CHAPTER XV.
NATIONAL SEGREGATION OF NEGRO.
Miss Schofield was most solicitous concerning the future difficulties which the Negro problem would occasion when the colored race reaches that stage of development when requests as are made at the present time for certain rights become demands which can not be ignored or disposed of by trickery and hypocritical legislation. As she was in advance of her time about thirty years in valuing the importance of industrial training for the Negro, and as early as 1890 was teaching and practicing the principles of hygiene and sanitation as they are now in force by the United States government at the Army and Navy stations, in the camps and homes of its employees wherever governmental authority extends, so she saw that the Negro will not always be satisfied with whatever his white friends chose to give him. She felt and believed that enlightenment, through education, the day would come when the Negro would be controlled only by according to him every right to which he may be entitled, and had great confidence that education also would so improve the intelligence and morals of the white people that they would have too much respect for their own manhood to prostitute it by declining to grant absolute justice to the race.
Upon the enlightenment of both races she depended absolutely for the fulfillment of that divine declaration of 1776, which declared that all men are created free and equal. She relied upon it wholly for making the war between the States worth its cost in blood and treasury; and considered that her work would prove in vain if it did not prepare the Negro for the highest responsibilities of life and create within him an unconquerable desire to assume them.
She maintained that man’s highest development could be achieved only by holding out to him rewards commensurate with the industry necessary for his development. This principle in political economy she asserted, was responsible for the antagonism of plutocracy to the education of the masses.
As her work, to which she was called by God as she sincerely believed and as the author whom she reared from a little child and educated as sincerely believes, was among the latter, plutocracy was, of course, the most frightful monster to be encountered and overcome. But overcome it must be at all hazards in the philosophy of Martha Schofield, and education instead of violence she taught was the weapon for that purpose.
The doctrine that by imparting to the colored man the knowledge which the white man has gained by laborious processes and the painful travail of centuries would stir ambitions, passions and new emotions in the colored race which would cause the Negro to refuse to submit to the domination of the white race was preached by her, and she dreamed dreams and formed plans for the solution of the problem that it is expected will arise in the final struggle of the Negro for complete and absolute justice under the flag of the republic. It was her most earnest desire that the two races occupy, if possible, one common country as they are now doing but on terms of perfect equality in the pursuit of happiness and the accumulation of wealth, which means an equal division with the Negroes of everything produced for the common good through the united strength and action of the masses. It also demands the same freedom of action for the Negroes in the exercise of every function of a citizen that is allowed the whites and contemplates their assimilation in the political life of the nation to the extent of their being eligible to the highest office of trust without regard to any qualification other than that of all citizens. Of course, it is worse than useless to say that the demand carries with it the observance of every principle of equality before the law without discrimination on account of race or color. The reservation of the right to impose restrictions on account of race in the application of the laws, customs and usages enacted to regulate the control of all would mean the surrender of the basis upon which rests the fundamental guarantee of certain rights without which no government could or should be acceptable to men of any manhood or courage.
Failing in the effort to live together on terms of reasonable compatibility, such as would conduce to the betterment of each race in all intellectual, moral and political aspirations, Miss Schofield advocated for the colored people segregation in a state or territory of its own, in which only people of color or those as now defined by national authority as Negroes, might become citizens.
This plan is made practicable, she thought by the right of Eminent Domain which the government retains to itself in the final acquisition and possession of territory through the means of condemnatory proceedings which certain contingencies might make imperative in the interest of the public weal.
Under authority of Congress the Secretary of the Interior might acquire by purchase through peaceable transfer, if possible, or if necessary through condemnation proceedings a territory of sufficient area to settle the entire colored race for all time and place it under a territorial form of government until such time as statehood might be considered more feasible. In this territory only could a Negro become a sovereign citizen with the rights of a citizen which now belong to any person residing in any of the States of the Union and complying with the requirements regulating citizenship. White men who remained in the territory could under no circumstances become a sovereign citizen. Only the Negroes should be allowed to vote or hold office. They should be allowed all the benefits and privileges that citizens of a constitutional state now enjoy, being represented in Congress on the same basis that any State is now represented.
No person, either white or colored, should be forced to move in or out of Negroland, except through deportation for offenses such as are now punished by exile. This would leave it optional with the Negro to live wherever he wished and still be under the protection of the United States flag and give the whites of the country a similar choice. If the Negro choose to remain in the States of the white man he would be at liberty to do so, but under no circumstances could he be allowed to perform the duties of a sovereign. The white men in Negroland would not be allowed to vote in that State on the same principle that a Georgian is not qualified to vote in Oregon; and a Negro living in South Carolina would not be allowed to vote in that State on the same principle that a white man is disqualified from voting at an election in Negroland.
It might be argued against this plan for the final settlement of the Race Question that it is not only revolutionary but confiscatory in that it seeks to deprive the white citizens of the territory to be created into a Negroland, of their property without their consent. In answer to this, reply should be made that it contains no more elements of a confiscatory nature that the common every-day application of the laws now in force for the condemnation of property in the construction of railways and the opening up of public highways.
That the public demands are sufficient to justify the extension of this law, even if it is undemocratic, to include the purchase of a wide area of territory is seen in the continued persecution of the Negro on account of his color, and the growing resentment of the race at the open discrimination practiced by the whites of all sections. It is more likely that the causes for the friction between the races will multiply rather than decrease as each becomes wiser, unless it were possible to make angels of men on earth as well as in Heaven.
The whites of the South by a large and increasing majority make no pretense at the determination of that race to keep the Negro down politically, at least; they depend upon their ability to do this as the only means of continuing themselves in power. When the Negro demands a share in the affairs of the government as he inevitably will and most assuredly should do, then will come concrete examples which will not only justify the separation of the two peoples through some plan of segregation, but make their separation imperative.
The climax of the antagonism, which may be dissipated by separating the two peoples, will be reached when the Negro shall not only demand but force the constituted authorities to grant absolute equality in the administration of justice; when he shall not only demand the right to vote, to sit on juries and represent his country in its legislative deliberations and actions but shall force his rights in these premises.
The determination of the white people now is to dominate predominately, and in all human probability this determination is to become intensely more fixed, even at the cost of their lives, their fortunes and their honor; while the Negroes will be equally determined, after equal fitness with the white man for the performance of the duties of citizenship, so determined that no power on earth or Heaven except extermination shall deny them certain inalienable rights which all instruction teaches them are cheap at any sacrifice. They will never assimilate Patrick Henry’s great speech until they are ready to act it. They can never act it until they are ready to accept death rather than slavery. Without the patriotism and love of liberty inspiring this immortal Virginian they can never develop the ideal that is in them.
Who would smother the ideals and aspirations of any race does so at the expense of their immortal souls. God could not be just unless He protected the emotions of human beings with the same degree of efficiency with which He protected the organs within them. Protecting the brain is a mass of bone and fiber; in front and behind the heart and lungs, are breastworks of superior construction, and around the longings and aspirations of the human heart are the bulwarks of self-condemnation and eternal damnation for any man or race of men who desecrate those sacred chambers by closing the opportunities for their development.
It may be argued that if this psychological law is true in practice the necessity for segregation exists in the imagination only—that the Race Problem will solve itself on the principle of self preservation and self interest if let alone and given time. The trouble with this argument is that it fails to take into account the value of the most effective means of preserving the integrity of both races. If God in His wisdom contemplated the commingling of races never before in physical touch it was for a temporary period only, each race, in the meantime, being endowed with reason sufficient to find a common solution for the evils which the Creator knew physical contact would produce.
That solution is segregation. It offers intact all the advantages which the opportunities of life among a highly civilized race create without the demoralizing and humiliating influences at work on account of race prejudice. It frees the whites and Negroes alike and enlarges the opportunities for the development of each race, under a common flag, that will no longer be under the necessity of polluting the pure air of Heaven by withholding its protection from among even the humblest of its citizens.
We often hear it said that the Negro is not yet ready for self-government, that he has not the fitness yet to govern under a territorial form of government; but less intelligent and far inferior races are at this time governing themselves. Were the Cubans as capable of self-government as the Negroes are now when the government of Cuba was assumed by them? Did not the United States Government entrust the Indians with a measure of self-government when the Indian territory was created and this race was settled in the West? There is no nation south of the United States with the possible exception of Brazil whose citizens have the intelligence and efficiency of the Negroes of North America for self-government. Besides, under the plan for segregation a territorial form of government is proposed until such time as statehood is more desirable. While the Negroes are being prepared for controlling their own affairs government under territorial laws would make life safe and insure equal rights to all. At least, the government of the territory, it is safe to say, would not be worse than the government obtained in the Southern States today.
But the Negro race is entirely capable at this time of managing its own affairs, supervised by a wise and just administration at Washington.
