It is a paradox indeed, this thing of a race’s holding its identity at the same time that it is supposed to lose this in the larger civilization.  Apply the principle to the Negro.  Very soon after the Civil War, when conditions were chaotic and ignorance was rampant, the ideals constantly held before the race were those of white people.  Some leaders indeed measured success primarily by the extent to which they became merged in the white man’s life.  At the time this was very natural.  A struggling people wished to show that it could be judged by the standards of the highest civilization within sight, and it did so.  To-day the tide has changed.  The race now numbers a few millionaires.  In almost every city there are beautiful homes owned by Negroes.  Some men have reached high attainment in scholarship, and the promise grows greater and greater in art and science.  Accordingly the Negro now loves his own, cherishes his own, teaches his boys about black heroes, and honors and glorifies his own black women.  Schools and churches and all sorts of cooeperative enterprises testify to the new racial self-respect, while a genuine Negro drama has begun to flourish.  A whole people has been reborn; a whole race has found its soul.

3. Face to Face

Even when all that has been said is granted, it is still sometimes maintained that the Negro is the one race that can not and will not be permitted to enter into the full promise of American life.  Other elements, it is said, even if difficult to assimilate, may gradually be brought into the body politic, but the Negro is the one element that may be tolerated but not assimilated, utilized but not welcomed to the fullness of the country’s glory.

However, the Negro has no reason to be discouraged.  If one will but remember that after all slavery was but an incident and recall the status of the Negro even in the free states ten years before the Civil War, he will be able to see a steady line of progress forward.  After the great moral and economic awakening that gave the race its freedom, the pendulum swung backward, and finally it reached its farthest point of proscription, of lawlessness, and inhumanity.  No obscuring of the vision for the time being should blind us to the reading of the great movement of history.

To-day in the whole question of the Negro problem there are some matters of pressing and general importance.  One that is constantly thrust forward is that of the Negro criminal.  On this the answer is clear.  If a man—­Negro or otherwise—­is a criminal, he is an enemy of society, and society demands that he be placed where he will do the least harm.  If execution is necessary, this should take place in private; and in no case should the criminal be so handled as to corrupt the morals or arouse the morbid sensibilities of the populace.  At the same time simple patriotism would demand that by uplifting home surroundings, good schools, and wholesome recreation everything possible be done for Negro children as for other children of the Republic, so that just as few of them as possible may graduate into the criminal class.