will eventually gain complete mastery and the man becomes a brute; but treat him like a man and a man he will prove. I believe that everyone who has the higher power of thought should have the political education and commercial rights that belong to America-excelling on all other lines, should try to excel all other nations in its broad and magnanimous treatment of all colored people, and the prompt payment of all its just and approved debts. When this is done, its citizens traveling abroad will never have cause to hang their heads in shame for their beloved land.

Durham, N. C.

ΑΝ

OPTIMISTIC VIEW OF THE
NEGRO QUESTION

Part of an address delivered before the faculty and students of
Shaw University, by Prof. G. E. Davis, Ph. D.,
Dean of Biddle University.

(Contributed for this book.)

"The question may be asked what is our greatest problem? There are several great problems that constantly present themselves to the American people. Education, Temperance, Labor and Capital, Trusts and Railroads, Imperialism and foreign immigration. Then, last but not least, "The Negro Problem," or, better

stated, "The Problem of the Races." This last is the greatest because it touches and influences all the others. It touches American life at every point. My only apology for bringing before you a subject with which most of you are no doubt as familiar as I am, is that my view may not lead altogether in the beaten track. My line of departure may be different. Innumerable reapers have put their sickle into the sunny field, but the harvest is so abundant that even the search of a wayward gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf.

Today, no man is courageous enough to say with confidence what the ultimate solution will be. He who asserts it is either an idiot or a fool.

It

It is being more generally accepted as a fact that in contributing a degree of light upon the subject, that the Negro is the only one of the darker races that has proven capable of looking the Anglo-Saxon in the face at short range and continuing to live in a progressive manner. is a question to be determined if the rising tawny national powers of the East upon the higher and broader plane of nationality can withstand what by many is held to be the inevitable contest for supremacy. We believe the results will be determined by the measure in which the Christian religion is embraced. In our own land it seems to be certain that there can never be absolute separation of the Negro

from the white race, fundamentally, because they have the same religion. Their forms and object of worship are identical and their creeds and creedal sources are the same. The sameness of social, civil and political institutions of the country also have a significant and important bearing upon the question. The true and only solution of our greatest problem is worthy of consideration.

I hold that it is to be found only in the Bible and the principles of which Jesus Christ is the embodiment. Looked at in the light of experience, which has been sufficiently varied, we find sufficient grounds for our conclusions.

(1) Political methods have not accomplished the results contemplated, although they have not been failures or barren of beneficent results. When the Negro was given the right of franchise, it was hoped that a weapon was put into his hands with which he might fight his way to the heights of citizenship; but in the South his vote was counted as suited the convenience of political exigency of the Democratic Partyas is attested by the suffrage clauses of the Southern States' Constitutions and Election Laws, enacted in harmony therewith.

The white South showed its opposition: (a) By the Black Code enacted under the policy of Andrew Jackson. (b) By the Ku Klux organi

zations during reconstruction. (c) By fraud and as little violence as possible from 1878 to 1895, when it was discovered by Southern political leaders that the Federal Government was not strong enough to enforce the constitution in the interests of the whole people alike.

(2) It has been proposed to colonize the Negro. To this both the Negro and his white fellow citizen will offer stubborn resistanceeven if a territory in which to colonize him could be found a thing practically impossible for several reasons, so evident they will not be mentioned.

It is no longer a question if the black man and the white man can live together here in the South on terms of civil and political equality. God, by His providence, seems to say they must. The white man will be helped to be more charitable and less fearful of the bugbear of social equality if he will take time to study the better side of Negro life. The records of the courts are not the only places to go for statistics.

We have our criminal class-far too numerous, we admit. But there are others.

The Negro cannot be colonized because of his relation to the industrial forces of the country. The South boasts of a civilization instinct with dignity and grace. The New South, springing Phoenix like, from the ashes of the