Tragedy of a Colored Man.

TRAGEDY OF COLORED MAN

Dr. Brewer Scores Lynching;
Evolution Necessary for
Betterment.

“The colored man’s past in pathetic, his present is alarmingly tragic,” Rev. George Brewer told a large congregation at the First Presbyterian church last evening, speaking on “Why These Crimes and Lynchings?”
“The horrible tragedy of the shocking outrages and the fiendish mob has stirred our souls to the depths.,” he said of the lynching of three negroes here recently. “It has aroused our whole city to a profound sympathy for the innocent sufferers of the assault.

REV. GEORGE BREWER.

Those suspected of the crime have been arrested; those participating in the mob violence have been publicly denounced and are rapidly facing the justice of the law.
“In studying the various aspects of the local tragedy what do we see as the fundamental cause for lynchings and crimes as affecting colored people throughout the country? If we look carefully and honestly we will see the accumulated tragedy of a neglected people and of a race prejudice against people who are ours by compulsion and not be choice.

Lack of Understanding.

“We are prejudice against them because we do not know them, their history, their needs and their possibilities. That is why I am speaking on this subject tonight, for I firmly believe that when we know them better we will hate them less.
Dr. Brewer reviewed the history of the colored race in America, detailing how slaves had first been brought from America, ignorant, superstitious and in constant fear.
“As Thomas Jefferson said,” the speaker continued, “the whole relationship between master and slave is a perpetuated exercise of the most boisterous passion, the most unremitting despotism, on the one hand, and degrading submission on the other. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his morals and manners undepraved under such circumstances. But from this degrading slavery, with neither whites nor blacks prepared for it, by a single proclamation, 4,000,000 slaves were turned loose in liberty, untaught, uneducated, undisciplined, without property of self-reliance, and among a people embittered by defeat and loss.

Colored Man’s Future.

“What about the colored man’s future? Historians say that whenever an inferior and a superior race have come in contact one of three things always takes place. The two races may amalgamate, in the Philippine islands, in Mexico and in South America. The stronger may reduce the weaker race to political and manual slavery, as in South Africa and North America, or the weaker race may be exterminated, a process now going on before our eyes among the native Hawaiians and the American Indians. Which of these three fates shall be the lot of the negro? The best thinkers, black and white, have agreed that we should never amalgamate. America has said ‘they shall never he held in slavery.’ Then shall we allow disease, vice, race hatred and violence to push these people into a suicidal extinction? If we are a Christian nation I say by the grace of God, let us write a new chapter of history in the realm of anthropology.

Slaves Given No Property.

“Dr. Riley, speaking of the negroes at the close of the Civil war, says, ‘When the armies of the South capitulated and freedom came to the slaves, did the slave assert his right to any portion of the property of which he was the chief creator? Did he set up a claim which would have been the occasion for fresh disorder to the Southern soldier on his return to his home in his tattered jacket of gray? No. There was not a syllable of demand, not a murmur was heard from the lips of the millions of enslaved. On the other hand, they joined heartily in the work of saving the crops and in the aftermath, of reconstruction.
“Think of the part the negroes played in the World war. They invested a dollar out of every five they possessed in Liberty bonds. They went 340,000 strong into the army and there was only one case of conviction for avoiding the draft.

Tragedy of Mulatto.

“Even when you think of the black man’s sins against the white woman don’t forget the white man’s sin against the black woman. We are all incensed over every negro assault, but have you ever stopped to think about the tragedy of the mulatto? What does the mulatto mean? Every mulatto living in America today is living evidence of the meanness, immorality and viciousness of some degenerate white man or white woman who did just exactly what these colored men were accused of doing. And this sin is not occasional; it is so general that it is alarming.
“After an address in a northern city by Dr. Cowan of our Freedmen’s board, a woman came up to him and said ‘Doctor, I’m from the South, from Virginia, and I know all about the darkies. Most of them are shiftless dishonest, lazy, dirty and irresponsible.’ But Dr. Cowan, politely interrupted her, saying, ‘Madam, if all you say is true, then it’s all the more necessary for us to give the negroes an education that will regenerate them and make them new creatures, and that’s my appeal for the colored people tonight.”
Dr. Brewer deprecated the stand organized labor has taken relative to the negro, saying that while the negro may practice law or medicine, or may preach, he cannot say a board or drive a nail because he is not allowed in the unions.