The Problem of the Hour: Will the Colored 
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 Race Save Itself from Ruin? 
 
 
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 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE TRUSTEES, FACULTY AND STUDENTS 
 OF THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE 
 AND THE MECHANIC ARTS, AT GREENSBORO, 
 
 MAY, 1899 V* 
 
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 By JULIAN S. CARR 
 
 
 1899: 
 
 The Seeman Printerv, 
 
 DURHAM, N. C. 
 
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THE PROBLEM OF TpE HOO^: 
 
 WILL THE COLORED RACE SAVE 
 ITSELF FROM RUIN ? 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 delivered before the trustees, faculty and students 
 
 OF THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE 
 AND THE MECHANIC ARTS, AT GREENSBORO, 
 
 MAY, 1899, 
 
 By JULIAN S. CARR. 
 
 1899: 
 
 The Seeman Printery, 
 
 DURHAM, N. C. 
 
Members of the Board of Trustees, Faculty 
 and Students of the North Carolina College 
 of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts for 
 the Colored Race: 
 
 Since your last .commencement, the statesman to 
 whom the United States owes its Colleges of Agricul¬ 
 ture and the Mechanic Arts has passed away, dying 
 at his post, in extreme old age. 
 
 It is now nearly sixty years since the beginning of 
 the modern revolution in mental activities and material 
 progress, which occupied the score of years between 
 1840 and i860. Agriculture upon well ordered system, 
 and the extension of steam transportation from its 
 ten years experiment upon the land to the dominion 
 of the sea, were at its foundation, in constantly 
 expanding development. 
 
 One by one, iron-working, gas-making, mining, 
 dyeing, bleaching, and the textile arts were modified, 
 in the light of chemistry; no longer a dream, but a 
 force. The electric telegraph became familiar, com¬ 
 mercial fertilizers and agricultural machinery magnified 
 the crops, and finally^ the power press, and the fabri¬ 
 cation of modern ships and arms, great and small, and 
 the multiplication of new methods in all arts, changed 
 the face of the world. 
 
 In an industrial sense, nations saw each other for 
 the first time, at the first World’s Fair in 1851, and 
 straightway they stripped for the race. 
 
 Men called for a new educative system, in sympathy 
 with the new era; nay, it was demanded as the natural 
 flower and crown of man’s new rule over nature. 
 The modern student must not be a dreamer among the 
 thoughts of the dead—he must be up and doing. The 
 need of the hour was a learning that should educate 
 the hand and eye, no less than the ear and brain. 
 
 Responsive to this, on December 14th 1837, Hon. 
 Justin S. Morrill, then a member of the House of 
 Representatives, introduced a bill to establish an 
 industrial college in each State, and grant for its main¬ 
 tenance 20,000 acres of public land, for each member 
 of Congress, 
 
4 
 
 It was adversely reported, but passed by hard effort 
 over the opposing report, only to be vetoed. 
 
 Yet he persevered, and in December 1861, introduced 
 an amended bill which increased the gift to 30,000 
 acres for each district, and read, in its own language, 
 “For colleges where the leading object shall be, with¬ 
 out excluding other scientific and classical studies, and 
 including military tactics, to teach such branches of 
 learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic 
 arts, in order to promote the liberal and practical 
 education of the industrial persuits and professions of 
 life.” 
 
 This, too, met an adverse report, yet nothing 
 daunted, he pressed the scheme, so that in June fol¬ 
 lowing it was passed, and approved by Mr. Lincoln. 
 After nearly thirty years he found that their useful¬ 
 ness was limited by lack of means for the extended 
 and costly appliances of technical education, and Mr. 
 Morrill became the leader, now in the Senate, in 
 passing the act of 1890, by which more than a million 
 of dollars is annually paid from the Treasury for 
 instruction in certain branches in these institutions. 
 
 Under the Acts, there are now sixty-six colleges, 
 having over $50,000,000 of permanent endowments, 
 buildings and equipments, with $6,000,000 income, 
 employing over 2,000 professors and tutors, and 
 instructing about 30,000 students. 
 
 This great development of scientific and industrial 
 education will always be a living memorial to Senator 
 Morrill. The story of his dauntless perseverance 
 should be recalled, and its lesson sink deep into the 
 hearts of those blessed by his efforts. 
 
 North Carolina, like many other States, first estab¬ 
 lished an agricultural department at her University 
 with the income of her land scrip, and subsequently 
 founded a college at Raleigh, for her white population. 
 Finally, after providing temporarily for the instruc¬ 
 tion of the colored race in agriculture and the mechanic 
 arts at Shaw University, the General Assembly, in 
 1891, came up to the full measure of its duty, and 
 organized this college, March 9th of that year. 
 
 The progressive citizens of Greensboro gave twent) T - 
 five acres of land as a site, and $8,000 for buildings. 
 In 1893, an appropriation of $10,000 was made, of 
 
5 
 
 State funds, and the school opened in the autumn of 
 that year, although it was not fully at work until 
 January thereafter. 
 
 I am gratified to learn that you have thirteen mem¬ 
 bers of the faculty, who represent the training of 
 some of the best institutions of technolog}" in the 
 country, and that you have 108 students on your roll, 
 besides having last year more than fifty teachers in 
 your summer school. 
 
 You have, therefore, fairly entered upon collegiate 
 life, and must prove an important factor in the educa¬ 
 tive forces of North Carolina. 
 
 You have a great opportunity before you. The 
 influence and spirit of this institution upon the gener¬ 
 ation to come will mean much to the whole population 
 of the State, white and colored; but immensely more, 
 to yourselves directly. 
 
 Here are facilities to acquire the key to the two 
 great needs of your race, money and education. They 
 are the levers that move the world. No ignorant race 
 can rise or succeed in any high sense, nor can its 
 members govern themselves or others. 
 
 “With all thy getting, get understanding,” says 
 the Book of Books. If you expect your people to 
 occupy high ground, they must learn how to do things. 
 What is the beginning of true knowledge? Finding' 
 how to do something well. The negro who teaches 
 his boy how to raise a crop, or build a house, or keep 
 his transactions in a ledger, has given him more than 
 if he had procured him a palace or a seat in Congress. 
 He has taught him how to do. 
 
 Education is worthless if men do not learn how to do 
 things. The man who goes to school is a failure if he 
 has only absorbed books, and has not learned how to 
 master a task, how to attach himself to the world, and 
 work out his share in human endeavor. 
 
 Too many boys get the wrong idea of the aim of 
 education. They look about and make this mental 
 comment: “Most of the educated men I know are 
 lawyers, teachers, doctors or preachers. They do no 
 manual labor. They are free from hard work, and I 
 want to be educated that I may escape hard work too, 
 like them.” Fie who goes to school only to seek an 
 easy time soon makes shipwreck of life. 
 
— 0 — 
 
 There is no royal road to learning. He who becomes 
 a scholar must burn the midnight oil. The lawyer at 
 the bar, the minister in his pulpit, who moves with his 
 eloquence, has had to toil when others were asleep. 
 
 Happily for your race, the early notion that educa¬ 
 tion was the road that lead to easy work, and no 
 manual labor, is passing away. This institution, 
 which can do more for the negroes of North Carolina 
 than any other is the recognition, the declaration by 
 the country that manual labor is honorable, and that 
 the truly educated man must train his hand as well as 
 his head. 
 
 Education of the right sort is the best, and safest 
 foundation for succcess in life. It is in the reach of 
 every boy, no matter how poor, if he has enough thirst 
 for it to study at night by the lightwood fire. 
 
 Next to education, the negro needs money or its 
 representative. The man who owns his home has a 
 stock in the country that nothing else gives. He is a 
 free-liolder, a tax-payer, and if he continues to amass 
 property, however little, he becomes a lender of money 
 to others. A home of one’s own gives steadiness to 
 life and character. In order to add to its comforts 
 and attractions, habits of economy and thrift are 
 found, and once begun, the way to independence, if 
 slow, is steady and sure. 
 
 “East year,” said a colored divine, “the white 
 people invested one million dollars in cotton factories; 
 while the colored people spent ten thousand dollars in 
 excursions.” Need I dwell upon the moral? Self- 
 denial to-day is the parent of advancement to-morrow. 
 
 I have addressed you thus far, without regard to the 
 especial circumstances which surround you as negroes. 
 But I am not unaware of the delicate situation of the 
 present, or unmindful of the responsibility attached 
 to these utterances. 
 
 Many of your race have felt uncertainties of the 
 future pressing upon them, and that from whatever 
 cause, the} 7 were about to enter upon a period of 
 humiliation and loss, possibly of danger to their rights 
 and privileges. Some, who recognize the friendship 
 of which I have endeavored to give practical proof, 
 and which I avow freely again to-day, have written to 
 me for counsel. Eet me, then, speak to you as repre- 
 
— 7 — 
 
 sentatives of the best element of the negro race in the 
 South, which I believe you to be. 
 
 Words are vain, unless they be spoken in candor, 
 in soberness and truth. I will speak plainly, and of 
 facts, every one of which has ample warrant in history. 
 
 Your ancestors came here, from Africa, through no 
 will of their own, or of our forefathers, the colonists, 
 but were brought here by foreign traders who pur¬ 
 chased them in their own land from chiefs of their 
 own color, as the prey of the strongest. In that age, 
 slavery was not confined to colored men, but large 
 numbers of white men were sent to the plantations in 
 America to labor, not only for criminal, but for polit¬ 
 ical offenses. Indeed a mechanic or laborer out of 
 work, and in a strange neighborhood might be sold in 
 England for a term of years, and sometimes for life. 
 And captives in war were subject to slavery, as for 
 example, Capt. John Smith, the great leader at James¬ 
 town, who had been a slave in Russia. 
 
 The royal power and the courtiers were chiefly respon¬ 
 sible for the slave trade. Queen Anne, in a letter to the 
 colonial governors in 1702, directed that her subjects 
 “take especial care that God Almighty be devoutly 
 and duly served,”' and that the Royal African Company 
 of England “take especial care that the said prov¬ 
 inces may have a constant supply of merchantable 
 negroes at moderate rates.” 
 
 And the same queen afterwards entered into the 
 most gigantic speculation in slaves that the modern 
 world had ever known, when she paid Philip V of 
 Spain an enormous bonus for the right to furnish the 
 Spanish West Indies with negroes from Africa, the 
 queen herself receiving one-fourtli of the profits. 
 Under this scheme, 700,000 were brought to America, 
 in the forty years following. 
 
 The trade finally fell into the hands of New England 
 skippers and owners, to supply the colonies, and at 
 the date of the Revolution, every one of the original 
 thirteen, without exception, maintained slavery. Vir¬ 
 ginia had abolished the trade in 1769, but her laws 
 were nullified by the British, George III and Parlia¬ 
 ment insisting upon keeping up the profitable traffic. 
 
 When the Constitution of the United States was 
 adopted, the slave trade was retained as lawful for 
 
— 8 — 
 
 twenty years, by the vote of New England which had 
 the trade in rum and negroes, and that of the rice 
 planters of South Carolina and Georgia, who believed 
 white labor could not be used for that culture. 
 
 Gradually the States whose climatic and industrial 
 conditions did not accord with slavery, abolished the 
 institution, and by degrees emancipation progressed 
 southward, aided in the North by the limited number 
 of slaves, and the facility for selling them to Southern 
 neighbors, in anticipation of these enactments. 
 
 The Legislature of Virginia had been on the verge 
 of abolishing slavery, but the difficulties that would 
 follow, the question of the two races, a matter wholly 
 untried with so large a population of the colored race, 
 stared her statesmen in the face. 
 
 They perceived the ultimate good, but saw the 
 dangers, some of which are stern realities now. Of 
 these Patrick Henry, the apostle of freedom, opposed 
 slavery as a permanent institution, but showed the 
 risk of the enormous social change. Jefferson approved 
 Monroe’s efforts for colonization, commemorated in the 
 name of the capital of Liberia, but with the wisdom 
 of all his life, had no faith in its possible success. 
 Chief Justice Marshall affirmed that in such a popula¬ 
 tion, the removal of the legal status of the negro as a 
 slave would not, of itself, relieve him or his white 
 neighbor from conditions irksome and hurtful to both. 
 
 Even the great statesman, who twice prevented the 
 lighting of the torch of war by his compromise 
 measures, Henry Clay, was wont to say that sudden 
 and general emancipation would bring more evil to 
 white and black, than the continuance of slaverv. 
 
 This is not the time and place to discuss the causes 
 of the war for Southern Independence, growing out 
 of the divergence of civilizations, and sectional interests 
 in tariffs, navigation laws, rights in slave property, 
 and the like, with legislation believed to be favoritism 
 for one section, and oppression for the other. 
 
 The earth rocked under the armed clash of three 
 millions of troops against seven hundred thousand, of 
 great navies against a few hastily equipped vessels, of 
 three billions of treasure against a scanty purse chiefly 
 filled with Confederate paper, and Appomattox might 
 have been foreseen from the beginning. As a result 
 
— 9 — 
 
 the negro was made free, and clothed with the polit¬ 
 ical rights of the white man. 
 
 Of the conditions that prevailed during reconstruc¬ 
 tion I will not now speak. They are written in the 
 history of the Confederacy, and some of the pages are 
 red with the blood of good men. 
 
 Of the controlling element at that period when so 
 large a portion of white men .in the South were dis- 
 frachised, Booker T. Washington, the president of 
 the most influential institution for the education of 
 the colored race, and known to you as now, perhaps, 
 the most distinguished of his people in America, not 
 long since declared in Boston : 
 
 “Those of the white race, from the North, who got 
 political control of the South in the beginning of our 
 freedom were not men of such unselfish natures as to 
 lead them to do something that would permanently 
 help the negro, rather than yield to temptation to use 
 him to lift themselves into political power. This mis¬ 
 take made the negro and the Southern white man 
 political enemies. 
 
 It w 7 as unfortunate that the negro got the idea that 
 every white man of the South was opposed by nature 
 to his advancement, and that he could only find a friend 
 in the white man who was removed from him by 
 thousands of miles.” 
 
 $ 
 
 I am here to affirm that the best friend the negro 
 has ever possessed, and the best friend he has to-day, 
 in the white man of the South, with all his faults and 
 his virtues. 
 
 The history of the family slaves during the four 
 years of bloody combat, must forever remain one of 
 the most honorable in human annals. The head of 
 the household, and often all of his sons were in the 
 distant army; the wife, perhaps the newly made widow, 
 and her little ones, were alone upon the plantation; in 
 some cases, even within the lines of the invading 
 army, and yet the daily routine of making the crops 
 went on. Our Southern women were not only safe in 
 the keeping of the black race, but they were actually 
 guarded and protected by them. There was indeed a 
 sense of security that we do not feel in these times. 
 
 The Southern slave was a friend who received and 
 merited the confidence and respect of the whole house- 
 
—10 
 
 hold. Affection between master and servant and 
 devotion to the comfort and happiness, the one of the 
 other, not only survived the rude shock of war, but 
 there are instances not a few, of loyalty to the ancient 
 regard, even to the present day. The recollection of 
 the fidelity of the negro in those dark hours, will be 
 green in the memory of every Southern man. 
 
 There were bad men. of both races in the era of 
 slavery. There were cruelty and wickedness, no 
 doubt, as exists everywhere upon the earth, but tell 
 me if the record of order, self-restraint and peaceful 
 industry shown by the black race throughout that 
 struggle, do not speak in eloquent tones of the nature 
 of the life that had transformed him into such a being 
 from the African savage as he once was, and still is, 
 in the Dark Continent. 
 
 Their training was largely under the influence of the 
 noblest women that ever lived. 
 
 Provision was made for religious instruction, and in 
 1841, the number attached to the various churches 
 was estimated at two millions. Sunday schools were 
 maintained not only in the towns, and at the country 
 churches, but also on large plantations, with the 
 women of the household as teachers. 
 
 You have read of the marvelous career of Stonewall 
 Jackson in defence of the Confederate cause, and 
 have perhaps considered him your enemy. Not so. 
 Did you ever hear of his colored Sunday school ? I11 
 
 Mrs. Jackson’s memoirs of him, we read that after the 
 great day at Manassas and retirement to his tent, his 
 heart turned to home, and the first letter after the 
 victorious battle, to his faithful pastor, at Lexington, 
 was to send a check as his contribution to maintain 
 the colored Sunday school, without one word of the 
 death struggle, and the rout of the P'ederal army. 
 
 Gen. Armstrong of the United States forces, so long 
 the Superintendent at the Institute at Hampton, was 
 constrained, as he noted the negro and the Indian at 
 work side by side, to declare that “the civilization by 
 slavery was the greatest missionary enterprise of the 
 century. ’ ’ 
 
 The removal of your people by colonization in Africa 
 or anywhere else has been much talked of, but was 
 seen by the South long since, to be an impossible 
 
— 11 - 
 
 dream. The ne^ro is among us to stay, unless lie 
 shall bring about his own dissolution. 
 
 If any one conceive the scheme of colonization to 
 be possible, let him consider what efforts and treasure, 
 and fleets of transports were required to carry the 
 small American army to Cuba and to Porto Rico, or to 
 move 30,000 men to the Philippines. 
 
 To carry eight millions of people to Africa would 
 require, if a ship taking five hundred passengers, men, 
 women and children, should leave one of our ports 
 every day in the year, Sundays included, no less than 
 some forty-four years in a grand procession, one day 
 after the another, across the Atlantic. During this 
 lifetime of a generation and more, vast additional 
 numbers would be born, for transportation in turn. 
 Even that would be but the first step. To procure 
 their homes, achieve self-support, and establish a stable 
 government, would be yet to come. 
 
 No such delusion ever attracted the attention of the 
 thoughtful white man in the South whom I have 
 insisted was the negro’s best friend. He saw that you 
 and your children must live in this land with him and 
 his children. He saw that for the common good, he 
 must “take up the white man’s burden,” a generation 
 before Kipling uttered the phrase. 
 
 With his country devastated, his means plundered 
 and squandered under legal forms, his brethren slain, 
 deprived even of his vote for years, and long without 
 the right to hold office, the Southern wtiite man has 
 preserved his kind feeling for the negro, even when the 
 colored vote was cast solidly against his best interests. 
 
 The negro had joined the stranger against his old 
 friends. He had removed himself in all church organ¬ 
 izations. But he was powerless to educate his children 
 without help. Tell me, candidly speaking, is it not a 
 wonderful thing that the white man should have taxed 
 himself to give the blessings of education to the child 
 of the black man ? 
 
 The United States Bureau of Education shows that 
 since the war, the Southern States have expended 
 $514,000,000 for common schools, and the negroes 
 have received more than $100,000,000 of the amount. 
 It is paid in North Carolina, per capita the same, 
 white and black, although the returns show 95 per 
 cent, of the tax paid by the white man. 
 
- 12 - 
 
 Shallow thinkers ask why we do not do more for 
 the colored child, and point to the large sums that 
 Massachusetts and other States give for popular edu¬ 
 cation. It is easier for the rich to give than the poor, 
 yet the dollar of taxable wealth in our State pays 
 more for this purpose than the dollar in Massachu¬ 
 setts. 
 
 And the task is more difficult, as we have more area, 
 and a school population much scattered, to say nothing 
 of the fact that two-fifths of the inhabitants pay 
 nothing practically. 
 
 There is another element in the comparison, which 
 illustrates the weight the white man lifts, to help the 
 negro. 
 
 Dr. Curry, manager of the Peabody Fund points out 
 this truth : 
 
 “It should be borne in mind that there are fewer 
 tax-payers in the South, in proportion to population, 
 and the school population especially, than any other 
 part of the United States. The South Central States 
 have only 66 adult males to ioo children, while in the 
 Western States, there are 157 adults. In South Car¬ 
 olina there are 37 out of 100 of school age, in Montana 
 but 18. And of the South, many adult males are 
 negroes, with a minimum of property. The number 
 of male adults to 100 children in New Hampshire, 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut is double what it is in 
 North Carolina, and the States south of it.” 
 
 To this may be added the excess in the number of 
 women, on account of the ravages of war in our sec¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Yet the burden of the additional number of children 
 but hastens the day when they will rebuild the pros¬ 
 perity once their fathers’. 
 
 Now who directed the policy of the State, and who 
 has gradually increased the blessings you enjoy? 
 Those whom you have dreaded as the White Man’s 
 Party. When, twenty-three years ago, the corruption 
 of ‘ ‘carpet-bag’ ’ government was ended by the election 
 of Zebulon B. Vance to the governorship of the State, 
 his first message rang with this clear note of the 
 statesmen: 
 
 “I regard it as unmistakeable policy to imbue these 
 black people with a thorough North Carolina feeling, 
 
— 13 — 
 
 and make them cease to look abroad for the aids to 
 their progress and civilization, and the protection of 
 their rights, as thev have been taught to do, and teach 
 them to look to their own State instead; to teach them 
 that their welfare is indissolubly linked with ours. ” 
 
 Did the men, who with Vance, took charge of the 
 State government do anything to prove their sense of 
 the common welfare of the race? They steadily 
 increased the fund for your schools, restored that 
 which had been squandered for other purposes than 
 the education of your children, and established Normal 
 Schools to provide you with teachers, which have been 
 sustained to the present time. They freely gave 
 charters and privileges, and in some cases land, to 
 institutions for your higher instruction. They founded 
 the first insane asylum ever built for the colored race, 
 in the history of the world, and have so enlarged and 
 equipped and beautified it, that it is one of the most 
 admirable institutions in the country. 
 
 They provided and have twice enlarged the colored 
 department of the deaf, dumb, and blind, a visit to 
 which will so impress you as never to be forgotten. 
 They gave an annual appropriation to the only insti¬ 
 tution for colored orphans in the State, and have 
 since doubled that, so that it is kept up almost wholly 
 by taxation of the whites They made a continuing 
 annual appropriation for your State Fair; the only one 
 within my knowledge regularly maintained by your 
 race, in the Union. This is held on the grounds and 
 in the buildings of the white State Agricultural Soci¬ 
 ety, and all its privileges are given freely, without 
 charge, although that Society is struggling under a 
 bonded debt of years. Can you find all this anywhere 
 else ? Is my proposition true, or not, that the South¬ 
 ern man is your best friend ? 
 
 • I have said that I would speak plainly, for the 
 interest of all. And I now declare further, that the 
 Southern people as a whole, and the white men of 
 North Carolina will never again submit to the govern¬ 
 ment of ignorance, in a great blind unwitting mass, 
 led by the artful and greedy, for their own selfish 
 ends. This determination is not born of hatred to 
 the negro, but is based upon a regard for the true 
 welfare of both races. 
 
—14 
 
 Those who lived in the South when the negro was 
 given the ballot knew that neither the white man nor 
 the negro is to blame for the political estrangement 
 that made the color line in politics. The same day 
 that the negro was made a voter, every Southern man 
 who had held office was disfranchised. It needs not 
 that we should open old sores, by asking why the two 
 measures came together. We are dealing with conditions 
 and facts. The negro obtained the ballot when the 
 master could not vote. 
 
 The negro was taken first to the polls, when the 
 Federal soldier typified to him his political savior. It 
 would have been unnatural, with that feeling toward 
 the party which had conferred the ballot, for him to 
 have done otherwise than vote as he did, en masse for 
 the Republican ticket. So, too, it would have been 
 unnatural, for white men of the South, understanding 
 how easily corrupt men would control the negro, and 
 his ability to use the ballot with intelligence and judg¬ 
 ment, to have advocated the bestowal of the suffrage 
 upon those not qualified to use it. 
 
 I may be wrong—it may not be wise to state it— 
 there may be exceptions that I have not seen—but I 
 feel impressed to say that in my observation, the 
 intelligent and thrifty negro has not only had little or no 
 influence in his party for securing better government, 
 but he has, in the main, been dominated by the igno¬ 
 rant of his race in political affairs. 
 
 If true, that is a proposition that ought to give pause 
 to every educated and industrious negro in the State. 
 I make the statement, not by way of criticism, but as 
 a fact, that the teachers and students of the negro 
 schools ought to consider. Everywhere in the world, 
 except among the negroes, intelligence and virtue 
 dominate in politics. Unfortunately, the ignorant, 
 who are easily deceived, control the political action of 
 many of the more intelligent, who are better qualified 
 to lead the race. 
 
 Eet me give an illustration: In a recent campaign, 
 an educated and thrifty negro, who had accumulated 
 some property, became convinced that the policy of a 
 certain party was not best for him or his race. He 
 decided that certain nominees were unfit to hold office, 
 and he wrote an article for the papers giving the rea¬ 
 sons why he had changed his politics. 
 
— 15 — 
 
 When the election was near at hand, this man (he 
 was a teacher) was told by most of the patrons of the 
 school, that if he changed his politics or scratched his 
 ticket, they would not let him teach their children. 
 What did he do? He voted as he had been doing all 
 the time. 
 
 A gentleman with whom he talked repeated his 
 reasons thus: “My race is uneducated, and therefore 
 very easily prejudiced. They think that if I change 
 my vote, I become an enemy of the people to whom I 
 belong. In their partisan zeal, they would ostracize 
 me, take away my opportunity for usefulness and 
 leave me without influence with my race. If I voted 
 my convictions, it would count only one vote, and 
 make me powerless to help the children who need my 
 help. If I vote with the rest of my race, I can help 
 enlighten the children. The hope of the negro race 
 lies in the future. I think it is my duty to let my 
 vote be controlled, rather than be cut off from the good 
 I can do to the children, in whose education I am 
 interested beyond anything.” 
 
 I do not quote this to condemn, or to commend him, 
 
 . but to illustrate the truth that the intelligence and 
 virtue of the negro race does not control it, and that 
 instead of being leaders in public matters, the teachers 
 and preachers are followers, and that too of the ignor¬ 
 ant, with all their prejudices. 
 
 Because of this, among other things, the whole 
 world now admits that it was a mistake to have given 
 universal suffrage to the negroes, cs they emerged 
 from slavery thirty years ago. It was a mistake that 
 the negro now recognizes, and one that injured him, 
 as it damaged others. 
 
 He was told to make bricks without straw. He 
 could not do it, and after thirty 3^ears’ use of the 
 ballot, it is not open to question, that suffrage ought 
 not to have been granted at once, but should have 
 been made an honor and a privilege, to be obtained 
 only b}^ those who fitted themselves to exercise it. 
 
 In a letter written in 1863, Mr. Tineoln avowed 
 himself to be of the belief of the early statesmen of the 
 South to whom I have referred, for he said that 
 “gradual emancipation can be made better than im¬ 
 mediate.” 
 
16 — 
 
 The failure of the educated negroes to make their 
 influence felt for good in the political world, lies at the 
 bottom of whatever opposition exists to further sacri¬ 
 fice by the white man for their enlightenment. 
 
 He is a false friend and a time-server who does not 
 frankly declare the truth. Of whatever party or 
 politics you choose to be, every man who is honest and 
 true should have the liberty to vote unmolested, unin¬ 
 timidated, and without prejudice for the man of his 
 choice; for men who are themselves honest and true; 
 whose interests are with the people, and who will 
 safely guard and protect all that is committed to their 
 charge. 
 
 What have you accomplished with the funds fur¬ 
 nished your race by taxation in the South? Ten years 
 ago, according to the United States reports, the South 
 had a population of the average .school age (6 to 14 
 years), of white children (using round numbers) of 
 3,489,000; of colored, 1,692,000. Of these North 
 Carolina had 239,150 white, and 142,600 colored, or 
 63 per cent, white to 37 per cent, colored. The en¬ 
 rollment in school was the same average, and it is 
 noticeable that of the Southern States, North Carolina 
 had the largest ratio of enrollment to the number 
 enumerated. 
 
 I will not repeat the figures of the Bureau of Educa¬ 
 tion for successive years, but observe that whereas 
 oirer 85 per cent, of the colored race of 10 years and 
 upward could not read and write in 1870, it was 
 reduced to 75 per cent, in 1880, and by 1890, had 
 fallen to 60 per cent. To-day, in some of the Southern 
 States, it is less than 50 per cent. In 1896-’97, the 
 latest published returns of the United States, the 
 average attendance per cent, of the white enrollment 
 was 67.58, and of the colored 61.95. Institutions for 
 higher education of the negroes, numbered 160 in the 
 Southern States, and 9 in the Northern, being a total 
 of 169. These had 45,402 students, an increase of 
 5,275 over the preceding year. 
 
 Industrial training, the salt of the whole, was given 
 to 13,581. They were provided with libraries of 
 224,794 volumes, valued at $203,731. The cost of 
 grounds, buildings, apparatus, etc., had reached 
 $7)7 i 4>958, the benefactions for the year being $303,- 
 
17 — 
 
 ooo and the aggregate income $i ,045,278 for the same 
 time. 
 
 The teachers in the colored public schools numbered 
 27,435, and in higher schools 1,795. They doubtless 
 now exceed 30,000. 
 
 A most important fact is, that in 1865 the negro 
 owned practically nothing, but has since accumulated 
 $226,000,000. That is not more than $20,000,000 
 short of the whole taxable property of North Carolina. 
 
 Recorder Cheatham, of the National Capital, (form¬ 
 erly of North Carolina), in a recent emancipation 
 address, speaks as follows: 
 
 “Where, in the same short period of freedom, has 
 any race undertaken life’s stormy path, without a 
 penny 111 their pockets, without food or raiment, and 
 has built 200 colleges, educated 25,000 teachers, who 
 have passed examinations at the hands of those sup¬ 
 posed to be antagonistic to their advancement; and 
 has educated 5,000 ministers of the gospel, 20,000 
 Sunday school teachers, and has 500,000 Sunday 
 school scholars, in the short period of 25 years. * * 
 
 “Is it not just that I should state here that Northern 
 help was great in the sympathy and aid to education 
 given us, but it must not be forgotten that Southern 
 men in every Southern community by sympathy and 
 accommodation in store and bank credits, have ex¬ 
 tended the race a service which they could not other¬ 
 wise obtain, and has enabled it to make the showing 
 of which we are justly proud. No man or race can 
 stand alone, and in the providence of God, we have 
 found friends in all sections of the country, who have 
 succored us in times of trouble.” 
 
 These are words of natural exultation. But there 
 is reason to believe that this development has been 
 one-sided; of the mental, much of it, without the 
 moral; of the head and not the heart. 
 
 There is a canker at the core of this civilization, and 
 according to the testimony of some of your own best 
 experts, the colored race is destroying itself by physi¬ 
 cal and moral uncleanness. 
 
 Many are flocking to the towns, where the steady 
 industry of the country is exchanged for periods of 
 exciting effort, and again, of utter idleness. The 
 children of a new generation are growing up without 
 
 2 
 
18 — 
 
 parental restraint, especially where the old fathers and 
 mothers of the days of slavery have passed away. 
 
 Young women, educated to read imaginative ro¬ 
 mances, decline to work in household service, and 
 crowd the streets of the larger towns until they come 
 to the police court and worse. Faithful colored pastors 
 wring their hands over the young Sabbath breakers, 
 who go from baseball and craps by day, to petty mis¬ 
 chief and thieving by night, until your penitentiary 
 rolls with 1,300 convicts, contains 75 per cent, of 
 minors, who started out in crime for an occupation, 
 and are already post-graduates from the police station, 
 first, and the work-house and convict road-working 
 camp in the second place, until they received the long 
 sentence that consigns them to the penitentiary. 
 
 Moral dissolution invites physical also, and swift 
 retribution follows. 
 
 It has been known to students of vital statistics for 
 years, that the black population was steadily decreas¬ 
 ing. At first the proportion of births, always large, 
 was maintained, but the death rate was notably greater 
 than that of the whites. Now it is proven that the 
 birth rate is decreasing, and the outlook ominous for 
 the fate of the race, unless the moral status is elevated 
 in time. 
 
 In 1790, the white population of the Union was 
 80.73 P er cent, in number, and the negro 19.27. 
 Under slavery, the increase if slow was steady, in its 
 own section. But the falling off now is extraordinary, 
 and in 1890, the colored population was only 11.93 
 per cent, against 87.80. The increase of white popu¬ 
 lation for 1880 to 1890 was 26.68 per cent, while that 
 of the negro was 13.51. 
 
 If we consider North Carolina, when the Union was 
 founded, she had 27 per cent, colored, which increased 
 in successive decades until it reached nearly 37 per 
 cent., but it is now decreasing, the census of 1890 
 showing 34.67 per cent, or about the ratio of 1820. 
 This is the more important, as we have extremely few 
 immigrants as yet, and have lost largely by white 
 emigration to the South and South-west. 
 
 The death rate in Southern cities shows a large 
 excess of colored over white, without exception. 
 While St, Uouis, Baltimore, New Orleans, Washing- 
 
19 
 
 ton, Louisville, etc., show a death rate of 17 to 22 per 
 thousand of white population, the rate for their colored 
 inhabitants is 32 to 38. 
 
 The bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor 
 for May 1897 contains the results of investigations 
 made by Atlanta University (colored), on this subject: 
 Reports for fifteen years were examined, and personal 
 visits made in colored families. It was shown that in 
 the leading cities of Atlanta, Baltimore, Charleston, 
 Richmond and Memphis, the annual average of deaths 
 of the whites, was from 18.59 to 23.19 P er 1,000, and 
 that of the colored was from 31.15 to 44.08, or a per¬ 
 centage in excess, of 73.8 average. 
 
 The details of the reports of the experts, inspired 
 by anxiety for the welfare of their brethren, show that 
 the status of mortality thus revealed, is not due to the 
 environment, as from overcrowding, or unsanitary loca¬ 
 tion, or the infection of diseases like measles, diptlie- 
 ria, fever and the like, because the excess due to these 
 affections is only 30 per cent. 
 
 But the ravages of consumption cause 130 per cent, 
 excess over that of the whites, infantile affections and 
 still birth 165, and disease directly attributable to 
 vice, no less than 482 per cent. There is an enormous 
 waste of child life. More than 50 per cent, of the 
 children of negroes born in Richmond, die during the 
 first year. The old fruitfulness, too, is passing away. 
 Illustrations are given to show the effect of the new 
 conditions upon the number in the household, which 
 is growing less. 
 
 In Nasheville, although the colored population is 
 only 37 per cent, of the total, they suffer 72 per cent, 
 of all the deaths from consumption. Infant mortality 
 also, is increased by the burdens placed upon the 
 women. I11 Atlanta, out of 324 families investigated, 
 31 were wholly supported by the labor of the mother, 
 and 205 by the mother, altogether or in part. 
 
 The same report shows the excess per cent, of con¬ 
 sumption in Charleston, S. C., to be 239. It should 
 be borne in mind that consumption and similar wasting 
 diseases are often the last stages of the life of the 
 drunkard and the debauchee. One of the investigating 
 committee, L- M. Henshaw, speaks as follows, of 
 this: 
 
20 
 
 “There is reason for great concern as to the exces¬ 
 sive prevalence of this disease among the colored 
 people. Unless checked, in the course of years, it 
 may be a deciding factor in the fall of the race. The 
 prevalence of consumption, scrofula, syphilis and lep- 
 leprosy has destroyed the weaker races before the 
 rising tide of Christian civilization. The Carib of the 
 West Indies, the Red Men of these shores, the natives 
 of the Sandwich Islands, and the Aborigines of 
 Australia and New Zeland have been greatly reduced 
 or disappeared altogether from the ravages of these 
 diseases. * * * The native population of the 
 
 Sandwich Islands a hundred years ago, was 100,000; 
 to-day it is 35,000.“ 
 
 Another expert, (Prof. Harris) sums up the conclu¬ 
 sion as follows : 
 
 “What is there in the negro’s social condition that 
 is responsible for these diseases, and the consequent 
 mortality? Be it known to all men that we, to-day in 
 this Conference assembled, are not the enemies of our 
 people, because we tell them the truth. While I do 
 not depreciate sanitary regulations, I am convinced that 
 the sine qua non of a change for the better is a higher 
 social morality. 
 
 Neither his poverty nor his relation to the white 
 people presents any real impediment to his phys¬ 
 ical development and good health. For the cause 
 of the black man’s low vitality, susceptibility to dis¬ 
 ease, and enormous death rate we must look to the 
 conditions he creates for himself. * * * I have 
 
 referred to the maintenance of the household by the 
 mother, and the impaired chances of life which a 
 debauched percentage bequeaths to childhood. Infants 
 in their graves will rise up against this evil and adul¬ 
 terous generation. 
 
 Let me add, that where shot and shell and bayonet, 
 the printing press, steam engine and electric motor 
 have slain their thousands, licentious men, unchaste 
 women and impure homes have slain their tens of 
 thousands. If these things be true, as charged against 
 us, unless a social revolution be wrought, the hand¬ 
 writing of our destiny may be seen upon the wall. 
 History teaches that war nor famine nor pesti¬ 
 lence exterminates not so completely and rapidly as 
 vice. ’ ’ 
 
21 
 
 Time fails me to discuss this subject in the light of 
 criminal statistics. You know how our jails and docks 
 and workhouses are filled. How to provide for the army 
 of colored juvenile offenders is a great obstacle to the 
 establishment of State Reform Schools and Reforma¬ 
 tories, yet they must come. 
 
 It has been pointed out, that in Pennsylvania where 
 there is but little prejudice to affect the black man 
 arraigned for trial, that while he forms about 2 per 
 cent, of the population, he furnishes 16 per cent, of 
 male prisoners, and 34 per cent, of females. I11 
 Chicago, which has been irreverently called the 
 “Negro’s' Heaven,’’ they form ip? per cent, of the 
 population, but 10 per cent, of the prisoners. Harris, 
 whom we have quoted, well declares : 
 
 “If we are to stike at the root of this matter, it 
 will not be at sanitary regulations, but social reconstruc¬ 
 tion, and moral regeneration.’’ 
 
 Dr. Curry has reminded us, “Education, property, * 
 habits of thrift and self-control, the higher achieve-| 
 ments of civilization, are not extemporized nor created ! 
 by magic or legislation. Behind the Caucasian, lie 
 centuries of the uplifting influences of the institutions 
 of family and society, the churches, the State, and the 
 salutary effects of heredity. Behind the negro are 
 centuries of ignorance, barbarism, slavery, supersti- I 
 tion, idolatry, fetichism and the transmissible conse- * 
 quences of heredity.” 
 
 Of all the men and women of color in this State, 
 you are especially blessed with the means of the 
 training to render you leaders of your people, our 
 of the wilderness, into the land of promise. You 
 are called to the high duty of combining mental and 
 industrial power with nobility of moral and spiritual 
 life. You must disdain anything less. The physical 
 and moral salvation of your people is at stake. The 
 blood of your fellow-men will be required at your 
 hands. Can you do this work ? Has any man of 
 your race already begun it ? 
 
 You know the story of Booker Washington. Eman¬ 
 cipation came when he was seven, and he followed his 
 mother to the mountains of West Yirginia, to toil for 
 her support. Why is he not there to-day ? Because 
 of the will to rise, and the self-denial and perseverance 
 to back it. 
 
He learned to read, by bits, between his hours of 
 labor, and then journeyed, chiefly on foot, for hun¬ 
 dreds of miles to the school he had heard of, where 
 boys might work to pay for education. Loading 
 ballast at the wharves in Richmond, and sleeping in 
 the open air, a friendless stranger, he earned the 
 money to clothe himself decently and enter upon the 
 task of training. When Gen. Armstrong said, “We 
 will see what you can do.” the day was won for fame 
 and fortune, and better, for infinite good among his 
 fellow-men. After graduation, he began to teach a 
 school in Alabama, with thirty pupils; in which a man 
 or woman might pay for food and tuition by labor, 
 faithful study, and good conduct. 
 
 When his good management developed, the white 
 people of Alabama provided a State appropriation to 
 aid the school; it attracted notice abroad, and gifts 
 came to it from the whole country, added to the self¬ 
 growth, from laboring students. 
 
 He described it in an address in Brooklyn, as fol¬ 
 lows : 
 
 “Since 1881, the Normal School of Tuskegee has 
 grown until we have sixty-nine instructors and 800 
 young men and women from nineteen States; if families 
 of instructors are added, 1,000 souls are on our 
 grounds. We cultivate 600 acres, and have made 
 1,500,000 brick this season. We have built up in 
 fourteen years, a property value at $225,000, with 
 thirty-seven buildings, on 1,400 acres of land, thirty- 
 four from student labor, with no mortgage on anything. 
 There is required for the work, $70,000 a year, and 
 there are 800 delegates in the yearly Conference.” 
 
 Is not a man who can organize like this, to be list¬ 
 ened to? And this is his language: 
 
 “It is important that all the privileges of the law be 
 ours. It is vastly more important that we be prepared 
 for the exercise of these privileges. * * * 
 
 “None will deny that after freedom we made serious 
 mistakes. We spent time and money attempting to 
 go to Congress and the vState Legislatures, that could 
 have been better used in becoming real estate dealers 
 or carpenters in our own country. vSo, too, in attend¬ 
 ing political conventions, when we should have been 
 .starting a dairy farm or a truck garden.” 
 
By his wise expressions, no less than his industrial 
 achievements, he seems to be the Providential leader of 
 his race. I will therefore add a paragraph from a 
 recent letter to a prominent colored man of our State. 
 He says: 
 
 “Is there any reason why the negro in'the South 
 should continue to oppose the Southern white man in 
 his politics? Unconsciously we seem to have gotten 
 the idea into our blood and bones that we are only act¬ 
 ing in a manly way, when we oppose Southern men 
 with our votes. * * * 
 
 “In some way, by some methods, we must bring 
 the race to the point where it will cease to feel that 
 the only way for it to succeed is to oppose every thing 
 suggested by the Southern white men. This, I con¬ 
 sider one of our real problems.” 
 
 I come now to consider the most serious phase of 
 the issues and possibilities of the elevation of your 
 race, and its peaceful dwelling in these States of its 
 nativity. I invoke your attention to a living and 
 burning question which concerns peculiarly our popu¬ 
 lation, with so large a number of negroes living in 
 near neighborhood to the whites, and in s:>me sections, 
 preponderating over the white residents in number. 
 
 The recent atrocious crimes committed in one of 
 these States, and the barbarous death meted out to the 
 brute who performed the deeds, have so shocked 
 thoughtful men of both races, that it is hoped that 
 out of the discussion forced by these horrible crimes, 
 there may come a better condition of things—a remedy 
 for these evils. 
 
 We are certainly face to face with conditions which 
 not only affect the peace and good order of society for 
 the time being, but our very civilization. This state 
 of affairs must be discussed and a speedy change 
 secured. If not, society dissolves into its elements, 
 and then as always the weaker race will suffer. Wis¬ 
 dom requires that this consideration be temperate, 
 frank and candid. It is in this spirit that I invoke 
 you to heed what I have to suggest. 
 
 It had as well be known of all men that white men 
 hold the purity of home, and the virtue of pure women 
 as sacred, and that the wretch who invades the one 
 and assaults the other must die. There is no division 
 
24 
 
 of sentiment among honorable men on this question. 
 It is only when they come to adopt the method by 
 which this death penalty shall be inflicted that they 
 differ. 
 
 The advocate of lynch law says the mob of excited 
 and angry men is the speedy and stern tribunal by 
 which the intolerable wrong should be punished, and 
 thus arrest crime by swift retribution. But the 
 thoughtful, conservative law-abiding citizen says, that 
 all violations of the law however frequent, should 
 meet punishment after trial according to the law of 
 the land. 
 
 I take my stand with the law-abiding class, but I 
 wish it distinctly understood that I open my lips in 
 favor of inflicting speedy and certain death upon the 
 brute who spills innocent blood, or applies the incen¬ 
 diary torch to an inhabited home, or lays unholy hands 
 upon innocent women. I believe that the security of 
 property, of society, of the home, of the safety of the 
 individual and all he holds dear, will best be conserved 
 by the prompt and faithful execution of the law. 
 
 Lawlessness begets lawlessness. When the barriers 
 of the law are broken down at one point by one 
 class, they may soon be broken down at another 
 point, it may be by another class, and for another 
 object. Vengeance begets reprisal in revenge. When 
 the white man, whose pride is that he has enclosed 
 human society in the bulwarks of the law, and is the 
 special custodian of that law, goes beyond it to inflict 
 punishment on the black man, it will not be long 
 before some vicious brute will in turn wreak wrong 
 and outrage upon some defenceless one. The more 
 revolting the crime of the one, the more atrocious that 
 of the other. Let us hope for the sake of our common 
 humanity that the depths have been reached. 
 
 Experience, even in lawlessness and crime, ought 
 to teach something. If we take no higher view than 
 to appeal to that experience, it seems to me that he 
 must cease to advocate lynch law. It has been tried, 
 in secret and in public, in the night and in the day, in 
 its less cruel methods, and in every sickening detail, 
 and yet the very crimes it was intended to suppress, 
 are on the increase. To say nothing more of lynch 
 law, it has been a lamentable failure. 
 
25 — 
 
 The wretch who is capable of committing these 
 crimes, having no respect for the law, has no dread of 
 the lawless. He has not been deterred by fear of mob 
 violence. Speculate upon it as we may, the fact 
 remains to confront those who uphold lynch law, that 
 it has not suppressed or reduced the crime it denounces, 
 and undertakes to punish. Then may I not appeal to 
 those who have embraced it, to stand aside, and let 
 the law of the land try its hand ? 
 
 The question of the future of the Southern negro as 
 developed by education and industrial training is of 
 great interest, as I have already pointed out, yet it is 
 secondary in the immediate present, when the social 
 order of the Southern country is in such great peril. 
 That question must be deferred, until we have restored 
 safety, and a feeling of security to the humblest woman 
 in the poorest cabin, in the ramotest corner of the 
 most thinly settled portion of the South. The South¬ 
 ern white man alone cannot restore that security. He 
 can help, by the enforcement of the law, but as the 
 loss of the sense of safety did not come through him, 
 he cannot restore it. That is the mission of the leaders 
 of the negro race. 
 
 The preachers, . the teachers, the doctors, the 
 best equipped men of your race, must address them¬ 
 selves to that task. They must be instant in season 
 and out of season. They must say one word in 
 denunciation of lynching, where they utter ninety-nine 
 in condemnation of the crime which has evoked lynch 
 law. They must create a public sentiment in their 
 race, so strong that the negro criminal shall be held in 
 the same detestation among his own race, as the white 
 criminal is held among his own. They must make a 
 public sentiment among negroes so strong that no 
 brute in the most obscure corner can fail to be deterred 
 by it. Crime must be made dishonorable. Criminals 
 must be made to feel that crime shuts the door of 
 respecable homes to the perpetrator. When the law¬ 
 breaker returns from the penitentiary, let him find 
 that he is disgraced, that the worthy will not have him 
 as an associate. 
 
 As a race, the moral elevation of the negro has been 
 retarded, because the returned convict has often been 
 received as the victim of persecution, instead of the 
 
—26 
 
 subject of just punishment. Let him be a Ishmaelite, 
 an out-cast, to be received nowhere, except by charity 
 and upon probation. From this college let the senti¬ 
 ment go that the negro criminal is not only degrading 
 himself, but his race, and let him know the ostracism 
 that white criminals have always been made to feel. 
 
 I know that the great majority of negroes, the great 
 mass of your people, condemns rape as well as the 
 lynching for it, but they must know that the first step 
 in ending both is to make a public sentiment against 
 the first so strong that no man will dare commit it. 
 This is a herculean task, calling for the highest wisdom 
 and strongest determination. 
 
 Booker Washington is authority for the statement 
 that no graduate of a college has been guilty of the 
 crime of rape. 
 
 This is a high tribute to the character of their insti¬ 
 tution, but it is a negative virtue that does not measure 
 the respectibility of the graduates. They are lights 
 that must not be hid under a bushel. Their influence 
 should be seen and felt in the darkest corner. Their 
 education is a failure if it do nothing but prevent the 
 commission of gross crimes. It will be a success only 
 where its influence uplifts the race. 
 
 We hear a great deal about the responsibility of 
 wealth, and are told that the rich man is but the cus¬ 
 todian of money, and is untrue to his stewardship if 
 he does not use his wealth for good purposes. Money 
 is only one kind of wealth. Education is wealth. 
 Character is wealth. A man whose education does 
 nothing except to give him happiness or strength, and 
 effects nothing for the world, is as mean a miser as the 
 millionaire who uses his money solely for his own 
 gratification. 
 
 The Federal and the State governments contribute 
 large sums yearly for this college and others like it, to 
 train the youth of the colored race, not merely to 
 enable such students as are gathered together, to learn 
 more of their own betterment. That is the smallest 
 part of the object. It is given in order that you may 
 carry light and truth and higher ideas into the cabins 
 of the most ignorant. Unless you do this, the knowl¬ 
 edge gained and unused makes you a miser, and there 
 is no character more despicable than one who hoards 
 
■ 27 - 
 
 iu selfishness, instead of using his store to bless man¬ 
 kind. 
 
 Eet me beg of you then, teachers and students of 
 this institution, and leaders of your race throughout 
 the South, to set yourself earnestly to the task of 
 stopping the crime for which lynching follows. I 
 repeat this injunction, I press it upon you from a sense 
 of its momentous gravity to both races. It is a matter 
 of such magnitude that it is impossible to exaggerate it. 
 
 Unfortunately", in recent years, men under extreme 
 provocation have taken the law in their own hands, 
 —anticipating the regular administration of justice, 
 and have inflicted summary execution upon persons 
 known or strongly suspected of flagrant crimes against 
 society. This is greatly to be deplored, I acknowledge, 
 and if continued, must lead to fearful consequences. 
 All thoughtful men know that the existence of society, 
 and the strength and value of government depends 
 upon the maintenance of established law. The law is 
 as necessary^ to the preservation of order and society 
 as the attraction of gravity to the solidity and perma¬ 
 nence of the mighty system of nature. 
 
 The eclipse of the sun brings darkness upon the 
 earth no more certainly than the eclipse of the law, 
 brings darkness upon society". The horrors inevitable 
 upon lawlessness would be inconceivable, if the certain 
 restoration of authority was not prompt and posi¬ 
 tive. Tike earthquakes and cyclones—if it lasted— 
 nothing would be left but wreck and desolation. 
 Society" without law would be like a trip without 
 compass or pilot, left in storm and darkness to the fury 
 of the winds and waves. The French revolution, 
 horror of ages, illustrated this immutable truth in 
 blood and fire. 
 
 Every consideration of humanity, every argument 
 of reason, every" principle of policy, every plea for 
 justice, condemns with one voice a resort to lawless 
 force. Philosophy denounces the principle. Expe¬ 
 rience demonstrates it to be self-destructive. Universal 
 history repeats that the faithful adminstration of 
 established law is the only remedy for crime. The 
 Great Book teaches the same everlasting lesson. It is 
 only when the evils of government itself become unen¬ 
 durable, that the sacred right of revolution can be 
 invoked. 
 
28 
 
 This must be a land of law; the action of no body of 
 men, however respectable in numbers or character, 
 which takes human life or destroys property without 
 lafwul authority, can be justified in conscience or policy. 
 How shall this great evil be reformed? Ret us first 
 look, as I have said, for its causes. Deep and powerful 
 reasons must have brought about, among good people, 
 the extraordinary and almost revolutionary movements 
 of which I have spoken as lynch law. 
 
 Dr. Deems truly said, we ought “to look into our¬ 
 selves and learn the truth.” Here is North Carolina, 
 our liberty-loving, law-abiding, peace-keeping people 
 who for a hundred years have established for her this 
 character. Nowhere is there greater obedience,—more 
 reverence for law. Yet here there has been in the last 
 thirty years more lynch law than in all her history 
 heretofore. Her people have intelligence, love justice, 
 hate oppression, desire peace. Education is free, good 
 and just laws prevail, and men’s rights are secure in 
 ^ her borders. 
 
 Now look into your hearts and memories and answer. 
 How many of the.se lawless acts of lynch law have 
 come from burning barns, from mills set on fire at 
 midnight, from cotton gins destroyed ? How many 
 from once happy homes, desolated over sleeping women? 
 And in this Christian age, in profound peace, must I 
 speak it ? How many pure tender, good women have 
 been pursued, assaulted and violated-—more than life 
 taken—by inhuman mosters in the shape of men ! Oh, 
 is there wonder that men rise in their might to defend 
 and protect their homes, their mothers, wives, daghters, 
 friends? Was there ever a time, an age, or country, 
 in which manhood would have done less? Cold must 
 be the social philosophy that can wait for the courts 
 to behold the desolate victim in the agony of reciting 
 before the public her story of the crudest wounds ever 
 inflicted on body and soul ! 
 
 Let history speak. In great old Rome, the pure 
 and lovely Eucretia is despoiled by Tarquin the Proud, 
 by stealth in her home. She will not survive the 
 wrong to her purity—she plunges a dagger into her 
 heart. Brutus displays the bloody knife, the Roman 
 people rise as one man, drive the Tarquins from 
 Rome, destroy the family of kings and establish the 
 
29 - 
 
 republic again. It is two hundred years later; Appius 
 Claudius, Chief of the Decemvirs, the ten chosen 
 rulers, claimed the beautiful Virginia, daughter of a 
 Roman soldier, for his slave and victim—the corrupt 
 judge, awarded the victim to a corrupt tyrant, and the 
 humble, but noble father, to save his beloved child, 
 stuck his dagger into her bosom. At sight of the 
 weapon, the Roman armies broke their lines, marched 
 at a run to the city, slew the oppressor, and broke up 
 forever the institution of the Decemvirs. 
 
 Deeper than the flow of the tides, certain as the 
 rising of the sun, constant as the laws of nature, is the 
 sense in man of the duty to protect and vindicate 
 woman, the spring of life, happiness and purity ! 
 Know all men, that in this land of ours, women shall 
 be safe. Every spot in North Carolina shall be her 
 sanctuary. At home, on the highways, in the forest, 
 everywhere, she shall be sacred and inviolable. 
 
 You are intelligent and moral men and women of 
 character, and you will hear the truth, which never 
 hurts the good. The criminal statisticsof the State show 
 that considering population, there are fourteen times as 
 much crime among the negroes as among the white 
 people. Therefore the bitterness of lynch law has 
 fallen principally, not exclusively, on the colored race. 
 But these foulest of crimes are still committed. Now 
 is your great, your noble opportunity. You can and 
 must overcome these accursed evils. 
 
 You must bring all the energies of your people, all 
 the influence you possess over your race, to impress 
 powerfully the hearts of your young men against these 
 terrible enormities. The men with the midnight torch, 
 the fiendish assailants of women, the brutal criminals 
 who murder without remorse, must be pursued to justice 
 by the vigilance of your own people. In your families, 
 at the schools, in the churches of the living God, by 
 your orators, in all circles and associations, every 
 effort must be made to create a sentiment and purpose 
 against these vices and constant outrages. 
 
 You must not form a society of the educated for 
 mutual pleasure and advantage. You must go into 
 the highways, and obtain the command of the igno¬ 
 rant, accepting the creed that he would be the greatest 
 must be the servant. After you have done all you can 
 
V 
 
 — 30 — 
 
 to prevent the crime, if some brute does commit it, 
 join with your white neighbors to hunt him down and 
 bring him to speed)" trial. Frown upon any who would 
 excuse the crime, or protect the villian, and create 
 such public opinion, as to compel all to follow your 
 example. Do you shrink from this? Then you are 
 not worthy to be teachers and leaders. 
 
 I believe that the great majority of negroes would 
 follow the leadership that leads. The negro preacher 
 and teacher who sits still and says nothing when an 
 outrage is committed by a brute of his own race, but 
 comes out in denunciation of the mob that lynches 
 the offender is a moral coward who is an enemy to the 
 uplifting of his people, and the moral elevation of his 
 country. 
 
 The white man of the South has a mission as impor¬ 
 tant to perform. He has not always appreciated the 
 need of a speedy enforcement of the law, nor has the 
 penalty been rigid enough, in some cases. The people 
 will not permit the ravisher to go unpunished. That 
 is as true as Holy Writ, but I am hereto declare again 
 that it is the high duty of the Southern white man to 
 see that the execution is accompanied by the sanction 
 of law, and is not through the torch of the over¬ 
 wrought multitude. It is not out of regard for the 
 wretch, that this duty is imposed upon us. Atrocious 
 as was the maiming and burning in Georgia, it cannot 
 be said that the brute did not deserve it. The ener¬ 
 gies of the white man must be put forth strenuously, 
 not in the interest of the ravisher, but for the honor 
 of the South, and the preservation of its civilization. 
 
 Det the laws be amended, to secure a speedy trial, 
 so that no man can say: “We had to lynch, because 
 the delays of the law are such as to defeat justice, or 
 destroy its effect.’' Degal execution where guilt is 
 ascertained, should be speedy and certain. Technical¬ 
 ities and advantages to criminals as to challenge must 
 be wiped, and every man must know that execution 
 will surely follow. That is the first duty of the law- 
 abiding citizens; of legislators and judicial officers. 
 
 The second is of like importance. The people must 
 be taught, day by day, that no man or set of men have 
 the right to constitute themselves judge, jurors, and 
 executors, even when the guilt is certain; that if good 
 
31 — 
 
 men tolerate lynching for rape, worse men will employ 
 it foi barn-burning, as they did in Tennessee, or for 
 horse-stealing, as they tried to do lately, in New York. 
 It is better that one ravisher should escape, deplorable 
 as that v\ ould be, than that good men should become 
 murderers. The future of our section depends upon 
 our ability to stamp out lynch law, and to secure that, 
 the people should be guaranteed the prompt legal 
 execution of the guilty. 
 
 Devotion to justice and humanity was sublimely dis¬ 
 played in the old Confederate soldier of Georgia, Maj. 
 W. W. Flowers, not long ago. When in April last, a 
 mob was ready to lynch a negro preacher, that brave 
 old man rode among them just as the noose was 
 adjusted. By the weird light these men carried, he 
 confronted them, declared his belief in the innocence of 
 the accused, and made an impassioned plea that the law 
 take its course. 
 
 In the days of chivalry, men put their lives on a 
 spear’s point for the lady of their love. Tauncelot 
 and Arthur are not more worthy to be embalmed in the 
 story than this gallant old Confederate who put his life 
 in jeopardy, to save an humble negro. To the mes¬ 
 sage of the mob to leave the town for his own good, 
 the sturdy veteran replied with the courage of a Coeur 
 de Dion, “Tell them that my muscles are not trained for 
 running; tell them that I have heard the whistle of the 
 minies from a thousand rifles, and I am not frightened 
 by this crowd.” 
 
 To the chivalrous men ot my race, who count the 
 protection of their women above love of life, I com¬ 
 mend the self-denying bravery of the ‘Old Rebel’ who 
 could go to a bloody grave, if need be, in upholding 
 the Anglo Saxon’s obedience to law. The hero who 
 will live in history is not the leader of the mob who 
 led it but for the infraction of the law, but the fight- 
 in 0 ' Confederate who had the courage to withstand his 
 infuriated neighbors, and tell them that lawful hanging 
 and not the uncertain execution by a mob was the best 
 defence of womanhood; yes, even when that mob is 
 animated by indignation at the crime that transcends 
 all crimes. 
 
 Such are the responsibilities imposed upon both 
 races. We can not run away from duty. The rich 
 
32 
 
 may seek some other land, if they have “no stomach 
 for the fight,” but the mass of white men and black 
 men who inhabit the Southern States, will live and 
 die here. If the problem is to be solved, we must do 
 it. The people of the North, however desirous, can 
 afford no help, except to give of their means to edu¬ 
 cate. I know not what the providence of God holds 
 in store for you. Whether here, in Africa, or else¬ 
 where, 3^011 must work out your own destiny: This I 
 do know, that there is no place anywhere for an 
 honorable history unless industry, thrift, and upright¬ 
 ness be the mainsprings of your life. 
 
 Public opinion at the North, especially the press, 
 must condemn as loudly and promptly the work of the 
 mob in the North and West as they are ready to 
 condemn in the South. It must be as legitimate for 
 the men in black to mine coal or otherwise honorabty 
 earn his bread in Pana, Illinois, as in Birmingham, 
 Alabama. Until then, the writer beyond Mason’s and 
 Dixon’s line, who pulls the mote from our eyes, can 
 not convince the world that he is sincere. It must be 
 as resprehensible in the Governor of Illinois or any 
 other Northern or Western State to station soldier}^ at 
 the railroad stations on the borders of those States to 
 prevent the incoming of the colored man as a laborer, 
 even by the shedding of blood, as such conduct would 
 be by the governor of Mississippi or North Carolina. 
 How dare they sit in judgment upon our shorcomings? 
 
 The Constitution declares that the citizens of each 
 State are entitled to the privileges and immunities of 
 citizenship in any other, throughout this Union. 
 Who made the negro a citizen ? It must come to this, 
 that it is just as inexcusable for the mob to serve 
 notice upon the unoffending black man in Pennsylvania 
 or Ohio to flee the town under penalty of death, as 
 such proceedings are unjustifiable in Arkansas or 
 South Carolina, before that public opinion can be 
 respected. 
 
 When we take into account how many times more 
 negroes there are in the South than in the North, I can 
 not say that these onslaughts upon the colored man occur 
 any more often in the South than in the North. Perhaps 
 the difference lies largely in the fact that our sins are 
 magnified, and theirs condoned, by the press which has 
 
—38 
 
 the ear of the American people. I have no sympathy 
 with such a sense of justice. 
 
 I am aware of the fact that I am speaking plainly 
 here. I come with that intent. My words have been 
 measured; you can afford to heed them. I violate no 
 confidence when I tell you that I am regarded as a 
 friend of the black man in this State, and these are 
 times of unrest with your race. But you may confide 
 in my words, when I declare to you that no disquiet 
 need be felt by the honorable, well-behaved, worthy 
 men among your people. I am here as a representa¬ 
 tive Anglo Saxon whose ancestors suffered with 
 Washington at Valley Forge, to assure you that the 
 welfare of the black is' safe in the keeping of the 
 Anglo Saxon, and that the home best suited for the 
 black man, everything considered, and beyond all 
 comparison, is the Southland. 
 
 That this is your best home, for which you should 
 make every effort to be worthy, is conceded by the 
 language of your Alabama leader. When in Brooklyn 
 he pointed out the fact that the negro mechanic is 
 shut out by trade unions in the North, saying: “The 
 negro can sooner conquer Southern prejudice in the 
 civilized world, than learn to compete with the North 
 in the business world. In field, in factory, in the 
 markets, the South presents a better opportunity to 
 to the negro to earn a living, than is found in the 
 North.” * * * 
 
 “In the North, you can encourage the education 
 among the masses which will throw open the doors of 
 your shops and factories to give our black men and 
 women the opportunity to earn a dollar. Tet it be 
 said that in all parts of our country, there is no dis¬ 
 tinction of race in the opportunity to earn an honest 
 living.” 
 
 Is it possible that such an appeal must be made in 
 metropolitan New York? Yea, verily. Strange does 
 it seem to those who have seen thousands of negro 
 workmen passing from our great tobacco factories, 
 and who note white and black carpenters working 
 together in peace and unity every day. 
 
 It is not without its bearing in this matter, that one 
 recalls the exclusion of the Chinese, and the absorption 
 of the Sandwich Islands, with no consent' of the 
 
 3 
 
:34 
 
 natives asked, and no likelihood of granting them the 
 ballot; and of the contemptuous spirit toward the 
 Cubans and the people of Porto Rico, to say nothing 
 of schools to rule the Philippines outside of our elec¬ 
 tion republican system. It would seem that the 
 anxiety of the Northern politician for the black man’s 
 ballot was chiefly to use that ballot indirectly, for 
 himself. But his interest in the negro does not seem to 
 be strong enough to provide him with the work that 
 feeds his wife and children. 
 
 Ret me be'excused for citing two illustrations, of 
 many, in my personal experience. Sometime ago, in a 
 certain Northern city, I had some business with a 
 colored man (a carpenter), and after it had been dis¬ 
 patched, he took occasion to thank me for the kindness 
 and courtesy which he said I had shown him, and 
 added: “Col. Carr, I was raised a slave in Tennesee; 
 I have lived in South Carolina and Virginia, and came 
 thence to this city. Never in any of these Southern States 
 was I proscribed on account of color. But since com¬ 
 ing to this city, I have worked for three years in the 
 shop where I am now engaged, and not once, in all 
 that time, has a single white man in the shop spoken 
 to me—and there are about one hundred of them. 
 Not once.” 
 
 I thought, what a contrast is that, to our life. At 
 the time, I was giving employment to perhaps two 
 hundred and fifty white people, and as many, may be, 
 of colored people. 
 
 Again. Shortly after the late unpleasant disturb¬ 
 ances in Wilmington, I was in New York, and coming 
 down Broadway one evening, just after dark. The 
 night was dark and cold, and I hurried to escape the 
 chilling blast, when I was stopped by a plaintive voice 
 “Master, please,” the black man said, as he extended 
 his hand for an alms. He said he was a painter by 
 trade, and led me to a gas light merely to show his 
 paint stained clothes to corroborate his words. He 
 declared that he would rather work than beg, “But I 
 am a black man, and for that reason I am not permit¬ 
 ted to make my living at my calling in this great city, 
 I am boycotted and proscribed to such an extent that 
 1 can scarcely ever get work, and when I do, it is 
 such that no one else cares to take; and often I go 
 hungry.” 
 
He affirmed, and I think he was honest, that it had 
 been three days since he had a meal. I told him that 
 1 was from the South, from North Carolina, where it 
 is alleged that we kill negroes for amusement; burn 
 their houses, destroy their property: and asked him if 
 he were not afraid to seek alms of a Southern man. 
 
 '‘No, master,” he replied, “my experience has taught 
 me, if I have learned anything, that the Southern man 
 is the negro’s truest friend, and the South is the ne¬ 
 gro’s best home.” 
 
 It is upon a civilization of true manhood and genuine 
 womanhood alone, that you can succeed. You who 
 are to giaduate from this institution must do your 
 duty, and you will not go unrewarded. Good men 
 will mark your course, conscience will approve and 
 hope for your race will return. Build up organizations, 
 utilize the power of your press to enlist your people 
 against wrong-doing, and in favor of what is right. 
 
 Then will come the revolution that will be the salva¬ 
 tion of your race; then you will win a victory as 
 glorious as any in history; then the true prosperity of 
 your people will begin; then will your lives be useful 
 and happy, for you will have conquered your passions, 
 and set your feet upon vice. 
 
 What 3^011 do for conscience and justice will be ap¬ 
 preciated. The negroes who fought the British on 
 Long Island, at Saratoga and at Yorktown received 
 their freedom, and were honored all their lives. Rob¬ 
 ert Butt, the slave grave-digger of Portsmouth, in the 
 yellow fever of 1855, who would not desert his post, in 
 time of dire distress, and extreme temptation, was 
 freed and enriched by the subscriptions of the whole 
 people, who mourned for him at his death, as a public 
 benefactor. 
 
 Go forth like Booker Washington, from Hampton, 
 with the gospel of faith and work. Your field is 
 around you, among the ignorant, prejudiced and inex¬ 
 perienced of your race, which must have guidance, or 
 fall into chaos. Thank God, that there is not, and 
 never will be a Southern Hayti, in this country. Bet¬ 
 ter plow all your days, than reign in a land red tor a 
 century with brothers’ blood. 
 
 The sweetest element in human happiness is the 
 thought of duty performed. I11 this connection, I 
 
cannot forbear the privilege of holding np for your 
 guidance and reverent memory, one of your fellow- 
 citizens of North Carolina, whose qualities of mind 
 and heart made him the peer of any member of your 
 race, of which history bears record. 
 
 A man of irreproachable character, of strong intel¬ 
 lect and clear judgment, recognizing the line of 
 demarcation between the rpces, and understanding the 
 self-restraint which that implies, it may be doubted, if 
 any one of his color ever had as much influence with 
 the white men of North Carolina, for the benefit of his 
 own people, as the lamented J. C. Price, of Salisbury. 
 
 Some among you knew the admiration I felt for his 
 talents and witnessed the gratification with which good 
 men saw his efforts wisely directed for your true wel¬ 
 fare. 
 
 You have good and faithful laborers to-day, if you 
 will heed their counsel. And you will be fortunate if 
 you walk in the footsteps and hallow the memory of 
 such a man as Price, faithful in his day and generation 
 and called to his reward. Verily, “A good name is 
 better than riches.” 
 
 And may Providence so guide your steps, that your 
 work in life maybe fruitful of good for all, both white 
 and black, to the good order of society, to your com¬ 
 fort and well-being, and to the honor and welfare of 
 North Carolina. You will deserve and will receive the 
 thanks of all men; you will purify and elevate your 
 people, and enjoy the confidence and love of your 
 country. 
 
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