White Man Owes Debt to the Negro, July 25, 1921

Our Debt to the Negro

This community has an obligation to face in its relation to its colored people. We may think that we can rock along without doing anything for their educational or moral uplift and the future generations will never know the difference. But we can’t. The integrity of any community is advanced only by the uplift of ALL the people within the limits of that community. We couldn’t possibly have an ideal community for whites while there are conditions among the blacks demanding urgent reformation. Truth is that the white population will rise in its standards of citizenship and civilization in proportion as the colored population rises also. We can’t mount up and keep the black man down. We can’t keep the black man down unless we stay down there ourselves with him.

This community, in common with all others in the South, pays too little attention to what is going on within the sphere of its colored citizenship. The destiny of the black man is dismissed as being a task for that race to work out itself, independent of any co-operative effort on the part of the whites. It’s a false notion. The superior in any circumstance has a definite duty to pace in relation to the inferior, whether racial, social, industrial or whatnot. The debt of strength the weakness does not automatically dissolve when we come to confront racial duties. The obligation of plenty to penury is not eliminated when a black man is reached. It is a permanent obligation and this community, to be ideal in its civic efforts, will turn its mind upon the status of life among its colored people with equal diligence as it applies to the status of life among its whites.

The colored race is entitled to good schools, to schools as good proportionately as the whites must have; they are entitled to good living conditions that will make for a wholesome citizenship. They are entitled to public benefactions in ration to their own support of the government. They are entitled to moral counsel and religious leadership. In every department of life, the white man has a debt to pay the negro, and there is no modern development or traditional notion as to the status of the negro that will liquidate that debt. It must be paid in friendly action, in helpful guidance, in material assistance and in the spirit of co-operative endeavor to help the negro make the most of himself.

The lead editorial of The Charlotte News, Monday, July 25, 1921