262               THE A. M. E. REVIEW

ber Bishop Turner tells of the rejoicing on the day the
Proclamation was issued. When the 13th, 14th and 15th
Amendments were passed there was still more rejoicing,
and the Negroes thought that at last they stood with their
feet securely planted on the borders of the Land of Promise.
But, alas! they, like Israel of old, have been wandering
these past forty years in the wilderness of political serf-
dom and drinking the bitter water of the Merah of Jim
Crowism.
    Within the next fifty years there must come to the
Negro a new emancipation, so that he may celebrate, coinci-
dent with the centenary of his emancipation from physical
slavery, his emancipation from social degradation, industrial
and commercial exclusion, political inequality and all dis-
crimination based on race or color.
    In the future, neither the agitation of a Garrison, the
eloquence of a Phillips, the statesmanship of a Sumner nor
the proclamation of a Lincoln can accomplish this work.
    The Negroes themselves must fearlessly champion their
own cause, as did the Irish under Curran, Grattan, O'Connell
and Parnell.
    We must, of our own race, produce editors like Garrison
and Lovejoy, preachers like Channing and Beecher, edu-
cators like Finney and Horace Mann, poets like Whittier,
philanthropists like Gerrett Smith, militant warrior-saints
like John Brown, statesmen like Sumner, novelists like
Harriet Beech Stowe and songsters like Julia Ward Howe, to
stir our blood with a new Battle Hymn of the Republic.
    For more than a score of years there has been at work
an insidious influence, under the guise of philanthropy, to
fix the Negro in a place of permanent inferiority. He is to
be educated along the lines which will make him a better
servant; he is to be free to buy land and own homes (pro-
vided his "white neighbors" do not object to his presence
in that vicinity and work independently upon the soil; he
may apply himself to the trades and work at a minimum
wage in the South and in the North work not at all, if the
Labor Union objects; he may have a bank account, but it
will not buy him comfort or convenience in travel, or




			

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

Editorials

Volume:  29
Issue Number:  03
Page Number:  260
Date:  01/1913