The Monitor
A National Weekly Newspaper Devoted to the Interests of the Colored
Ameri''"'* raska and the Northwest
isUl
iv,pc>S .un ALBERT WILLIAMS, Editor
$1.50 a Year. 5c a Copy Omaha, Nebraska, Dec. 16, 1916 Vol. II. No. 25 (Whole No. 77)
Southern Whites
Retard Progress
Nebraska University Professor Press
es Home Perniciousness of Race
Prejudice.
I)R. GEORGE ELLIOTT HOWARD
Advances Doctrine of Potential Equal
ity of Races in Address Before
Open Forum.
Race prejudice was held as retard
ing the development of the south and
her people and as a false and costly
dogma in the face of the refutation of
the dogma that Negroes are poten
tially an inferior race, morally and
intellectually, by Dr. George Elliott
Howard, head of the department of
political science and sociology of the
University of Nebraska at All Souls’
Church, Lincoln, Sunday evening.
Dr. Howard addressed the first
meeting of the new Lincoln open for
um. After his address he answered
questions put by several members of
the audience and later spoke with
Sarah McWilliams, an aged Negro
woman who said that she had known
slavery in her childhood. Dr. How
ard’s address held closely the atten
tion of his hearers, many of whom
were Negroes. He said:
“Every race has regarded itself as
superior to all other races and every
race has been mistaken. Such belief
is contrary to Christian ideals, which
have the same value for the souls of
all races.
Among heathen and Christian peo
ples alike, one of the most contempti
ble and harmful of man’s failings is
race prejudice. It has been the cause
of persecution and unfairness. Every
where such prejudice is a sinister fac
tor in the advancement of the nation
it affects. Science has proven the
doctrine that races are potentially the
same spiritually. Modem science does
not regard the color of the skin, curl,
of the hair or shape of the shin bone
as indicative of the value of a man’s
soul.
Race Prejudice Deeply Rooted.
“Race prejudice may become deeply
enrooted by the enslavement for 300
years by one race of another and in
one aspect of the question the Negro
problem, I challenge your attentioi
tonight. What is the price which the
nation is paying for it? In the end
the solution of the southern race prob
lem is to come through the education
of the white race. Race prejudice is
implanted in the social standards of
the south. Raising of a people’s
ideals is a slow process. They have
themselves erected a barrier to the
advancement of the Negro intellectu
ally. This is a great mistake. The
advancement of the south in the past
hundred yeare has been greatly re
tarded by this false race dogma, but
it looks back to the carpet bagger
and other things of the past to atone
for its weakness of the present. With
almost childish helplessness it does
this.
“The whites of the south are sure
that the Negro is lower potentially. It
A SEESAW GAME.
r -- - " ■ ... -.—--1
is time that the whites emancipated
themselves from mental bondage.
They look back to the good old days
when the Negro “knew his place.”
Meanwhile every year the doctrine of
the inherent potentiality of all races,
subject to environment and opportu
nity, grows stronger, despite the su
perficial writings of Thomas Nelson
Page and others who look through the
smoked glass of the southerner. Does
not the Russian persecute the Jew,
once the chosen of the Lord? Does
not the Magyar persecute the Ruman
ian and Slav?
. “The white south does not know the
Negro although it claims full knowl
edge of him. It cannot see the forest
for the trees. Who has not heard the
pet saying of the affection the mas
ter’s child held for its Negro nurse in
the old days of slavery—the southern
er’s argument for the good old slav
ery days?
Figures On Progress.
“I will quote you a few statistics
to show you Negro “retrogression” in
fifty years, from 1866 to 1914, Num
ber of Negro homes owned by their
occupants increased from 12,000 to
600,000; farms owned by Negroes,
200,000 to 981,000; wealth of Negroes,
$20,000,000 to $100,000,000; percent
age able to read or write, 10 per cent
to 75 per cent; number of Negro col
leges and schools, 15 to 500; Negro
church property value increased from
$1,500,000 to $76,000,000.
The Russian serfs were emanci
pated in 1861, but in fifty years their
wealth only reached $36 per capita
as compared with $70 for the Amer
ican Negroes and only 30 per cent of
them can read or write.
"There is a distinct fancy in the
south that education cannot lift the
Negro. The whites often boast that
thep pay taxes to run Negro schools,
but Negroes are not given their just
share of school tax money. In Louis
iana $2 per capita is paid to educate
Negro children and $49.54 to educate
white children. With ludicrous al
though pathetic zeal, the southerner
often ostracizes you if you call Ne
groes “Mr.” or “Mrs.” He points
to the higher death rate among the
Negro peoples in the south, but he
can find that the Negro death rate in
Chicago is lower than the white death
rate. He clings to the false doctrine
that the Negro is more unclean mor
ally than the white and is delaying
progress further by this dogma. It
is declared that the ruling passion of
the Negro is to despoil white women,
but in the face of this terrible psy
chology, the white man is far more
guilty in his relations toward the Ne
gro woman. Immorality among the
Negro women is not nearly as wide as
before the war.
(Continued on Page 13)
Colored Blood On
European Throne
A Review of Instances of African An
cestry Among European
Royalty.
BY GEORGE WELLS PARKER
Prince George of Battenberg’s En
gagement to Great Granddaugh
ter of Pushkin.
Quite recently the cables announced
the engagement of Prince George of
Battenberg to the great-grandchild
of Pushkin, the national poet of Rus
sia. Pushkii was the great-grandson
of Hannibal, a native African whom
Peter the Great brought to Russia
and ennobled. Pushkin married one of
the court ladies and his family has
always held high position among the
Russian aristocracy.
This news brings to mind that there
have been many instances in Euro
pean history when persons of royal
lineage have intermarried with darker
races, with or without the consent
and favor of their sovereign. One
peer of the British realm married a
full blooded Hotentot woman some
years ago, while the late Sir Halliday
MacCartney, Sir Edwin Arnold and
Count Henri Coudenhove, of Austria,
all made marriages with dusky wo
men. Countless have been the Eng
lishmen who have married Indian
women and quite numerous have been
Englishwomen who have married Hin
du men. The Hindus, of which the
Brahmins are the high caste race,
came into India hundreds of years ago
and intermarried with the black
tribes which they found on the plains.
Portugal is, ethnically speaking, a
mulatto race. This country was at
one time deeply engaged in the slave
trade and the black population of
Lisbon outnumbered the white. When
the blacks were freed they did not re
main apart but intermingled with the
inhabitants and made the whole na
tion half caste. The Spanish, too,
are of similar strain, their Moorish
ancestry being so strong. The old
est and greatest aristocracy of Spain
today is that which traces its lineage
back to the black Moors who con
quered that country during the middle
ages.
Consort of Grand Duke.
Countess Terby, the wonderfully
handsome consort of Grandduke Mich
ael Michaelvitch of Russia, is a des
cendant from Pushkin. Her father
was Prince Nicholas of Nassau,
younger brother of the late sovereign
grand duke of Luxenburg, and
through him she is related to the
queens of Holland and to half the
reigning houses of Europe.
Marshall Bemadotte, who founded
the present Swedish dynasty, had a
Moorish mother, while Gustavus IV.,
the last sovereign but one of the great
Vasa dynasty in Sweden, was calhd
“The Moor,” because of his exceeding
ly dark complexion. When he was bom
his grandmother, the old dowager
(Continued on Page 9)