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Journal of Negro History
educating the masses. In the Forty-fifth Congress, he proposed a measure,[1] somewhat similar to one previously submitted by Jere Haralson, to establish an educational fund and to apply the proceeds of the public lands to the education of the people.[2]
Protection of Loyal Citizens
The protection of the loyal people of the South claimed also the attention of Negro Congressmen. When, therefore, the House had under consideration the bill to enforce the 14th Amendment, Robert C. De Large made eloquent remarks replying to Cox of New York, who had denounced the "ignorant" rulers of South Carolina for their "rapacity," which in his opinion justified the activities of the Ku Klux Klan.[3] It was in the defense of the bill for the
- ↑ Congressional Record, 45th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 1646; 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 2714, 3602.
- ↑ At a later date, Langston, in the Fifty-first Congress, introduced a measure for the establishment of normal and industrial schools for Negroes. These numerous measures were referred invariably to the Committee on Education and Labor, from which they were usually reported adversely to the House.—Congressional Record, 51st Congress, 2nd Session, p. 1650.
- ↑ In placing the responsibility with both parties, DeLarge said: "Mr. Speaker, when the governor of my State the other day called in council the leading men of the State, to consider the condition of affairs there and to advise what measures would be best for the protection of the people, whom did he call together? The major portion of the men whom he convened were men resting under political disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment. In good faith, I ask the gentlemen on this side of the House, and gentlemen on the other side of the House, whether it is reasonable to expect that those men should be interested, in any shape or form, in using their influence and best endeavor for the preservation of the public peace when they have nothing to look for politically in the future? You say that they should have the moral and material interest of their State at heart, though even always denied a participation in its honors. You may insist that the true patriot seeks no personal ends in acts of patriotism. All this is true, but, Mr. Speaker, men are but men everywhere, and you ought not to expect of those whom you daily call by opprobrious epithets, whom you daily remind of their political sins, whom you persistently exclude from places of the smallest trust in the government you have created, to be very earnest to cooperate with you in the work of establishing and fortifying the government set up in hostility to the whole tone of their prejudices, their connections, and their sympathies. What ought to be is one thing; what in the weakness and fallibility of human, nature will be is quite another thing. The statesman regards the actual and acts upon it; the desirable, the possible, and
