Samantha at the St. Louis ExpositionHolley, Marietta
General
Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition
Holley, Marietta
Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904 : Saint Louis, Mo.) -- Fiction
Mebby you'll tell me you don't see how you can help it, but Samuel, you
must try, for though there are here and there oasises in the gloom
lighted up by education and inteligence still there remains the great
multitude of your steel children that you ort to help, you ort to do as
well by them settin' in long rows right on your very doorstep as you're
doin' for them six thousand milds off. Sinners must be punished by law,
else what is law made for? Order must be kep', the helpless protected,
but you know, Samuel, that if some of the disgraceful seens that are
bein' enacted here right under your dear old nose took place amongst
your adopted Philippine children or even amongst your protejays in
Turkey or China you would send out a warship to once. I am sorry for
you, Samuel, and think the world on you, but faithful are the woonds of
a friend; you must hear the truth once in awhile or who knows what would
become on you, you might puff up with proud flesh and have to have an
operation, and I guess you will anyway before you git through with this
problem.
I presoom you want me to advise you what to do, only bein' a man you
hain't really wanted to come out and ask me. Josiah acts jest like that
lots of times.
So I'll say to you, I honor you, Samuel, for what you're doin' for these
foreign children, but I want you to do jest as much to home. I want you
to send teachers and found schools at your own expense; you're four
handed and able to do it. And Id'no but you had better buy land in their
own home you stole them from, buy a small farm for each one that wants
to go. Travelers say that in the Valley of the Nile, a country with
similar climate and soil to the south land where they wuz born, is an
unoccupied place big enough for each one to have a small farm of their
own. I want you, Samuel, to buy this land for 'em, take 'em back there
at your own expense, all that want to go. There are plenty of the young
and enterprising who would go full of the hope of foundin' a new
republic for their own race, where they can expand and grow strong away
from parlyzing influence of racial and social hatred.
There would be lots of 'em who wouldn't want to go, and why can't you,
Samuel, I'd say, buy them a little home here, for instance, on the vast
unoccupied area of Florida? Let 'em have the hull state if necessary;
let each family have their little piece of land, and then make 'em work
it; send teachers, found schools, teach 'em to be self sustaining and
self respecting.
Samuel would probable sass me back and say, You can't teach a nigger to
respect himself and stand upright.
And I'd say, "'Tain't so, Sam, but if it wuz, centuries have been spent
by the white race in teachin' this people to be dependent and helpless,
to not think for themselves, to lean entirely on the judgment and
justice of the white people (weak reeds to lean on anon or oftener)."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account