Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/287

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THE NEGRO
263

litical campaigns he renders valuable service on the stump for the Republicans, and is recognized by the opposition as a forcible and convincing speaker. He came to Kansas twelve years ago at the head of an exodus from Mississippi, where he held a county office. He lived in the " black belt," and the overwhelming negro majority made it possible for him to secure a political position. He is thoroughly conversant with the negro problem in the South, and after twelve years of study and investigation he believes his plan the only one that will ever bring peace and happiness to his race. It will, he says, solve the vexing problem in the South, and at the same time deport these people to a country where there are no social distinctions, but where with the Latin races they would become cemented and a part of the whole.

When Col. Brown first launched his colonization scheme on the public he was met with strong opposition from leading colored men all over the country. They did not believe it practical, and declared that a wholesale emigration of negroes would tend to fasten upon them a greater servitude than that complained of on the cotton and sugar plantations of the South. Then the negroes were unacquainted with the social conditions existing in the South American countries; but since Col. Brown and his co-workers have, through printed matter and from the lecture platform, removed the prejudice which first existed, a wonderful change has taken place, and he is constantly receiving letters inquiring about the movement. Several years ago he laid his plans in detail before ex-Senator John J. Ingalls. That gentleman scouted the idea of colonizing the negroes in South America, and advanced the opinion that his plan of sending them back to Africa, their natural home, was the only feasible one by which the race question would ever be eliminated from society and politics in this country. Col. Brown, however, caused Ingalls to weaken on his proposition when he showed him the disadvantages of the African scheme.