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Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence

[483] <h3>THE NEGRO LAWYER; HIS OPPORTUNITY, HIS DUTY</h3> By W. Ashbie Hawkins Of the Baltimore Bar Gentlemen: The legal profession is without doubt in the lead. Its devotees outrank all others in service to the government and they come the closest in personal contact to the individual. This is denied of course, and always will be denied by men of all other professions, but when the roster of the world's lawyers who have faithfully and efficiently served humanity in every conceivable way is pitted against that of the others, the question is relieved of all doubt. The Negro lawyer is no longer an experiment. He has been severely tried from within and without, and he has proved his worth. His place in our economy is fixed. He has demonstrated his capacity to serve, and to serve well, and for all of this both the lawyer and the race he is helping to advance are under lasting obligations to Howard University. She has to her credit more men who are actively and successfully[484] pursuing their calling than any other institution of learning in this land.   *   *   *   *   *   The Negro race is probably to-day in greater need of consecrated lawyers than it is of pious priests. The time has come for the lawyer to take his place in the lead. We are celebrating this year the 50th anniversary of our emancipation, and, paradoxical though it may be, we appear further from emancipation to-day than when Lincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation, or when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. It is quite true that we have an immensely larger realty-holding to our credit, that our financial worth is constantly on the increase, that our illiteracy is rapidly reaching the vanishing-point, and that in all matters, spiritual as well as temporal, we seem to have improved, but the closer we approximate the standard of life and living of the dominant race, all the harder apparently have we to fight to maintain our self-respect, and preserve the rights and privileges which the letter of our American law guarantees. When we were slaves and had nothing except our muscles, there was no thought of separate-car laws. When we were ignorant and powerless to think coherently, there were no efforts at our disfranchisement. When we were poverty-stricken and satisfied if we might live in the alleys of our great American cities, there was no thought of segregation, whether in the matter of our residences, or in that of the employees of our much-heralded republican government. With every increase in accomplishment, or worth, or demand for[485] the better things of life, comes the burden of wrongs, injustice, and rash discrimination. It would be idle here to attempt to recount in detail the grievances we justly have against the government in city, state and nation; to do so further than the purpose I have in view would be but to tell you what you full well know. The Negro race needs a change of viewpoint; another leadership is an absolute necessity, and I see no reason why men of our profession should not attain it. For years we have had in the ascendency the prophets of submission and silence, and we have been taught to declare for peace when we knew there was no peace. No other element in our great nation, except that of ourselves is content with things as they are, accepting without protest every new injustice, in the vain hope that some day would bring about a change for the better. We have lulled ourselves to sleep with this fatalism, and what is the result? We have noted the practical nullification of every act suggested or inspired by the changing conditions in the lives and property of freedmen brought about by the Civil War. Disfranchisement in every Southern State is as fixed and determinate, as the indifference of the Negroes of those sections, or the practises of all political parties can make it. Separate, and therefore inferior, accommodations on public conveyances are the rule, and we have endured these conditions so long that it would appear almost cruel now to undertake, or to ask a change. We have noted further, and this is the saddest of all, that our inactivity in claiming our rights, or our indifference about their recognition, has not[486] only emboldened our enemies, but it has silenced our friends. We have seen with increasing alarm the judicial construction of statutes and the Constitution itself, which all but vitiate and annul the basis of our citizenship; we have seen repeated attempts made to discredit the War amendments to the national Constitution, and some have in all seriousness gone so far even as to question their constitutionality. Every student of our common law has always been sure of the right to private property, and the corollaries thereto, but it is just in the present year that a court of last resort in a neighboring State, in an interpretation of one of these new conceptions, a segregation ordinance, declared that while the one under investigation was invalid, that the municipality enacting it might under its police powers make provision for the segregation of the races in the matter of their residences, schools, churches, and places of public assembly. The law is not a fixed science; it is more properly growth, a development. What is not regarded as law to-day may, by the inactivity or indifference of those most deeply concerned, become the law of the next decade. So we behold to-day our rights and liberties drifting away from us, and that regarded as the law which years ago we deemed impossible. What are we to do, you say? What can we do? The lawyers trained here and in other institutions of learning must answer these questions, and in finding their answers will be their opportunity. The adjudication of the conflicting interests of mankind, the interpretation of our statutes and[487] our common law the determination of rights and privileges of all men, is a judicial function. What rights we enjoy to-day have come in the final analysis from the courts. What rights we find ourselves to-day deprived of, and which we hope to enjoy to-morrow, must come, if at all, from the same source. The courts have the last word, and it is to that instrument of government we must appeal, and to that last word we must look for our safety, or fear our doom. But courts are not self-acting institutions, and they are not engaged in academic discussions of abstractions. They are severely serious. It may be that, like so many Americans, we have lost faith in the courts, and Heaven knows we have had abundant reason for so doing, but there's hope. They have too often and too long listened to the clamors of public opinion, put too much faith and credit in the utterances of latter-day journalism, coloring their opinions to suit the one, or to escape the criticism of the other. Under the pernicious doctrine of public policy and in fortifying that undefined and indefinable legal notion of police power, courts have wiped aside Constitutional limitations, and disregarded what the profession at least had learned to consider as almost fixed precedents of the law, but even with all these defects admitted, there remains the startling truth that to these governmental agencies we must look for the righting of our wrongs and the redress of our grievances. We have shunned the courts too often in our temporal affairs, fearing, it seems, further adverse decisions, or waiting a proper adjustment at some other forum. In my own State it might now be compulsory[488] upon you, or any other decent self-respecting person of the race, in travelling from here to New York or elsewhere in the North, to ride in the so-called "Jim-Crow" cars provided by an indulgent Maryland legislature for Negro patrons of its railroads, had it not have been for a member of the Faculty of this institution. William H. H. Hart knew that legislation of that character was an attempt to restrict interstate traffic, and the Court of Appeals of Maryland agreed with him. The case of State vs. Hart, reported in 100 Md. at page 595, is a landmark in our Maryland law, and under its influence "Jim-Crow" cars have almost disappeared from the railroads of our State. Another distinguished member of the Faculty of Howard University, but of another department, in travelling over the railroads in the eastern part of our State last fall, discovered that the compartments provided by the roads for their colored passengers, in point of cleanliness, appointment, and convenience, were notably inferior to those furnished others. He complained to the Public Service Commission and, after a full hearing, the Commission passed a decree requiring these railroads to furnish accommodations to its colored passengers equal in all respects to that furnished others. This is exactly what the Separate-Car Law provides, but it is exactly what the railroads had never intended to furnish and, without the complaint of Professor T. W. Turner, no other course would have been followed. Here are two, and there are numerous other concrete examples of what may be accomplished by sane and timely appeals to our judicial tribunals. Our government[489] has three well defined departments separate and distinct, each operating in a manner as a check on the other, and all together working for the common good of the whole. We have resorted generally to the executive and have been satisfied with its appointment of a few men to office, and with its passive execution of the laws affecting us. In recent years we have arisen to the point of seeking legislation in the defense of our civil rights, and it is hoped that as the years pass more of this will be done. But in the judicial branch of the government is where, after all, we must place our reliance. We need a body of trained lawyers in full sympathy with our community life, eager, anxious, and capable, prepared at any emergency to present our cause fairly and intelligently before any tribunal; and with this accomplished, I have faith in the American people that justice will prevail, and right triumph over every wrong. I do not mean that the lawyer is to seek such service by the fomenting of litigation; far from it, but let him be prepared for it by study and devotion to racial ideals, and when the hour comes he will be called on to marshal its forces and take charge of the legal contests of a race. This will never be if he dreams only of his money, if he thinks only of present material gain, if he counts his successes in terms of houses and lands. He must be willing to serve for the sake of the service. The failures in our professional life come almost wholly from those who had no high ideals of their calling, and no devotion to the interests of their race or country. Country and race in this matter are synonymous; you can't serve one without at the same time serving the other. [490] The lawyer who advocates the protection of the lives, the property, and the civic welfare of ten millions of Americans of whatever hue, or origin, is not a racial zealot, but a patriot of the highest character, and his worth in preserving the nation's ideals is beyond calculation. Young men, you who are either about to leave these halls for the active life of the lawyer, or you who are just beginning the pursuit of your studies here looking to the same end, I bring you, I hope, no discouraging note. My aim is to do the contrary. The heavy burdens the race is bearing in the form of unjust laws and practises, in strained constructions of statutes, constitutions, and the common law; in the thousand ways which the ingenuity of the prejudiced find to bar us from the full enjoyment of American liberty and freedom, these will some day, along with those of us who are now at the bar, furnish your greatest opportunity. Your duty then, as now, will be to fortify yourselves with all the learning which this institution provides, with all that the libraries in your reach contain, with all that close and intimate association with others of your profession will secure, with sincere devotion to the ideals and traditions of our noble profession, and with no less devotion to the interest of your clients, and a determination faithfully and loyally and efficiently to serve your race, your nation and your God. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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