perceptible only in some of the younger men like Locke of Howard University and James C. Waters.

It is easy to account for this. Christian America created the color line; and all the great currents of critical opinion, from the eighteenth century to our time, have found the great barrier impassible and well-nigh impervious. Behind the color line one has to think perpetually of the color line, and most of those who grow up behind it can think of nothing else. Even when one essays to think of other things, that thinking is tinged with the shades of the surrounding atmosphere.

[42] Besides, when we consider what Negro education is to-day when we remember that in certain southern counties the munificent sum of 58 cents is spent for the annual education of a Negro child; that the “great leader” of his race decries “higher” education for them; that Negro boys who get as far as “college” must first surmount tremendous special obstacles—we will cease to wonder at the dearth of thinkers who are radical on other than racial matters.

[42]

Yet, it should seem that Negroes, of all Americans, would be found in the Freethought fold, since they have suffered more than any other class of Americans from the dubious blessings of Christianity. It has been well said that the two great instruments for the propagation of race prejudice in America are the Associated Press and the Christian Church. This is quite true. Historically, it was the name of religion that cloaked the beginnings of slavery on the soil of America, and buttressed its continuance. The church saw to it that the religion taught to slaves should stress the servile virtues of subservience and content, and these things have bitten deeply into the souls of black folk. True, the treasured music of these darker millions preserves, here and there, the note of stifled rebellion; but this was in spite of religion—not because of it. Besides, such of their “sorrow-songs” as have this note in them were brutally banned by their masters, and driven to the purlieus of the plantation, there to be sung in secret, [43] And all through the dark days of slavery, it was the Bible that constituted the divine sanction of this “peculiar institution.” “Cursed be Canaan,” “Servants obey your masters” and similar texts were the best that the slaveholders’ Bible could give of consolation to the brothers in black, while, for the rest, teaching them to read was made a crime so that whatever of social dynamite there might be in certain parts of the book, might not come near their minds.

[43]

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