[8] The immediate cause of the riot in Detroit was the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of a colored man called William Faulkner charged with committing an assault on a little girl.  Feeling that the prisoner was guilty, bands of ruffians swept through the streets and mercilessly beat colored people.  Seven years later it was discovered that Faulkner was innocent and to reimburse him for his losses and humiliation the same ruffians raised a handsome sum to set him up in business.  See Farmer’s History of Detroit and Michigan, Chapter XLVIII.

[8a] A study of the directories of Detroit shows that a considerable number of Negroes had entered the higher pursuits of labor.  See especially the Detroit Directory for 1865.

[9] Simmons, “Men of Mark,” 356.

[10] In 1853 Judge Ruffin moved with his parents from Richmond to Boston, where he became judge of the Charleston District.  Simmons, “Men of Mark,” 469.

[11] This information was obtained from newspaper clippings in the possession of Miss Fannie M. Richards.

THE PASSING TRADITION AND THE AFRICAN CIVILIZATION

A close examination shows that what we know about the Negro both of the present and the past vitally affects our opinions concerning him.  Men’s beliefs concerning things are to a large extent determined by where they live and what has been handed down to them.  We believe in a hell of roaring flames where in the fiercest of heat the souls of the wicked are subject to eternal burnings.  This idea of hell was evolved in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula where heat is one of the greatest forces of nature with which man has to contend.  Among the native tribes of Northern Siberia dwelling in the regions of perpetual ice and snow, hell is a place filled with great chunks of ice upon which the souls of the wicked are placed and there subjected to eternal freezings.  This idea of hell was evolved in the regions where man is in a continual battle with the cold.

The beliefs of Negroes concerning themselves have to a large extent been made for them.  The reader no doubt will be interested to know that the prevailing notions concerning the inferiority of the Negro grew up to a large extent as the concomitant to Negro slavery in this country.  The bringing of the first Negroes from Africa as slaves was justified on the grounds that they were heathen.  It was not right, it was argued, for Christians to enslave Christians, but they could enslave heathen, who as a result would have an opportunity to become Christians.  These Negro slaves did actually become Christians and as a result the colonists were forced to find other grounds to justify their continuation of the system.  The next argument was that they were different from white people.  Here we have a large part of the beginnings of the doctrine of the inferiority of the Negro.