THE RACE PROBLEM | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 18, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 24.

THE RACE PROBLEM.

THE Independent thus condemns the experience of a Congregationalist minister in mission work among negroes. It furnishes food for thought from more than one point of view:—

“An admirable study of a local negro problem is given by the Rev. Charles M. Sheldon in The Kingdom. Mr. Sheldon is pastor of a church in Topeka, Kansas. Within the boundaries of his parish is a district of about eight hundred negroes, living for the most part in two and three room cabins. There are in the district four churches, but without a high Christian influence. It is a class of poor negro immigrants from Tennessee and elsewhere, the older people having been slaves, and the young people having grown up in a loose kind of way. Mr. Sheldon took lodgings for two weeks in this negro district, went into their house, took a careful census of their numbers, occupation, health, ambitions, needs, and wants.

“He then tested the caste feeling against the negro in Topeka. He had a respectably dressed negro go successively into three of the best restaurants in the city, and followed him, and found that he was properly received and cared for. The restaurants drew no color line. Then he had the same young man apply for membership in the Young Men’s Christian Association, and he was refused, altho a Bohemian, an Indian, a Chinaman, or a Turk would have been received. They told the negro applicant to get up a negro association of his own. So the Young Men’s Christian Association proved less Christian than the restaurants.

“In conclusion, Mr. Sheldon says that there is no negro problem any more than an Anglo-Saxon problem—it is simply a human problem; that the great hope for the negro is in the children; and his church has accordingly established a kindergarten for negroes. The young men and women are the hardest of all to reach, including the rowdy, lawless, loafing, and gambling element. At the same time the negro young man does not have much incentive to study, or learn a trade. He can get no place as clerk in an office or store, nor any position as workman or machinist in a railroad shop; he is not wanted as a teacher, and industrial avenues generally are closed against him.

“Since this investigation began, many of the negroes have come into Mr. Sheldon’s church and Sunday school. One white family at once took their children out of the school, and withdrew to another church; but the rest of his people, he says, seem to be pretty good Christians, and remain with him. The negroes ride in the street and steam cars all through Kansas with the white people, and have the same rights with them at theaters, churches, and all entertainments; but the race prejudice is yet far from fading out. Mr. Sheldon concludes with this weighty remark—

“I do not have much hopes of Christianizing the negroes until we have Christianized the Anglo-Saxons. It is a present question with me now sometimes which race needs it the most.”