily. By the time that Mr. Graves gets all of the antagonistic
races and all the antagonistic occupations and people of the world
cornered off and fenced up in their God-prescribed ‘metes and bounds,’
and fences them each up, with stakes and riders to hold them in--by
that time I am sure he will envy the job of Sysiphus. But there is a
grain of sober truth in one thing Mr. Graves says--that the Negro is
blameless.”
[4] NEGRO TORN FROM JAIL BY AN OHIO MOB.
SHOT DEAD ON THE GROUND, THEN HANGED FROM TELEGRAPH POLE--YELLS OF
LAUGHTER--FOR HALF AN HOUR THE SWINGING CORPSE SERVES AS A TARGET
FOR THE MOB WHICH POURS LEAD INTO IT, SHRIEKING WITH DELIGHT.
(_By the Associated Press._)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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