Shadow and Light: An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present CenturyGibbs, Mifflin Wistar
History
Shadow and Light: An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century
Gibbs, Mifflin Wistar
African Americans
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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