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
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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 Grégoire'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