ro race just as there was during the years of its oppression; but
a condition upheld and approved by the constitution, laws, and public
sentiment of the nation cannot do other than plead guilty to having
contributed to this result which has so greatly affected the
estimation in which good men, equally with bad men, the innocent as
well as the guilty of our race, are held by the whites. I am not
clanking my chains as a Negro in remembering the past, and only do so
in accounting for what the unreasoning and unsympathetic are disposed
to regard as abnormal criminality in the American Negro.

Negro parents under the old regime were parents physically only. The
government of their children was in the hands of others. Obedience to
parents enjoined by the decalogue was not rendered by children, was
not encouraged by others, nor could it have been enforced by parental
authority. Filial affection in the slave-child existed to an
appreciable degree notwithstanding these disadvantages. Parents and
children came into the possession of freedom not sufficiently
understanding nor appreciating the relation of each to the other.
While I am clearly of opinion that it may not be successfully shown
that Negro children are more criminal in inclination than other
children, their home-training, or, rather, their lack of
home-training, is greatly responsible for what of criminality there is
among them. Negro parents, as a rule, seem disposed not only to give
larger liberty to their children than they ought, but they give
absolute license in too many instances. In illustration of this fact,
in cities particularly, children are allowed to go from their homes in
the night-time and wander the streets amid their baleful associations
until nine, ten, eleven o'clock and longer. And when they return home
they do so unattended. The accounts given by them as to where they
have been cannot be relied upon. Further, children are not required to
be respectful to their elders of either sex. This condition does not
obtain alone among children of ignorant and poor parentage, but
absence of good manners is also often found among children and youths
who have had fair common and high school advantages. This license has
led directly and unerringly to the formation and cultivation of habits
more likely to debase than elevate them. To venture criticism of
parental laches or of the conduct of the young, to admonish or advise
different manners and conduct from that wh