Black and White | Page 2

into the colony of Virginia in
August, 1619, was the beginning of an agitation, a problem, the
solution of which no man, even at this late date, can predict, although
many wise men have prophesied.
History--the record of human error, cruelty and misdirected
zeal--furnishes no more striking anomaly than the British Puritan
fleeing from princely rule and tyranny and dragging at his heels the
African savage, bound in servile chains; praying to a just God for
freedom, and at the same time riveting upon his fellow-man the gyves
of most unjust and cruel slavery. A parallel for such hypocrisy, such
sacrilegious invocation, is not matched in the various history of
peoples.
It did not matter to the early settlers of the American colonies that, in
the memorable struggle for the right to be represented if taxed, a black
man--Crispus Attucks, a full-blooded Negro--died upon the soil of
Massachusetts, in the Boston massacre of 1770, in common with other
loyal, earnest men, as the first armed protest against an odious tyranny;
it did not matter that in the armies of the colonies, in rebellion against
Great Britain, there were (according to the report of Adjutant General
Scammell), on the 24th day of August, 1778, 755 regularly enlisted
negro troops; it did not matter that in the second war with Great Britain,
General Andrew Jackson, on the 21st day of September, 1814, appealed
to the "free colored people of Louisiana" as "sons of freedom," who
were "called upon to defend our most inestimable blessing," the right to
be free and sovereign, and to "rally around the standard of the eagle, to
defend all which is dear in existence;" it did not matter that in each of

these memorable struggles the black man was called upon, and
responded nobly, to the call for volunteers to drive out the minions of
the British tyrant. When the smoke of battle had dissolved into thin air;
when the precious right to be free and sovereign had been stubbornly
fought for and reluctantly conceded; when the bloody memories of
Yorktown and New Orleans had passed into glorious history, the black
man, who had assisted by his courage to establish the free and
independent States of America, was doomed to sweat and groan that
others might revel in idleness and luxury. Allured, in each instance,
into the conflict for National independence by the hope held out of
generous reward and an honest consideration of his manhood rights, he
received as his portion chains and contempt. The spirit of injustice,
inborn in the Caucasian nature, asserted itself in each instance.
Selfishness and greed rode roughshod over the promptings of a
generous, humane, Christian nature, as they have always done in this
country, not only in the case of the African but of the Indian as well,
each of whom has in turn felt the pernicious influence of that heartless
greed which overleaps honesty and fair play, in the unmanly grasp after
perishable gain.
The books which have been written in this country--the books which
have molded and controlled intelligent public opinion--during the past
one hundred and fifty years have been written by white men, in
justification of the white man's domineering selfishness, cruelty and
tyranny. Beginning with Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, down
to the present time, the same key has been struck, the same song as
been sung, with here and there a rare exception--as in the case of Mrs.
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Judge Tourgée's A Fool's Errand, Dr.
Haygood's Our Brother in Black, and some others of less note. The
white man's story has been told over and over again, until the reader
actually tires of the monotonous repetition, so like the ten-cent novels
in which the white hunter always triumphs over the red man. The
honest reader has longed in vain for a glimpse at the other side of the
picture so studiously turned to the wall.
Even in books written expressly to picture the black man's side of the
story, the author has been compelled to palliate, by interjecting

extenuating, often irrelevant circumstances, the ferocity and insatiate
lust of greed of his race. He has been unable to tell the story as it was,
because his nature, his love of race, his inborn, prejudices and
narrowness made him a lurking coward.
And so it has been with the newspapers, which have ever been the
obsequious reflex of distempered public opinion, siding always with
the strong and powerful; so that in 1831, when the "Liberator"
(published in Boston by the intrepid and patriotic Garrison) made its
appearance, it was a lone David among a swarm of Goliaths, any one of
which was willing and anxious to serve the cause of the devil by
crushing the little angel in the service of the Lord. So it is to-day.