FREE SOIL AND PROGRESSIVE CONVENTION                247

reason of failing to poll three per cent of its vote, although New
Orleans, a city of well nigh one hundred thousand blacks, might have
itself furnished 20,000; and there, at least, an organization, it would
seem, could have been kept up without a nickel of car fare! And
what is worse, in this same State of Louisiana, where the colored
men, as in the other Southern States, have been disfranchised, they
underwent the further humiliation of having all their public schools
leveled to the primary grade without a protest or objection, except to
send word to Boston and other centres, annoyed at the insult, to mind
their own business!
    Failure in perfecting a successful party organization and dis-
franchisement being accomplished facts, with the government looking
on and the Supreme Court, as in the Jackson Giles case, sidestepping
the whole matter as one for the political department of the govern-
ment, would it not be well for us to try to constitute ourselves as
followers for a while, and as we gradually return to the ballot, join
,whichever party appears to offer us the largest outlook in social jus-
tice and economic encouragement. The colored man would thus be-
come in time one with his community in political as well as industrial
usefulness, and no longer regard himself as a thing apart on election
day.


                      ------------------------


              STRUGGLING TO RISE; OR, THE HANDICAPS OF

                  THE COLORED RACE: JUST AND UNJUST

                        By Daniel Murray

            THE  incidents in the struggles of a race to rise and
            its success in overcoming such obstacles as it has
            had to contend with, cannot be otherwise than an
            interesting recital in the estimation of all intelli-
            gent students of human history.  All the races of
            the world, from remotest antiquity, have at some
            time been the victims of false,cruel and unjust
            aspersions by other races.
     Much light on this view is gathered from an examination of Mr.
Andre Blaucau's "La Crise de la Guadeloupe," an island which has
given to the world more high-class men of color, according to popula-
tion, than any other spot on earth. Mr. Blaucau in his book devotes a
chapter to the cruel, false, and misleading statements intended to
degrade the Negro and everybody in the remotest degree allied with




			

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 29, Num. 3

Struggling to Rise, or the Handicaps of the Colored Race: Just and Unjust

Volume:  29
Issue Number:  03
Page Number:  247
Date:  01/1913