The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue — John Shaqi
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial IssueVarious
History
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue
Various
African Americans -- Social conditions -- To 1964; Civil rights movements; Martin Luther King, Jr., Day; United States -- History
all that reformers and moralists would have them; the imitative faculty
of the African has betrayed the black politician into many of the
vicious ways of the white politician, and the colored preacher is
frequently not above "the pomps and vanity of this wicked world." All
this is the more unfortunate, as the blacks have a child-like confidence
in their chosen leaders, founded partly on their primitive character,
and partly on their distrust of the native whites. Both their
politicians and their preachers have given abundant evidence of their
insincerity during the excitement of emigration by blowing hot and
blowing cold; by talking to the negroes one way, and to the whites
another; and even to the extent, in some instances, of taking money to
use their influence for discouraging and impeding emigration. These are
some of the faults and misfortunes on the part of the blacks which enter
into the race troubles. The chief blame which attaches to the whites
is the failure to make a persistent effort, by education and kind
treatment, to overcome the distrust and cure the faults of the
negroes. The whites control, because they constitute the "property and
intelligence" of the South, to use the words of a democratic statesman;
this power should have been used to gain the confidence of the blacks.
Had such a course been taken, there would not have been the fear of
reenslavement, which actually prevails to a considerable extent among
the negroes. So long as a portion of the whites entertain the conviction
that the war of the sections will be renewed within a few years, as is
the case, the negroes will suspect and dread the class who would treat
them as enemies in case the war should come, and will seek to escape to
a section of the country where they would not be so treated. Perhaps,
too, there would have been a voluntary political division among the
black voters, had the whites used more pacific means to bring it about,
and had they themselves set the example. And last, but not least, in
making up the sum of blame that the whites must bear, is their own
unwillingness to labor, which gives the rural population too much time
for mischief and too little sympathy with the working classes.
As we have traced the causes that have led to the exodus, and described
the conditions which warrant the belief that there will be a renewal of
the emigration on a more extended scale next spring, and endeavored to
distribute the responsibility for the troubles equitably among whites
and blacks, remedies have naturally suggested themselves to the reader;
in fact, they are more easily to be thought out than accomplished. A
few general reflections may be added, however, in order to indicate
the probable solution of the race troubles that have brought about the
exodus, if, indeed, the whites and blacks of the South are ever going to
live together in peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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