WHITES AND BLACKS OR THE QUESTION SETTLED 46

CHAPTER VII. OUR CHRISTIAN DUTY

There are College professors, mechanics, tradesmen, bishops and theologians all over the South, with black faces.In Washington,Wilkes County, the home of Hon. Robert Toombs, a carriage is sent with a committee of white men to escort a Negro Bishop, Rt. Rev. W. J. Gaines, to the largest church for white people in the city, to preach to white people about the “Unspeakable riches of God's kingdom reserved for the Saints”.

In Milledgeville every white church in the city is given up during the A. M. E. Conference to the colored preachers, and not only the churches but the opera house. Did these Negroes surrender their manhood to obtain these things? No. They simply conducted themselves like sober, conservative, Christian gentlemen, and were treated accordingly.

The court rooms, the State capitols and the opera houses throughout the South are given to the colored people, in which to hold their meetings and conventions from time to time. Are not these evidences of the fact that the South is rapidly going forward and losing sight of prejudice?

The Southern white men will give the Negro all he merits. The Atlanta Journal has repeatedly called the attention of the railroad companies to the distinction made in providing for colored accommodation at the depots, and in the cars prepared for their conveyance. This paper is not alone. Only a few days ago the Charleston News and Courier "hauled" the railroads "over the coals" for a failure to provide equal accommodation for their colored passengers.

All over the South, regardless of the Negro "hot heads" and the white "kickers," a sentiment is present, and on the increase, which is gradually clothing the Negro with responsibilities in proportion to the number answering to the standard by which they are measured, to-wit: Intellectual, financial and moral fitness — more stress being put on the first and last than on the other.

In mentioning a few things which ought to be granted, I deny a disposition to lecture anybody, to refuse to be thankful for what has been and is being done, or to appear offensive and dictatorial. What I say is for the good of the whole country, and I trust I am actuated by the purest motives.

If in this world I have an enemy, he is unknown to me; that my heart is friendly to all is proven by a reiteration of an earnest expression of mine which appeared in print some time ago, it was:

 “No man loves his race more than I love mine. It may be that I shall die misunderstood, just as I have lived misrepresented; suffer me to say that, so great is my love for the race to which I belong, I stand ready, if such a thing be possible, to remain the balance of my life, however long, in any prison, however vile, to perpetuate peace between the sons of Japheth and the sons of Ham”.

"I am ready at any day to keep my word. Be at peace with God, knowing that you have treated your neighbor right, and there is no more pleasant death than dying for your country”.