Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/144

126 with characteristic avidity, and glory in the congress. Along such lines, as I have already said, they often, yes, very often show no little foresight, for they well know that if they become pregnant by a white man, the child runs ten times the chance of success in its life than were it of pure negro blood.

"So lacking in moral rectitude are the men of the negro race," says Thomas again, " that we have known them to take strange women into their homes and cohabit with them with the knowledge of, but without protest, from their wives and children. So great is their moral putridity that it is no uncommon thing for step-fathers to have children by their step-daughters, with the consent of the wife and mother of the girl. Nor do other ties of relationship interpose moral barriers, for fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, oblivious of decent social restrictions, abandon themselves without attempt at self-restraint to sexual gratification whenever desire and opportunity arises. That such licentiousness is prevalent is not surprising, when we reflect that animal impulse is the sole master, to which both sexes yield unquestioned obedience. Not only is negro immorality without shame, remorse or contrition, but their unchaste men and women are perfidious, malevolent, and cowardly in their relations, and with reckless obliviousness to consequences eagerly gloat over each other's frailties and readily betray the indiscretions of their companions in guilt. Moreover, the contradictions of the freedman's nature are such that, while imputations of personal impurity are resented by the known impure, there is a common disposition to question each other's morals, and rarely is either male or female accorded a clean bill