The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919

Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919, by Various

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Title: The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919
Author: Various
Release Date: April 15, 2007 [EBook #21093]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE JOURNAL
OF
NEGRO HISTORY
Volume IV
1919

Table of Contents
Vol IV--January, 1919--No. 1
Primitive Law and the Negro ROLAND G. USHER Lincoln's Plan for Colonizing Negroes CHARLES H. WESLEY Lemuel Haynes W. H. MORSE The Anti-Slavery Society of Canada FRED LANDON Documents Benjamin Franklin and Freedom Proceedings of a Mississippi Migration Convention in 1879 How the Negroes were Duped Remarks on this Exodus by Federick Douglass The Senate Report on the Exodus of 1879 Some Undistinguished Negroes Book Reviews Notes
Vol IV--April, 1919--No. 2
The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures ROBERT E. PARK The Company of Royal Adventurers GEORGE F. ZOOK Book Reviews Notes
Vol IV--July, 1919--No. 3
Negroes in the Confederate Army CHARLES H. WESLEY Legal Status of Negroes in Tennessee WILLIAM LLOYD IMES Negro Life and History in our Schools C. G. WOODSON Gr��goire's Sketch of Angelo Solimann F. HARRISON HOUGH Documents Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918 Book Reviews Notes
Vol IV--October, 1919--No. 4
Labor Conditions in Jamaica Prior to 1917 E. ETHELRED BROWN The Life of Charles B. Ray M. N. WORK The Slave in Upper Canada W. R. RIDDELL Documents Notes on Slavery in Canada Additional Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918 Book Reviews Notes Biennial Meeting of Association

THE JOURNAL
OF
NEGRO HISTORY
VOL. IV--JANUARY, 1919--No. I

PRIMITIVE LAW AND THE NEGRO
The psychology of large bodies of men is a surprisingly difficult topic and it is often true that we are inclined to seek the explanation of phenomena in too recent a period of human development. The truth seems to be that ideas prevail longer than customs, habits of dress or the ordinary economic processes of the community, and the ideas are the controlling factors. The attitude of the white man in this country toward the Negro is the fact perhaps of most consequence in the Negro problem. Why is it that still there lingers a certain unwillingness, one can hardly say more, in the minds of the best people to accept literally the platform of the Civil War? Why were the East St. Louis riots possible? I am afraid that a good many of the Negro race feel that there is a distinct personal prejudice or antipathy which can be reached or ought to be reached by logic, by reason, by an appeal to the principles of Christianity and of democracy. For myself I have always felt that if the premises of Christianity were valid at all, they placed the Negro upon precisely the same plane as the white man; that if the premises of democracy were true for the white man, they were true for the black. There should be no artificial distinction created by law, and what is much more to the purpose, by custom simply because the one man has a skin different in hue than the other. Nor should the law, once having been made equal, be nullified by a lack of observance on the part of the whites nor be abrogated by tacit agreements or by further legislation subtly worded so as to avoid constitutional requirements. Each man and woman should be tested by his qualities and achievements and valued for what he is. I am sure no Negro asks for more, and yet I am afraid it is true, as many have complained, that in considerable sections of this country he receives far less.
I have long believed that we are concerned in this case with no reasoned choice and with no explainable act, but with an unconscious impulse, a subconscious impulse possibly, with an illogical, unreasonable but powerful and in-explainable reaction of which the white man himself is scarcely conscious and yet which he feels to be stronger than all the impulses created in him by reason and logic. What is its origin? Is there such a force? I think most will agree there is such an instinctive aversion or dislike.
I am inclined to carry it back into the beginnings of the race, back to the period of pre-historic law