Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/274

250 250 THENEGRO " It is a problem of moral decay. It demoralizes politics. Wherever a black supremacy is threatened through a black majority, the black ballot is strangled without reserve in the black hands that hold it against the safety of the State. This is wrong. It is illegal. It is monstrous. But it is true. " Never, never in a thousand years will the negro, North or South, be allowed to govern in this Republic, even where his majorities are plain. We might as well fix that fact in our minds to stay. No statute can eradicate, no public opinion can remove, no armed force can overthrow the inherent, invincible, inde- structible, and, if you will, the unscrupulous capacity and determination of the Anglo-Saxon race to rule. " In a land of light and liberty, in an age of enlight- enment and law, the women of the South are prisoners to danger and to fear. While your women may walk from suburb to suburb and from township to town- ship, without escort and without alarm, there is not a woman of the South, wife or daughter, who would be permitted or who would dare to walk at twilight unguarded through the residence streets of a populous town or to ride the outside highways at midday. " The terror of the twilight deepens with the dark- ness, and in the rural regions every farmer leaves his home with apprehension in the morning and thanks God when he comes from the fields at evening to find all well with the women of his home. "Here, then, the issues — Unity of the Republic, material development, purity of politics, political inde- pendence, respect for the ballot, reverence for the Constitution, the safety of our homes, the sanctity of our women, the supremacy of law, the sacredness of justice, the integrity of race, and the unity of the Church. " There he stands, that helpless and unfortunate in- ferior. For his sake, the one difference has widened between the sections of our common country. Over his black body we have shed rivers of blood and treas-