The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919

Description

PRIMITIVE LAW AND THE NEGRO The psychology of large bodies of men is a surprisingly difficult topic and it is often true that we are inclined to seek the explanation of phenomena in too recent a period of human development. The truth seems to be that ideas prevail longer than customs, habits of dress or the ordinary economic processes of the community, and the ideas are the controlling factors. The attitude of the white man in this country toward the Negro is the fact perhaps of most consequence in the Negro problem. Why is it that still there lingers a certain unwillingness, one can hardly say more, in the minds of the best people to accept literally the platform of the Civil War? Why were the East St. Louis riots possible? I am afraid that a good many of the Negro race feel that there is a distinct personal prejudice or antipathy which can be reached or ought to be reached by logic, by reason, by an appeal to the principles of Christianity and of democracy. For myself I have always felt that if the premises of Christianity were valid at all, they placed the Negro upon precisely the same plane as the white man; that if the premises of democracy were true for the white man, they were true for the black. There should be no artificial distinction created by law, and what is much more to the purpose, by custom simply because the one man has a skin different in hue than the other. Nor should the law,[Pg 2] once having been made equal, be nullified by a lack of observance on the part of the whites nor be abrogated by tacit agreements or by further legislation subtly worded so as to avoid constitutional requirements. Each man and woman should be tested by his qualities and achievements and valued for what he is. I am sure no Negro asks for more, and yet I am afraid it is true, as many have complained, that in considerable sections of this country he receives far less.