In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr.
Washington is especially to be criticised. His doctrine has
tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden
of the Negro problem to the Negro's shoulders and stand
aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact
the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us
are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great
wrongs.
The South ought to be led, by candid and honest criticism,
to assert her better self and do her full duty to the race she has
cruelly wronged and is still wronging. The North--her co-
partner in guilt--cannot salve her conscience by plastering it
with gold. We cannot settle this problem by diplomacy and
suaveness, by "policy" alone. If worse come to worst, can
the moral fibre of this country survive the slow throttling and
murder of nine millions of men?
The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty
stern and delicate,--a forward movement to oppose a part of
the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington
preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the
masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him,
rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this
Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host.
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