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Chapter XX11 Retrospect and Prospect For seventy years, I have been keenly aware of the continuing crisis in Negro-white relations. To see a mob of white men bent on lynching Negroes before one is five years old etches an impression on the mind and soul that only death can erase. Since my boyhood days, I have longed for a solution to the Negro-white problem. At one time I was willing to consider the problem solved if only lynching and the brutalities inflicted upon Negroes by white people could be forever abolished. Unyielding resistance to these injustices was deeply woven into the very fabric of my soul. During my time and earlier, no program has ever been proposed that has produced a solution to this problem, which has dominated the thinking of black people and white people for over three centuries. Perhaps when the slave traffic was at its height, little thought was given to solutions. The dominant motive in promoting and maintaining slavery was profit, and profit alone, no matter how hard evil men may have striven to salve their consciences by blaming God, proclaiming that the black man was ordained by Him to do manual labor for the white man. "What God has ordained, let no man attempt to overthrow," was the false defense of the wicked for their avarice and greed. In my lifetime, four main solutions have been advanced to close the chasm of suspicion, distrust, hatred, prejudice, and racism inherent in blackwhite relations in this country: colonization,segregation by law, some form of 4t black separatism" here in the United States, and more recently, integration (desegregation, in my terminology). A few people have argued that miscegenation is the solution. Violent revolution has been seriously proposed by a small group who believe that the "system" is beyond reform and must be destroyed. During slavery, many white people advocated colonization for the Negro , especially for the free Negro. Some masters felt that with free Negroes around it would be too hard to discipline their slaves. There were also 300 R E T R O S P E C T A N D P R O S P E C T JOI Negroes who did not "adjust" well to the "American way of life"; so the question arose, "What to do with them?" As the numbers of free Negroes increased, it was felt that they had to be sent out of the country "if property in slaves was to be secure." Others insisted that free Negroes should be sent out of the country because the two races could never live together in peace and harmony. In his book From Slavery to Freedom (pp. 237-241), John Hope Franklin tells of a colonization movement which began as early as 1774, when a proposal was advanced to send the Negroes back to Africa. Not long after the end of the Revolutionary War, a program to send Negroes back to Africa was proposed . Thomas Jefferson also headed a committee which "set forth a plan of gradual emancipation and exportation." Franklin reminds us further that the Connecticut Emancipation Society had as one of their objectives "the colonization of the free Negroes." Negroes also were interested in colonization. In 1815, Paul Cuffee took thirty-eight Negroes to Africa at his own expense. Two years later, the American Colonization Society was organized with men like Justice Bushrod Washington, Henry Clay, andJohn Randolph supporting it. Plans were made to set up a colony for Negroes in Africa, and federal and state aid was sought to support the project and to arouse favorable public opinion. Men were sent out to raise money to get free Negroes to emigrate to Liberia. Having secured money, ships were purchased by the Society and chartered to transport Negroes to Liberia. By 1832,a dozen legislatures, including those of such slave-holding states as Maryland,Virginia,and Kentucky, had given official sanction to the Society. North Carolina and Mississippi had local colonization societies. To begin with, only free Negroes were transported to Africa, but soon slaves were manumitted to be taken to Liberia, and by 1830 the American Colonization Society had settled 1,420 Negroes there. In the end, however, the Society did not have much success in persuading Negroes to go to Liberia, the final total being approximately a mere twelve thousand. In fact, all programs for sending Negroes to Africa and to other countries were mostly failures. They were not economically feasible. Too few supported the idea; and...

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