606                      A. M. E. REVIEW.

their hoodlums, their criminals. They should be in haste to give them all
the law allows them, the full jail sentence. They should help discover and
then accuse them to justice. Better than this, they should put upon them
all the pressure of social ostracism. They should make a sentiment that
excludes and secludes them; and then they should add all the power of
Christian influence. We do not like it when we hear that in certain elections
the bulk of the Negroes have voted with or for the saloon. It gives them a
bad name. It implies that the dregs are in the majority. We hear it said
that Negroes are politically venal, even corrupt; that they sell their votes,
just as some white men do. If this is a Negro vice then the Negro pulpits
and the Negro journals should denounce the guilty ones, even by name, if
possible, and Negro good government associations should ferret out those
who thus disgrace and even endanger the whole race. There is not enough
of this done.
  And there are white dregs, even altho their crimes do not endanger the
stronger race to which they belong. The mob that the other day burnt a
man alive in Pennsylvania, a black man, were of the lowest dregs of their
race there. Because we do not want such madness of criminality to spread
we should, as advised by the Jewish editor, deal drastically with such brutes.
They doubtless do not know they belong to the dregs--such people never
do. They are often described as "the first citizens" of the place; but dregs
they are, the vilest dregs. Call them by their right name. Deal with them
drastically. We build prisons for such. We also build reformatories and
churches.

                               LIBERTY.
  One of the most puzzling traits of the human character is illustrated in
the way in which what are called new truths are received and wrought into
the common consciousness. Any one who believes that logic is logic, and
that all that is needed to secure the acceptance of a truth is to prove it by
evidence and logic, is bound to be disappointed by the results of experience;
for the conduct of men is governed not by logic, but by habit, tradition,
prejudice, and the practical necessities which are developed by the effort to
live in peace with one's fellow-men.
  Liberty, for instance, is a word of ancient origin in general use for many
hundred years, and yet there is not a country on the round world where
liberty is claimed and granted in the full measure which a due regard for
the independence of the individual and the just demands of society would
seem to make inevitable. In the vast majority of cases liberty is claimed
as a right, and in very few cases is it offered as a privilege to be defended for
the benefit of others. Civil and religious liberty are coupled in many a toast
and ardent declaration of devotion to the rights of humanity, but one of
the most difficult things in practice is to carry the principle with unswerving
fidelity into all the affairs of life and action.




			

OHS/National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center Serial Collection

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 28, Num. 2

Volume:  28
Issue Number:  02
Date:  10/1911