Fifty Years of Freedomwith matters of vital importance to both the white and colored people of the United States
appointment of a Negro is of more importance than the passage of the tariff bill and the enactment of currency legislation. It rises like a mountain peak above all other questions of the day. It seems that the appointment was made in view of Patterson's campaign activities in the interest of Democracy. I do not think much of the policy that pays party obligations at the expense of the purity of the greatest race on the globe. I shall fight every Negro appointment that is made."

It is not necessary, he admits, to know anything personally of the candidate—anything about his character or qualifications; it is enough to know that he is a Negro or of Negro descent, to disqualify him for any office under the Government. And this, he affirms, is the sentiment of all Southern senators. Even a man like President Wilson, with all his brains and culture and high Christian character, or rather, I would say, avowal of high Christian principles, after nominating Patterson for the position permitted him to withdraw from the contest in the face of Vardaman's declaration, "No government office should be held by a Negro." And instead of sending in the name of another colored man, in order to rebuke that sentiment, he sent in the name of an Indian, which was a virtual acceptance, on the part of the President, of the position taken by Vardaman and other Negro-hating senators. 16And the fact that a white man was named almost immediately afterwards for the post at Hayti shows how completely the President has surrendered to the dictation of Southern Negro haters. If the progress we have made during these fifty years has had so little effect upon a man like Woodrow Wilson, how much is it likely to have upon the average white man? Any one who has kept in touch with the movements of the last half century that have had to do with this vexed question, cannot fail to see that the two phases of the race issue have very little to do with each other. The development within the race has had no appreciable influence in creating within the white man a disposition to behave any better towards the colored man, to accord to him his rights, to treat him as a man, as a citizen, as a brother. So far as we may judge from the experiences of the last fifty years and from what is transpiring about us to-day, there is no hope of things ever being any better as the result of race improvement. It is right, of course, for us to make the most of our opportunities, and to press forward as rapidly as possible along all lines of endeavor, material, intellectual, moral, spiritual; but let us not be deceived, let us not imagine, though we ourselves will be greatly benefited by such a course, that the attitude of the white man towards us will change for the 
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