Oh, the Irony!

Here’s a fascinating editorial from a black newspaper in Chicago complaining that black people always vote Republican:

It is inconceivable to us how the Negro can work himself up to the point where he is willing to trifle with his soul’s salvation, for he is willing to forfeit his chances of arriving within the pearly gates of heaven (if there is such a place, which we doubt), by affiliating with all the wildcat churches in existence. He will become a Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Mormon, Christian Scientist, Dowieite, and freely follow the religious leaders of all other denominations, and hazard his chances of striking the straight and narrow path, which is supposed to lead to paradise, for it is expressly stated that there is only one true church, that all who fail to march under its banner are eternally lost. With this terrible warning or admonition hanging over his head he is perfectly willing to traverse various roads in order to find a resting place with his imaginary gods throughout eternity.

All this is readily changed with the Negro when it comes down to politics, which only deal with the temporal affairs of men and not with their spiritual welfare, and by permitting the wily and demagogic leaders of the Republican party to mix up his religion and his politics together for him; he has naturally arrived at that mental condition which forces him to believe that he must continue to blindly vote for the party of Abraham Lincoln, regardless of the fact that men and political measures have changed within the past forty years…

As it is he can never regain any of his political power or prestige until he refrains from permitting any one to tell how he is going to vote simply on account of the color of his skin. The members of no other race in America claiming to be civilized, would permit themselves to pursue such a ruinous course of policy.  The members of all other races and nationalities look upon politics as a cold business proposition, and the vast majority of them cast their ballots for the men who will best serve their interests, regardless of their politics, and enable them to enrich their pockets. While on the other hand the Negro continues to live in the dead past, and is ever ready to continue to vote for dead ideas or sentiments. His mental disease in this regard is his greatest curse. He is tolerant or friendly disposed to any other Negro who may happen to differ with him along religious lines, but he places his Republican politics ahead of his Lord and his religion, for with a few honorable exceptions he is willing to tear to pieces every Negro who assumes an air of political independence, that is one who fails to blindly vote and act like himself.

The ironies. The resonances. The questions. Primary sources have a way of surprising us, provoking new questions, giving us a window into a world that we might have thought we knew, but is actually quite unfamiliar and surprising.

Among the surprises here: the mocking attitude toward religion, and the intensity of anti-Republican feeling at this early date. To specialists this probably isn’t surprising, but it is to me. In any case, someone needed to tell the editorialist that political allegiances are sticky and African Americans didn’t really have better options at the time. Sound familiar?