Mixed Race Studies

Will the Negro Emigrate?

Omaha Daily Bee
1894-07-01
page 13, columns 1-2
(Source: Library of Congress)

Bishop Atticus G. Haygood, President of Oxford College [University]
Oxford, Georgia

Bishop Atticus G. Haygood Argues that They will Not.

Another view of the Race Problem

Inter-Marriage of Whites and Negroes Less Common than Formerly—The Plan of Despotism a Failure—Progress of the Colored Race.

There is a negro question and not simply a matter of adjustment of relations between two classes of the same race, as of landlords and tenants, employers and employes—all be ing white or black, but of men and women of two very different races holding business and ther relations to each other and living together In the same communities. Whether the race element makes difficulty between white and black in other countries does not count, so far as facts go, here. In the United States it does make difficulty and in the south chiefly only because most of the negroes are in the southern states.

A few negroes have gone north as a few northern people have come south. How do these get on together? It is a question of facts only. Northern people and negroes, when brought Into relations, get on together just as southern people and their negro neighbors do, with unquestionably this difference, southern white people are more patient with negroes they employ than northern people are and, in personal relations, are more kind to them.

It is essentially, at bottom, a race question in all parts of the United States—of which I have had personal observation from Ohio to Texas and from Massachusetts to California. It was a question before and since the war; a question whenever and wherever these two peoples have been thrown together. It is a race question now and will be so long as the two races live together In this country.

Doctrinaries of many schools—striving strenuously to force facts into conformitywith their theories—have told us how to solve the race question that every day and hour demands our consideration. And a very emergent and important question it is.

There have not been lacking theorizers who have trusted in what they first called “amalgamation,” afterwards “miscegenation.” A few have seemed to gain a sort of pleasure in contemplating such a solution. It is a very monstrous and brutal way of looking at it. But it is as silly as it is revolting. One, a bishop, spoke of It as a “bleaching” process!

THE TENDENCY TO MISCEGENATION GROWING LESS.

Every informed person In the south knows that the tendency to miscegenation grows less and less every year. Emancipation strengthened in both races revolt at blood-mingling by these dissimilar people. The negro question will never be solved by any process of race effacement—though we wait a thousand years. The mulatto will gradually disappear. This negro question, inherited from our fathers, we will hand down to our children.

In seeking the best solution to any difficult question It is often very helpful to find out what cannot be done. Let us eliminate from our thinking the element of miscegenation.

THE NEGRO HERE TO STAY.

We may as well eliminate solution by deportation. In what follows on this point I must run the risk of being charged with dogmatism. One who has received impressions concerning any matter from his infancy may well enough have controlling reasons for conclusions he cannot give to another lacking similar knowledge.

One of my conclusions is: The negro is here to stay—concerning which opinion one might write a book, without getting to the end.

Bishop Henry M. Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal church I have known since he first appeared in reconstruction politics–the like of which the sun never saw before and never can see again—in Georgia a generation ago. He is a man of great ability and of intense convictions. His whole soul is set on emigration to Africa as the one possible solution of the negro question. If he had a thousand years to live he would give nine centuries of his “expectation of life” to see his hope a reality. No man knows better than Bishop Turner that the negro question in the United States is a race question. I believe he thinks it a permanent question. I do most certainly. He has made many most eloquent speeches, seeking to fire the hearts of his people with an invincible desire to find homes, opportunity, freedom and enlargement of life in Africa. He has despaired of their finding these great boons here. If he could found, or see founded, a great christian negro republic in Africa he would be the happiest man in the world. He is, I am sure, most conscientious in all he thinks and says on the subject.

But he awakens among his own people more antagonism than favor when he urges them to colonize the dark continent.

EMIGRATION TO AFRICA.

The newspapers gave much prominence to such movements as Garton’s; a ship load of southern negroes going to Siberia from this country some months since. As if twice so many negroes wore not born the day they sailed!

As affecting the negro question such ill-managed enthusiastic escapades amount to nothing. The few who go are, in the opinion of the multitudes who stay, only freaks. Whether colonization be advocated by white or black men, doctrinaries or philanthropists, it is the same thing; the sum of the result is anger and distrust.

The fundamental reason for rejecting colonization in Africa ns a solution of our problem is a very simple and conclusive one; the negroes do not wish to go and they do not intend to go. Moreover, the great body of the white people do not wish them to go away. History shows that great epoch-making migrations result from some deep impulse urging the race that moves and not the desire of some other race that does not move. A people, dominated by another race, might bo so oppressed as to create this race-moving impulse. How little southern negroes are so affected we see in the very small number that have moved out of the old slave states into northern and western portions of the union. It may be answered–they find that their condition is not helped by such movings in the United States. Let another make the retort; I will not anticipate it by so much as offering an opinion about it.

NO MOVEMENT BY FORCE.

As to moving the negroes to Africa by force, I never heard of a southern man who entertained such a thought for a moment. Were it attempted from without and the negroes were passive (and they would not be passive) southern men would make trouble of an extraordinary sort if there were a fit country in which to settle them; if there were means for moving them; no right-thinking man would consent to send these people away against their will. Violent deportation would surpass the wrong that brought them here.

The exceptions to these statements are so few that they do not count in any view of the whole subject under consideration. The southern white people who want them out of this country are as few as the negroes who have gone to Africa or wish to go.

THE NEGROES WILL BE PROTECTED

A few weeks since the newspapers told us of some “striking brotherhood” that passed resolutions that “the negro must go.” They were not men of the south, the men of the south will protect the negro against men like these if they go beyond resolutions—to deeds.

What God’s providence may bring about as to the relation of these truly wonderful people to Africa, men Will know what time it pleases God to show his designs to men. That the negro race In America has important and vital relations to the future of Africa is as plain to me as that they came from Africa. But this is equally clear, if all the negroes wished to go, if all the white people wished them to go, if the United States government owned vast territories in Africa, if the people of the United States were ready to “foot the bill” for moving and settling and protecting them, the negroes here are now no more ready for to stupendous a change than Africa is ready for them. Great changes are going on in Africa. Greater by education and Christianization among the negroes here.

BUSINESS INTEREST OF THE NEGRO.

Before closing this article another view of the case should be presented. The southern negro has business and other interests in this country which he begins to appreciate very highly. He is getting land of his own; he Is accumulating property; he is educating his children. He is getting to be a business man. At this point I quote a paragraph from a speech delivered In the United States senate May 28, by the Junior senator from Georgia, the Hon. Patrick Walsh—an Irishman profoundly patriotic to America; a Catholic so broad minded and liberal that he is an example of tolerance and charity to many Protestants—than whom an honester, truer man is not in the United States senate. I have many times gone over the ground and the senator’s statements are from first sources—the books of the comptroller general of Georgia. Georgia has separate lists for the return of taxable property by whites and blacks. It is important that we study the business facts that enter into the general question. It is to be wished that other southern states would adopt the same method.

THE VIEW OF SENATOR WALSH.

Senator Walsh, a better authority than Miss Ida Wells, says:

“A fact worthy of note Is that the negroes returned for taxation In Georgia, property aggregating in value In 1879, $5,182,398; in 1889, $10,115,380; in 1893. $14,960,675. (He might, have added that the imitative negro never “gives in” his property at any fancy valuation; $15,000,000 In 1893 means about $40,000,000.)”

“This is an Indisputable evidence that tho negro is given a fair showing, and that in Georgia the industrious and econominal citizen can make a living and accumulate property, whether he be white or black. The negro is treated fairly, and besides being able to acquire property, his children are given educational advantages which they eagerly Improve. Georgia appropriates in round numbers eleven hundred thousand dollars for public schools, and this goes equally to the critical ion of both races. The tentedly together and the negroes recognize that their best friends are the whites among whom they live, who know their habits and customs, and have a more genuine interest in them than those who profess a great deal more.”

This witness is true. I spell “Negro” with a “big N.” In this question Negro means a race and not a color.

Atticus G. Haygood
Oxford, Ga.