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                         Fifty Years of Freedom

              WITH MATTERS OF VITAL IMPORTANCE TO BOTH THE
                      WHITE AND <DW52> PEOPLE OF
                           THE UNITED STATES


                                  —BY—

                     REV. FRANCIS J. GRIMKE, D. D.


    Delivered before the Presbyterian Council in the Madison Street
      Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, Maryland, October 17, 1913.
          And before the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church,
                  Washington, D. C., October 26, 1913.

                "Oh, speed the moment on
              When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty and Love
                And Truth and Right throughout the
                  earth be known
                As in their home above."

                                -------

                   "Voice of a ransomed race, sing on
                   Till Freedom's every right is won,
                   And slavery's every wrong undone!"

                                -------

                  "Sail on! The morning cometh,
                  The port ye yet shall win;
                  All all the bells of God shall ring
                  The good ship bravely in!"

                               ----------

                           PRINTED BY REQUEST

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                        FIFTY YEARS OF FREEDOM.

                            LEVITICUS 25:11.

               A JUBILEE SHALL THAT FIFTIETH YEAR BE UNTO
                                  YOU.


On the twenty-second of September, 1862, President Lincoln issued his
Preliminary Proclamation, which was in the nature of a notice to the
states in rebellion, that unless they returned to their allegiance
within a specified time the slaves within their borders would be
declared free. The time expired without accomplishing the desired
result. Accordingly on January 1, 1863, the President issued his
Supplemental Proclamation manumitting the slaves within the rebellious
states. This did not, of course, set them free. They were still slaves
and continued to be as long as the war lasted. Freedom did not come, as
a matter of fact, until the surrender of Lee at Appomattox Courthouse
April 9, 1865. The effectiveness of the Proclamation depended upon
crushing the rebellion. It was the victorious army of the North, under
the leadership of General Grant, that gave efficacy to the Proclamation.
For all practical purposes, however, we may assume that fifty years have
elapsed since freedom came to us as a race. Fifty years is a long time
in the history of an individual, but not very long in that of a race. It
is sufficiently long, however, to make it worth while for us to stop and
think a little about what these fifty years have meant to us, and to see
if there are any lessons in them that may be helpful to us as we enter
upon the second half of a century of freedom.

At the end of these fifty years we find:

I. That we have made considerable progress. We are not now where we were
fifty years ago. We are not as poor; we are not as ignorant; we are not
as morally debased. The plane upon which we stand now is higher. This
progress, in some respects, has been unparalleled. It is not necessary
for me to speak in detail of what has been accomplished along
educational lines. The record is before the whole country. No one can
read the last report of the Commissioner of Education of the National
Government without realizing that very marvelous changes for the better
have taken place in the condition of the <DW52> people. The facts as
presented there, touching the number of public schools and public school
teachers ministering to the intellectual wants of this race, as well as
the large number of higher educational institutions having the same end
in view, show conclusively that conditions now are very different and
very much superior to what they were fifty years ago. The large number
of teachers, lawyers, doctors, ministers, now to be found among us, as
compared with fifty years ago, show the same thing.

Nor need I speak of the changed condition that these fifty years have
wrought in our economic condition. We are still poor; we still have to
struggle to make ends meet, to keep the wolf from the door; but there
can be no doubt that we are very much better off now than we were fifty
years ago. We live in better houses; we dress better; we eat better
food; we own more property; we have more on deposit in banks and other
saving institutions; we have more invested in business; we travel more;
we give more to religion, to charity, to education. Even our worst
enemies, however, they might wish it were otherwise, will hardly be
found affirming that we are no farther on materially than we were fifty
years ago, that no substantial progress has been made by the race. In
every direction the evidences are too plainly apparent to be denied. The
following statement, taken from the declarations of the National
Business League at its recent session in Philadelphia, tells in a word
the simple story of what has been accomplished during these fifty years:
"Starting half a century ago, without experience, without education, and
without property, we to-day own and pay taxes on 20,000,000 acres of
land, an area as large as the State of South Carolina; we own and
control 100 insurance companies, 300 drug stores, 64 banks, 450
newspapers, and more than 20,000 other businesses of various kinds, and
the total wealth of American <DW64>s in land, homes, schools, churches,
and other forms of property, amounts to more than $700,000,000.

"In submitting this brief record of material progress, we do not
overlook the advance made in other directions. Fifty years ago more than
90 per cent of the race was wholly illiterate. To-day more than 70 per
cent can both read and write."

II. At the end of these fifty years we find the race still aspiring,
still wishing to go forward. The progress that has been made is not
something that has been forced upon the race against its will, as
members of it are forced to ride in "Jim Crow" cars in the South; it is
what the race has wished to do. It is not now, and never has been
willing to remain in the condition in which slavery left it. From the
very beginning there has been the desire for better things, for enlarged
opportunities. And it still has dreams and visions of larger and better
things which it hopes some day to realize and towards which it is still
pressing. Any one who is calculating upon a retrograde movement on the
part of the race will be sadly disappointed, if we may judge from what
these last fifty years have revealed of capacity and aspiration on its
part. The outlook, in some respects, may be dark, but it is not because
of any lack of interest in matters material and educational, or because
of any evidence of decay, of the growth of demoralizing tendencies in
the race as a whole. There is, of course, in all races an idle, vicious,
lawless, dare-devil, reprobate element. And such an element we find
among us, especially in the urban population; but the existence of such
an element in the <DW64> race is no more evidence of a retrograde
tendency on the part of the race as a whole, than the presence of such
an element among the whites is an evidence of a retrograde movement on
the part of the white race as a whole. The <DW64> race makes no claim to
superiority over other races. It is simply human like other races. The
same evidences of depravity exhibited by other races it also exhibits,
neither more nor less. As bad as is a certain element among us, it is no
worse than the same element in other races. The trend of the race is not
downward, but upward; is not backward, but forward. Moral progress, of
course, is always slower than any other kind of progress. It is very
much easier to train the head than to train the heart; it is very much
easier to develop brain power than moral power. The most difficult thing
in the world is to keep men straight morally, is to build up, to develop
a strong, upright, virtuous character in men of all races. And this must
be borne in mind in estimating the moral progress of the race as
compared with its intellectual and material advancement. If progress
here has been slower, it is simply because that kind of progress is
slower among all races. That the race is responding, in a measure, to
the many agencies that are at work for its moral and spiritual uplift
can hardly be doubted; nor can there be any doubt that there is an
element, and a steadily increasing element among us, that is laying more
and more emphasis upon character, upon upright living.

III. At the end of these fifty years, we find, and very naturally, as
the result of the progress that has been made in knowledge, in material
resources, in social advancement—a growing self-respect on the part of
the race, which makes it very much more sensitive as to the deprivation
of its rights, very much more restive under injustice, oppression, and
all invidious distinctions. It would be strange if it were not so. You
cannot surround a man with conditions which tend to develop his manhood,
his self-respect, and expect him to quietly acquiesce in any line of
conduct which aims to humiliate him, to force him down beneath the level
of what he feels to be his due. The oppressive measures which the
slave-holders took to keep the slaves in an attitude of subserviency by
shutting all light, by keeping them in darkness, by depriving them of
all opportunities of improvement, was the only safe, the only wise
course to pursue. And even under such circumstances, under such rigid
enforcement of repressive measures, the spirit of resistance was not
entirely extinguished. How much less is it to be expected now that we
should quietly submit to unjust treatment, to invidious distinctions!
The race is becoming more and more alive to its rights, and, as it
advances, this sense of what belongs to it, of what it is entitled to
will increase rather than diminish. There is no way by which this
growing insistent demand for its rights on its part can be arrested
except by recognizing these rights, or, by forcing the race back into
the condition of intellectual and moral darkness in which it was before
the great era of freedom, or, by killing it off, either slowly by
shutting it out of all productive industries, or by the wholesale
massacre of it.

The last two lines of action, on the part of the dominant race, are
among the possibilities, but scarcely among the probabilities of the
future. The <DW64> in this country can never, never again be forced back
into the condition in which he was before the War. Nor is there any
likelihood of a wholesale slaughter of the race. There is very little
hesitancy or compunction about killing an individual or a small group of
individuals, but when it comes to making war on the race as a whole,
with a view to exterminating it, even our worst enemies will hesitate,
will hardly venture upon so violent a measure; if not from a sense of
right, at least, from fear of arousing the moral sentiment of the
civilized world. The race is not likely to be less insistent in the
future in demanding its rights than it is now at the end of the first
half century of growth, of development.

IV. At the end of these fifty years of freedom, in spite of the
remarkable progress that we have made along all lines, we find race
prejudice increasing instead of diminishing. The remarkable record of
progress that we have made has had no appreciable influence, so far as
appears on the surface, in lessening the feeling of hostility to us.
Race prejudice is stronger, is more bitter, more aggressive to-day than
ever before. The enemies of the race are more united and more determined
than ever to throw themselves across the pathway of our progress and to
compel us by sheer brute force, whatever our attainments may be, into a
position of permanent inferiority. Not content with what has already
been done to humiliate us, it is now demanding segregation, is now
insisting upon restricting the rights of <DW52> people to live in
certain prescribed sections of communities only. And it has become so
emboldened, so insolently aggressive that it is demanding segregation
among the employees of the General Government itself. And its demand is
being acceded to. Segregation, as a matter of fact, has already begun in
some of the Departments of the Government. A bill recently introduced
into Congress makes it a criminal offense to mix the races—to have white
and  clerks working together in the same room. For nearly a half
century white and  clerks have worked side by side, and nothing
was thought of it; but now through this insane desire to humiliate a
race, to impress it more and more with its inferiority, it is now
proposed to make it a crime, not under laws enacted by <DW64>-hating
Southern legislatures, but by the National Government itself, which is
supposed to represent all the people, and to represent equality of
rights for all the people. That prejudice is increasing; that more and
more the effort is being made, and in ever-widening areas, to hedge us
about with limitations, with restrictions which are not imposed upon
other elements of the population, is manifest to any one whose eyes are
open to what is going on in the country, not in one section only, but in
all sections.

V. At the end of these fifty years, we find nearly all the rights
guaranteed to us under the constitution, especially under the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments, practically nullified in a large section of
the country. In the South we have been disfranchised. We have no rights,
civil or political, which the white man is bound to respect. The only
good <DW64> in the estimation of the dominant sentiment of the South
to-day after fifty years of freedom, is the <DW64> who knows his place,
and who is willing to keep his place of subjection, of subordination to
the white man.

VI. At the end of fifty years, in spite of the facts just narrated, with
a full knowledge of the gross injustice from which the <DW52> man is
suffering, the rest of the white people of the country, as a whole, are
found standing silently by looking on while this cruel and relentless
warfare against the race is going on, with only occasionally a word of
protest, or of mild remonstrance. The great mass of the white people in
other sections of the Union, seemingly, cares nothing about what
treatment is accorded to us. They don't seem to think that it is a
matter about which they need to concern themselves. If there is any
feeling at all it is rather one of sympathy with the oppressor.

How white men of the North and West whose fathers fought and died to
save the Union, and through whom freedom and the great amendments to the
constitution came, can stand silently by and see the same rebel spirit
that sought to destroy the Union set upon the <DW52> man and rob him of
his rights—the very rights that came to him as the result of the blood
shed by their fathers, I have never been able to understand. The sons of
the rebels are still true to the principles for which their fathers
fought and died. It is only in the North and West, among the descendants
of the men who fought and died for the Union, that we find the
principles for which their fathers stood, forgotten or cowardly
surrendered. For these men to allow the <DW52> man to be robbed of his
rights by the descendants of those who fought to destroy the Union and
to perpetuate slavery is to dishonor the memory of their fathers; is
virtually to say, that they were wrong, and that the rebels were right.
Such an attitude is an affront to every loyal white man who fell during
the war or who fought for the Union and the cause of freedom. It is
amazing that the descendants of these brave men should be so little
concerned about matters for which their fathers were willing to lay down
their lives. Shame on such descendants!

VII. At the end of these fifty years, in spite of the indifference of
the many we still have left, however, a remnant of men and women with
the spirit of the old abolitionists—a remnant of men and women who stand
squarely, uncompromisingly for the principles of liberty, of equality,
of fraternity for all; and who, in one way and another, have shown their
sympathy with us in the efforts we are making to develop ourselves and
to maintain our rights. The number is small; but small as it is we are
thankful for their sympathy and support—thankful to know that we are not
left in our weakness to fight our battles alone. It encourages us to
know that in the city of Boston, there is an A. E. Pillsbury and a
Moorfield Story; in the city of New York, an Oswald Garrison Villard; in
the city of Cincinnati, a J. B. Foraker; in the city of Philadelphia, a
John Elmer Milholland; in the city of Washington, a Wendell Phillips
Stafford; in the city of Chicago, a Jane Addams; in the United States
Senate, a Moses E. Clapp. There are others equally worthy of mention who
are known to be our friends, our sympathizers, our well-wishers.

VIII. At the end of these fifty years of freedom, we find ourselves shut
out of a great many avenues of employment. There are not many things
that we can get to do. This is due mainly to race antipathy, to a
growing indisposition on the part of the whites, to work with us. The
outlook in this respect is not growing brighter, but rather darker and
darker. The disposition seems to be to limit our activities to the most
menial occupations, or to shut us out entirely. This is especially true
in the North; and the same sentiment is also growing in the South, and
would grow very much more rapidly than it has, but for lack of white
labor supply.

IX. At the end of these fifty years of freedom, we find that one of the
chief sources of demoralization to the race is strong drink. A careful
examination of the facts as they exist, and as they have