The Teachings of History Considered in Relation to Race Problems in America26
By Nathan F. Mossell, A. M., M. D.
Surgeon-in-Chief, Frederick Douglass Hospital, Philadelphia, Pa.
Those who are familiar with history will testify that the blacks were a fundamental element in the civilized races of antiquity, as also of the primitive races of southern Europe. In fact, all history is pregnant with traces of the Negro element. The world will ever look with wonder and amazement upon the marks of ancient culture in the valley of the Nile, and we may continue to look as far back as records and inscriptions lend us light, only to find the black man, above all others, leading in the ancient arts and sciences.
History places the earliest civilization in Egypt. The ruling tribes among the people were called the Hamites, the “sunburnt race,” according to Dr. Winchell. Says Professor J. Boughton: “The wanderings of these people since prehistoric history began has not been confined to the American continent. In Paleolithic times the black man roamed all over the fairer portions of the Old World; Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, acknowledged his sway. No white man had, so far, appeared to dispute his authority in the vine-clad valleys of France or Germany, or upon the classic hills of Greece or Rome. The black man preceded all others, and carried Paleolithic culture to its very height.”
The history of all the lands has been but the history of succeeding races; more often, however, by fusion of different racial types and by the mingling of various tribes and peoples, have been evolved new races, superior to any of the original types. Greece and Rome, the study of history will tell you, had their race and social problems. Inter-marriage at last settled the question. The ethnology of Spain tells the same story. There is not a nation on the globe of pure ethnic character. From the ethnic standpoint, the blood of the black race is everywhere apparent. Ask the Frenchman, the Italian, the Spaniard, whence comes his dark skin and hair; it surely does not come from the Aryan blonde. Ethnology alone can give the answer. In considering the future of our racial problems, it is fitting that we shall recall these facts of history to know the Negro’s past place in the world’s annals.
American slavery, the most accursed institution the world has ever known, did more to degrade the master than the slave, a truth most often overlooked. It is here I take strong exception to the literal interpretation of the injunction, “Whosoever will smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,” and “If any man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.” Not so; but, on the contrary, we should resist evil with our energy. The tyrant who smites you on one cheek is only made more of a brute by permitting him to continue in the practise by smiting you on the other. It is our moral duty, therefore, to resist him, and not more for our own sake than for his. The brutalizing influence of slavery upon the master class is the curse of the Southern States to-day, and has much more to do with the difficulties of solving the race problems than does the ignorance of the blacks. The Government is not guiltless in this matter of interpretation of the scriptural injunction. In the matter of State rights, Southern election laws, and mob violence, our Government has turned the other cheek also. What has been the result? Why the tyrants continue to become more and more brutal, until they are not only running black men out, but they have recently, at the muzzle of the shot gun, forced their own kith and kin, men to the manor born, to leave the States. I have no hesitancy in proclaiming that this brutality is a legacy left us by slavery, against which we have to contend, making itself felt in the organized mob and in disregard of constituted authority.
In these days of imperialism and territorial expansion, when there is, likewise, much discussion on the subject of inferior races, it is fitting that we should place ourselves aright upon the question of suffrage and rights of franchise. William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., says: “Whosoever laments the scope of suffrage, and talks of disfranchising men on account of ignorance or poverty, has as little comprehension of the meaning of self-government as a blind man has of the colors of the rainbow. I declare my belief that we are suffering, not from a too extended ballot, but from one too limited and unrepresentative. We enunciate a principle of government, and then deny it in practise. If experience has established anything, it is that the interest of one class is never safe in the hands of another. There is no class so poor or ignorant in a republic that it does not know its own suffering and needs better than the wealthy or educated classes. By the rule of justice, it has the same right precisely to give it legal expression. That expression is bound to come, and it is wiser to have it come through the ballot-box than through mobs and violence, born of a feeling of despair and misery.” Those States in the South which are passing laws restricting suffrage, to promote the selfish ends of a class, are sowing to the wind and will surely reap the whirlwind. In a republican government, supposed to be ruled by the popular vote, a people’s liberty has practically been taken when the right to vote is denied them. In such States, personal liberty, the right to testify in courts of law, the right to hold, buy, and sell real estate, and, in fact, all other rights, become mere privileges, held at the option of others. People are no longer free when the rights of franchise have been annulled. Slavery is truly re-enacted in those States which have succeeded in disfranchising the Negro.
I have neither patience nor respect for those among us who are truckling to the prejudice of our enemies by giving credence to the lie that the ballot was placed in the black man’s hand too soon. Lowell was right when he said: “The right to vote makes a safety-valve of every voter, and the best way to teach a man to vote is to give him a chance to practise. It is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them down; the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to society than a sense of wrong in their heads.” The so-called Negro domination of the reconstruction period has no record of misrule such as exists in most of the Southern States to-day. It is our privilege (an oppressed people, who know by bitter experience whereof we speak) to give this government timely warnings as to its duties toward the inhabitants of our newly acquired territory.
I have no confidence in the Government’s ability to ameliorate the race conflicts of the South through the course recently outlined by the President of this nation in speeches of flattery and encomiums upon the dead and living heroes of the Southern Confederacy. This policy of conciliation was repeatedly attempted before the war, with the results that the slave influence continued to spread further north and west. It was proved then, as it ever shall be, that no nation can succeed by making a compact with the devil. One must tremble for this country’s future when they read upon the statute-books of the Southern States these diabolical laws against social purity, against the civil and political rights of our citizens. It is hoped that the coming Congress will rise to a sense of our impending danger, and see to it that the strong arm of the Government is brought forward to protect each and every citizen in his civil and political rights. Until this is done, we are by no means prepared to add nine millions more of a dark race to those with which we now have to deal. There are those already high in the nation’s council who predict that the result of our present war27 will be a curse instead of a blessing, that the nation’s incapacity to deal justly with our recently liberated slaves proves our inability to deal with nine millions more of untutored and so-called inferior people.
The final conclusion of the whole matter may be forecasted thus: The Negro element in this country is permanent and indestructible. So great are the numbers of the Negroes, and so intimate their relations with the white people, that it is safe to say without fear of contradiction that the status of the Negro element will determine in a large degree the future of the white. Let this truth once be learned. Let the thoughtful people of the nation cease trying to deceive themselves. The inevitable teachings of history will not be reversed. The blood of these varied races will finally be mingled until race distinctions will ultimately be obliterated. The docile nature of the Negro race, his intimate domestic and other relations with the whites, make this conclusion inevitable. The two races are complements of each other and cannot be separated.