Unfettered: A NovelGriggs, Sutton E. (Sutton Elbert)
General
Unfettered: A Novel
Griggs, Sutton E. (Sutton Elbert)
African Americans -- Fiction; United States -- Race relations -- Fiction
It is far better for the South and for the nation that the shortcomings of
the Negro be conquered by excellencies, than that they should be left as a
constantly rising flood tide destined to over-leap all walls whatsoever,
carrying devastation that many generations will be taxed to repair. The
white man of the South must be aided in his work by the people of the whole
land. In view of what is required of them, the white people of the South
ought, perhaps, to be more highly and more generally educated than those of
any other section of the country, whereas the percentage of illiteracy
among them is greater than it is in any other section.
Our racial organization must encourage the philanthropists of the world to
remember the white people of the South in the distribution of their wealth
for benevolent purposes. When education is more general in the South and
the white people are conscious that as an aggregation they represent a
higher degree of power, they will feel the more inclined to abandon the
policy of force, and proceed with the work of intellectually assimilating
the Negroes whom they have hitherto thrust out. When thus equipped the good
and strong in the South will coalesce and rule by the sheer force of
superior worth, which is the only method countenanced by truly civilized
peoples.
Recognizing the fact that, in the interests of a composite American
civilization, it is desirable that the Negro be imbued with many of the
qualities of the white man, care should be taken that the Negro population
be so diffused throughout the country, that no section of the white race
shall have more work of this character than it can well perform. Our racial
organization shall therefore establish an emigration bureau, that shall
drain off unduly congested regions and locate Negroes in more desirable
localities. This lightening of the burdens of some places, coupled with the
program of more extended education, will aid the Southern white man to do
what the world expects of him, namely, preserve his own strong parts and
impart strength to, not repress, the weak.
Thus less and less grow the essential elements of the problem as the great
bulk of the Negroes measure up to the standard of the ideal citizen and the
Southern white man is the better prepared to shoulder the responsibility
that attaches to the post of seniority in the civilization under which we
live.
OUR LAST FOE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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