19--No. 4

Labor Conditions in Jamaica Prior to 1917 E. ETHELRED BROWN
The Life of Charles B. Ray M. N. WORK
The Slave in Upper Canada W. R. RIDDELL
Documents
Notes on Slavery in Canada
Additional Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918
Book Reviews
Notes
Biennial Meeting of Association

THE JOURNAL

OF

NEGRO HISTORY

VOL. IV--JANUARY, 1919--No. I

PRIMITIVE LAW AND THE NEGRO

The psychology of large bodies of men is a surprisingly difficult
topic and it is often true that we are inclined to seek the
explanation of phenomena in too recent a period of human development.
The truth seems to be that ideas prevail longer than customs, habits
of dress or the ordinary economic processes of the community, and the
ideas are the controlling factors. The attitude of the white man in
this country toward the Negro is the fact perhaps of most consequence
in the Negro problem. Why is it that still there lingers a certain
unwillingness, one can hardly say more, in the minds of the best
people to accept literally the platform of the Civil War? Why were the
East St. Louis riots possible? I am afraid that a good many of the
Negro race feel that there is a distinct personal prejudice or
antipathy which can be reached or ought to be reached by logic, by
reason, by an appeal to the principles of Christianity and of
democracy. For myself I have always felt that if the premises of
Christianity were valid at all, they placed the Negro upon precisely
the same plane as the white man; that if the premises of democracy
were true for the white man, they were true for the black. There
should be no artificial distinction created by law, and what is much
more to the purpose, by custom simply because the one man has a skin
different in hue than the other. Nor should the law, once having been
made equal, be nullified by a lack of observance on the part of the
whites nor be abrogated by tacit agreements or by further legislation
subtly worded so as to avoid constitutional requirements. Each man and
woman should be tested by his qualities and achievements and valued
for what he is. I am sure no Negro asks for more, and yet I am afraid
it is true, as many have complained, that in considerable sections of
this country he receives far less.

I have long believed that we are concerned in this case with no
reasoned choice and with no expla