The slave trade : $b Slavery and colorJervey, Theodore D. (Theodore Dehon)
History
The slave trade : $b Slavery and color
Jervey, Theodore D. (Theodore Dehon)
African Americans; Slave trade -- United States; Slavery -- United States; United States -- Race relations
If it is in truth and fact a divine institution, then the necessity of
subjecting it to those regulations which experience has proven most
expedient, for the proper adjustment of civil relations, is not very
clearly apparent.
If it is not a divine institution, then it is a social organization,
no matter how high the plane upon which it is operated, and religious
equality brings in its train social equality.
The attempt of British divines, face to face with the color question in
South Africa, to readjust the religious views of the fifties, directed
at people mainly outside their own doors and to justify the refusal
to extend religious equality to the blacks in the Dominions, on the
professed ground that there is not complete spiritual equality among
men and that the final award for the use cannot be made a basis for
the adjustment of earthly relations, moves somewhat limpingly, and, in
lucidity, falls far below the utterance of that profound Negro, who
has so clearly set forth the rights of his race in America, in the
following declaration:
“The Negro has a God ordained right to protest against his exclusion
from means of self support. He has equal right to protest when
deprived of legal and civil justice, or when the opportunity of
knowledge or sober living is denied him. He has no just cause of
complaint, however, when excluded from social intercourse with the
white race, for the obvious reason that mankind does not mingle on
terms of social equality—a fact as true of black men as of white. Nor
is Negro exclusion from membership in white churches a trespass on
Negro rights, for after all, a church is neither more nor less than a
social family.”[210]
Of the Negro who made this sane well balanced pronouncement it is
fitting that a white South Carolinian should have something to say,
although he has been absolutely ignored by the most cultivated members
of his race.
As we shall later note DuBois, who today comes nearer being recognized
as the leading Negro of America than any who can be mentioned, has
claimed that:
“the greatest stigma on the white South is ... that when it saw
the reform movement growing and even in some cases triumphing, and
a larger and larger number of black voters learning to vote for
honesty and ability, it still preferred a Reign of Terror to a
campaign of education, and disfranchised Negroes instead of punishing
rascals.”[211]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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