Description
John Brown's Body - - (Researcher’s note: This editorial was published on page 1 of the April 21, 1904, The Landmark newspaper.)
Kansas is getting enough of the colored man and brother. Before the war Kansas was the hotbed of abolitionism, and a negro was much better than a white man. During the war Kansas was a nigger heaven and general place of refuge for escaped slaves.
Since the war Kansas has been rapidly reaping and will continue to reap the harvest of the seed sown. Give a negro an inch and he will take a yard. Kansas white people put the negro on equality with themselves, and the negro soon recognized that be is better “than such low-down white trash.”
Everywhere in Kansas where there is a large negro population the negro asserts his superiority. He knows that back in Missouri where he came from a white man was considered better than a negro, and has an idea that the Kansas white man who does not consider himself better than a negro is “not much no how.”
At Leavenworth, Topeka, Atchison, and many Kansas towns the whites have bad trouble with the blacks. At Coffeyville last week a negro outraged a white woman. When the officers went after the brute they were stood off by a crowd of armed negroes. The officers had to retire for reinforcements. Then came a riot and almost a race war.
Leavenworth burned a negro a few years ago for a like crime. Kansas City, Kansas, has had serious troubles over the question of negroes in the public schools. Men paraded the streets of Kansas City, Kansas, armed with guns, fearing at any time a race war.
Other places in Kansas have had similar troubles and one thing is certain, “Old John Brown’s Body” or some other ancient ghost is surely “marching on.”Date(s) of Creation
4/21/1905
