“I am inclined to the opinion that the politicians, judging by the magazine article I gave you,” said he, “were quite anxious to keep the Negro question alive for the party advantage it brought. In the North it served the purpose of solidifying the Negro vote for the Republicans, and in the South the Democrats used it to their advantage; neither party, therefore, was willing to remove the Negro issue by any real substantial legislation. Enough legislation was generally proposed pro and con to excite the voters desired to be reached, and there the efforts ended.”

I could not but reflect that the triumph of reason over partisanship and demagoguery had at last been reached, and that the American people had resolved no longer to temporize with measures 104 or men, but were determined to have the government run according to the original design of its founders, upon the principle of the greatest good to the greatest number.

104

No President since Grant was ever more abused by a certain class of newspapers and politicians than President Roosevelt, who adopted the policy of appointing worthy men to office, regardless of color. He said that fitness should be his rule and not color. In his efforts to carry out this policy he met with the most stubborn resistance from those politicians who hoped to make political capital out of the Negro question. To his credit let it be said that he refused to bow the knee to Baal but stood by his convictions to the end.

I found from the published reports of the Bureau of Statistics that the Negro’s progress in one hundred years had been all that his friends could have hoped for. I give below a comparative table showing the difference:

105

I noticed that Negroes had gained standing in the country as citizens and were no longer objects for such protection as the whites thought a Negro deserved. They stood on the same footing legally as other people. It was a pet phrase in my time for certain communities to say to the Negro that they “would protect him in his rights,” but what the Negro wanted was that he should not have to be protected at all! He wanted public sentiment to protect him just as it did a white man. This proffered help was all very good, since it was the best the times afforded, but it made the Negro’s rights depend upon what his white neighbors said of him,—if these neighbors did not like him his rights were nil. His was an ephemeral existence dependent on the whims and caprices of friends or foes. True citizenship 

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