Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1900 — Mr. Graves’ Settlement of the Negro Question, [ARTICLE]

Mr. Graves’ Settlement of the Negro Question,

John Temple Graves gave his lecture “The Last Hope of the Negro” to a large and very appreciative audience, at the opera house Thursday night. Mr. Graves who is always eloquent and plausible quite carried away his audience with the feasibility of his plan for settling the negro problem. It is the ancient plan*of a general colonizations more fully thought out and developed than it has probably ever been presented before. His plan, briefly stated, is to set aside a scope of country in the west or southwest, large enough for a state, and induce the colored population to settle there, en masse. He would give them complete control and possession of that territory and make it a state of the union, and not permit white men to vote or hold office there. At the same time, or eventually he ®would make legal the condition now exists in fact, the disfranchisement of the negroes in the south. The scheme as worked out and explained hy Mr. Graves, has many things to recommend it but we are disposed to greatly doubt its practicability. Following the close of his lecture Mr. Graves invited the audience to ask questions and make suggestions, which led to a general discussion, lasting nearly three quarters of an hour.