But, after all, is
not this simply the writhing of the age translated into black,--
the triumph of the Lie which today, with its false culture,
faces the hideousness of the anarchist assassin?
To-day the two groups of Negroes, the one in the North,
the other in the South, represent these divergent ethical tend-
encies, the first tending toward radicalism, the other toward
hypocritical compromise. It is no idle regret with which the
white South mourns the loss of the old-time Negro,--the
frank, honest, simple old servant who stood for the earlier
religious age of submission and humility. With all his lazi-
ness and lack of many elements of true manhood, he was at
least open-hearted, faithful, and sincere. To-day he is gone,
but who is to blame for his going? Is it not those very persons
who mourn for him? Is it not the tendency, born of Recon-
struction and Reaction, to found a society on lawlessness and
deception, to tamper with the moral fibre of a naturally
honest and straightforward people until the whites threaten to
become ungovernable tyrants and the blacks criminals and
hypocrites? Deception is the natural defence of the weak
against the strong, and the South used it for many years
against its conquerors; to-day it must be prepared to see its
black proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against
itself.
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