The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 9, September, 1887 — John Shaqi
The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 9, September, 1887Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 9, September, 1887
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
We regard the Glenn bill as the most extraordinary
manifestation of race feeling which has been made in any part
of this country in many years. We are surprised at it because
we believed that the State of Georgia, as well as other
sections of the South, had long since passed the stage when
a law like this could be thought of seriously, either as a
necessity or as a matter of policy. The bill seems to us to be
entirely retrogressive in its action and in the highest degree
impolitic. It is an industrious attempt to make a mountain
out of a mole-hill. We observe that several Georgia papers,
the Atlanta _Constitution_ among the rest, favor the proposed
law on the ground that it obviates the danger arising from a
mixture of the races. Now, we are not in favor of a mixture of
the races, neither do we question the wisdom of the existing
law of Georgia, which provides separate schools for colored and
white children, but we do deprecate the attempt to incorporate
in the statutes of any State such a drastic and offensive
measure as the Glenn Bill. Even if such a danger existed as
that named in the _Constitution_ the proposed law would not
help the matter one iota. It will not have the slightest
influence on the question of social equality one way or the
other. So far as it affects the future of the race question a
more short-sighted, blundering, puerile piece of legislation
could not be conceived. The bill ought to be “smothered” out of
sight at once and forever.
THE CENTRAL CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE.
This bill is a low grade of revenge, unworthy of the
legislators of a free people. The colored people are making
the greatest sacrifices to obtain education, and by the
generosity of their Northern friends, who have established a
number of first-class schools for them in the South, they are
making rapid advancement. They are making more rapid progress
relatively than the whites. And, strange to say, these efforts
to elevate their condition have created alarm, and the cry
of social equality has been raised. Intelligent people in
the South appear to be overwhelmed with the fear that if the
Negroes are accorded the equal rights to which citizenship
entitles them, that Southern white men and women will become so
eager to marry them that they must be prevented by law.
Certainly this suspicion is unworthy of the people who
harbor it. We know that in the old slavery times there
was a deplorable amount of inter-racial association and
licentiousness in the South. Nearly every plantation and
negro quarters furnished proof of it. But we believe that the
education of the negro will promote morality, and help to
remove the evil. At all events, in a Government like ours, in
which all citizens have equal rights, social standing cannot be
regulated by law.
THE NEW YORK CHRISTIAN INTELLIGENCER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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