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Publications of the University of Virginia
Phelps-Stokes Felloioship Papers

LECTURES AND ADDRESSES
ONTHE
NEGRO IN THE SOUTH

Cna.>'i;1^s^»iie, Ya-,

t^^t;^ I3i5.

The Michie Company, Printen.
Charloltesville, Vit«inia

9.

9

The Phelps-Stokes Fellowship for the Study of the Negro was
founded at the University of Virginia in 1912 through a gift
from the Trustees of the Phelps-Stokes Fund. It is the duty
of the holder of the Fellowship to stimulate and conduct investi
gation and to encourage and guide a wider general interest among
students concerning the character, condition and possibilities of
the Negroes in the Southern States.
With this object in view the successive incumbents have, or
ganized classes for study that have been well attended and dili
gent. Special investigations have been carried on by each Fellow ;
related topics have been assigned for study by individuals and
groups, and the results presented for class discussion; and from
time to time men distinguished as thoughtful students of Negro
Life have been invited to lecture at the University.
This little volume contains lectures delivered by invitation of
the Fellow during the past three sessions. The opinions ex
pressed and the policies suggested are those of the respective lec
turers. They are published, not to present the opinions of the
Fellow nor the attitude of the University, but to preserve con
clusions reached by independent observers in different parts of
the South.
Ufiiversity, Virginia,
October j, 1915.

CONTENTS.

1. Responsibility of the Southern White Man to the Negro.. 5
By Alfred Holt Stone.
2. Considerations on Race Adjustments in the South  19
By James H. Dillard.
3. Black-Belt Labor, Slave and Free  29
By Ulrich B. Phillips.
4. What Is Justice between White Man and Black in the
Rural South  37
By Clarence Poe.
5. The New Reconstruction  56
By William O. Scroggs.
6. Some Public Health Aspects of Race Relationships in the
South  70
By James Bardin.
7. Thinking White about the Negro in the South  84
By John E. White.
8. Negro Criminality ..."  98
By D. Hiden Ramsey.

The Responsibility of the Southern White Man to
the Negro.*

BY ALFRED HOI.T STONE.

In the world old history of the tragedy of races there is no
more interesting chapter than that which tells the story of the
negro in America. Its interest is not alone because it deals with
the ever fascinating subject of the development of a primitive
people, taken from a state of lowest barbarism and suddenly
transplanted to an environment possibly some thousands of years
normally in advance of their own. The interest is intensified by
reason of the unique fact that here is the one instance in history
of a large body of people being deliberately hunted down in their
native habitat : transported thousands of miles, in a manner which
no government would now tolerate in the case of cattle intended
for human consumption; bartered and handled in the open mar
ket much as any other species of livestock ; imade to play one of
the most important roles ever played by any manual laboring
class in the development of an economic product of world-wide
significance and use ; becoming the passive, dully submissive cause
of the greatest conflict in our history; ushered into citizenship as
the ignorant dupes and tools of white politicians, and used as
dummies in a travesty which forms the most forbidding chapter
in American history; increasing more than one hundred per cent.
in number during fifty years of freedom, where gradual but cer-

*The following paper is allowed to stancf just as it was presented.
It is a frankly informal discussion, by a Southern man before a
Southern audience, of a question peculiarly Southern in nature. It
was not prepared with a view to publication, and it raight be better
taste to omit one or two personal passages, or at least to recast the
form of expression. But on second thought I haye decided to let it
go to press as it is, rather than run the risk of unconsciously alter
ing it into something other than it was really meant to be, in the
process of rewriting it for publication.
A. H. S.

6 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
tain extinction had been predicted by their former masters ; stand
ing today a politically and socially isolated body of ten millions
of people, owning some hundreds of millions of dollars of prop
erty, occupying an economic position of the utmost importance,
challenging the serious thought and consideration of tbe nation ot
which they form an inseparable part, as a problem which baffles
solution. We are confronted today by the stubborn fact of some ten mil
lions of negroes, who are increasing rather than dying out; who
are an important factor in the economic life of America, and
particularly of the South ; who thus far have not proved assim
ilable, either politically or socially — and who, therefore, consti
tute a "problem." As Southern men, we may well take counsel of
ourselves, as to our attitude and responsibilities toward these peo
ple and toward the problems created by their presence.
Toward a great many human questions I may say that I am
fatalistic, rather than sentimental, in my attitude. It is rather
the practical aspects of history which appeal to me. I see no di
vine plan in the bringing of the negro race to America. I have
the utmost respect for those who hold to such a belief. But I
cannot share it. I think the case was simply one of a strong
people enslaving a w^,ker, for purely selfish but wholly normal
economic purposes. This view serves only to increase the burden
of responsibility resting upon the shoulders and the conscience
of the white man. I have heard it argued that this contention of
present white responsibility ibased upon the fact of slavery is un
sound ; that the "dajnages are too remote." A knowledge of the
history of the origin of negro slavery in America suggests that
nothing is clearer or more direct than this responsibility. It is a
responsibility which embraces every one of the great maritime
powers of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth cen
turies; England, Spain, France, Portugal and Holland. And
most surely it rests also upon America, and bears most heavily
upon those of us who are closest to the burden. What are the
salient facts of the case?
The European slave trade had its beginnings half a century
before the discovery of the continent which was to become the
home of the most important branch of the negro race. It was

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 7
during the reign of Prince Henry of Portugal, whose services
to the cause of oversea exploration gained for him the surname
"the Navigator," that Antonio Goncalvez brought back three
Moors from one of his cruises to the African coast. These
Moors proposed to ransom themselves with negro slaves, if re
turned by their captors to their native country. The ground
upon which Prince Henry accepted their proposition is curiously
suggestive of the antiquity of one of the prime arguments by
which the so-called Christian white man has often sought to jus
tify the enslaving of the so-called pagan negro. It was that this
transaction would result in the gaining of souls, "because the ne
groes might be converted to the faith, which could not be man
aged with the Moors."^ Goncalvez obtained ten negroes for his
Moors, and they landed on the shores of Portugal in 1442, just
fifty years before the voyage of Columbus. That this was more
than a mere curious incident without bearing on the real slave
trade between Africa and the new world, is shown by the fact
that in 1444 the Company of Lagos was chartered, and that of
Arguin in 1448, each of which included in its activities the trade
in African negroes. These companies are said to have brought
into Portugal and Spain seven or eight hundred negroes a year
between 1444 and 1460.^
In the description of the landing of the first two hundred and
odd negroes brought to Portugal, in 1444, quoted by Helps from
the Chronicle of Azurara, we may read the first count in the in
dictment against modern slavery, destined to be repeated ten
thousand times in the English speaking world during the 417
years which elapsed between that time and the destruction of
slavery in the Southern states. "But now for the increase of
their grief," so runs the chronicle, "came those who had the
charge of the distribution, and they began to put them apart one
from the other, in order to equalize the portions; wherefore it
was necessary to part children and parents, husbands and wives,
and brethren from each other. Neither in the partition of friends
and relations was any law kept, only each fell where the lot took

1. Oppenheim's Helps Spanish Conquest in America, 1, 30.
2. Ibid., I., 5 n.

8 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
him." We are further informed that the Infante was present
to look after the fifth which fell to his share," considering with
1 i. " 3
great delight the salvation of those souls which before were lost.
As suggesting the very early part which negroes took in the
economic life of the new world, we may recall that the transfer
of negro slavery from Europe to America took place in 1501,
only nine years after the first voyage of Columbus. For fifty-
seven years negro slaves had been fam,iliar objects in some of
the cities of Portugal and Spain. It is not surprising, then, to
know that the first negroes brought to America were not savages
from the wilds of Africa, but were civilized, native bom inhab
itants of Europe.* For quite a while, in fact, none but
so-called Christian negroes were permitted to be imported.
It was not until 1517 or 1518 that a direct trade was established
between Africa and what is now the island of Santo Domingo.
This was under a monopoly contract granted by Charles Fifth to
Governor de Bresa, at the recommendation of Las Casas, which
provided for four thousand negroes at eight years.^
The mention of the good Las Casas suggests the curious ad
mixture of benevolence and selfishness which was urged in con
nection with the definite establishing of the direct African traffic.
There is no questioning the good priest's sincere desire to save
the Indians from the killing labor of the mines, which was rap
idly destroying them, by substituting a stronger class of laborers.
There is, however, no questioning the fact that the conviction of
those on the ground, that one negro was equal to five Indians
for labor, rather than any sentimental regard for the native, was
at the bottom of the first large importations of negroes, — which
really marked the beginning of slavery as an American economic
institution. Negro importations to the Spanish American mainland began
about 1523 to 1525; and assumed important proportions under
licenses granted by Philip the Second, in 1551 and 1552, for the
transporting of some 40,000 slaves. Spanish and French com
panies carried on the business, in a more or less sporadic fashion

3. Ibid., I., 24-25.
4. Ibid., I., 5.
5. Ibid., IL, 13; IIL, 148.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 9
for the next century and a half ; or, say, down to the first aSsiento
to England in 1713. English seamen occasionally engaged in the
slave trade probably as early as 1553. Sir John Hawkins is
probably the most faimiliar of all the names identified with the
trafiic. But it was not until about 1623-25 that the trade began
to be regularly and systematically carried on in British vessels.
From that period down to 1807, when the lawful business came
to an end, the English became the greatest slave carriers of the
world. They supplied not only their own possessions in the
West Indies and on the Continent, but after the assiento of 1713
they furnished slaves to Spanish America as well.® The many
so-called estimates of the number of negroes brought to America
are but little better than guesses. From the very nature of the
business, the most that can be said is that such figures are merely
suggestive approximations. The number brought to Spanish
America may be said to have been somewhere between four and
seven millions. The guess for English America, insular and con
tinental, is about three million during the century preceding the
Revolution. The number brought into the thirteen colonies may
have been about three hundred thousand.^
In so far as abating responsibility is concerned, there is but
little force in the statement, so often repeated by Southern writ
ers as a plea in justification or defense, that New England im
ported slaves, used them until she found it no longer profitable,
then sold them to the South. There is usually the accompanying
declaration that the South herself had little, if any part in the
oversea trade. It took two to make a bargain, and for every
slave sold by a New England trader to the South, there must of
necessity have been a Southern purchaser. If the South was not
extensively engaged in the African trade, it cannot be denied
that she did a brisk business in the interstate trafiic, — and this
too for half a century after the other business was outlawed and
branded as piracy on the high seas by the entire civilized world.
Lest I may be misunderstood as stressing too heavily the pri
mary responsibility of the Southern people, permit me to express

6. Gomer Williams, Liverpool Privateers, 466.
7. Rhodes, Hist, of U. S. L, 11.

10 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
a most emphatic disclaimer, — in so far as the idea of such re
sponsibility being peculiarly Southern is concerned. A very large
section of the white race is tarred with the same brush, n the
English taunt the Spanish, as has been done, with the saying that
the Alcazar at Madrid was built with the profits of slave-trading
concessions, the Spanish may say as much of the fortunes oi
more than one great Manchester house whose early business was
that of manufacturing goods for the African trade. It was an
English actor who once cried out to a Liverpool audience that
the very stones in Liverpool's houses were cemented with negro
blood. To revert to my practical view of such things — Slavery was in
truth simply one of the great commercial tools of the world,
which could not have developed if the world had not demanded
its services. Its rise, progress and decline were merely part of
the history of its times. Of the moral aspects of the English
part of the business, we may say with Baines : "So totally dif
ferent was the feeling which then prevailed on this subject, that
whilst the article of the treaty of Vienna, denouncing the African
slave trade, was regarded as the noblest article of the great paci
fication of 1815, the article of the treaty of Utrecht, giving Eng
land the privilege of importing negroes into the Spanish posses
sions in America as well as into her own, was regarded as one
of the greatest triumphs of the pacification of 1713." ^ Of the
economic aspect of the American branch of the institution, we
may safely accept the opinion of Doyle : "There is no feature of
colonial history with which moral and sentimental considerations
have so combined themselves as the question of slavery. Yet
there is hardly any which, has been so largely determined by phy
sical causes, so little by the deliberate volition of men." ^
But from the very inherent nature of the present situation, the
South cannot escape a heavier measure of responsibility for and
to the negro within her borders, than accrues to the rest of this
country or to the rest of the world. We have cried "hands off"
for so long, have demanded so insistently that we be let alone

8. Williams, Liverpool Privateers, 470.
9. Doyle, Eng. Colsin Am., 243.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 11
have so often assured the world that we could handle the situa
tion, if only free of outside interference, that, now that we have
been let alone, we cannot shirk the responsibility which comes
with the freedom we have asked. The white people of the South
ern states have control, absolute and undisputed, of the political,
social and economic affairs of those states and of every county
in them. They frame every law enacted in the South, down to
the ordinances of every village council, saving only a few negro
towns of unimportant significance. Every sheriff, every mayor
and police officer, every judge, is a white man. Throughout the
length and breadth of the land there is not one organization, po
litical, religious, industrial or social, which is threatening, or
even seriously questioning this control. Living under the laws
which we frame, interpret and execute, subject to the action of
our officials, amenaible to the processes of our courts, a non-de
tachable part of our industrial economy, sharers of our economic
destiny, are some ten millions of people of another race. Under
this bald statement of fact it would be as idle to deny a large
measure of responsibility for the part which these people are to
play in their own future and in ours, as it would be criminally
unwise for us to fail to use every effort to make that part what
it should Ibe.
It is for lus to say whether we shall drop the burden, let the
negro drift with his own current, increase in criminality, grow
in idleness, and finally 'develope into an incubus too heavy to
carry. To accept such a laissez faire program would be tant
amount to a confession of stupidity and weakness such as the
white race has not yet made. Definitely to turn away from it,
involves at least the assumption of an attitude contrary to all
thart; the other course implies, — if not the formulating and fol
lowing of a specific contrary plan of action. I do not come to
you this evening with any such formulated plan. I am only ven
turing to suggest the necessity and wisdom of considering the
subject in all its aspects and ramifications, with a view to some
future course of action. And unless we have in view as our
ultimate objective the ameliorating of the general conditions of
race relationship, the making possible of some slight improve
ment of the future over. the present, to be worked out through

12 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
the slow and tedious processes of years, — why study the questio
at ali? If our study leads to nothing tangible, if we are to con
tinue to grope aimlessly in the fog of the fancied knowledge which
we think is ours by inherited contact, then we might as well leave
the subject to politicians and frankly wash our hands of it. ont
can we thus easily avoid our responsibility?
No man ig more keenly alive to the difficulties involved in do
ing anything definite for the nesgro masses than I. I know his
faults, his vices, his weaknesses, the inherited and apparently
ineradicable limitation of his character. I appreciate also the
difficulties grounded in certain restrictions placed by the federal
constitution upon the action of the States, — restrictions which
make it impossible frankly to treat the negro as a negro. That
is as a human being entitled to every essential right of life, lib
erty and property, yet at the same time as a race the mass of
which is at least for the present normally on a different level of
intelligence and responsibility from that of the average white
man in the same environment. At the same time I find no valid
excuse for inaction in the argument of inconvenience.
First of all, our investigations should lay the stable foundations
of such constructive effort as may subsequently prove needful
and practicable. The very groundwork of this foundation is a
better knowledge of the subject on the part of our own people.
If I were asked by you iwhat in my opinion is the one most im
portant thing to be undertaken by Southern people in their hand
ling of the whole subject of the negro and his problems, I think
I should answer that our primary need was a more thorough
knowledge of the Southern negro by the Southern white man.
I mean real, scientific knowledge, — not the superficial informa
tion acquired by contact with individual negroes. If there is
any one branch of human knowledge of which the average South
ern man claims peculiar and almost exclusive possession, it is
that pertaining to the negro. We regard this as one of the birth
rights of the Southern child, — something bom with us and in us
— and hence something for which there is no necessity of study
It is often the case that the average individual is least thoroughly
informed upon the details of everyday matters which surround
him. And this is no exception. The world of scholarship the

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 13
standards of modem research, and the importance of the subject
alike demand something more at the hands of Southern people
than sentimental twaddle about black mammies and faithful body
servants, on the one hand, and generalizing dissertations upon
negro inefficiency and criminality, on the other.
What are the facts? Is the Southern negro losing ground
economically, or is he slowly but steadily increasing his holdings
of real and personal property? Is he doomed to extinction
through disregard of moral and hygienic laws, or is he painfully
learning the lesson which every race must learn that is destined
to survive in the ancient and perpetual struggle of mankind?
Is he a hopeless menace to Southern social life, or is he a crea
ture into whom may be instilled lessons of law and order, with
reasonable promise of a fruition of better living and greater ob
servance of the usages of civilization? Is he a lustful beast that
should not be allowed to roam at will upon the earth, or is he
a fairly moral human being, furnishing no more than his pro
portion of lapses into the more revolting social crimes? Is he
really a non-taxpaying burden upon Southern white people who
have generously contributed to his education, or does he pay
his own way with his own taxes and educate his own children
at his own expense?
As a Southern man, iborn and reared and living in the South
ernmost part of the South, addressing an audience of Southern
students who must inevitably play their part in moulding local
and national public sentiment upon a subject of grave public mo
ment, I put these questions to you not in any idle or perfunctory
spirit. They are questions demanding your most earnest thought,
your candid and serious study, and your honest and unprejudiced
reply. I appreciate, probably quite as fully as any of you can,
the difficulties involved in the prosecution of investi'gations such
as I suggest. But nothing is easy that is really worth while.
Here is a field of study which is at once one of the most im
portant in America and one which is the peculiar province of the
Southern man. Yet what Southern authorities have we on any
of its branches? The only statistics of lynchings in the United
States are those annually compiled by a Chicago newspaper.
The only authoritative study of lynching and its ramifications

14 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
is by Cutler, of Western Reserve. The only study of negro
criminality is by Wilkox, of Cornell, and it is now out of date.
With a few exceptions the only economic studies of the Southern
negro have been by students from outside the South, lhe e
monographic treatment of the negro farmer is by Kelsy, of t e
University of Pennsylvania. There are scores of topics, sub
sidiary to the general subject yet capable of throwing a great
deal of light upon its most important aspects, which afford in
viting avenues of investigation for the student inclined to the
general fields of sociology, economics or history. The rela.tion
between property holding and crime could (be worked out in a
study of the negro population of any Southem penitentiary. Yet
in the main we are content to consider the negro race as a unit
in its contribution to our criminal class, without any fair attempt
at discrimination between the different elements of its popula
tion. We are complacent in the belief of our generous carrying
of the burden of negro education, yet we do not know the facts
upon which to ibase an intelligent estimate of the real weight of
this burden. Only a few Southem states provide separate racial
assessments which will enable us to determine the taxes paid by
each race, and we have made no adequate use of the infonmation
made available by even these. We talk of what the Southem
people have done for the negro defective and delinquent classes.
Yet in some (Southern states the provision for such classes is
pitifully crude and inadequate. Even the insane among them
are in far too many cases confined to the common jails, simply
because of the failure of the state to provide sufficient accom
modations in asylums. It is foreign to my purpose to indulge
in a dissertation on different theorifes of incidence, but I venture
to suggest that in considering the question of public burdens and
public benefits we give proper thought to that which holds that
the (burden of taxation falls most heavily upon the poor, — ^that
the man who pays rent on city buildings or farm lands pays
likewise his full share of the taxes upon what he uses and occu
pies. We can make but little progress as long as we continue to in
dulge in sweeping generalizations. There are some ten millions
of negroes in the United States, and they are not all alike. There
is no such concrete thing as "the Southern negro,"— just as there

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 15
is no such definite and delimited individual as "the Southem
white man." These negroes present a large variety of differ
ences of complexion, native intelligence, education, inherited and
acquired characteristics, temperament and disposition. In short,
they differ among themselves in all those respects which differ
entiate individuals and groups of any and every other race. Just
so with their status, and with the relations between themselves
and the white race, in different communities and places through
out the South. It is unscientific, incorrect and misleading to
speak of race conditions or race relations as though they were
something reducible to definite terms of expression, applicable
alike to all places where the two races are found in contact. I
have heard thoughtful Southern men, who were not politicians
and who had no qiuestionaJble end to serve, declare that in the
South no white woman was safe when left alone, and that the
life of the women in the rural South was one comparable almost
to a state of constant siege. More than once I have protested
against any such assertion, descriptive as it is of a condition
which would place our country upon the footing of an African
jungle, peopled by creatures no better than savage beasts. When
a Southern man thus describes his own immediate environment
I am not disposed to take issue with him. I grant that his knowl
edge of his own surroundings is superior to mine. But I must
insist that he do not generalize for the South as a whole. I live
in the country. In my county there are about nine negroes to
one white person. On Dunleith Plantation there are some three
hundred and odd negroes, and only five white men. Yet the
women of our families .are as safe from any form of molestation
as they could be anywhere in the world. During the Mississippi
river floods which prevented me from keeping my engagement to
come here last spring, I had one hundred and seventy-five of
these negroes almost in my very yard for a period of seven weeks.
The only white persons there were my wife and myself, and on
several occasions business demands caused me to leave her en
tirely alone with them. I did so with no more, thought of pos
sible harm befalling her than would have oome to me on leaving
her under any other circumstances. And indeed she was fully
protected. In this presence I wish to bear my testimony to the
firm belief that any negro man there would, without thought of

16 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
personal consequences, have risked his life in her defense.
don this personal digression. I indulge it only to add emphasis
to my objection to the misleading and often unjust generaliza
tions which are so frequently made in this connection.
Of some things we may rest assured. The negro is here to
stay, and his numbers will increase rather than diminish. In a
certain large sense, whatever affects his race also affects yours
and mine. From this there is no escape. There is no method of
computing the vast accumulation of economic loss entailed upon
the South through long generations of dependence upon unskilled,
untrained negro labor. In ante-bellum times the observant trav
eler contrasted conditions which he saw in the South with what he
saw in the rest of the country and in Europe. He charged to
slavery the unfavorable balance against the South which every
where met his eye. In trath, it was not slave labor but negro
labor which was, at bottom, responsible. The contrast between
North and South was not the contrast between free and slave
labor, but that between white and negro labor. Whatever makes
for greater efficiency on the part of Southern negro labor,
whether in agriculture, in the industrial trades, in domestic
service, makes for greater wealth and happiness for the South
as a whole. Whatever makes for cleanliness, for more decent
living, for better housing conditions, for .greater freedom from
disease among our negroes, makes for health and peace of mind
among ourselves. Whatever makes for law and order and right
living among our negroes, makes for peace and safety in the
community at large.
The South has nothing to fear from the decent, self-respecting,
law-abiding negro. In so far as I can see, his presence is no
menace to the white community. It is the negro of the dive and
the slum, the conveyor of filth and disease, the gambler and the
"bad man," the gun-carrying, whiskey-drinking, drug-using
"rounder," whose black shadow sometimes disturbs our peace
of mind. And there is not a negro dive, a crap joint or a "blind
tiger" in any county in the South which does not exist through
either the connivance or indifference of the white man.
If it were possible to establish a better basis of mutual under
standing between the races, or between leading men of both
races, it would be a long step in improving general conditions

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 17
and in softening some of the harsher aspects of the problems
which confront the respectable negro. It hardly seems possible
to accomplish much by mere outside pressure upon the negro.
You cannot legislate a people into either morality or prosperity.
But a definite attitude on the part of white men who would say
to the proper negroes in a given community: "We are your
friends. Our only wish is to help you help your people. Our
only request of you is that you help us to co-operate with you,"
an attitude which would be eqiuivalent to such a declaration,
would be a power for helpfulness both to black and white.
The exercise of a sense of discrimination between negroes of
different classes is a necessary pre-requisite to any effort at
negro betterment. I have said that there are just as many dif
ferent kinds of negroes as there are of white people. It is just
as discouraging and disheartening to a respectable, law-abiding
negro to feel that the white community regards the entire negro
element as one and the same, to feel that he is held responsible
for the doings and character of the lowest class, as it would be
for a white man similarly situated.
Protection to person and property, by law and public opinion,
is another factor of far-reaching influence, if only it oould be
thoroughly established. There is no doubt in my mind that this
is one important element in the situation which makes for racial
peace and quiet in the British West Indies. I do not believe
that there is any creature so low in the human scale as to be
beyond the reach of the influence which a feeling of security,
of fairness and justice in the administration of the law, brings
with it. The affording of a decent environment to respectable
ne;groes striving to rear respectable families, is another such in
fluence. Beyond question there is also room for reformation in
the administration of penal institutions, most of which are little
more than graduate schools for hardened criminals. This would
mean the establishing of reform schools for juvenile offenders.
We might add to the foregoing the white man's support of and
interest in every deserving negro school, industrial or otherwise,
coupled with a strict supervision of the teaching force in every
school maintained by the state, and the broadening of the whole
field of the educational training of the negro along well con
sidered lines rather than its restriction along any.
—2

18 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
Equalling, if not transcending, any other opportunity in this
field of influence and work, is that open to the Christian minis
try and the Christian church. The church .and its ministers are
privileged to say and to do things which would be misunderstood
and possibly harmful if attempted by other forces or other men.
I am aware of the work already done and doing by the church,
but there seems to be a need for somehow correlating the work
of the church among negroes more with the common, every day
aspects of their lives. One function I have in mind is that of
bringing the races closer together ; the broadening of the influence
of the white race over the other ; of making the negro feel that
the boasted friendship of the Southern white man is something
definite and tangible, and not a mere rhetorical mockery and
sham, meant mainly for foreign consumption. Is there a greater
missionary field on earth for practical missionary effort than is
offered Southem churches by the Southem negro?
Equal, probably, to anything else is the duty and responsibility
which devolve on the Southern white man, by reason of his po
sition, his environment, his inheritance and his claim to be the
friend and mentor of the negro, to set the latter a proper per
sonal example. The negro is an imitative creature, or we may
say that his race is in its imitative stage. It is human nature for
the negro to seek justification for his own shortcomings in the
conduct of some member of the race which he is taught to regard
as his superior example. It is merely a truism to say that every
man owes to his community the duty of an example of right liv
ing, of a clean and upright life. The truism becomes freighted
with deeper significance when applied to the Southern white man
whose lot is cast among a mixed population.
The whole matter may be summed up, in my view, as an ex
pression of necessity upon the white man's part for arresting the
growing tendency toward cleavage between the best elements of
both races, the lessening of contact between the worst, and the
restraining, as far as may be, of the forces and influences which
make for the negro's physical, mental and moral degeneracy.
This is peculiarly a white man's problem. And it is the South
ern white man who, in the last analysis, is most vitally concerned
in its solution.

Considerations on Race Adjustments in the South.

BY JAMES H. DILLARD.

When Mr. Ray Stannard Baker was in the South preparatory
to writing his excellent book entitled "Following the Color Line,"
he asked me if I had any solution for the race question. I was
not at the time acquainted with the purpose of Mr. Baker's mis
sion. My first reply was that I knew of no immediate solution
of the problem; and then, correcting myself, I confessed that I
might make one suggestion, namely, the decapitation of the
next person who said anything about it. Mr. Baker did not ac
cept the idea of my suggestion, for which neglect we are pro
foundly thankful. In my opinion, his book, so full of infor
mation and keen insight, is a work for which all fair-minded
people. North and South, owe him a debt of gratitude. The
book proves furthermore that honest investigation and intelligent
discussion may always be helpful. And yet, there was perhaps
some excuse for my exaggerated suggestion of silence. There
have been times when, there have been phases of this subject
about which, such talk and discussion as we had did more harm
than good. Moreover it is true that there are sores and bruises
which only the procession of days, months, years, can remedy
and heal. There are readjustments and new views iri s6cial and
economic matters which only the revolution of time can bring
around. Consider one very deep and very vital feature of our race
question in the South. I am almost persuaded to say that it is
the heart of the whole question. I refer to the necessary change
of view which we Southerners are called upon to take. I hesitate
to make the statement, lest it be misunderstood, and yet the fact
must be recognized. We must face the change from thinking
of the Negroes as members of a slave race to thinking of them
as members of a race, which like other races, may develop into
higher civilization. Yet there need be no surprise, no blame, if
we of the South are slow in coming to the realization of the
19

20 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
change. Think of the tremendous change from the love for t e
old black mammy to the plain recognition of the landowning Me-
gro farmer or the town Negro grocer and druggist. Is er
any wonder that time is needed to adjust us to such change.
The Negro too needs time to adjust himself, as much as we
whites need time to adjust our own point of view.
Let me say at once that there is little trouble in actual practice,
in the common every-day routine of life and business. Negroes
testify to the good-will of the Southern whites in the enterprises
which they undertake. The Negro bankers all tell of the assist
ance or expression of approval which they had had from the
local white bankers. All such Negro enterprises go on without
opposition and secure the good-will of white people. The neces
sary cooperation of the races goes on in the main with friendli
ness, and I see no reason why it should not continue to go on,
each race gradually accommodating itself to the changed con
ditions. But the changed view-point, in regard to the race as a
whole, cannot be adjusted over night.
Meanwhile there should be an effort toward having our dis
cussions such as are based on knowledge of facts and a desire
for peace and good-will. For this reason we welcome and ap
plaud the donations of the Phelps-Stokes Fund in establishing
this course of lectures and a fellowship in this University for the
purpose of promoting investigation and discussion as to the con
ditions of the Negro population and the relation of the two races.
Let us also welcome the University Commission on Race Ques
tions formed for the same purpose and composed of representa
tives from eleven of our Southem State Universities. We shall
look forward with deepest interest to the work of these and
similar agencies, such as the meetings of the Southem Socioloo--
ical Congress and the work of college groups of the Young Men's
Christian Association. In the present lecture I shall venture to
deal with certain general facts and conditions already known
perhaps to most of us.
First let me say that it seems to me remarkable that there is
not more friction between the races when we consider all that
has happened. I wonder daily at the peaceful relations, since
it really seems that little has been left undone which might cause

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 21
irritation. Yet the fact is that the millions are going on quite
peacefully about their business. It is only the dozens and hun
dreds about whom we hear trouble. And let me say here that it
is a pity that the way of newspapers happens to be harmful in
this respect. When mainly the evil things are considered news,
the result is misleading. I attended a large Negro educational
meeting where white superintendents and colored teachers spoke,
where there was important and interesting business transacted
for the educational advantage of the race. I saw no mention of
this meeting in any newspaper, and yet nearly every paper I
bought, in crossing three states, had some notice of a shooting-
scrape between a white man and a Negro which occurred on the
same day and in the same town.
I am only wishing to call attention to the obvious fact that in
the main the two races are actually living and working peacefully
together in all our Southern communities. When three branch
libraries were recently built in New Orleans, the lowest bidder
for one of them was a Negro, and he was awarded the job with
out any question. The memorial library at the Louisiana State
University was erected by a colored contractor. I might multiply
such illustrations in all parts of the South, and I think they tell
the important story which ought to be emphasized whenever we
think of the race problem, because, as I have said, we are in
danger of forgetting the commonplace when we hear of the ex
traordinary. To my mind the generally peaceful relations which exist indi
cate the settling down of the two races to a basis of gradual ad
justment, such a status as might have been begun thirty or forty
years earlier, but for the mistaken ideals of the statesman and the
selfish ideas of the politician. Let us dismiss the politician; but
a word should be said about the ideals of the statesman, such
for example, as was Charles Sumner. Phillips Brooks once said
that we cannot live this life aright without the vision of the
eternal life, and that we cannot live for the eternal life without
keeping our eyes on this life. The same thought can be applied
to our ideals; we cannot live for them in the best way and bring
them into effect without keeping in view the plain, homely, actual
facts of existence. This is where statesmen like Charles Sumner

22 ¦ PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
missed the best results forty-odd years ago. They tried to legis
late in a day their ideals for two peoples, neither of which they
understood. They not only did not understand the people for
whom they were legislating, but they forgot all about human
nature, and inheritance, and environment, and all the other tre
mendous facts of commonplace life. The politicians of the pe
riod had no vision of the future; they wanted immediate results
for themselves; they neither J;hought nor cared about ultimate
harm. The Sumners did care, and they meant well, but they un
fortunately kept their eyes too steadily away from the stubborn
world. So, after the storm and stress, out of which undoubtedly
some good came, we had to go back and take a new start. And
now let us hope that self-seeking politicians and all who are still
lacking in patience may not retard the sure progress, gradual but
sure, which is certainly being made in the solid way of race im
provement and race adjustment.
In expressing this opinion I do not for a moment imply that
conditions are satisfactory. I only mean to say that they are
becoming more so, and that they are even more so at the present
moment than one might expect.
There seem to me several immediate causes of complaint which
should be mentioned. But before mentioning these I wish to say
in all fairness that they art not confined exclusively to the South,
and I wish to emphasize what seems to me a fact of prime im
portance, namely, that in opportunities to work the Negro has
perhaps a freer field in the South than he has elsewhere. The
same Negro who built the University library of which I have
spoken was not allowed to work at his trade in Chicago. This
statement is from his own lips. It cannot be said too often that
the Southem people do not stand in ithe way of the Negroes'
opportunity to work and by work to improve their economic
condition. But there are other things in life besides work. Man
does not live by work alone and, as I have said, I think there
are several immediate causes of complaint which should be con
sidered. Any one who has had the opportunity of observation knows
that Negroes have just ground to complain of their treatment in
the lower courts, and these lower courts are naturally the main

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 23
courts for them. One of the severest criticisms that can be made
against civilization and governments is that less care is taken,
less money paid, less thought given to insure justice among the
poor than among the well-to-do and rich. Solemnly we talk
about the importance of having learned and spotless judges for
higher courts, and make much ado about supreme courts and all
courts of higher jurisdiction; but for ordinary justices of the
peace and for judges in police courts, we may select any broken-
down politician or ward-heeler. The South is not unlike the rest
of the world in this; but because we are like the rest of the
world, the Negroes suffer; and, because of the fact of race preju
dice added to the misfortune of poverty, they suffer all the more.
Another just cause of complaint may be found in the treat
ment which Negroes too often receive from the employees of
public service corporations, especially from the employees of
common carriers, such as ticket sellers and car conductors. I
do not speak of the accommodations, which, though there is im
provement, are not what they should be, when we remember that
a full fare is paid ; but I speak of the humiliating treatment which
Negroes too often receive in the way of coarse and gruff words
and manner. I need not say that this evil would be disapproved
as sincerely by men of gentlemanly instinct in the South, as by
men of gentlemanly instinct in the North.
A third just cause of complaint, especially in most of the rural
districts, is that the school officials do not apportion a proper
amount for Negro public schools from the public funds, and
furthermore that insufficient care is taken in the administration
of even the amounts appropriated. The Southem states spend
a large amount of money on Negro education, much of which
is almost wasted, and the fact is that with many notable excep
tions many school-boards do not seem to care whether it is wasted
or not. The Negro schools in the country have hitherto had lit
tle or no supervision. In a large proportion of the rural dis
tricts the teachers have been too poorly paid, and the terms have
been too short to make the school little more than a farce. But
these conditions are beginning to change. We are beginning to
see that from every consideration of justice, as well as from
every consideration of economics and self-interest, the masses

24 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
of the Negroes in the country must be brought out of the condi
tion of ignorant inefficiency. I think furthermore, as I sha
say later on, that the disposition to improve the public schoos
for Negroes will advance with the advancing idea of a revolu
tion in the character of the schools. When it is seen that the
schools can be made a part of practical life, that they can teach
home industries, and habits of cleanliness and promptness and
thrift there will be more disposition to spend money in their be
half. Let me say that there are many hopeful signs of the
coming changes.
A fourth just cause of complaint refers to the subtle matter
of which I hesitatingly spoke at the beginning. It is our gen
eralization of the Negroes as merely — I hardly know how to
express it — merely a mass. We Southerners generally like the
individual Negro, will work with him, help him, joke with him.
But in another mood we class all of them together as a mass. I
have heard a distinguished Southern lawyer speak contemptuously
of the idea of having Negro lawyers, and yet, at another time,
speak in terms of praise of a particular Negro lawyer with whom
he had actually been associated in a criminal case. This is an
interesting fact, and there are many similar instances.
A main feature in any discussion of the race problem must be,
are the Negroes improving? Is the race advancing in education,
in civilization, in enlightenment, in moral and economic stand
ards? I think there may be the same reply to these questions
that would be made if the questions were asked concerning other
races. The fact is that there has been a notable advance within
the Negro race during the past forty years. No one can travel
through the South, and fail to see this, unless he keeps his eyes
solely on a certain type of still-existing plantation Negro or
upon the low type of the city alleys. No one could stand before
a meeting of the Negro Business League and fail to see the ad
vancement there represented. There are signs of progress in
nearly all parts of the South : increasing ownership of land the
churches and other buildings for Negro activities in the cities
better-looking homes, large amounts contributed by the NeToes
themselves for their religious and their educational institutions
growth of the number engaged successfully in business and in the

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 25
professions, increasing sanctity of the marriage relation, the
growing senthnent of race consciousness and race pride, the
higher and more dignified tone of the Negro press. All of these
are signs which may be seen, and the facts, so far as they can
be enumerated, are told in the census reports.
But there is the other side. There are thousands of Negroes
living in a condition of ignorance and poverty which is a dis
grace to so-called civilization — just as certain streets of New
York are a disgrace, and certain streets of old York are a dis
grace. I mention old York, because some who are here this
evening may recall Mr. Rountree's striking work on "Poverty,"
based upon his studies in that city. His book led me a few years
ago to see the worst conditions in that ancient town, and "within
a few months thereafter I traveled through the black belt of
three of our Southem States. I saw masses of Negroes in coun
ties where they number five and even more to one of the whites.
I saw their wretched poverty and the little that is being done for
them, the little that in some places they are even trying to do for
themselves, so little is there to arouse any sentiment of thrift or
improvement. It must be said, however, that there are not very
many localities in which the Negroes are not trying, though it
may be in a crude and blind way, to do something for church or
school. They are not in many places so utterly hopeless as per
haps thirty percent of the people in York. They have more air
and sun, and certainly a sunnier disposition. But they need and
deserve, like all the poor, a better chance, and if we are wise we
shall help them to have a better chance. Who can say that it will
be to the advantage of the white race to have the Negroes in any
community thriftless and ignorant ?
About four-fifths of the Negroes are still living in the coun
try districts, and there at present the chief problem lies. The
betterment of the condition of the country Negro is the great
immediate problem, not only for the sake of the individual
Negro, but for the sake of the Negro problem as a whole. For
unless the rural conditions are improved, the most enterprising
of the country Negroes will flock more and more into the cities,
leaving behind the more hopeless of their fellows, and creating
a more difficult situation in the cities. If the improvement of

26 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
rural life is generally recognized as perhaps the greatest of pres
ent social problems, it is not hard to see that the problem is mos
acute in the rural districts of the South.
In the South, as everywhere, the heart of the problem of rural
improvement is the land question. Where the Negroes have been
able to acquire land, there the best conditions exist. In some
counties conditions are such that very few Negroes have been
able to acquire land. I drove twelve miles in Alabama and was
informed that I had passed through but three men's land, all
three of whom lived in cities. In a majority of counties how
ever the conditions are different, and many Negroes have bought
the land on which they live and work.
But the land question, under our present laws, must take care
of itself. What can 'be done otherwise for the rural Negroes?
I mention two things, referring to their religion and to their
education. Far the most important and potent influence is the
country preacher. From him the masses receive their ideals of
duty and conduct, of life and death. From him come all their
ideas above and beyond the routine of daily life in the field and
cabin. Through him, more than in any other way, the masses of
the Negroes can be influenced for better living. If I were a
millionaire I would have a traveling commission of competent
preachers, some white and some colored. I would have them at
tend every Baptist Association, every Methodist Conference,
every meeting of preachers of whatever kind. I would have
them go through the country and call together meetings of
preachers. I would have them hold summer schools for preach
ers. And the burden of their message should be this : that sal
vation is now as well as hereafter and that clean, honest, indus
trial living is a vital part of religion. Furthermore I would place
in every institution for the preparation of preachers a teacher of
sanitation and home-making. In other words I would bring
home to the minds of the preachers the conviction that their
religion is meant for this world as well as for the next world
The next great question is of course that of schools. Here the
most important feature of the situation at this time is the im
provement of the rural schools, and the main need is a larger
appropriation from the pubHc funds for this purpose. The edu-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 27
cation of the masses of the Negroes can be affected only through
the regular public school system, which is the only method for
the general education of any people. In regard to the elementary
public school, especially those in the country, there is a wide
spread opinion that they are ineffective, that they need almost a
revolution in their curriculum. The movement for introducing
into them home industries, for making them fitter in the way of
touching the life about them, and, at the same time, for putting
more life into the teaching, has been generally welcomed. Here
is a tremendous field for further philanthropy and outside as
sistance. And if the schools become thus changed and improved,
if their education can be seen to be effective, then without doubt
there will be more disposition to appropriate money in their be
half. Try to picture any one of a hundred counties with their large
Negro population, mostly ignorant and living from hand to
mouth, with little or no thought of cleanliness or thrift, and with
children swarming about the one or two room cabin. There may
be in the community a so-called school, open during three or
three and a half months, at some time in the year, with a gener
ally incompetent, poorly paid teacher, teaching in a rude church
or a ruder shanty of some kind, teaching by rote some lifeless
and remote facts, out of lifeless books. Better than nothing this
is, but how little. And with only a little more money and a lit
tle more intelligence how much better it might be. It is one of
the pities of the situation that by not spending more on rural
education, for whites as well as blacks, we are almost wasting
much that we do spend. This is the fact which we of the South
will realize more and more, as we come to realize the bottom
fact, that it will not pay, not pay in any sense of the word, to
allow any portion of our population to remain uneducated.
I have mentioned the three sure processes for immediate bet
terment, namely, the acquirement of decent homes, the enlighten
ment of the preachers as to practical religion, and the improve
ment of the schools. Whether or not these three things will
solve the whole problem, grant that there will always persist a
race problem, yet these things are good in themselves. No one
can deny that it is well for the man who tills the soil to hold the

28 PHELPS-STOKES Fellowship papers
soil. No one can deny that a religion which brings home_
realization of human obligations is good for any human bei g.
No one can deny that an education which brings intelligence
the performance of daily tasks and daily living is good, not on y
for the individual, but for all who must come in contact with him-
So I repeat that in these three lines of progress we must place
hope and confidence.
I said a moment ago, "granted that there will always persist a
race problem." Who can doubt that there will be a race problem,
if we choose to call it so, so long as human beings of different
races inhabit the earth? We have no monopoly of the problem
in the South. It may be said to be world-wide. Races are dif
ferent, and the differences, so far as we know, will persist, in
our Southern states we have to face the differences and the
difficulties. But what other solution is there than to acknowl
edge differences, and yet to work in all necessary co-operation
and to cultivate good will? Neither the idea of wholesale col
onization, nor the idea of wholesale extinction, any longer re
ceives serious second thought. Are not all such speculations and
predictions quite futile? Must we not realize the fact that the
Negro is here to stay, and mainly in the South?
None of us can read the future, and I never think of the
prophecies about the race problem without the inclination to
quote the lines in Henry IV:
"You are too shallow, Hastings, far too shallow.
To sound the bottom of the aftertimes."
But in the meanwhile there is enough at hand to engage our at
tention for a time. The old English proverb, echoed by Chau
cer in his Good Counsel, said. Do the next thing; and for us,
whatever the future may hold in it of uncertainty or perplexity,
the nearest duty lies in the direction of good-will, cooperation, and
practical helpfulness. Our immediate problems are better homes,
a fuller conception of religion, and a more efficient system of
education.

Black-Belt Labor, Slave and Free.

BY ULRICH B. PHILLIPS.

The so-called negro race in America has widely varied quali
ties. Many quadroons and mulattoes and some exceptional
negroes possess mental traits identical with those characteristic
of white men; they follow the same habits of thought and ac- ^<.
tion and respond in the same way to economic and social stimuli. (Z^
[But the great mass of ordinary negroes are in a radically differ- .^.../p/juf
ent category, thinking and acting in distinctly negro-like ways S'hci-fU^HiH
and thereby presenting peculiar problems of economic and social -^ ^ -'"
adjustment?] The negroes who dwell in the Southern districts <: "¦*• '-<p^ -
of negro majorities — the black belts — usually show the fullest
negro traits; and the blacker the belt, other things equal, the
more thoroughly negro-like is the general run of the negroes. In
the present discussion we shall not be concerned with exceptional
conditions. We shall consider the mass where the mass is the
greatest and the type the most undiluted. The cotton belt will
afford our chief data, for the double reason that that industry
has long employed the greatest bulk of negroes and that for it
the census returns are more illuminating than for any other in K^
the premises. .
In the ante-bellum regim^_^avery afforded the means of polic- ^"^
ing the negroesland transferring their control from hand to hand t^oC-s^ ^
in the labor market. With it was intimately associated the ' ('^'¦'^
plantation system, providing a definite routine of simple tasks
and supervision to ensure their performance. It also provided
incidentally a certain degree of industrial and social education
for the negroes. The regime of plantation slavery in fact per- f'C\
mitted capable managers to make typical American negroes as t
efficient laborers, doubtless, as the world has ever seen under any i^ »^y* 1,7-
form of coercion. In both social and industrial schooling planta- \'^
tion slavery was immensely effective. Some masters and over
seers, it is true, were too degraded and brutal to give the slaves
under them a chance for sound progress through imitation. On
29

G)

^' " 30 '^ , '^ '^ PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
,«'^^ . \
the other hand some masters were too easy-going to r !
slaves in efficient labor. Indeed the slaves had many ^^^^^^^^^'^ -.
and oftentimes they ruled their masters more than the '"^^ \
y ruled them. But generally speaking the slaves in the ^".*^' ^ , \
^^^¦rff \ South were far more productive as well as more "^'^'^ j^^,.,
¦'*//.«? <f j any other mass of negroes had become at that time. u
more, slavery and the slave-trade made the labor supply P e-
nomenally responsive to industrial opportunity. Its mo 1 1 y
demonstrated by the slave-labor occupation of virtually the w ^
of the cotton belt's vast area within forty years from the time
when the cotton industry began to be firmly estabhshed. Since
emancipation, on the other hand, the negro population has al
most wholly staid in the districts where the slaveholding regime
left it.
Tradition in various localities of the South relates almost in
credible tales of cotton output by the slaves of vigorous planters.
Authentic records of individual achievements are lacking; ^but
the census retums are eloquent enough. To use these in a com
parison between ante-bellum and present-day conditions it is
necessary to choose districts where negroes have continually done
the bulk of the work: where towns, which always disturb the
statistical picture of agriculture, are few and small; and where
there have occurred no revolutionary changes in the methods
of cultivation, such as have been caused by the enormous resort
to commercial fertilizers in the piedmont and the pine-barrens,
and in the western cotton belt by the invasion of the Mexican
boll-weevil. Probably the area most truly typical of those where
uo change has occurred of importance comparable to the freeing
of the slaves is the Yazoo Delta in Northwestern Mississippi.
Let us take four counties strung .along .the Mississippi river in
this district, none of them containing towns of consequence, all
^\^ of them blessed with the inexhausible fertility of alluvium, and
' .^ »' ^ all producing before and since the war little but cotton and com
l"^ ,(,(i»r' in a quite steady ratio. The four counties. Tunica, Coahoma,
\^ti'* Bolivar, and Issaquena, had in 1860 a population of 4,384 whites,
25,592 slaves and no free negroes; a total of 29,976 of whom
85.4^^0 were blacks and 14.6% whites. In 1910 these counties
contained 12,243 whites and 90,001 negroes ; a total of 102,244,

THE NEGRfiTlN'^ffE SOUTH ^ ^^ ./ ^ ,2JU^ T U^^
with a black percentage of 88. Now in 1860 the cotton product
of the four counties was 100,972 bales averaging four hundred
pounds each, while in 1910, a typical year of the recent period,
it was 156,384 bales of five hundred pounds average. Convert
ing the figures for 1860 into five-hundred-pound bales, and re
ducing the output to a per-capita basis for the gross population,
it appears that for each inhabitant these counties produced two
and one-third bales in 1860 as compared with one and a half 'fre'
bales in 1910. In short, the per-capita product has declined by l^lm^'f
thirty-five per cent. A large number of other counties chosen
at random throughout the rest of the cotton belt confirm these
indications of the Yazoo Delta that the emancipation of the
rural blackHbelt negroes has diminished their industrial efficiency.
On the other hand, the areas of white majorities in the cotton
belt, in all cases where no great diversion of labor has occurred
as into the cotton mills, show a heavy increase in cotton produc
tion. The per-capita crop has generally doubled or trebled, and
in many districts it has increased ten fold. In recent decades, in
deed, the most striking development has been in certain large
districts of Texas, Oklahoma, and western Texas, where the
population is about nine-tenths white and where the cotton crop
often runs to two bales per-capita in spite of considerable activi
ties in other industries. Texas alone, with less than one-sixth of
her population negroes, and containing less than one-tenth of the
Southern negro population, now produces more cotton than all
the South did in 1860, and from one-third to nearly half as much
as all .the other cotton states produce today. In short the negroes
have apparently lost to the whites the larger half of the cotton
growing industry, without any considerable gain in any other
field to offset the loss ; and the average cotton-field negro is only
two-thirds as efficient as his grandfather was at his own age as
a slave. Various other data tend to confirm these conclusions. To take
extreme cases : in the year 1906 the state of Alaibama leased a
large number of able-bodied convicts at the rate of forty-five dol
lars per month. At the same time in the South Carolina low
lands the current rate of hire for plough hands was four dollars
a month, together with a cabin, an acre or two of land, and "Sat-

32 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
urdays off with the mule ;" and the lessees of the Alabama con
victs probably made a larger profit per head from the w ^
their laborers than did the South Carolina planters from ^^^^ ;'
-^ labor of their free negroes. [^ This comparison commits the
f;i.h''j '^ ^^'^y' perhaps, of proving too much) But standing baldly as i
j^, y,n^ does, it points the moral of modern free-negro inefficiency.
^««.^v. suggests that tbe mass of average black-belt negroes as ^
been reached, and it is by no means sure to be reached tor s
ficial effect, by the existing agencies for education and stimulus.
In the slaveholding industry no money wages were paid, and
in present day Southern agriculture most of the laborers work
on some basis of tenantry or crop-sharing. To determine the
cost of labor year by year under either regime would be too in
tricate a task for the present occasion. But a comparison of
conditions and tendencies will serve our purpose.
The cost of a slave's labor arose partly from his being a living
creature requiring sustenance, and partly from his being a chat
tel" the ownership of which involved the investment of capital.
As a human being he (and all his group) had to be provided
constantly with sufficient food, clothing and shelter to preserve
his life, health and strength, and, in some degree at least, his
happiness and loyalty. He must also be given medical attention
in time of need, and perhaps some occasional reward as an in
centive. All this was required for the sake of the master's pros
perity, if from no other consideration. On the other hand the
work must be neither debilitating in character nor exhausting in
quantity. As a matter of fact, in cotton cultivation all of the
routine work was and is relatively light by reason of the very
nature of the industry. After the land has been prepared for
the crop the heaviest task in the field is the mere trudging behind
a one-horse plough ; and the hours of day-light in Southem lati
tudes are never long enough for this to exhaust the strength of
an able-bodied man. For the cotton belt, and still more for the
tobacco districts, the tales told by the abolitionists that slaves
were systematically worked to death for the greater profit of
their masters were obviously the purest fabrications. And even
in the rice and sugar industries it is impossible to see how masters
could profitably follow such a practice in the latter ante-bellum pe
riod, in view of the prices for slaves which then prevailed.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 33
As a chattel the slave had to earn the interest on his invest
ment before he could earn any profit for his owner. And still
other deductions must be made if we apply sound principles of
accounting. The value of the chattel was liable to impairment or
destruction by death, disease, accident, or escape. To distribute
this liability over a term of years it would be necessary to esti
mate the rate of risk and add to each year's expenses appropriate
sums for casualty insurance, as well as the taxes levied on slave
property. Depreciation, however, shoud probably not be reck
oned, for the advancing years and declining capital value of the
adult slaves, along with the deaths of the aged, were offset under
ordinary circumstances by the birth and growth of children.
In the cotton growing- industry the cost of laibor constituted by \ ] i l^.^i* ^
far the greatest part of the total cost of production, and prior to I , j /
the civil war nothing of much importance occurred after the in- '^''
dustry had reached its routine basis, say in 1820, to increase the
efficiency of labor. Under such conditions an essential require
ment for permanent prosperity was that the cost of labor should
bear a fairly steady relation to the value of the product. As to
slave sustenance this requirement was easily met, for the aver
age plantation raised most of its own provisions and the prices
of supplies in the market were fairly steady. But with all the
other elements in labor-cost the circumstances were quite other
wise, since they varied with the widely fluctuating prices of slaves
in the market. Let us consider these fluctuations, taking as the
standard the average prices of "prime field hands" in the cotton
belt. A prime field hand, be it said, was an able-bodied young
man of no special skill. In 1795, just before the beginning of
the upland cotton industry, this price was a little below $300. fl ^'
By 1800 the new demand carried it to $450, and the closing of ^•^iJrai^^
the African slave-trade in 1808 caused a further rise to $600 in \ ' '
the following year. Then the war with Great Britain reduced
it to $450 again in 1813; but the return of peace, bringing a
great stimulus to industrial expansion, carried it to $1,000 in
1818. The overproduction of cotton and the panic of 1819,
however, depressed it to $700 in 1821. After nearly a decade
of quite staible slave prices a new inflation carried them to $1,300
for prime field hands in 1837; but the prevalence of exceedingly
—3

34 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
hard times in the first half of the forties drove them '^'^*"^e
$600 in 1844. With the recovery of the cotton market after 1!^^
and its firmness at from ten to twelve cents a pound thro g _
the fifties, there occurred a vigorous and unremitting r
slave prices until in 1860 prime field hands brought from $1,6
to $2,000 a head in the various cotton-belt districts.
These fluctuations paralleled those of cotton prices to some
degree in various brief periods ; but in the lapse of decades cot on
trended downward as positively as slaves trended upward. ^ A
the beginning of the century upland cotton ranged about thirty
cents a pound in the New York market. In 1803 it fell to twenty
cents, and during the war of 1812 it dipped as low as eleven
cents. The arrival of peace sent it up sharply to thirty cents,
and the panic of 1819 brought it down to fifteen, where it staid
off and on until the early thirties. It then rose to fifteen cents
in 1835, but promptly entered upon a disastrous decline to the
starvation level of six cents in New York, which meant four or
five cents in the interior cotton districts. In the later fifties it
recovered, as we have already seen, and ranged for the rest of
the ante-bellum period between ten and twelve cents at New
York. Now let us convert slave prices into terms of cotton. In 1800,
in round figures, a prime field hand could be bought for 1,500
pounds of the ginned staple; in 1810 the price had doubled; in
1820 it had risen to 5,000 pounds of cotton; in 1830 it was 7,000
pounds; in 1840, 8,000; in 1850, 10,000; and in I860 it ranged
between 15,000 and 18,000 in different parts of the cotton belt.
Thus the price of slaves as measured in the chief product of
their labor increased at least ten fold between 1800 and 1860,
and three fold after 1820.
In the early twenties and before, a planter could buy slaves
and raise cotton at a substantial profit above maintenance, in
terest, and insurance charges. After 1835 he could no longer
do so. In 1839 and the early forties thousands of planters were
bankrupted, and those who were unscathed esteemed themselves
extremely fortunate. In the fifties, which by comparison were
spoken of as prosperous, it was only the most talented managers
and those whose plantations lay in the most fertile districts who

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH

35

could buy slaves and from their labor earn anything beyond
interest charges. The average planter seems to have gained only
from two to five per cent, on his investment. Slaves, indeed,
had grown too precious to be risked in any but the most salubri
ous employments. Such planters as were near the seaports
eagerly hired gangs of German and Irish immigrants for ditch
ing and levee building and any other needful work too heavy
for performance without danger of strain and injury. No man
could afford to take chances with a thousand-dollar slave.
In the present-day regime of the black belts it is hard to speak
with confidence as to the cost of labor. But it is fairly certain
that, in spite of the diminished efficiency of the general run of
the negroes, the labor cost per pound of cotton is not so great
as it was in 1860, and that there is no tendency toward the un
remitting enhancement of the labor-cost ratio such as there was
in the slaveholding regime.
Thinking men of the ante-bellum South opposed the over
throw of slavery partly because they hoped the abolitionists'
clamor would die away and permit the South to remodel her
own system quietly and constructively, partly because of a dis
like for disturbing vested interests, but mainly, it appears, be
cause they had an exaggerated dread of the social disorder to
follow the relaxation of control over the negro population.
There was some apprehension that emancipation would reduce
the efficiency of the negroes, but little belief that slave labor
per se was more profitable to the employers than free labor
would be.
Slavery was abolished against the resistance of the South,
and in a way which was one of the most injurious conceivable
for the employers. But since the agony of the\so-calledjRecon-
struction period the Southem community has taken a new start,
and today it is taking stock of the situation and making plans
for the future. The South needs knowledge of her own past
and present in order to frame the most intelligent plans. No one
anywhere has but a smattering knowledge and a haphazard un
derstanding of the ante-ibellum regime. There is room here for
patriotic service by vigorous students by scores and hundreds.
But still greater is the need for men of constructive leadership

(y

y

¦jh^ ^1-

36 PHELPS-STOKES Fellowship paperj
to lay out programmes and set sound examples for the p
to follow.
Under ordinary circumstances free laborers in general ea ^
secure rewards too high for the welfare of the commumties in
which they dwell. The higher their earnings, the greater their
contributions to the social fund. One of the surest indications
of general prosperity, in fact, is the prevalence of high wages,
and a greater general prosperity is one of the things which the
South most imperatively needs. Its achievement would help
immensely to solve a multitude of problems. The purchase
money for the slaves brought into any district was a contribution
paid to the people of other communities, whose industrial vigor
seems generally to have been relaxed by the receipt of this tril>
ute. But the wages paid to free labor stay largely in the district
itself, to swell the earnings of the merchants and bankers and
the professional classes and to promote new enterprises for in
dustrial diversification. However it may be achieved, therefore,
whether by the increase of paternalistic supervision or otherwise,
one of the chief needs of the whole South, one of the tasks which
whites, blacks, and mulattoes must yet combine to accomplish,
is the diminution of irresponsibility and the improvement of
industry among the general run of the negroes.

What Is Justice between White Man and Black in
the Rural South?

BY clarence poe.

I am to talk to you tonight about the welfare of the rural
South. I should not need to invoke your interest in any rural
problem, standing as I do in an institution founded by Thomas
Jefferson, who constantly reiterated his belief that the political
health of a State is measured by the proportion of its people
engaged in agriculture — Jefferson who declared that "a prosper
ity built on the basis of agriculture is that which is most desir
able to us;" and that "our government will remain virtuous as
long as our people are chiefly agricultural." In an institution
founded by Jefferson, I repeat, I should not need to remind you
of Goldsmith's "III fares the land;" of the great historian Fer-
rero's declaration that "the disease which killed the Roman Em
pire was excessive urbanization;" nor of Rider Haggard's his
tory-supported warning to our race that "the flocking of the land-
born to the cities is the handwriting on the wall of our civiliza
tion." Nor should I need, standing in an institution nurtured by the
love of your historic State, to invoke your interest in any prob
lem affecting the future of the South; for your battlefields have
reminded me afresh of Senator Carmack's eloquent expression
of the love that all of us feel for our home-land which "has
broken the ashen crust and moistened it with tears, a land scarred
and riven with the plowshare of war and billowed by the graves
of her dead," but a land to which "every drop of our blood,
every fiber of our being, every pulsation of our hearts, is con
secrated forever."
I ask only that you young men shall consider the facts I pre
sent with that ardent and high-minded love for the South which
distinguished our fathers, and with that high seriousness which
made President Cleveland declare when asked what was the
greatest problem confronting the American people :
37

38 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
"Oh, there is only one. We can see our way througti
of our difficulties. We can at least imagine a ^'""'t .^
all problems but one. But the Negro question baffles ev _y ,
body's understanding. No one knows what the answe ¦ ;|
No one knows when it will demand an instant answer.
I.
What then are the outstanding facts that face us as we consider
the future of the South's rural civilization? The outstanding .
facts are these, that the rural South— and by the "rural South'
I mean the farms themselves and not the so-called "rural sec
tions" of the census which include all towns of less than 2,500
people — the real rural South is getting blacker instead of whiter.
Sparsely settled though it is, a veritable Eden for agricultural
production and with the bare fringe of its possibilities not yet
touched, we yet face the fact that in the last census decade, a
decade when its white population ought to have increased ten
times as fast as its negro population, the white acreage actually
decreased and the Negro acreage increased; the proportion of
white farmers decreased and the proportion of Negro farmers
increased; and the Negroes gained faster in farm ownership (17
per cent, as compared with 12 per cent, for the whites), while —
most sinister fact of all — it was the whites who fastest lost their
homes and joined the tenant class (188,000 increase in number
of white tenant farmers in the last decade, or 27 per cent.,
against only 118,000 increase in Negro tenant farmers, or 21
per cent.).
Take our South Atlantic States, principally Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Here the num
ber of white farmers during the last census decade increased
only 12 per cent., negro farmers 23 per cent. — ^nearly twice as
fast. In the South Central States, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missis
sippi, and Alabama, white farmers increased 12 per cent, and
negro farmers 21 per cent. — nearly twice as fast. In the west
South Central section as a whole, the incoming of white settlers
into Texas and Oklahoma resulted in a different showing, but
the figures given for our eastern South form a striking index to
conditions in all the vast region between the Potomac and the
Mississippi.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 39
Or rather I should say that we shall have a more accurate
and more striking index to conditions when we consider the facts
just given in their relation to the population increases of each
race. Take the South Atlantic States. Their total white popu
lation increased 20 per cent, but the number of white farmers
only 12 per cent. On the other hand, the total number of ne
groes increased only 10 per cent, but the number of negro farm
ers 23 per cent. In other words, the number of our white farm
ers increased only 60 per cent, as fast as our white population,
whereas negro farmers increased 230 per cent, as fast as the
negro population.
Similarly in the East South Central States the white popula
tion increased 14 per icent. but the number of white farmers only
12 per cent., whereas the negroes, with a 6 per cent, increase in
population, made a 21 per cent, increase in number of farmers.
In other words, the number of white farmers increased only 86
per cent, as fast as the white population, while the negro farmers
increased 350 per cent, as fast as the negro population. -
Here then is your supreme fact: that with present tendencies
the negroes are capturing the rural South both from the stand
point of occupancy and ownership. It is just fifty years this
month since freedom came. Yet within this period, that is to
say, within the lifetime of men not yet old, the negroes have
reached the position where they occupy half as good a position
as our white farmers themselves with regard to ownership of
the farms they operate — ^have reached a position where they
own a farm-land area greater than the total area of Scotland
or Greece and two-thirds the total area of England. In one
state, Oklahoma, the percentage of tenants is greater for whites
thafi for negroes, while in five other States — Virginia, North
Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas — the actual number
of white tenants is greater than the actual number of negro ten
ants. II.
These are the facts, facts vouched for by the unimpeachable
witness of the United States Government, that confront us.
What do they indicate, my friends, except that under present
conditions the rural South is being lost to the white man? And

40 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
what does this mean for the future of our race and our se •
town as well as country? With what concem should the °^^
regard the swift and steady deterioration of her rural ci
ship, the only foundation stone upon which she should re
mighty empire of tomorrow ? i, ¦ t
But our problem is. What can we do about it and yet e jus
to the Negro? For the chivalrous South, in my opinion, earn
estly yeams as I myself yeam to be, just to the black man.
have risked unpopularity to defend his rights in previous years,
and my desire now, no less than ever before, is simply o s
justice done between the two races — not a superficial justice but
a deep and elemental justice.
Now when this question, "What is justice between white man
and black?" is put to the average citizen of other sections, he
answers with pathetic assurance and finality, "Equality. But
the tragedy of our case is that the answer is not so simple ; that
no answer to so complex a problem is ever so simple. The noble
doctrine of equality if only considered superficially, may lead us
into fatally vicious negation of its intrinsically righteous princi
ple if we do not remember that great modifying principle recently
reiterated by Dr. Richard T. Ely, of Wisconsin:
"Thgfe is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of
unequals.'' There is a thought that I wish every man in America were
forced to memorize. We cannot put a roan and a skunk in the
same room and say we are giving them equal treatment. Why?
Because their standards are different. We cannot turn a dozen
mountain goats and a dozen Kentucky colts into the same dry
winter pasture, and say we are giving them equal treatment.
Why? Because their living standards are different. Similarly
I cannot sew a bushel of wheat and a bushel of thistle in my
fields, or a quart of jimson-weed seed with a quart of snap beans
in my garden, and leave them to grow up together, and claim to
be giving them equality in any real sense of the term. I cannot
put my boy in a stable with my colt and say I am treating them
equally well. And every recurring summer teaches us that tares
will flourish under conditions fatal to the wheat; that cockle-
burrs will grow riotously in a neglected field in which every

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 41
corn stalk has yellowed to a barren death; that we must spray
and prune and nurture the apple, the peach and the rose, while
the thom and the thistle seem to thrive by neglect.
In other words, my friends, throughout the animal and vege
table world we see the fundamental truth exemplified that "there
can be no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals,"
and the principle holds just as good in our world of economics
and sociology. If you should turn loose two million Japanese or
Chinese and two million white men on California farms and give
them so-called equal privileges, there would not be genuine equal
ity for the white men. The Caucasian with his higher living
standards would not have an equal chance with the less civilized
Orientals. As Professor Branson puts it :
"A people with lower living standards will always prevail
against a people with undefended higher living standards."
In other words, wherever two men are doing the same work,
the man who can live on fifty cents a day will always crowd to
the wall the man whose higher civilization requires a dollar or
more to maintain — unless that higher civilization and living stand
ard are properly safeguarded.
And so in the rural South today, my friends, we see another
illustration of the fact that genuine equality, genuine justice,
must be not that of the letter which killeth but of the spirit
which maketh alive. If equality for two living things — whether
plants or animals or persons or races — if equality does not mean
equality for each to grow, develop and perpetuate its own life,
its own ¦ excellences, its own achievements and standards built
up through the long process of evolution, if equality does .not
mean that, then that equality is false and spurious, a snare and
a delusion; and a heinous repudiation in fact of all that it pro
fesses to be in name. And it is today just such a travesty and
mockery of eqiuality that hangs like a blight and a pall all over
the rural South. In the name of justice for the negro the most
hideous injustice is done to the white man. In the name of equal
ity for the lower order of civilization the most ruinous inequality
is forced upon the higher order. In the name of benevolence
for a backward race an economic and social situation of un-
imagined malevolence forces the advanced race away from the

42 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
lands our own ancestors rescued from the wilderness a
savage. ^^ ,
Are the negroes gaining on the white farmers in the ,
today, are they capturing the rural South and Africanizing ,
fairest portion of America, because they are superior o
farmers in intelligence? No. Because they are superior m in
dustry? No. Because they are superior in character.
They are gaining for none of these reasons. They are gaming
simply because present conditions give the negro two un
advantages in competition with the white man.
First, an unfair economic advantage in that the negroes are
able to buy land and make crops on a scale of living, clothing
and housing that the respectable white farmer and his family
doing the same character of work cannot meet.
Second, a sofial advantage in that when negroes move into a
white neighborhood, or begin to outnumber the whites in a
neighborhood, or become of bad character, the whites may be
forced to move away because there is no longer an adequate
white social life, or for the peace and security of the white farm
er's wife and daughters.
I know how it was and yet is in my old home neighborhood.
My own father in his old age was forced to leave his lifelong
home and the home of his father before him, simply because the
crowding in of Negroes around us made the place unsatisfactory
for reasons both of family protection and of neighborly social
life. An excellent white man and his wife who were my tenants
on the same place three years ago left for the same reason. A
cousin who has built on the same farm fears that the same forces
will cause him to move. If I had to sell the place it would not
bring half what it would bring if it were in a thrifty white neigh
borhood. And only recently I had a letter from one of the dear
est old ladies I have ever known, a woman who, left a widow on
a small farm, moved to a town in another state. She wrote :
"Many a man has died and left his wife and children in very
good circumstances with a little farm and stock where she
and her children could have stayed and worked and been
happy. But for fear of the Negro she would have to pull
up and leave it all and go to the factory with a sad heart
and put her darling children to work from daybreak tUl

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 43
dark. The Negro is free and the white child has often be
come the slave through fear of the Negro. I myself would
never have left my home but for this fear."
These are typical cases. Moreover, where there is no actual
physical fear of the Negroes, their presence may nevertheless
drive white people away from a neighborhood simply because
these 'Negroes occupy farms that white people would otherwise
occupy, and for this reason there is no social life for the white
people who remain, and schools, churches, and all the agencies
that make life attractive dwindle and starve.
Not only this, but the Negro has an unfair advantage for tak
ing the rural South to himself in that white farmers not only
will not move into an all-negro neighborhood, while negroes do
not hesitate to move into any white community, but furthermore
it is an almost invariable rule that when he buys out a white man,
it lowers land values, injures social conditions and makes it
easier for negroes to get more land, whereas when a white man
buys land in a community, the mle is that it increases land values
and makes it harder for him to get more.
If I know my own heart I believe in being just to the negro.
I believe with all my soul that "in the long years of God the
strong cannot oppress the weak without destruction." With all
possible yearning for truth I have joined the hosts of other
earnest Southerners who in prayer for light have flung them
selves : "Upon the great world's altar stairs
That slope through darkness up to God."
And I repeat that as God knows my heart I believe in being
just to the Negro, but I also believe — and here is the thought
that I fear has never occured to thousands and thousands of
earnest, sincere, well-meaning students of the problem — I also
believe in being just to the laboring white man whose ancestors
through centuries of toU and aspiration and discipline have
wrought out the civilization which we enjoy — the civilization to
which the negro, moreover, owes the very peace, safety and
prosperity he enjoys.
And I tell you tonight, my friends, with all the earnestness of
my soul, that present conditions in the South are not just to the

44

PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS

laboring white man— that the white farmer hasn't an equal chance
with the negro in the struggle for future control of the rural
South. I tell you that while I know that here and there individ
ual negroes are treated with injustice — hideous injustice yet
considered as a race the really disadvantaged and handicapped
man in the South today is not the negro — not the negro who but
yesterday in African barbarism, is now becoming heir to the most
advanced civilization in the most favored portion of the whole
earth ; not the negro who as a matter of fact, is the best-off, the
most advantageously situated, non-white man in the whole world
today; and better-off even, according to Booker Washington's
own statement, than the less favored laboring men of our own
race in Europe.
Consider the Chinese, infinitely the negro's superior, with a
civilization, a literature, a religion, a government, science, inven
tions, and a social order, that are yet the admiration of all
thoughtful people ; consider the Hindus, equalling the Chinese in
many respects and excelling them in philosophy and literary
genius — and yet when I was on the other side of the world I
found the Chinese and Hindus working for ten cents a day,
whereas the American negro, whose race has made no important
contribution to civilization, has made no great achievement in
science, govemment or religion, makes ten times ten cents a day
solely by reason of contact with the white man's own opulent
civilization. And furthermore by reason not of his superiority but
by reason of his very inferiority, in the matter of lower living
standards, this American negro is now able to outdo the white
man in getting possession of the land, the fundamental source of
all wealth.
My point then is that the really handicapped and disadvantaged
man in the fierce industrial struggle in the South today is not
the negro but the white farmer or laborer who must compete
with a race with lower living standards, and whose white social
life throughout the rural South is im,poverished if not imperiled
by the almost universal sand'wiching of white and negro fartners.
Are not these really the ones for whom the concem of our states
men and builders of tomorrow, our lovers of justice, should go
out — these humbler white brethem out on the farms and in the

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 45
shops and factories who are fighting the hard batdes of our
race and of a sorely pressed civilization, yet who are too often
dismissed as being only "poor white trash," while beaetFolenr
people overflow with sympathy for the supposedly downtrodden
negro ?
Less than a year ago il heard Rev. Dr. Graham Taylor, in
a sermon at the National Conference of Charities and Correc
tions declare that the striking miners in Colorado in attempting
to maintain their higher living standards, a higher ideal of civ
ilization for themselves, their wives, and little ones, were bat
tling for a cause as holy as martyrs had died for in other ages.
What then, I ask, about the living standards of the Southern
white farmer? Is it not just as high and holy a duty to protect
the white man's civilization, social heritage and living standards
that our ancestors have wrought out through patient generations,
as it is to protect the negro in the rights to which his individual
and racial achievement entitle him?
But here the question arises. What can we do about it ? What
can be done and what is in prospect to be done to remedy the in
equality and injustice that now handicap the white man in the
rural South in his efforts to perpetuate and develop a richer
rural civilization?
My own answer is that I believe the immediate need is for
the steady development of homogenous white communities in
the South instead of the present indiscriminate sandwiching of
white and negro farms; and that we should begin with race
segregation in land-ownership as the first step in this direction.
And while I have argued for this as a matter of justice to the
white man, I believe it will be best for both races. For after
all has been said about economic conditions, the fact remains
that the most crying need of both races in the rural South today
is for a richer social and community life — for better supported,
more forceful and satisfying schools, churches, farmers' and farm
women's clubs, corn clubs, canning clubs, libraries, lyceums,
musicals, athletic sports, picnics, rallies, and all other agencies
of rural comradeship — and in none of these agencies of a richer
social life can the two races mingle. It is inevitable, therefore,
in our sparsely settled South that in two school districts each

46 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
with fifty negro families and fifty white families neither schools
nor churches nor social life can be half as good as for either
race as if the hundred families of each race were grouped to
gether. In other words, ignoring entirely the matter of a feeling of
security and safety for the wives and children of our white
farmers, we have to face the fact that in every Southern neigh
borhood so long as we maintain our fundamental policy of social
separation, the white schools will be the poorer, the churches will
be poorer, the social life and community life will be poorer, just
in proportion as negro residents displace white residents. And
because it is not practicable to carry race segregation to the point
of excluding negro tenants from white communities is no rea
son why we should not go as far as present circumstances will
permit, and at least allow white communities to limit future land
sales to white people.
In North Carolina such a plan for race segregation in land
ownership is now definitely before the people and it is fast be
coming an issue in other States. After being twice overwhelm
ingly endorsed by the State Farmers' Union, the measure came
before the Senate of North Carolina at its recent session, in the
form of a Constitutional Amendment to be submitted to the peo
ple, and at this its very first appearance lacked but two votes of
receiving a majority of the votes cast. In fact, it received a clear
majority of all the Democratic Senators voting, received the only
Republican vote from that half of the State containing the prin
cipal part of the negro population, while from all that half of
the State east of Greensboro where the people really know con
ditions, only four votes were cast against it. This Constitutional
Amendment is intended simply to give effect to the demand of
the organized white farmers of the State for a law providing :
"That wherever the greater part of the land acreage in any
given district that may be laid off within a county is owned
by one race, a majority of the voters of such a district should
have the right to say, if they wish, that in future no land
shall be sold to a person of a different race — provided such
action is approved or allowed (as being justified by con
siderations of the peace, protection and social life of the
community) by a reviewing judge or board of county com
missioners."

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 47
The plan as you will see, is not for compulsory negro segrega
tion by large districts but for voluntary white segregation by
neighborhoods. And now let us see how such a plan will help.
I have said that at present the white farmer suffers from two
forms of unfair competition: (1) social, (2) economic. That
the plan for land segregation between the races will prevent the
crowding in of negro landowners into white communities and
thus improve social conditions is obvious. But I wish especially
to emphasize this further fact, that it will also safeguard our
white farmers against the negro's unfair economic competition —
a problem the whole South should think more seriously about.
Of the nearly one-fifth of a million increase in number of ten
ant white farmers in the South in the last census decade — farm
ers of Southern white blood who are landless and homeless to
day, and who with their wives and families represent an increase in
the South's white tenant population of nearly a full million in
ten years — it is impossible to say how many are landless be
cause of having to face competition with a race with lower liv
ing standards. And yet the obvious explanation Dr. Charles W.
Stiles gave in New York sometime ago, "These people have been
living for generations in competition with negro labor; that very
competition has made them poorer," seems almost to have been
suppressed in the South. Only recently the New York Outlook,
in referring to the increase in cotton mill population in South
Carolina, said that the poor white farmers "have been forced
from the fields by Negro competition and have flocked to the
mill towns."
Now through land segregation we should be able to encourage
in homogeneous white communities those cooperative organiza
tions of farmers for improved farm business that have revolu
tionized the agriculture of Denmark for example, "making it
a little land full of happy people," and of Ireland and other
European countries, and this is work in which it is almost impos
sible for whites and blacks to work together effectively. That is
how our white farmers will be enabled to "defend their higher
living standards," to use Professor Branson's term. In those
all-white communities with the tonic atmosphere of equality,
democracy, brotherhood, comradeship, and a higher intellectual

48 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
life, we should develop a more highly organized, diversified and
profitable agriculture such as already characterizes our all-white
Western States, Germany, France, Denmark, etc. The white
farmers, in short — ^more intimately bound together and more
effectively working together — through more scientific farming
and better organized farm business, through cooperative owner
ship of improved machinery, cooperative breeding of better live
stock, cooperation in crop production, crop marketing, and in all
forms of farm activity, will get out of competition with low-
grade negro labor, so that their higher living standards will no
longer be "undefended" against negro competition. They will be
defended through the cooperation and cumulative application of
the white man's higher skill and intelligence.
Moreover, a highly important point is this — that we can never
hope to settle and develop the South, we can never hope to get
the best class of Northern and Western farmers to come South,
if they must settle in mixed neighborhoods. But they would
come and come quickly to homogeneous all-white communities.
I have letters from all sections of the North bearing on this
point, and I have the testimony of some of the foremost railway
authorities in the country. Race segregation in land ownership
is indeed the first step toward securing for the South that denser
population without which she is forever handicapped.
And now with this brief statement of its purposes, let us con
sider some of the questions that may be asked about the plan,
for I am always anxious to consider any inquiries.
Question: "Is it constitutional — that is to say in harmony
with the Constitution of the United States ?"
Answer: Upon this point a remarkably able affirmative opin
ion has been prepared by Honorable James S. Manning, formerly
a Judge of the North Carolina State Supreme Court, and I shall
be glad to send a copy to anyone interested.
Question: "Has the plan been tried anywhere?"
Answer: Nowhere else in the world are negroes and whites
in great numbers living together side by side as here in the South,
except in South Africa. For years and years our brother Eng
lish people there — white farmers who went from England there
just as our ancestors came from England here — struggled with

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 49
just such conditions as we now face in the South. On a trip
abroad three years ago the writer discussed the subject with one
of the most eminent white statesmen of South Africa and he
declared that they saw but one remedy, land segregation. Ac
cordingly, on June 19th, last year, the law went into effect — a law
which prohibits any negro in the Union of South Africa from
buying or leasing land in the districts set apart for white owner
ship. Question: "But if you permit negro tenants in a community
are they not just as great a drawback to the white community
and social life as negro landowners ?"
Answer: The negro tenants are not permanent and immov
able residents, and they are responsible to some person of the
white race who can in a measure control them. Moreover, it is
believed that where a white neighborhood votes to limit future
land sales to whites, it will be easier to get good white tenants
into such community, easier to get a sentiment favoring white
tenants, and easier also to get settlers from other sections as
I have just indicated, and thus gradually develop a wholly white
community. Because we cannot get ideal conditions is no rea
son for not making as much progress as it is possible to make.
Question: "But is it not the thrifty, honest and unobjection
able negroes who buy land? Do these negro land-owners really
injure the rural community?"
Answer: It is true that the negroes who become land-owners
are usually the better class of negroes. But even if only good
negroes bought land, bad negroes may inherit it, and it is in
fact, a matter of common observation that the children of these
original negro land-owners are frequently the most objection
able, immoral and insolent to be found. Consider my own case.
Two old negroes years ago bought farms adjoining mine. They
were good, honest, law-abiding old negroes and I have never
heard a word against them. But the son of one of them, after
long being a menace to the neighborhood, is just completing his
third term in the penitentiary; while as for the descendants of
the other, one negro was killed in their house in a drunken brawl
and the community life has been demoralized by them in other
ways. Moreover, if all negroes who bought land were good

50 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
negroes and their descendants could be guaranteed to be good
negroes, they do not support the fundamental social institutions
of our race.
Question: "But is it not true that white people leave the
farms, not because of the negro, but because of unattractive con
ditions — ^because they want a better social life, better schools,
and churches, less isolation ?"
Answer: Here again we have in large measure a secondary
form of our primary problem. Why are the schools, churches,
social life, etc., as poor as they are in the average Southem
neighborhood? Because of the negro. Because the schools,
churches, social life, etc., merely exist at a half-dying rate with
the support of only half the population instead of flourishing with
the united support of all the population as is the case in wholly
white communities. It is not supposed, of course, that land seg
regation between the races would stop the drift to the cities, but
it is believed that it would so help check it and so attract the
best class of white farming people from the North and West as
to serve our one great need which is to make the South increas
ingly whiter instead of increasingly blacker.
Question: "But why can't the matter be settled by public
opinion? That is to say, why can't the people of a community,
when it seems wise, decide by private agreement not to sell more
land to negroes?"
Answer: For the reason that if all resident land-owners
should agree to this policy, in a very great proportion of our
farm neighborhoods, the land is largely owned by absentee land
lords who do not care how much they may offend public opin
ion in the community, nor how much the white residents may be
discommoded, provided only they secure such prices as they wish
for their land.
Question: "Suppose such a constitutional amendment as the
North Carolina Legislature considered were passed, let us see
just how the principle would be applied. In other words, what
would be its practical legal operations?"
Answer: Well, the plan is just this. Take the old neighbor
hood in which I was reared. Suppose we wished to take ad
vantage of this segregation act. We could lay off our district

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 51
and have a properly signed petition presented to the judge or the
board of county commissioners certifying that two-thirds or
three-fourths of the land in the district, as the case might be,
was owned by our race and that for the promotion of the peace,
protection and social life, we desired to vote on the question of
limiting future land sales to persons of the same race. If the
petition was in proper legal form and the other legal conditions
were complied with, the question would be decided at the fol
lowing biennial election. My idea would be to have it decided
simply as a feature of the regular election and not have the added
excitement of a special campaign or special election. If this
proposition carried, then after a certain definite date no more
land in such a district could be sold to a person of a different
race. Question: "But isn't the natural result of this legislation to
make the negroes in large measure serfs and deprive them of
their natural rights?"
Answer: No such spirit has been manifested on the part of
the promoters of the movement. Their purpose is to protect
our white civilization, not to oppress the negro. After such white
neighborhoods as wish to do so adopt the land segregation prin
ciple, there will be abundant opportunity for negroes to buy land,
and with the mobility of population at this time, there need be
no fear upon this point. In fact, the proposal in North Carolina
is that no race shall segregate to itself a greater proportion of
the lands of the State than its proportion of the State's popula
tion — a plan which abundantly protects the negro's rights.
Question: "Will there not be danger then, on the other hand,
that the white man's rights will be imperiled by negroes segregat
ing communities to negro ownership?"
Answer: In the practical operation of the law it will be very
rare that negroes will be able to segregate communities except
where they own virtually all the land. The matter must come
up upon petition from voters or freeholders, and in case the
negroes should plan a gerrymandered district in such a way as
to injure the rights of the whites, it will be easy for the white
people to propose a larger district they could control. It would
probably be provided, however, that no school district or town-

52

PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS

ship in which two-thirds of the land was owned by one race
should be included in any larger district segregated to a different
race. Question: "But will not this proposition stir up race feeling?"
Answer: Present' conditions which enable negroes to move
into white communities and practically force white residents out,
are creating the bitterest form of race feeling the South has
ever known and unless some legal and reasonable plan of pro
tection for white communities is offered, we shall have race
trouble in far worse form than if the matter can be adjusted in
some legal fashion, setting apart communities in which the
negroes v/ill know they cannot buy land but leaving others open
to them.
And now let me Say in conclusion that it is all true enough, of
course, that allowing white communities to limit future land
sales to white people will only partially solve the South's rural
race problem, but it is at least a step in the right direction, the
logical next step for our Southern people, and nearly all progress
is made by steps. The plan will at least enable people in white
communities to stand up and say, "We do not wish any more
negroes as permanent and immovable residents here," and so
stop absentee landlords (they are mainly responsible) from ig
noring the public sentiment of the community. And having taken
this first step it will be easier to build up a race pride in that dis
trict, easier to encourage white tenants to take the place of
negro tenants, easier to get thrifty and enterprising farmers
from other sections, and thus gradually develop a thoroughly
prosperous and progressive neighborhood of comrade white
farmers with all the inspiring advantages such a community af
fords. IV.
Such then my, friends, are the advantages of the plan for land
segregation between the races in the South, and while nobody
supposes that a plan with positive advantages will not have some
disadvantages, the net advantages in favor of the plan are such
that the proposition I shall now submit can hardly be gainsaid.
That proposition is this, that if the South had adopted this
policy after the war, if it had been the custom all these years to

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 53
reserve certain communities exclusively for white ownership,
keeping the land in white hands for the better support of the
white social life, schools, churches, etc., making these neighbor
hoods virtual "cities of refuge" in which those who wished to
escape mixed communities might build worthy homes for them
selves and their descendants with the assurance that they would
never be surrounded by negro land-owners — if this, I say, had
been our policy all these years, can you imagine the revolution
that would now be raised if it were proposed to repeal this happy
exemption and throw these sections open to a mongrel popula
tion? And yet if it would have been a good policy to adopt fifty
years ago, why is it not a good policy to adopt now?
Something must be done to save the rural South to the white
race and here the appeal of the men of our race is not for in
justice but for justice. They demand a genuine "equality" — the
equal right of an advanced civilization to perpetuate itself by
righteous regulations in competition with a lower civilization.
They demand that you townsmen, who yourselves live in com
fortable segregated white quarters in our cities, shall put your
selves by your s)mipathies in the place of the white farmer who
may at any time have an absentee landlord put some vicious
negro next to his isolated home and wife and children, miles and
miles from police protection. They demand that you men in the
professions and in commerce^ — as fully exempt from fierce eco
nomic conflict with a race with lower living standards as if you
lived in another land — they demand that you shall consider the
conditions of your less fortunate brethren who must sell every
load of tobacco, every bale of cotton, every bushel of apples,
every pound of meat, in competition with some negro farmer or
tenant. If a more practical program of betterment than Land Segre
gation Between the Races can be evolved, I shall rejoice; but in
the face of the crises that confronts the South I submit that
patriotic men should support a proposed remedy or propose a
better one. As for the question whether segregation shall come
through legal or voluntary means, it does not concern me— if
only the practicability of non-legal methods can be demonstrated.
I am not concerned about methods ; I care only for results— re-

^"^ PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS >
suits as they affect not only our rural population, my friends,
but the whole future destiny of the South and of America. With
the rural South getting whiter, as a result of giving rural, white
civilization an equal chance for growth and development, no
limit can be set to the South's development. With the rural
South getting blacker, as a result of present unjust conditions,
there is a complete denial of all the great future that otherwise
seems open before us.
Ominous, relentless, inescapable, the problem faces us like
another grim and terrible Sphinx, "propounding her riddle to the
passers-by, which if they could not answer, she destroyed them" ;
there being indeed a sinister coincidence in the fact that the
Greeks themselves in telling their own story of the half-beast,
half-goddess, and her fatal riddle, were wont to say that the
anger of the gods had brought her to them "from the farthest
parts of Ethiopia."
Unless we be men of a little breed we must face the issue,
and face it, my friends, with a sense of the magnitude of the in
terests involved, a realization that the destinies of a more than
imperial land are placed in our keeping. In the eleven strictly
Southern States from Virginia to Texas inclusive, to say nothing
of the new empire of Oklahoma, we have an area greater than
the combined areas of Greece, Italy, Switzerland, France, Ger
many, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, England, Scotland, and Ire
land, and in the providence of God we may well achieve a civili
zation as varied and historic as theirs. It is in our power to be
the builders of empires yet to be, to be among those who "raise
up the foundations of many generations" ; while on the other
hand, by a fatal indifference and inertia we may prove ourselves
traitors alike to the history and the future of our race.
William Archer, the eminent English student of our race prob
lems puts the matter conservatively when he says of our South
ern States that "they are fitted by their climate and resources to
be not only a white man's land, but one of the greatest white
men's lands in all the worid." And with proper adjustment of
our race problem, which he believes calls for an even more
drastic race segregation than I have advocated— he declares that
the South would "awaken as if from a nightmare to a realiza-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 55
tion of its splendid destiny," and "a region perhaps the most
favored by Nature in all the Western Hemisphere would stand
where it ought to stand — in the van not only of civilization but
of humanity."
With you and all other men who love their race and section,
I leave this problem as a burden upon your hearts and conscien
ces. No other condition in all our Southern country demands
more emphatically of our statesmanship and of our citizenship a
new and positive and constructive policy.

The New Reconstruction.

BY WM. 0. SCROGGS.

It is both an honour and a privilege to address the students
of this University upon a subject of such concern as that of
our race relations in the South. There is a growing conviction
among our thoughtful citizens that while an immediate solution
of the problem is not forthcoming, a more satisfactory racial
adjustment is both necessary and practicable, and we may now
observe many efforts under way to effect a reconstruction in the
relationships of our white and coloured citizens. The ultimate
success of this work of reconstruction will depend in no small
degree upon the attitude which those who are now students in
our colleges will assume toward the movement. If they are
receiving such an education as will enable them to approach
their civic duties and responsibilities with what we usually call
the social point of view, if they are being imbued with the spirit
of social service, we need fear no reactionary outcome. To ad
dress an audience, therefore, which is soon to constitute a very
influential element of our younger citizenship, upon a topic of
such vital importance to our people, is a task not to be lightly
undertaken; but, as the minister says when he pronounces the
marriage service, it should be entered upon "reverently, dis
creetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God."
One of the most important functions of our Southem colleges
should be the development among their students of a rational
viewpoint on all matters pertaining to interracial relations. In
vestigation has convinced many of us that while our people
as a whole feel very intensely concerning this problem they
know very little. Much of the discussion that we hear is merely
an airing of the emotions. Very few of our people have any
knowledge of the actual civic, economic, educational, hygienic,
or moral conditions among the negroes even of their own com
munities, and with so little information at hand they can form

56

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH ' 57
no real judgment concerning the public policy that every intelli
gent citizen should advocate.
Even among those who have devoted some study to the prob
lem there seems at first sight to be utter confusion of thought.
We find one student aglow with optimism; another filled with
boding pessimism. One tries to show us that negro schools are
steadily improving, that illiteracy is rapidly decreasing, that mob
violence is less frequent, that race friction is diminishing, that
the negro is increasing in numbers and in wealth, and that there
is more sympathy and cooperation between the leaders of the
two races than ever before. Another at the same time tells us
that the gap between the races is widening, that the younger
generation of whites has none of the sympathy for the negro
that was found among the former slaveholders, that the black
man is not holding his own in economic competition with the
white, that his body is a prey to devastating diseases, and that
relatively to the whites he is numerically declining. We even
find contradictions made by the same individual. It is no un
common thing, for example, to hear some one declare in one
breath that the mulatto is the weakest and most vicious ele
ment among our coloured population, and in the next breath
to declare with equal conviction that the only negroes who
ever accomplish anything are those who have white blood in
their veins. We may expect such contradictions so long as
we persist in our inclination to loaf and generalize. The whole
subject has been too much beclouded by individual preposses
sions, and by conjecture and controversy.
Happily, we are coming more and more to realize this con
dition, and there is now apparent among our people a growing
desire for such accurate knowledge as will aid in effecting a
more satisfactory racial adjustment. The belief that once
prevailed to the effect that the race problem would eventually
solve itself if only agitation and discussion were not allowed
to disturb the process of this adjustment is now" quite gen
erally discountenanced; for experience has amply demonstrated
that agitation and discussion, like Banquo's ghost, will not down.
For years the enlightened cittizenship of the South has sat
in dignified and respectable silence, while the demagogue quak-

58 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
ing with the assumed fear of "negro domination," and shout
ing in stentorian tones for "Anglo-Saxon supremacy," has sum
moned to the hustings and the polls the hosts of unlettered
and unsocialized voters, who thereupon have elevated this agi
tator to a place among the seats of the mighty. Perceiving the
wonderful possibilities which the race issue; possesses in the
way of vote getting, politicians have even gone to the extent
of advocating mob violence, if this seemed an effective means
of riding into power.
While such men have woefully misrepresented the South,
they have reached a vastly greater audience than have those
who entertain a more enlightened opinion. Moreover, while the
designing office-seeker has raged and imagined vain things, our
real leaders, by their silence, have perhaps created the impres
sion that they too acquiesce in such views. Who can blame
the man of the street if he is densely ignorant of the best
Southern thought on the negro problem?
The time has arrived, however, when the thinking as well
as the feeling South is beginning to make itself heard. The
social conscience of our people found utterance in 1912 through
the medium of the Southern Sociological Congress, which de
clared itself in favour of dealing with the race problem "in a
spirit of helpfulness to the negro and of equal justice to both
races." Even more auspicious is the interest of our Southern
college students, which has manifested itself sometimes spon
taneously by the formation of voluntary classes for the study
of the negro problem. It is a fact of enormous import that
fifteen thousand white college students in the past four years
have read such a sane and suggestive little book as Dr. Weather-
ford's Negro Life in the South. And this is by no means all
that is being done in our institutions of learning, as the Civic
Club of this University has so well demonstrated. In the con
ferences on race problems at the meetings of the Southern So
ciological Congress college professors have taken a prominent
part. The Southern University Commission, consisting of one
faculty representative from each of our Southern State uni
versities, is devoting its efforts to the encouragement of the
study of the race problem in our colleges and to the collection

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 59
and dissemination of such information as will aid in the de
velopment of sounder views with regard to relations between
the races.
It is evident, then, that a reconstruction of race relations is
actually under way, and that for some time it has been proceed
ing almost imperceptibly and yet steadily and irresistibly. This
movement I choose to designate as the New Reconstruction.
It is a movement for better education for both whites and blacks,
for higher moral ideals and a socialized religion, for increasing
cooperation between the best elements of both races, and for
greater publicity for those whose views are based on reason
rather than on prejudice and tradition. From this it will ap
pear that the New Reconstruction in no respect resembles the
so-called reconstruction of a past generation. The new move
ment realizes the value of racial solidarity and seeks to dis
cover and work with the well-established currents of thought
that underlie the life of our people. This were far better and
far nobler than those fruitless efforts of the past to create an
ideal democracy of non-homogeneous peoples by the mere fiat
of the government. Unnatural and distasteful social and po
litical arrangements, imposed upon any people, become a source
of grave peril. The little province of Bosnia, torn from its
natural associations became last summer the scene of a deed
that has destroyed the peace of Europe. If England cannot
assimilate Ireland, nor Germany Poland and Alsace-Lorraine,
it is useless to look forward to the immediate and complete social
equilibration of the whites and blacks in the United States.
An immediate solution of the problem is not forthcoming. In
any society there will always be a political problem so long as
some men are conservative and some are radical, and there will
always be a race problem so long as some men are white and
some black. We might as well accept the dictum that the negro
will never become an integral member of our social body so
long as he remains a negro. The colour line is drawn every
where — though with varying degrees of rigidity — and it will
always prevent his complete participation in the life of the
white community. Moreover, the more closely the two races
are drawn together in large numbers on a plane of theoretical

60 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
equality, the more tightly will the colour line be drawn. For
this reason the social barriers between Southern whites and
blacks are much greater today than was the case under the
slavery regime.
The New Reconstruction will come not by way of govern
mental fiat, but by the gradual process of evolution. All efforts
in the past to hasten the social integration of the negro by
means of legislation have resulted in failure. The thirteenth
amendment secured for every black man the status of a free
man but not that of a citizen. The dictum of the United States
Supreme Court, enunciated in 1857 in the Dred Scott case, had
been to the effect that slaves were not citizens and could not be
come citizens, even when emancipated or descended from free ne
groes. To secure for the freedman the full rights of citizen
ship, the Federal Congress in 1866 passed the first so-called
Civil Rights Bill over the veto of President Johnson, and two
years later the gist of this law was incorporated into the Fed
eral Constitution as the fourteenth junendment. Following the
ratification of this amendment. Congress in 1875 passed a sec
ond Civil Rights Act, which prescribed full and equal accom
modations for all citizens, regardless of colour, in hotels, public
conveyances, and places of amusement, and imposed heavy pen
alties for violations of the act.
This measure marked the culmination of Federal legislation
in behalf of the civil rights of the black man. And now, four
decades thereafter, we may well inquire what benefits this law
and the constitutional amendment upon which it was founded
have secured for the negro race. The fourteenth amendment,
instead of being employed, as its authors intended, for the pro
tection of the coloured man, has been invoked by corporate
wealth for its protection against hostile State legislation. Ac
cording to Mr. Charles W. Collins, by 1912 604 cases involving
the interpretation of this amendment had been passed upon by
the Supreme Court, and of these only twenty-eight bore any
relation to the status of the negro, and only six of these were
decided in his favour. The court early declared that in case
the rights of a citizen were curtailed by the private act of an
individual, the citizen should look to his State and not to the

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 61
Federal government for his protection, inasmuch as the amend
ment was designed only to prevent a State from abridging the
privileges and immunities appertaining to Federal citizenship.
Reasoning along similar lines, the Court in 1883 declared the
Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional, and thus vir
tually served notice upon the negro that he was no longer the
ward of the nation, but that now he was to take the rank of "a
mere citizen," whose rights were "to be protected in the ordinary
modes by which other men's rights are protected." This de
cision marks the close of the regime of special protection for
the negro and the beginning of what we may call the period of
natural selection.
The efforts to bestow the ballot upon the negro by govern
mental fiat have likewise met with failure. In 1865 persons of
colour had full political rights in only five States. In the next
four years State constitutional amendments conferring the suf
frage upon the negro were submitted to the voters in nine
Northern States and were rejected in seven of them. The fif
teenth amendment, proclaimed in effect on March 30, 1870,
would never have been ratified without the assent of the former
Confederate States, and without the rule of the bayonet in the
South this assent would never have been secured. The negro
enjoyed the full use of the ballot only so long as Federal troops
had control of Southern elections. Following their withdrawal,
the black man was debarred from the polls sometimes by force
and sometimes by fraud, until the whites wearied with such
extra-legal and illegal devices, undertook his disfranchisement
by legal methods. It is worth recording that the States in
which the negroes outnumbered the whites took the lead in this
movement, — Mississippi in 1890, South Carolina in 1895, Louis
iana in 1898. Then Alabama followed in 1901, North Carolina
and Virginia in 1902, and Georgia in 1908. To achieve the dis
franchisement of the negro, these States have taken cognizance
of certain characteristics of the coloured race which may be used
to bar him from the polls without expressly excluding him on
the ground of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude.
Legal restrictions based on the ability to read and write, owner
ship of property, payment of poll tax, long periods of residence.

62 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
good character, good understanding of the constitution, military
service, and voting ancestors have fully achieved the purposes
of those who drafted the amendments: they have deprived the
black man of the ballot and at the same time have given every
white man the opportunity to vote.
Appeals to the Federal courts against these provisions have
been unavailing. Even before the disfranchisement had begun,
the Supreme Court declared that the suffrage was not conferred
upon any one by the fifteenth amendment, but that its purpose
was to prohibit a State or the United States from withholding
the ballot on account of race, colour, or previous condition of
servitude. In 1903, when the suffrage clauses of the Alabama
constitution were attacked, the Court declared that it was be
yond its task to remedy an alleged political injury, and that re
lief must come, not from the judicial but from the political de
partment of the government. This decision did not determine
the validity of disfranchisement, but it rendered such measures
at least temporarily immune from attack through the courts,
and indicated that if relief were sought it must be obtained by
Congressional action.
The judicial interpretations of the Federal amendments and
the adoption of the new State constitutions have resulted in the
complete undoing of the old Reconstruction, and have paved
the way for the racial adjustment which we may call the New
Reconstruction. The new movement must profit by the errors
of the past and not rely upon political remedies. In this respect
we already find ground for encouragement. It is a significant
fact that in the last presidential election, for the first time since
the Civil War, the platforms of none of the great political
parties contained any reference to the problem of the negro.
This omission is not to be lamented, but rather should it be an
occasion for rejoicing that politicians in the North have ceased
to find it profitable at regular four-year intervals to bewail the
plight of the black man. Let us hope that politicians of the
South will soon find it to their interest to follow the example
of their brethren in the North and give the poor negro a rest.
The foundation of the new work lies in sympathy and coopera
tion between the races, but so long as the office-seeker uses the

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH ' 63
black man as a bogey we may expect only mutual distrust and
misunderstanding. Although the New Reconstruction contemplates a racial read
justment, it does not seek to alter that basic fact in the rela
tions of whites and blacks which we call social segregation.
While this segregation may sometimes result in practices that
do not square with our theories of democracy, and may even
cause the whites at times to appear illogical and inconsistent, it
is nevertheless the means by which the race responsible for the
nation's past, present and future achievement has maintained
its integrity. Racial separation has its basis in the group in
stinct of "consciousness of kind," and is not to be lightly dis
missed as "senseless prejudice" and "unreasoning antipathy."
While under the New Reconstruction all necessary measures
to safeguard the integrity of both races should be favoured, ef
forts should be also made to eliminate those features of the ne
gro's civic status which seem antagonistic to the spirit of a just
government. Dr. Booker T. Washington recently said : "Nowhere
are there ten millions of black people who have greater oppor
tunities or are making greater progess than the negroes in Amer
ica." Since nine-tenths of these black people live in the South,
the Southern negro must be relatively much better off than his
cousins on the Dark Continent. But this has only a remote
bearing upon our own problem. The question for our consid
eration is not whether our coloured people are in better condi
tion than the native Africans, but whether they are properly
treated as native Americans. In most particulars this question
may be answered affirmatively. In his Southern home the negro
has been accorded a large measure of civil rights; he enjoys
protection of life, limb, and property; he has in the South,
perhaps, a greater degree of industrial freedom than elsewhere
in this country; and he can secure at least an elementary edu
cation for the asking. Nevertheless there are other phases of
the negro's condition which cause even the most optimistic lead
ers of the coloured race at times to show signs of discourage
ment. Sensible negroes do not protest against race distinctions,
but they do sometimes protest when such distinctions lead to
unfair discriminations. Some time ago a coloured man wrote

64

PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS

to a leading Southern newspaper as follows: "Whatever may
be the opinion of others concerning the drawing of the colour
line in the South, the thoughtful negro has accepted it as a
fixed principle, realizing that the race has absolutely nothing
to fear or lose by social separation. Social intermingling has
always meant social degradation to the less advanced element.
* * * 'pjjg negro does not desire social intermingling. All
he wants is a square deal before the law." Is separation
compatible with the square deal? It must be part of the pro
gramme of the New Reconstruction to make it so.
A number of instances may be cited in which race distinctions
have resulted in something less than the square deal. The ne
gro is the victim of unfair discrimination by our common car
riers. For his inferior accommodations he pays the same fare
as the white man, and this mistreatment is inexcusable. Sep
arate coaches are a necessity, but separation should not be al
lowed to produce injustice. Separate schools are also a neces
sity, but there are indications that in the division of the school
fund the negro does not get a square deal. In some of our
Southern cities he is taxed for the maintenance of parks, libra
ries, and museums for the exclusive use of the whites, while
the members of his own race are not provided with any similar
facilities. Our courts, and especially our inferior courts, some
times show a tendency to mete out to the black man the extreme
penalty of the law, while in the white man's case they temper
justice with mercy. Again — and this is the most serious of all —
the negro is too frequently the victim of mob violence, though,
happily, such statistics as we have show that lynching is on the
wane. The correction of such untoward conditions should be
part of the work of our New Reconstruction.
A new phase of the civic treatment of the negro has recently
appeared in the form of segregation by law in municipalities.
In both the North and South the urban negro population is
usually to be found in a district apart to itself. This is not an
unusual phenomenon. In all communities where diverse ele
ments of population are found, there is a noticeable tendency
toward their differentiation and segregation. Our American
cities have their Italian quarters and their China towns as well

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 65
as their coloured districts, and this racial segregation seems to
accord with the wishes of those concerned. "All flesh consort-
eth according to kind, and a man will cleave unto his like." In
most communities, however, the colour line runs nearly parallel
with the poverty line, and the conditions in the negro quarters
are frequently those of the slums. It is natural, then, that cer
tain more prosperous members of the race should seek to es
cape from the poorly built, insanitary dwellings and the filthy
and neglected streets and alleys and secure homes in a more
wholesome environment. But if they chance to move into a
white residence district they soon discover that their advent is
most unwelcome to their new neighbours. In all parts of the
country many and varied expedients have been employed to
exclude the coloured population from certain sections of our
cities. In the last few years, for example, property owners have
organized for this purpose in Kansas City, St. Louis, and North
Berkeley, California. During the year 1911 trouble resulting
from the purchase by negroes of property in white residential
sections was reported in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Kalamazoo,
Michigan, Logansport, Indiana, and Seattle, Washington. At
the same time a tendency developed on the part of a number of
Southern municipalities to enforce the separation of the races
into different residence districts by law. This movement had its
beginning in Baltimore, in 1910, with the passage of the so-
called West segregation ordinance. Judicial obstacles caused
this city to enact four segregation ordinances in three years.
The example of Baltimore was followed by the cities of Rich
mond, Norfolk, and Ashland, Virginia, Atlanta, Georgia, Green
ville and Anderson, South Carolina, and Greensboro and Win
ston-Salem, North Carolina. A general segregation statute was
enacted by the Virginia legislature in 1912, permitting munici
palities so desiring to designate certain sections within their
limits for white and other sections for coloured residents. The
city of Roanoke took advantage of the act on March 15, 1913.
The constitutionality of these various ordinances has not yet
been finally passed upon, though several have been judicially
annulled on technical grounds. With this phase of the ques
tion we need not concern ourselves. If public sentiment ap-
—5

66

PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS

proves such measures and the courts are convinced that the
policy is wise and sound, constitutions will be construed favour
ably to the ordinances. We are concerned, therefore, not so
much with a constitutional problem as with a problem of social
justice. Legal segregation has been defended on racial, social,
and economic grounds. Only the lowest class of whites, it is
claimed, will be found living in the same block with negroes,
and it is from such a commingling that miscegenation is most
likely to arise. In the second place, racial friction is greatest
between negroes and the poorer whites, and the separation of
these elements will be conducive to law and order. Again,
segregation is held to be desirable for economic reasons: when
ever negroes move into a community its real estate values tend
to depreciate. The opponents of segregation do not deny that
the presence of a negro family in a city block tends to depress
property values in that neighborhood, but they urge that the
upward progress of the race should not be made "to depend on
the price of land." It is claimed also that the segregated negro
quarters will be neglected by the municipal authorities, so far
as lighting, paving, drainage, sewerage, street cleaning and polic
ing are concerned, and that the negro will be compelled to live
in the least desirable parts of the city. This last statement is
true even in those cities which have not enacted segregation or
dinances, and it is difficult to see how legal separation can
bring about any considerable deterioration in the present status
of the coloured city dweller. It is obvious that segregation has
been developing by informal social action during a long period
of time, and any discussion of the relative merits of formal or
informal action to secure this end must be largely academic.
The real question is whether legal segregation results in a square
deal for the black man. If experience proves that it does not,
it must be part of the programme of the New Reconstruction
to correct whatever injustice results from the policy.
A measure involving an entirely different principle is the plan
for so-called rural segregation strongly advocated since 1913 by
Mr. Clarence Poe, of North Carolina. The author of this plan
summarizes it as follows : "Whenever the greater part of the
land acreage in any given district that may be laid off is owned
by one race, a majority of the voters in such a district shall

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 67
have the right to say, if they wish, that in the future no land
shall be sold to a person of a different race — provided such
action is approved or allowed (as being justified by considera
tions of peace, protection, and the social life of the community)
by a reviewing judge or board of county commissioners."
An examination of this proposed measure shows that, what
ever may have been the intention of its framer, it would in ac
tual practice secure only a partial segregation of the races in
rural communities. Negroes owning land at the time the meas-
sure went into effect would not be affected, and coloured labour
ers and tenants might still remain in the districts adopting the
plan. The plan, when analyzed, appears to be simply a scheme
to enable the voters in any district to put an end to the sale of
land to negroes. As very few negroes vote, it would be impos
sible for them to exclude whites from any community, even
though they outnumbered the whites ten to one and owned the
greater portion of the land.*
Eight reasons are advanced by its author for the adoption
of the plan: (1) Rural segregation is necessary to give white
farmers and their families a satisfying social life ; (2) it will in
sure them greater safety and protection; (3) it will secure better
schools, churches, and other agencies of community welfare for
both races; (4) it will make possible a greater degree of co-
qperation in rural communities, as racial divisions have proven
a great barrier to cooperative enterprises; (5) it will improve
the moral side of race relationships ; (6) by checking the crowd
ing out of whites by blacks and providing all-white communi
ties it will attract to the South a larger proportion of immi
grants from other sections and countries than this region now
receives; (7) segregation will make it possible for young men,
who will not at present compete with negro labour, to go into
the white districts as tenants, save and become independent
landholders; (8) it will protect certain rural districts from ab
sentee landlords, who now sell lands to negroes regardless of
the feelings of the white residents.
Everyone familiar with conditions in the rural South will

?See the article by Mr. Gilbert T. Stephenson in the South Atlantic
Quarterly, April, 1914.

68 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
admit the existence of many of the evils here complained of,
but it does not follow therefrom that the scheme of segrega
tion offers a remedy. That there is an unmistakable tendency for
the black counties to grow blacker is fully attested by the Fed
eral census. This crowding of the whites by the blacks may not
be attributed to the greater efficiency of the latter, as it has
been clearly shown that the progress of the negroes in the South
varies almost inversely with their numerical ratio to the whole
population. The negroes are most backward where they greatly
outnumber the whites, and they crowd out the whites in these
communities just as unskilled labourers with low standards of
living tend to crowd out the more highly skilled workmen in
industrial centres, and as Mongolian labourers have tended to
crowd out Caucasians in our Pacific States. The principles of
Gresham's law seem operative in the case of labour as well as
in that of money.
To admit these facts, however, is to cut the ground from
under the argument for segregation. If the whites suffer from
the presence of masses of unskilled, low-standard coloured la
bour, the obvious remedy is to take measures to increase its
skill and raise its standards. Segregation, instead of achieving
this result, will work in the opposite direction, as experience
fully proves that black districts tend to retrograde. The negroes
do best in those communities where they are outnumbered by
the whites. If segregation were in effect in any rural com
munity the most thrifty and industrious negroes, desiring to
acquire land, would be compelled to move elsewhere, leaving
behind them the shiftless and inefficient of their race; and the
last state of that community would be worse than the first.
Racial segregation is sought in our cities because it is not
deemed desirable that the two races should be constantly touch
ing elbows. In the country, however, abundant elbow room
may be obtained without the necessity of residential segrega
tion. Let us remember, too, that four-fifths of our coloured
population is rural, and that the proposed concentration of this
element, in its present stage of development, in solidly black
communities would cause our country districts to be dotted here
and there with bits of "darkest Africa" even more than is the
case today in some of our Black Belt counties; and the conse-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 69
quences would be unhappy for both races. The scheme of rural
segregation is the most mischievous measure that has been pro
posed since the days of the Old Reconstruction. For years
white and black leaders have urged the negro to stay away from
the cities, to practice thrift and acquire property; and this plan
of rural segregation, if adopted, would make it impossible for
many industrious, law abiding members of the race to follow
such sane advice. It is inconsistent with any practicable move
ment for better racial relations, and should be opposed by all
who desire the progress of the white and justice for the black.
And now after this attempt to describe the present civic status
of the negro in America and to interpret to you the ideals and
methods of the New Reconstruction, I wish in conclusion to
emphasize one very important fact. Those who would aid in
conducting the work should be blest with an infinite amount of
patience. We must expect to achieve progress only through
evolution; and in spite of the scoffings of many so-called re
formers, Herbert Spencer was right when he preached that
evolution is most satisfactory in its results when its processes
are slow. No better example of the folly of attempting to force
the process of social evolution can be given than that which is
shown by the history of the Old Reconstruction.
Much of the inspiration for the new work must come from our
educational centres. More and more our thoughtful citizens are
calling upon the universities which they support with their taxes
to aid them in solving their various problems, — problems which
are not only educational, but also industrial, social, and moral.
More and more our universities are perceiving their duties and
opportunities in this respect, and they are beginning to realize
their share of the responsibility for the manner in which the
greatest of all our problems is treated. Let us hope that this
new conception of duty will cause them to strive more than ever
before to send forth constructive leaders, — men who will dare
be radical when to be radical means to be right ; who will have the
courage to be conservative when conservatism is demanded by
conscience; and who will dare, if need be, to beard the blatant
demagogue and challenge the sovereignty of King Mob. It
must be men of this type who bring the New Reconstruction to
its consummation.

Some Public Health Aspects of Race Relationships
in the South.

BY JAMES BARDIN.

In the South there are some ten millions of Negroes, living
side by side, and in the most intimate relationship with the
white people. Physically, mentally and morally, the Negroes
are different from their companion race. They evolved in a
different part of the world, in totally different environmental
conditions. They possess a physical organism and a physiolog
ical organization suitable to tropical regions. They have be
hind them no racial experiences with the diseases common to
the whites. They possess no traditions based upon ages ot
evolution in intellect and soul. They seem to have practically
no pride of race or of family. Their minds have had only the
short space of some two hundred years in which to lose the im
press of savagery. From the point of view of racial psychology,
they possess practically not a single characteristic powerful
enough to restrain them from the vices of our civilization. To
day we find them here among us, living in the midst of a phys
ical environment different from that in which they evolved, in
the presence of a civilization which they took no part in form
ing and which, consequently, has not contributed to the strength
ening of their own racial characteristics.
The presence of the negroes in a physical, social and racial
environment so different from that in which they were evolved
has produced many consequences of racial rather than sociolog
ical import, and these consequences affect both blacks and whites,
reciprocally. In the first place, as he was not sufficiently pre
pared in the school of nature to take part in the white man's
social systems — as he was racially incapable of adjusting him
self to the radical changes incident upon his entrance into the
white man's environment — ^the Negro has to a large extent
become the victim of the civilization into which he was thrust
by an institution which was unnatural in more senses than one.
70

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 71
And the white man has in turn come to be menaced by the fact
that the Negro has been unable to withstand the evil side of
Caucasian civilization.
Experience shows us that when an inferior and a superior
race come into daily and intimate contact, either of two things
happens; the inferior race is either completely engulfed and as
similated by the superior; or a sort of biological conflict is set
up between the two races, the end of which is the destruction
of one or the other. The second of these alternatives is the
condition which has obtained very often in history: I need but
to cite the case of the native Hawaiians, and of the Indian
tribes in this country who have established close relationships
with the whites. In the south today this condition is the one
which obtains; we are in the presence of such a biological con
flict; and while the altruistic ideals of our civilization and the
humanity of the Christian religion serve to mitigate somewhat
the relentless law of the survival of the fittest, the conflict is
nevertheless a deadly one. We see expressions of it every
where, among both blacks and whites. But these expressions
are more marked in the negro, because, since he is ethnically the
inferior race, he is bearing the brunt of the battle. Some of
these manifestations are of extreme significance. As an evi
dence of their impermeability to our civilization, one needs but
to recall the ease with which the negro masses will revert to
barbaric conditions of life if left to themselves. As evidence
of their anti-social tendencies when judged by the standards of
our public morals and laws, one has but to contemplate the
only too well authenticated facts in respect of the enormous
amount of crime committed by a relatively small Negro pop
ulation. And, finally, as evidence of their lack of adaptability
to their physical environment, one has but to observe the amount
of disease and degeneracy present in the race.
I propose to confine myself to this last-named factor in the
Negro's relationship to us — ^the factor of his reaction to his
physical environment as expressed in the amount of disease
and degeneracy present in the race ; I shall also endeavor briefly
to point out some of the consequences to the white people of this
disease and degeneracy among the Negroes.

72 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
For the sake of convenience and clearness of presentation,
this problem — the Negro's relation to the health of the South —
may be divided into two parts, each of which may be consid
ered separately from the other, and each of which has its own
peculiar significance. The first of these divisions embraces
what may be called the diseases of the Negro which more im
mediately affect and menace the State. The second division will
include those diseases which affect and menace the individuals
comprising the state. Each group largely overlaps the other, of
course. In the first group I propose to include those diseases
which so affect their victims as to make them or their descend
ants pubhc charges. In the second group, I shall include those
diseases which are dangerous to the community and to individ
uals because of their infectious and contagious nature.
The diseases comprising the first group may be spoken of as
"diseases producing racial degeneracy;" that is to say, those
diseases which manifest themselves as hereditary diseases, or
which, if not actually inherited themselves, produce serious and
degenerating weakness in successive generations. The most im
portant of these diseases are, of course, as far as the state is
concerned, diseases of the mind, tuberculosis, syphilis, and alco
holism. As an index of the effect produced by these diseases upon
the social organism, we may with most profit consider the eco
nomic burden they put upon the tax-payers, and the economic
losses they occasion in many ways by incapacitating the indi
viduals suffering from them. Though these economic losses do
not by any means express either the burden or the menace of
these diseases, some idea of the amount of such losses is easily
ascertained and indicates to the student the significance of other
factors, just as the steam-gauge shows by its figured dial the
pressure of steam in the boiler.
At the present time there are in the South, according to my
estimate, some 25,000 negro insane. Upon the basis of the total
negro population, this means that there is, roughly, one insane
negro to each 400 of population. The rate for the whites in the
South is approximately the same. The two races have about
the same insanity rate upon a basis of equal population groups.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 73
In respect of feeblemindedness among the negroes, we can not
speak with any certainty at all, as there are no available sta
tistics. But from such evidence as I have been able to accum
ulate, I am almost certain that feeblemindedness is present to
a large degree among the negroes, and is rapidly on the increase.
Tuberculosis, as we all know, is extremely prevalent; the
death rate per thousand from this disease in the negroes is es
timated to be at least three or four times as great as among the
whites. The disease is, furthermore, apparently on the increase
in the cities and towns. Per thousand of population. Surgeon
Wertenbaker of the Marine Hospital Service, estimated that
Tuberculosis is four times as prevalent among the negroes as
among the whites.
As for Syphilis, there is no trustworthy information, as might
be expected. But I have arrived at some conclusion as to the
amount of this disease among the negroes by the analysis of
vital statistics and by the results of some laboratory investiga
tion recently carried out. In the first place, vital statistics show
that the number of deaths reported as due to this cause is 400
per cent, higher in the negroes than in the whites ; this figure is,
of course, very misleading — but it nevertheless has some sig
nificance. Of more consequence are the statistics of still-births
among negro women — a great number, if not the majority, of
which are due to luetic infection. Still births occur about three
times as often in negro women per thousand as among white
women. This figure throws much light upon the prevalence
among the negroes of the disease in question. Still more defi
nite, however, are the results of some laboratory investigations
made recently in one of the large hospitals for the negro insane.
After having eliminated all negroes known to have the disease,
about two hundred patients were chosen at random and their
blood was tested for the Wassermann reaction by a competent
serologist. Of the negroes thus tested, about thirty per cent.
showed infection. We may conclude, therefore, that not only
is there a great amount of the disease present in the race, but
also that it is much more prevalent than among the whites.
Alcoholism presents a more difficult problem. We can not
say precisely that it is on the increase. Perhaps we might ven-

74 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
ture the statement that it has reached its limit, and that except
for the very highest classes among them, all the negroes are
susceptible to and suffering from this disease to greater or less
degree. Associated with alcoholism, and of more import and
menace, are other drug habits, which of late years have begun
to spread among the negroes. Cocaine is the chief of these drugs,
and the use of it by negroes is becoming a serious and grave
problem. Any one who has even seen a person on a "cocaine
spree" will realize the gravity of such a habit if it ever becomes
universal, so to speak, among what we call in the South "bad
negroes." To just what extent it is being used we have no
means of telling; but from the great activity of the post-office
officials, and other government agents who are striving to sup
press the traffic in the drug, it must be very wide-spread.
The consequence of this great amount of degenerating di
seases in the negro race are many. Indeed, there is almost no
part of our society upon which they do not have some effect.
It would be manifestly impossible for me to enter into anything
like a general discussion of the social consequences of such di
seases, even if I were able to do so. So I shall have to con
fine myself to a brief discussion of some of the effects which
are most obvious and of most significance, and trust that from
the information thus advanced you will be able to form an ad
equate idea of the serious nature of the general problem.
As I have said before, the best index of the effect of such
diseases of degeneracy upon society is to be found in the losses
they occasion. Let us for a moment examine some of the
economic effects of the Negro's diseases upon the Southem states.
During the past ten years, the state of Virginia has expended
$1,404,227 upon the care of the negro insane alone. The state
of North Carolina has expended some $750,000. The state of
Mississippi about $1,600,000. Each Southem state is spending
on an average something more than $110,000 per year upon
the care of negro insane alone — and this sum is far inadequate
to provide for the number of patients who should be in the
hospitals. There are eleven southem states ; it is evident, then,
that these eleven states have spent over $12,000,000 in the past
ten years in caring for the negro insane. An equal, and un-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 75
doubtedly far greater sum, has been expended by public and
private hospitals for the gratuitous treatment of diseases other
than insanity.
You may 'be interested in some statistics in regard to the Hos
pital of the University of Virginia; these statistics will give
you some idea of the sum expended in the hospitals throughout
the South. In the year between Feb. 1st, 1912 and Feb. 1st,
1913, there were admitted to this institution 521 negro patients.
These negroes remained in the hospital a total of 10,901 days.
The cost to the hospital for their maintenance, which includes
their food, surgical dressings and drugs, and does not include the
cost of operations, the physicians' time, and so forth, is esti
mated to be about $1.00 per day. This makes the total cost of
maintaining these negro patients $10,901 per year.
Of these negroes, 152 agreed to pay the hospital for their
maintenance. I say agreed to pay, for this is as far as about
half of them ever go. The regular charge to ward patients in
the hospital is $7.00 per week for those who are able to pay.
The average amount per week each of these 152 patients agreed
to pay was eighty cents per day — somewhat less than the regular
ward charge. Each of the 152 patients spend an average of 21
days in the hospital. If all of them had paid what they agreed to
pay — that is, $5.60 per week — ^they would have turned into the
Hospital $2,550 approximately. Therefore, if they had all paid
— which they did not — the cost of treating the entire 521 patients
.would have been $8,260 in excess of the amount paid in by ne
gro patients.
These figures are only approximations, but they indicate the
enormous burden Southern charity is bearing in caring for sick
negroes. The University Hospital is fairly representative of
all general hospitals in the South. If the negro is thus costing
the Hospital over eight thousand dollars a year more than he
pays in, what is he costing all the hospitals in the South. The
total sum, I venture to state, would not be a bagatelle, to be
dismissed lightly.
It is totally impossible, of course, even to guess at the money
value of the services and time of physicians who have gratui
tously treated negro patients. It is equally impossible to esti-

76 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
mate the loss to the employers of negroes caused by the great
amount of illness among their help. Such figures, if obtainable,
would probably reach an astounding sum. To give you some
notion of the amount of this loss, I need but to bring forward
the fact that, in many localities, it has been ascertained over
and over again that negro laborers are absent from their work
almost twice as often and twice as long as white laborers work
ing under approximately similar conditions. You can easily
draw your own conclusions.
Such figures as these, which are after all but pale shadows
of the reality of the economic losses occasioned to the Southem
people by disease among the negroes, will nevertheless serve to
suggest to you how enormous is the burden we bear. These
figures stand for the immediate, the obvious effect, of such di
sease; they are the sign of the weight on our shoulders. But
they also indicate something else; they indicate a source of fur
ther burdens. When we contemplate them, we sooner or later
will ask ourselves: What of the future?
Naturally, I shall not attempt to answer that question. But
I believe I can point out a few things which will at least give
a foundation upon which a prediction might be based. Let us
go back for a brief review of the Negro's health history since
slavery; by viewing his past performances, we may be able to
forecast what he will do in the future.
Fifty years ago, according to the best evidence obtainable,
physical and mental diseases were rare in the negro race. While
it is doubtless necessary to proceed with caution and to take
with a large grain of salt the opinions of many who would have
us believe that just before the war the negroes were physically
perfect, owing to the influence of a rigid selection, a sifting of
the evidence will disclose that the black man of those days was
vastly better off physically than he is now. And while he was
mentally perhaps "a child of nature still," what thoughts he
nad were healthy, and what knowledge he possessed was not
that gained in or filtered from the city slums.
In 1864 there were practically no negro insane; such cases
as did exist were due either to congenital accidents, which pro
duced idiots or imbeciles, or were cases of mania and melan-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 77
cholia and the like, due to bodily or unfavorable environmental
causes acting on the individual. Physicians of that time are
almost unanimous in the opinion that the so-called "degenera
tive" types of insanity, such as the dementia of the young (de
mentia praecox), paranoia, manic-depressive insanity and the
like, were almost unknown. We must allow for errors of diag
nosis on the part of these elder physicians. But when we have
made every concession demanded by our caution, we are ob
liged to conclude that these degenerative types of mental di
sease were excessively rare.
Tuberculosis, which today is almost a synonym of the word
"negro," was not regarded fifty years ago as a particular scourge
of the race. In the city of Charleston, for instance, in the year
1860 the death rate per thousand from tuberculosis was about
the same for whites and negroes. Ten years earlier, in 1850,
the negro had a little the better of it, his rate being appreciably
lower. Today, in the same city, and in this time of sanitary
precautions, the story is vastly different, for the rate in the ne
groes is about 200% in excess of that in the whites.
In the same way, alcoholism, drug habits, and the grave di
seases due to vice were relatively uncommon among the blacks.
I might prolong the list indefinitely, but the result would be the
same. We may assume, then, that when the negro ceased to
be a slave and became a freeman dependent upon his own re
sources and guided solely by his own caprice, he was, as a peo
ple, unusually sound physically and mentally.
What is his condition today? The facts I brought forward
in the beginning are the answer. In fifty years — which, I can
not state too emphatically, is an exceedingly short time in the
history of a race — in fifty years, he has deteriorated mentally
and physically until he has become not only worthy of our cu
riosity as students, but also of our profoundest pity. In the
presence of such facts as these, it is certainly permissible to
ask: what will the negro do in the coming half-century, if we
are to judge by the past fifty years ? I have neither the knowl
edge nor the time to go into the causes of this degeneracy, and
attempt to get from them information which will help in mak
ing a tentative forecast. But I believe I am perfectly safe in

78

PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS

saying that, for the most part, these causes — certainly the most
powerful of them, at least — are operating today with undimin
ished force and will continue to operate for some time to come.
In addition, there is beginning to assert itself one other factor
which has only recently appeared in the negroes of this coun
try, and which will serve to increase the probability that he will
continue to degenerate as rapidly, if not more rapidly, in the
future as in the past. I mean, the factor of heredity.
In the beginning, I referred to the diseases we have so far
been considering as "diseases producing racial degeneracy;" I
did so because these diseases are the ones most likely to have
an effect upon succeeding generations. Anyone suffering with
one of these diseases will, if he have children, very likely have
defective children, children who will ultimately have to be cared
for in some manner by the state. Every physician knows full
well the effect of syphilis in the parents upon succeeding gen
erations. Anyone who uses a little discrimination in his observa
tions can see in the negroes of today the hereditary effect of
this disease. That tuberculosis is hereditary — in the sense that
a tendency to the disease may be transmitted — is rapidly being
strengthened by daily observation and study. As far as the ne
gro is concerned, hereditary predisposition is the only thing
which will account for his increasing susceptibility to the dis
ease; while he is probably racially susceptible to a greater de
gree than the white man, several investigators have shown that
environment does not play a very important role in causing the
disease in the race; if we base our study solely upon this racial
susceptibility, we would be compelled to give the factor of en
vironment a large role. But all classes of negroes, no matter
where they are nor how they live, suffer from and die from this
disease in numbers all out of proportion to what we would ex
pect if we judged solely from racial susceptibility plus environ
ment. Heredity must be playing a large part in causing the
increase of this affection among the negroes. In regard to in
sanity, it is practically certain that heredity is beginning to as
sert itself powerfully. In recent years, there have been several
families of negroes which have become established institutions
at the Central State Hospital, in Petersburg; the staff there re-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 79
gards it as unusual when some one of these families is not rep
resented on the hospital books. The same is true of practically
every other hospital for negro insane. Last summer, I collected
a number of family histories which, though they are imperfect,
indicate to my mind that the disease is becoming hereditary and
is rapidly spreading as a hereditary disease among the negroes.
The hereditary influence of alcohol and cocaine is too well
known for me to pause upon it here. In brief, the negroes are
being attacked in large and increasing numbers by the diseases
I have named, which, on account of their tendency to modify
succeeding generations, are extremely likely to cause the de
terioration of the race. Each generation of negroes will con
tain many more defectives than the preceding; Dr. Nolan
Stewart, of Mississippi, asserts that the number of negro insane
almost doubles every ten years. The burden of the support
of these defectives will grow heavier every year. Just how
much heavier, and just what the ultimate result will be in terms
of dollars or in terms of human life and suffering, we can but
speculate. Such, then, are the aspects of the Negro's relation to public
health which are of most importance to the state. Let us now
consider for a moment the second part of the problem — the Ne
gro's relation to us as individuals.
Statistics go to prove that the negro is about as susceptible
to the ordinary infectious diseases as the white man ; he is more
susceptible to tuberculosis and other diseases of the respiratory
tract; he suffers from typhoid, scarlet fever, diphtheria and so
forth to about the same extent as the whites. The only diseases
to which he seems relatively immune are malaria and — as has
only recently been shown — hook-worm. Everything else being
equal, statistics show that there is about the same amount of
acute infectious diseases in the two races.
If everybody in the South were white, such a condition would
not be particulariy worthy of remark. If everyone were white,
it would be relatively easy to enforce health laws and sanitary
regulations; it would be relatively easy to teach the people the
principles of personal hygiene. But everybody is not white. A
large part of our population is made up of the members of a

80 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
race which, as I have suggested before, is very little amenable
to law and instruction. The negro is proverbially a happy-go-
lucky sort of creature. It is, furthermore, very hard to induce
him to sacrifice his own interests for the benefit of others. And
he has seldom shown evidences of any feeling of responsibility
toward the community in which he lives.
It is this lack of responsibility, this indifference to the wel
fare of others, which makes the negro when diseased a positive
menace to others. All of us who reside in the South know the
negroes and know how they live. We are only too familiar with
the rude cabin in the country and the hovel in the town. We
are associated with the negroes in all sorts of ways — on the
streets, on the street-cars, in our homes. Negroes cook our
food, launder our clothing, nurse our children; they come into
intimate contact with us everywhere. How many of us appre
ciate the significance of this when we oome to consider ques
tions of public health? The negro, in his home, has no idea of
sanitation ; in his person, he usually has no idea of personal hy
giene. When he is ill, he does not often realize that he is a
menace to others ; or, if he does happen to know it, he does not
often care whether he is or not. He is, as a rule, totally indif
ferent. And, furthermore, the very nature of his economic po
sition forces him to disregard the precautions which should be
adopted by persons suffering with infectious diseases. When a
white man gets tuberculosis, he is often able to stop work alto
gether, or if this is not possible, he at least is likely to command
resources enough to enable him to secure medical advice, which
will teach him first of all how to reduce the menace of his dis
ease. The tuberculous negro very rarely does either of these;
as a rale, he has to work, or starve. And he seldom seeks med
ical advice until his disease is far advanced; he has had, mean
while, unlimited opportunity to infect others, and probably has
done SO. The negro woman with sick children has to work, or
her family will suffer. The usual income earned by negroes
makes it practically impossibly, granting that they might have
the inclination, for them to make their dwellings sanitary, and
themselves clearily and careful.
Ignorance of the nature of the infectious diseases, careless-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 81
ness in regard to the consequences of such infections to them
selves and to others, a reluctance or an indifference to medical
treatment, and an economic position which forces them all, sick
or well, to work as long as they are able, are the factors in the
public health aspect of race relationships in the South which
most intimately concem us. Any family in the South is likely
to have a tuberculous cook, or a cook whose husband has ty
phoid fever; such a cook is very likely, and in all innocence, to
mix tubercle or typhoid bacilli with the salad. The housegirl
is very often infected with venereal disease, and the nursemaid
may be feebleminded — which will lead to her giving the baby
attention, the character of which I will leave to your imagina
tion. Such a household as this is by no means fanciful. On
the contrary, it is evident to all who study the question that
such conditions occur to a painfully alarming extent. To give
you an idea of how careless and indifferent the negroes are in
respect of these infectious diseases, I might tell you of an inci
dent which recently came to my notice. A negro washerwoman,
on coming for the clothes at the first of the week, was told by
her employer that she had better not do the family wash that
week. "Why not?" she asked. "Well," replied the lady of the
house, "I thought you wouldn't want to do it, because some of
my children have scarlet fever." "Lawd, Miss," exclaimed the
washerwoman, "I don't mind dat none. Why, my own chillun
has jest got over de scarlet fever demselves; but dat ain't stop
me from washin' yo' clothes."
This is typical of a thousand similar incidents throughout the
South, and you can readily see the menace in such a situation.
Infectious diseases among the negroes are perpetually danger
ous to the white people. A well known physician, has aptly ex
pressed the situation when he said: "The Negro is for the
South a perpetual reservoir of infectious diseases."
It is true, on the other hand, that by reason of efficient health
departments, and a well developed sanitary conscience among
the whites, the negro has never yet been able to work any se
rious and wide-spread ill to the general population. It is not
likely that any epidemics originating among the negroes will
ever devastate our cities. Of course, if such diseases as bu-

82 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
bonic plague or Asiatic cholera ever gained entrance into this
country, and got a good start in our black belt, no man can
say what would happen. But such things are not likely to hap
pen. We are too well guarded by our health officers for that.
But it is true that a great amount of individual illness can be
traced to the negro — isolated cases of infection, due to the ne
gro's carelessness and ignorance. This is particularly true of
insect-borne diseases, particularly those carried by household
insects. As individuals, we are most certainly menaced by the
negro. The worst of it is that we are so endangered largely through
our own carelessness and indifference. We are doing almost
nothing to protect ourselves. We raise a great hue and cry
about small-pox and fail to notice pneumonia. We spend great
sums on fighting tuberculosis among the white people, but not
enough to stop its source among the negroes. As far as I can
ascertain, Virginia and North Carolina are the only southem
states in which there is any great effort being made to educate
the negro about tuberculosis. Nowhere in the South, except for
a few sporadic and unscientific attempts among the negroes them
selves, is there any attempt being made to reduce venereal dis
ease. And as for insanity and allied affections, absolutely noth
ing is being done by way of prevention. Indeed, one is some
times tempted to think that something is being done by way of
increasing it. We white people, upon whom the burden of gov
ernment rests, are in the end responsible for the great amount
of disease among the negroes; and are indirectly responsible,
likewise, for the harm such disease is doing us; if we were
really to bestir ourselves, we could better matters in a short
while. In the foregoing analysis, I have tried to state some of the
more important and obvious facts in regard to the relation of
the negro to our public health. With these facts in hand, it will
be easy for me to indicate to you a few important considerations
which we will — someday — have to face. I shall attempt to draw
no conclusions; I shall merely state the problem as it appears
to me, and leave it with you for your reflection.
The first consideration is : "What is to be the relation of the

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 83
Negro to the health problem viewed from the point of view
of the state?" We have seen that the race is showing a marked
degeneracy; we have seen how such degeneracy is the seed of
its own increase. The cost to the state in caring for these de
generates is already an enormous sum. We should remember,
when we think about this sum, that we white people have our
own problems to face. Degeneracy is on the increase among
us, too ; we have our own sick to care for and support. We have,
on our own part, an immense burden to bear. Do you not think it
timely and pertinent to inquire: Will the white people of the
South be able to solve — will they even have resources to attack —
their own problems of public health if at the same time they
are obliged to support a horde of defective negroes, the produc
tion of which they are doing nothing to lessen? Does not this
seem a good place to apply an ounce of prevention?
In the second place : "What of the negro's relation to us as
individuals ?" How many white people have got tuberculosis and
typhoid and other infectious diseases from the negroes? How
many will acquire such diseases during the next year ? We have
the negro among us, and will continue to have him; we shall
have to associate with him daily. Does it not seem high time
to begin teaching him something about infectious diseases?
I leave these two questions to you for your reflection. And
in conclusion, I venture to hope that you will not stop with
thinking and reflecting — that your consideration of this gfreat
problem will issue in practical results. I say this not merely
because I believe the white people in the South are being in
jured by their indifference toward disease among the negro, but
also because of sympathy for the negro himself. The amount
of suffering among these people is distressing to any right
minded person. Do not we white people, who are more or less
responsible for the negro's destiny, owe it to him to protect him
against himself?

Thinking White about the Negro in the South.

BY JOHN E. WHITE.

As a man thinketh, so is he; as a people think, so are they,
and so is their civilization. The Southern white people have thought
more about the negro than about any other subject of public
concern. He is the unavoidable big fact and the obtrusive big
issue, from which there is no escape. During the past fifty
years, we have thought about the negro, if you will allow me,
sometimes red and sometimes blue, alternating from resentment
to pessimism. Now, the presence of ten millions in the South
is something to think about. That we have been and are in
fluenced in character by our thought about it and our dealing
with it, is inevitable. To contribute even in a small way to right
thinking and right dealing about the negro in the South is the
most useful patriotism open to a Southern man.
By "Thinking White about the Negro," I do not mean pri
marily to exalt the ideals of altruism as our thought motive.
I do not mean to press you for sentimental sympathy. The con
ception of "thinking white about the negro," I propose is think
ing worthily, soundly, constructively and in such a way as to
secure, the profitable reaction of the white man's thoughts upon
the white man's civilization. By "thinking white" I have in
view our enlightened self-interest. If it could be that the moral
considerations of justice, and sympathy in our thinking about
the negro, do not contribute to the welfare and strength of the
twenty million white people in the South, let them be discarded
for considerations more practical; but if thinking helpfully
and dealing hopefully in obedience to great principles is nec
essary for the development and progress of white men and ne
groes alike, my thesis is justified on every ground of pragmatism.
It is the conviction of many Southern men that a movement
to improve our front toward the race problem is possible, and
that the practical way to begin it is to secure the formidable
assertion of the best thought of the best men in the South with
84

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 85
the purpose of gaining ascendency over public opinion. This
conviction involves the confession that public opinion in the
South on this subject has not been dominated by the best thought
of the best men, but has been controlled by incitements, oftimes
promoted by fears and passions. It is a saying of Samuel But
ler's that "the history of the world is the record of the weak
ness, frailty and death of public opinion." In this country, pub
lic opinion never dies, but it is very much exposed to weakness
and frailty. Public opinion in the South about the negro has
been much abandoned to influences of indifference and repres
sion. It has reflected our fears oftener than our force. A bet
ter thought and a better courage has existed all the time, but
submerged in reticence and restraint. Men of light and lead
ing, bold enough otherwise have on this subject held aloof from
their obligation to public opinion. The church and the pulpit
have been silent for the most part; the school and the teacher
singularly reserved. The editors and the politicians have had
the field. If the South has not done very well with its prob
lem, it is probably because our educators, preachers and intelli
gent business men have not come to the assistance of the editors
and politicians. The immediate task therefore confronting any
movement to create a current of constructive public opinion on
the race problem is to get the best minds together, the best
thought into resolution, and the cooperation of the best men
in a program that will draw public sentiment to its support.
In practically every Southern community there is private con
science and wisdom quite sufficient to determine its public senti
ment if it were organized and applied purposely to that end.
In 1896 a demonstration of this fact was made in Atlanta, Ga.
A Civic League was organized, which appealed to the best men,
white and black, to get together. When it was known that a
score of leading citizens were behind the movement, the wall of
hesitation crumbled. In a little while three thousand white men
had signed up with the League and public opinion was practi
cally solid in favor of law and order and against unfriendly at
titudes toward the negro. The significant effect was that the
best negroes immediately organized their league. For nearly
ten years the influence of the movement has controlled the pub-

86 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
lie sentiment of Atlanta. The white people demonstrated their
power to improve the relations of the races to the advantage of
both. This is a genuine white supremacy, this is what I mean
by "thinking white," this is the sort of movement to lead out
of the prevailing irresolution in the South toward the problem
of the races. The first step of it is to elicit the courageous ex
pression of our best judgments, then to combine these influences
and direct them upon public opinion. The best service the South
can render the nation will be such a movement reassuring it
that the Southern people may be relied on to deal with the
problem progressively about which there is more or less doubt
at the present time.
It appears to many that conditions in the South were never
so favorable for such a movement as now.
(1) Sectional feeling is at its lowest ebb in the South. The
presidency of Woodrow Wilson and the Vetum of the South
to national leadership is reducing sectionalism to the expiring
point. We are back in the "house of our fathers." Our sense
of national responsibility is pervasive. The Southern people
are on their mettle to prove themselves before the world. To
establish the contention that we are able to deal with the negro
more successfully than any other section of the country is doing,
is an achievement that appeals to the deepest self-respect of the
South. This is sectionalism worth while.
(2) We are practically settled down to the conclusion that
the negro is a permanency in the South. For several years noth
ing has been heard of colonization or wholesale segregation. The
European war reviving the impulse of immigration from foreign
lands is tending to arouse the South's appreciation of the negro
rather than diminish it. There is no real desire in the South
to exchange him for European importations. In every farmers'
club and laborers' organization, when the test is made, a fa
vorable judgment for the negro in the South is registered.
(3) The irritations of race contacts have been generally re
duced throughout the South. The prohibition of the liquor
traffic has wrought a great result in this direction. The crime
of rape and the accusations of rape have greatly diminished.
Seventy per cent, of the lynchings last year involved no charge

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 87
of outrage upon womanhood. The irritation of the negro's par
ticipation in politics has practically disappeared. The disfran
chisement laws have greatly contributed to allay the perils of
race conflict. It is worth noting that the negroes are in much
the same status in the Southern States they would have been
had they never been enfranchised. The South may therefore
consider it possible to deal with them as the South would have
dealt with them had the reconstruction era been left out of our
history. There is an important little book in the library of the
Supreme Court of Georgia, which indicates that the Confed
erate Soldiers returning from Appomattox were thinking "white
about the negro." This litde volume is entitled "Acts of 1865
and 1866 — Laws Governing Persons of Color." On page 239
are three sections of laws which illustrate what the white people
of Georgia considered as their true attitude toward people in
their midst who could not vote nor legislate for themselves.
Simple, clear, kind, conceived in moral conscience, these laws
provided a definite status and threw wide open the doors of op
portunity for the negroes now no longer slaves, and yet not en
franchised, to make progress guaranteed by law. The South
is in position to forget the resentments aroused by Reconstruc
tion, for which the negroes were scarcely responsible, since their
present civic status is practically what it would have been if the
Fifteenth Amendment had not been passed.
(4) Negro education is now turned mainly in the direction
approved by the common sense of the South. The higher edu
cation of negroes has undergone modification in ideals and in
reality. Our public schools more and more direct the negroes'
thought toward industrial efficiency. It is indisputable that
Hampton and Tuskegee have wrought marked change in the
motive and method of negro education and in the popular at
titude toward it in the South.
(5) Another factor making way for a high-minded policy on
the part of Southem white people in determining their dealing
with the negro is the consciousness known as world-conscious
ness. We are living in the open; the sense of isolation, of de
tachment, and of retirement below the Mason and Dixon line,
has been surrendered. We are consciously responsible to hu-

oo PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
manity for what we do. Constraint and restraint fall out of the
world's eyes looking upon us. We are not independent of it,
dare not defy it, and do not desire to do so. This fact is urging
in the direction of something with respect to the negro that will
stand in the judgment of history. The South is encouraged to
proceed in a course approved by mankind. Any other course
exposes us to intolerable moral and financial penalties.
I have spoken of "The Best Thought of the Best People" as
something to be formulated definitely and launched into the
current of Southern opinion. It is incumbent upon me there
fore to state what I believe to be the best thought of the best
people about the negro and his relation to the South. Something
would be gained immediately if every intelligent white man
would task himself to put in order the convictions he desires him
self and others to abide by on this subject. What I submit is
what I believe could become the creed of Southem white men
and suggest the basis of understanding and a program of progress
with the race problem.
First: The Anglo-Saxon people of the South are providen
tially ordained and charged with supremacy in Southern civil
ization. Accepting this distinction, we should accept its obli
gation. The white people do dominate and direct civilization
in the South. It is a simple fact. Their numerical superiority
is three to one, and the rate of increase is constantly increasing
their proportion of numerical advantage. Financially, the white
people hold firmly the properties, control the channels of com
merce and finance, manage the industries, and dictate the terms
of general business. In education, the white people occupy an
unchallengeable advantage of privilege and opportunity. Ten
dollars to one, is the ratio of money expended in the South for
the white man as compared with the negro. Politically, the
white people exercise uncompeted power. Surely the conclu
sion should be considered final against any possible question of
the secure position of the white people. The ten million negroes
considered as a population are incomparably disadvantaged in
comparison. Where then is the room for the white man to doubt
himself? The only shadow of question deserving a moment's
anxiety is the disposition to base our supremacy upon discrim-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 89
inations of an artificial character. It sets loose the question at
once whenever the white people seem willing to assume the at
titude of "infant industries," unable to survive without the spe
cial favors of legislation for their protection. The only reliable
basis for the ascendency of any man or people in this world is
quality. The fear begotten in Reconstruction days is utterly un
justified now. The South is the white man's country. Let him
accept responsibility for it and hold it in his merit and deserving
and meet competition like a white man without whining. This is
noble Anglo-Saxonism. This is the white man "thinking white"
about himself and about the negro too.
Second: The negro is a man. This thought in its full mean
ing is required of the South. He is not half a man, half beast,
but a man made in the image of God. He is not a negro first
and a man afterwards — a may be man, but a man first — a human
being first of all. The South can deal with him soundly only
on this basis, that he is to be thought of in the terms of human
ity. He is an inferior man, a terribly backward man, but a man
for all that. Intelligent people of course know that the an
cestral tree of the Anglo-Saxon roots in an ancient heathenism.
Slavery is not a stigma peculiar to the negro race, nor is Africa
the only darkness, out of which men have been drawn to higher
levels. It is not the best thought in the South that forgets the
fact that the negro is a man. If perforce our civilization must
deal with him, it is good that we are dealing with human ma
terial. I do not mean that there is any serious dispute of the
humanity of the negro among intelligent people, but it would
have a wholesome effect upon the unintelligent if the South's
creed of the negro should set it down as a fundamental of our
understanding of him that he is a man.
Third: The negro is a Southern man. Asserting this, we
have to acknowledge that the term of description is not familiar
to our thought, but reflection demands that it stand. The negro
race related to the South is the historical identity of the Amer
ican negro. It is inextricably bound up with the South. Side
by side with what we have done for the negroes, a great deal
is to be said about what the negroes have meant to our peculiar
Southem life. I do not refer now particularly to the negro's

90 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
labor in slavery, which enriched the South before the war, or
to his contribution to industrial wealth as a working man since
the war. The introduction of the negro into Southern life con
ditioned from the beginning the tone and shape of the peculiar
civilization of the Ante-bellum period. We speak of it as a
feudal civilization. We cherish it sentimentally as a rare and
beautiful civilization. We preserve its records as a glory for
future generations to contemplate. What made that civilization
peculiar? It was the negro. Unconsciously enough, he was the
patient inner mold, about which the habits and customs and
courtesies and chivalries and leisures and hospitalities and ten
dernesses and lovely women and knightly men were fashioned.
There is nothing we like to remember about the Old South that
does not include the old negro. Less attractively, to be sure,
but not less really, the negro's labor on the farms and in the
households of today is the differential of the New South. There
are no plans for our future as a people that do not involve the
negro. Edgar Gardner Murphy struck out a convincing phrase when
he described the South as "the indivisible inheritance." "We
can no more make," he says, "a bi-racial division of our civ
ilization than we can make a bi-racial division of the sunshine,
the rain, the returning seasons. It is the fate of the land. If
there be freedom of the press, if there be a press fit or unfit
to be free ; if there be a vital and spiritual religion ; if there be
books, artists, poets ; if there be an historic and responsive lan
guage; if there be stable banks, equitable markets, courts ac
cessible and for the most part just; physicians, hospitals — and,
by no means least — the kindly interest of the wisest and kindliest
of a more highly developed population, — ^these are the negro's.
In so far as they are ours, they are his ; in so far as they are
not his, they tend, in subtle, inexorable fashions not to be our
own." The negro feels himself to be a Southern man. His fibre is
knit in a Southern texture. He has proven his loyalty to the
South. There was never an hour before the war, when be
tween slavery and leaving the Southland, the negro heart would
have hesitated in its choice. Something must explain the his-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 91
toric fidelity of the negroes during the Civil War, when their
masters were here in Virginia fighting for victories which de
termined their estate as slaves or freemen. Their ignorance
does not explain it. It was the South smitten into the negro's
heart and the Southern white people felt as his people that
kept him true and made him trustworthy. He was where his
soul told him God wanted him to be. The negro is a Southerner.
Fourth: The negro is a black man. To affirm this sounds
commonplace, but it is in the creed of the South. This is not
to insist upon a badge of inferiority or to shut a door in the
negro's face. It is to be insisted on, because it is the pledge of
his best opportunity for progress, a necessary guarantee of his
protection in opportunity. If the negro is not a black man, and
if he does not remain a black man, thinking white about the ne
gro is not worth while. There is no use in talking about the
adjustment of race relations based upon an immorality that de
stroys racial honor.
Gale Hamilton said: "If God made the white man white, the
yellow man yellow, and the black man black. He intended for
the white man to remain white, and the yellow man to remain
yellow, and the black man to remain black."
This statement is not conclusive for argument, but it indicates
the basis upon which the negro's opportunity in the South rests.
Great nature signifies something final in her definitely marked
race varieties. The fact of color is not the force of race. It is
but the differentiating symbol of a vital identity. Nature usually
penalizes race amalgamations. The data available tends to prove
that deterioration inheres in all mongrelism. The apparent
mental superiority from the infusion of white blood in the negro
is offset by the reduction of physical virility. The true norm
of the negro's aspirations is race integrity. It provides an ad
equate stimulus for his energies, a definite direction for his mo
tive. About the ideal for racial integrity the white people have
built their progress. The race pride of the Caucasian has
spurred him forward sharply all through his history. The ne
gro can build his home and secure it only in such an enthusiasm.
The problem of the mulatto has been the perplexity of the race
problem. It has reacted upon the negro race injuriously by fix-

92 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
ing a false ideal before the black man's face. The mulatto is
also the irritating indictment of the white people. Our whole
civilization has had to pay a desperate price for the sins of a
few. The mulatto challenges the sincerity of the white man's
resolution against social equality. He is the living proof of equal
ity on the level of vice. The mulatto is not, and cannot be, a
happy human being in the South. Viewed from his estate under
present conditions, his interior life is disconsolate. Every mu
latto man is a tragedy. His is the most anguished and most
helpless experience being suffered on this earth. For ninety
drops, or even a less proportion, of Anglo-Saxon blood feeding
a brain more than half an Anglo-Saxon brain throbbing in a
spirit charged with Anglo-Saxon pride, to be mixed with a pro
portion of African blood, brain and spirit, and that scientific
fact of a nature at war with itself and condemned to the rela
tions of the negro in the Southern states, leaves no extreme of
tragedy unrealized. The elimination of the mulatto is of course
dealing with a refractory human difficulty and must be accom
plished without inhumanity. By severest punishment of white
men guilty of invading the negro race and making him the ob
ject of severest social wrath, the South will find a practical point
for beginning with itself for the elimination of the mulatto.
Then left to the natural law of reversion to type, the two million
mulattoes in the South, in the view of many, may enter upon a
process of reabsorption and finally disappear. Within his own
pure racial lines the negro can find all the necessary aristocracy
to aspire to.
When the best thought of the South gets influential expres
sion along the lines suggested, our attitude toward the negro
will be morally masterful and make a practical program possi
ble. We will then be able to consider him as only a part of
our problem of civilization. We will then be able to turn at
tention to its other elements as they involve him and he involves
them. It is quite possible that the actual facts and forces of
Southern life are not clearly understood either in the South or
out of it. Let me employ the figure of a ladder for illustration.
Thirty million people in the Southem states are climbing on
one great ladder, which we call our Civilization. Ten million of

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 93
them are well advanced toward the top. Ten million are at
least safely civilized. Ten million constitute the upper white
group of intelligence and thrift. They own the property, direct
the politics, and determine the progress of the South. Next be
low them is a group of isolated white people in the mountains
who are fallen out of the main current of Southern life. They
represent red blood and new brain cells. They are quite rapidly
being drawn up into the group above. The solution of their
problem is outlet through contact upward. The evil that besets
them is contact with the group below them. When a man comes
out of the mountains into the larger world, he comes to go up
at once or go down in civihzation.
The group below the mountaineers is made up of five or more
million white people of backward type. They are found as ten
ants in rural sections, or along railway lines attached mainly
to the cotton mill industries. In broad fact they are thriftless
or thriftlessly inclined. Ancestrally their record is without in
spiration. They do not take advantage of the public schools in
any ambitious way. Most of them are content to be tenants and
day workers. They occasionally buy land, but do not hold it
to pass it on to their children. They are in constant competi
tion with the negro tenantry. A recent census bulletin exhibits
twenty-seven counties in South Georgia, in which there are
51,033 farm homes, and 34,000, or nearly seventy per cent, of
these homes are occupied by tenants. This is typical of large
areas of the South. Attention will discern here the acute point
of race antagonism.
The history of the mass of backward white people in the
South has not been explored sufficiently for scientific statement,
but it is a history and not an accident that such a mass does
exist. The early records of settlements in the South show that
with the families of colonists came always "indentured servants"
— that is white people drawn from the cockney and serving
classes in the old country. In the new land they did not inter
marry outside their class, but soon became detached from the
families with which they had come and began an independent
family hfe, yet dependent in a social sense upon the intelligent
and thrifty colonists. In spite of opportunity, these people could

94 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
not shake off their heritage of dependence. During the long pe
riod of African slavery, these white people had an anomalous
position in the South. They were connected with the planters
and plantations as renters, but a negligible factor in the feudal
system. About every plantation before the war, such families
are recalled distinctly by men now living, — a people thriftlessly
disposed and without a stake in the land. The negro slave was
held as of more value to the Planters than this type of man whose
status was economically uncertain. The negroes themselves felt
their importance to their masters and their position in the feudal
regime to be superior. The war came, the slaves were freed, all
lines of distinction between white men were wiped out, and this
large element of the white population seemed for many years to
have disappeared as a distinct class.
But here is what has happened. With the recovery of South
ern agriculture and the increased value of farm lands, a re-inte
gration of the backward white people has followed. The cotton
mills came, industrial centers were established, and the magnet
to draw these people into communities was provided. This very
largely explains the tendency of poor white people to move away
from the farms. The land lust was never deep in their nature.
I have interviewed a number of large land owners with refer
ence to this section of our Southern population. The testimony
is that the negro tenant is more likely to buy a piece of land and
hold to it successfully until paid for, than the white man of this
class. Of course there are a great many small farmers of a bet
ter type but in the main, the point of antagonism with the negroes
is with the landless white people. They support mainly the public
spirit against the negroes, which is murderously manifested in
lynchings. They have slight qualms of conscience on the subject.
Sixteen white men were arrested in connection with the Atlanta
riot of 1906. Investigation established that not a one of them
owned a foot of land, but came from the mill population about
the city.
Here then is an element of our Southern situation to be made
distinct. It is a definite task in the South to draw them up the
ladder. They define the inflammable fringes of the race problem,
and at the same time such tendencies as exist in fact toward mis-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 95
cegenation. Upon this line that marks the contact between ten
million negroes and seven million backward white people the South
must concentrate its concem. Considering the welfare of the
negro race the important necessity is to get the white people just
above them on the ladder moving up faster. The progress of
the negro race halts at the heels of the white man or crowds
upon his heels inevitably.
On the lowest rungs of the ladder is the great mass of now
nearly ten million negroes. Are they climbing — can they climb?
Do they constitute a greater peril as companions and beneficiaries
of our upward movement, or as a drag upon our upward move
ment? It seems to me that these questions are not difficult to
answer. They have been answered over and over by census
reports and by what every man may observe. Wherever the
negroes of any given community are densest in ignorance, there the
greater evils and the greater hopelessness of the race problem is
found, and there the statistics of lawlessness and vice are abound
ing. In her best mood, the South points to the difference be
tween the jungle African of the slave-ship and the Southem
negro of today with some degree of moral pride in the astound
ing contrast. A fair acceptance of this record of improvement
justifies a good faith in the negro's availability for further im
provement. Bound up with us as he is — intermixed with all
our life — related in every way to our industrial progress, and
confronting an age which demands efficiency and skill and a
higher order of intelligence in labor, surely the South cannot
comfortably contemplate the future unless the advancement of
the negroes is included in our hopes and in our plans of develop
ment. But does the negro justify such hopes? With one condition
guaranteed, most assuredly. That condition is the opportunity
of contact with Southern white people who will furnish him
noble examples and lend him encouraging leadership. Some
things to justify the strong faith and the good works of the
Southern people about the negro are demonstrated beyond dis
pute. The longest distance ever traveled by a race in just three
hundred years was from Jungle in Africa to Highway in Amer
ican civilization. The American negro has made that journey.

96 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
Whatever remains unattained and difficult, whatever the remain
ing gap from the front rank as races stand at the opening of
the twentieth century, that fact is unchallengable, that distinc
tion for the negro is secure.
It has been a peculiar pilgrimage, the strangest in the annals
of history. It can scarcely be reckoned a pilgrimage as we are
used to speak of other great human movements onward and up
ward. Stage by stage from tribal slavery in Africa, to com
mercial bondage in the slave-ships, to the feudal serfdom of the
South, and then to sudden emancipation, and then to a dazzling
day of citizenship in a republic, the negro came, always thrust
on by dramatic forces he did not originate and over which he
had no control.
One may question if the three hundred years of such swift
and unanticipated changes, and so marked by unnatural press
ures, does not place the negro's progress outside the category
of evolution entirely. Environment is the word that explains
what we see, and providence is the only word that indicates the
inscrutable forces at work back of it all.
To some sympathetic students the fact that the negro's im
provement has come to him so largely without his own initiative
has not been regarded as a hopeful feature of his history. This
is, however, to be said. Although no driving impulse of dis
content or aspiration from within sent him upon his remark
able adventure of progress, yet at each pause of the advance,
the negro race has shown an inward capacity for grasping the
gain tenaciously. So if the race may not be credited with pio
neering power, the capacity of response to opportunity and the
passion for holding on to advantage may suggest a compensation
for the apparent absence of initiative ability.
There is one truth above all others to be kept clear by South
ern Christians — namely, that the presence of ten million negroes
in the South is not a problem that merely puts our political in
stitutions to the test. It is profoundly a social and moral prob
lem, and it puts our Christianity to the test. It is the Christian's
gospel that is in the crucible. Speaking as a Southern man, I do
not dare to risk a Christianity or a faith of Christianity as trust
worthy for myself or mine in any issue which doubts the effi-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 97
ciency of Christ for all the difficulties that have discouraged the
South in relation to the negro.
The Christian citizen "not only confronts evil and claims
that it can be destroyed, and stands before sorrow and claims
that it can be transfigured, he stcmds amid the misunderstand
ings of men, amid the perversions in the purposed order of life,
the ugly twists that have been given to fellowships which were
ordained to be beautiful and true, and he proclaims their pos
sible rectification in Christ." Whether of Samaritan or Jew,
Greek or Barbarian, Bond or Free, Black or White.

Negro Criminality.
Introductory.
Each professional man approaches the Negro Question from
the viewpoint suggested by the bias of his own technical mind.
The doctor sees the real substance of the problem in the health
and sanitary conditions of the race; by remedying these condi
tions he hopes to solve the problem. The educator evaluates the
race question in terms of illiteracy statistics, and contends that
when the black man is brought completely under the civilizing
influence of the school, the really important step has been taken
in the establishment of abiding race relationships. The lawyer
argues that the criminaHty of the colored race constitutes the
problem; by developing in the negro a real respect for the laws
of society we introduce the true element of solution.
It cannot be too early realized in any study of Southem race
conditions that the problem is wider and deeper than any one
angle of approach suggested by professional interest. The first
impression that a conscientious student gathers in his survey of
the question is its pervasiveness. And the only solution that can
be hoped for must ground itself upon a recognition of this fact.
Educators in the fulness of their wisdom will never be able to
bring symmetry out of the tangled race relationships until they
are given the intelligent cooperation of all the other forces.
The lawyer can accomplish much by addressing himself to the
reform of criminal conditions among the negroes, but his un
supported activity will not of itself solve the problem. The
question must find its solution in the attitude and wisdom of
the whole region concerned and not exclusively in the opinions
of a few leaders, however large-visioned.
Edgar Gardner Murphy, one of the sanest students that ever
brought his understanding and sympathy to bear on the ques
tion, made a distinct contribution to the thought on the subject
when he declared before a Philadelphia audience in 1900:
"I think that you will see that there is today with us not the
negro problem only, under its varied personal and local phases,
98

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 99
but Other problems, with it, and I think that you will understand
me, therefore, if I say that when a man attempts to discuss the
problem at the South, he may begin with the Negro but he really
touches with however light a hand the whole bewildering prob
lem of civilization."
In abstracting the various phases of the question, the student
exposes himself to the danger of seeing one fact so vividly that
he overlooks the other facts necessary to explain it. He is liable
to lose the sense of perspective which alone will give value to
his work. Very fortunately the study of Negro Criminality is
not attended by such dangers in their most acute form. It is a
study of negative values, of those points where the negro has
failed to square with the dead-level average of organized society.
It must take note of all racial and environmental disadvantages
as explanatory of failure. Back of the criminal instincts of the
negro we see the working of all the economic, religious and so
cial agencies. Negro criminality is the result of many forces.
It is a single concrete expression of the racial frailties plus the
unfavorable conditions under which the backward race is at
tempting to work out its status with respect to the advanced
race. Excessive criminality cannot be regarded as an infallible test
of social deterioration. With the multiplication of laws, with
the perfection of methods of detecting violations and with ^J'^y^
changes in criminal procedure, the ratio of the criminal element '"^
to the total population might conceivably increase without any
alarming significance. Furthermore, criminality as a standard ^^
is purely negative, ignoring the larger positive phase where the 'Ju»
law has called forth obedience and respect. It is a test which ^a******^
concerns itself with failures rather than successes.
Yet a study of criminality suggests quite clearly where the
negro is breaking down as a law-abiding citizen. By enabling
the student to discover in ever so general a manner the sources
of crime, it fortifies him with facts that should have some in
fluence in the framing of laws. The study of crime under nor
mal conditions is one of the most difficult of the social sciences,
but it is especially difficult in the case of the Afro-American
where there is such a complicated admixture of instincts and

100 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
motives. However, it is in this field that it should yield its best
results once the difficulties have been overcome. The problem
is not: why do negroes commit crimes? It is rather: why do
negroes contribute a heavier criminality than the white man?
It is relative rather than absolute.
The criminal negro is not numerically a large proportion of
the race yet he constitutes in the eyes of some men who are
privileged to speak with authority the real negro question. He
contributes the largest share of the friction that arises between
the two races — especially now that partial disfranchisement has
removed political friction in the South. He is the vagrant and
the shiftless class which too often is regarded as composing the
bulk of the race. He is the weak man industrially, the pauper,
the economic deadweight. By those rare crimes against white
womanhood he enrages the white people into "retributive justice"
which degenerates into brutal lawlessness. What he lacks in
numerical strength he supplies by the position which he holds
in the eyes of the people. To the law-abiding members of his
own people he sometimes represents the spirit of race aggressive
ness; he dares violate the laws made and enforced by the white
man. And not any too rarely he is regarded by them as a ro
mantic figure who through his crimes wages a guerilla welfare
against the white man's society. Sometimes the white man takes
the other extreme and shoves all negroes into the same class
with the criminal element. The criminal negro has somehow or
other fixed himself into the nervous system of the unthinking
members of both races. Historical Background.
Negro criminality can justly be regarded as a phase of the
negro question which made its appearance only with freedom.
In slavery any criminal instincts of the negro were repressed by
the strict surveillance maintained under the plantation govem
ment. The shiftless, vicious negro was herded into the same
class with the honest, industrious slave and forced to apply him
self to assigned tasks. The routine of his life seldom offered the
opportunity or the temptation for criminal offences. He was
so hedged in by restrictions that there was no free play to his
activities.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 101
Dr. H. B. Frissell, principal of the Hampton Institute, has
described the situation very graphically:
"Slavery had its good features and uses as well as its bad ones.
While it kept negroes from being educated, it also kept them
from being criminal. The institution of slavery put all negroes
on a dead level. The black men with criminal and vicious in
stincts were forced like all the rest to be industrious. They had
no opportunity to commit crimes and if they broke over the
bounds they were punished so relentlessly that they were speed
ily cowed into subjection. In this way, slavery as a matter of
course prevented crime to a great extent. When emancipation
came, the naturally depraved and criminal class of negroes were
let loose and deprived of this restraining influence of the slavery
system. Such men began, naturally, to confound license with
liberty, and they have instinctively degenerated since slavery
days." 1
Furthermore, the negro slave could become a criminal in the
eyes of the law only in the more serious offences. The statu
tory enactments of the several states "never extended to or in
cluded the slave, either to protect or to render him responsible,
unless specifically named or included by necessary implication." ^
The ordinary systems of criminal procedure in the several states
did not cover offences committed by slaves and each common
wealth was forced to enact a slave code to provide penalties for
violations of the law by the negroes. The conditions of servi
tude took away any deterrent influence that pecuniary fine, im
prisonment or banishment might have possessed for the negro.
And there were only two forms of punishment that had any
value when invoked against the negro offender — whipping and
death. "The extremes, death and whipping, being the only avail
able punishments, it becomes necessary, in forming a slave code,
to throw all offences under the one or the other." *
Only such offences were recognized by the state as were too
serious to be dealt with efficiently by the masters. Many crimes
were made capital when committed by the negro because there

1. Patterson, The Negro and His Needs, 187-188.
2. T. R. R. Cobb, The Law of Slavery, 359.
3. Ibid, 260.

102 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
was no other adequate penalty at hand. For instance, we find
manslaughter punishable with death in the case of the negro
slave and with life-imprisonment in the case of the white. But
as Cobb points out in his scholarly work on "The Law of Slavery,"
the capital punishment was "seldom inflicted undeservedly."
"The slave's situation is such that the temptation to commit the
higher offences is very slight and only the most vicious are ever
guilty of them. Executions of slaves for any of these offences
are very rare." *
The slave-owners lived sometimes in dread of servile insur
rections — a dread which occasional uprisings like Nat Turner's
kept acute. Many laws designed to prevent insurrections were
enacted against slave gatherings and these laws were enforced
by the rural constabulary rather than by the individual masters.
In 1822, a committee of Charleston citizens memorialized the
state legislature to enact laws to counteract the discontent preva
lent among the slaves. After reviewing the recent abortive in
surrections, the petitioners summarized the situation as follows :
"Under the influence of mild and generous feelings, the own
ers of slaves in our state were rearing up a system which ex
tended many privileges to our negroes; afforded them greater
protection ; relieved them from numerous restraints ; enabled them
to assemble without the presence of a white person for the pur
pose of social intercourse or religious worship; yielding to them
the facilities of acquiring most of the comforts and many of
the luxuries of improved society; and what is of more impor
tance, affording them means of enlarging their minds and ex
tending their information; a system whose establishment many
persons could not reflect upon without concern, and whose rapid
extension, the experienced among us could not observe but with
'fear and trembling;' nevertheless, a system which met the ap
probation of the greater number of our citizens who exulted in
what they termed the progress of liberal ideas upon the subject
of slavery, whilst many good and pious persons fondly cherished
the expectation that our negroes would be influenced in their
conduct towards their owners by sentiments of affection and grat
itude.

4. Ibid., The Law of Slavery, 360.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 103
"The tranquility and good order manifested for a time among
the slaves induced your memorialists to regard the extension of
their privileges in a favorable light, and to entertain the hope
that as they were more indulged, they would become more satis
fied with their condition and more attached to the whites.
"But in the midst of these promising appearances whilst the
citizens were reposing the utmost confidence in the fidelity of the
negroes, the latter were plotting the destruction of the former." ^
Robert Toombs in his famous defence of slavery delivered in
Tremont Temple, Boston, January 24, 1855, made a very un
favorable comparison between the criminality of the free negro
at the North and the slave negro at the South. "Denied social
equality by an irreversible law of nature and political rights by
municipal law, incapable of maintaining an unequal struggle with
a superior race, the melancholy history of his career of freedom
is most usually found recorded in criminal courts, jails, poor-
houses and penitentiaries. The authentic statistics of crime and
poverty show an amount of crime among the free blacks out of
all proportions to their numbers when compared to any class of
the white race." Toombs in his parallel paints a roseate picture
of the negro slave in the South, declaring that he was working
out his social salvation under the most normal conditions.
The scant records upon which any opinion can be based tell
the story of a minimum amount of criminality among the slave
negroes. Naturally the master was unwilling to release his ju
risdiction over his slave and would consent to a transference of
authority only in the most aggravated cases. No owner wished
to lose even temporarily the services of his slave through im
prisonment for some petty violation of the law; he preferred
himself to inflict some form of corporal punishment. The rec
ords, however, show many cases of executions for rape, murder
and arson.
Hoffman has stated the situation in the following summary :
"During slavery the negro committed fewer crimes than the

6. Memorial of the Citizens of Charleston to the Senate and House
of Representatives of the State of South Carolina. Quoted in Phil
lips, Documentary History of American Society, 103.

104 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
white man and only on rare occasions was he guilty of the more
atrocious crimes, such as rape and murder of white females.
Whether from cowardice or respect and devotion to his master,
he respected the persons of his master's household, and few in
deed are the recorded attempts at insurrection and revolt on the
part of the Southern slave. Criminal statistics of the colored
population previous to the emancipation are difficult to obtain,
and on account of the abnormal conditions of servitude would
have little value for purposes of comparison with the wholly
different conditions of freedom." ®
No more unfortunate period in American history could have
been chosen for the justification of emancipation than the few
years following the War between the States. Four million slaves
were legislated into freedom as an incident to a greater issue.
They were thrown clear of all the restraints which had formed
such a large part of their life in the past and placed upon an
equal basis of individual responsibility with the men who had
been their masters. They stood as a buffer between the senti
mental enthusiasm of the North and the half-hearted acquies
cence of the South. No resort could be had to the dispassionate
wisdom of the nation; they could only appeal from the prejudice
of one section to the counter prejudice of the other section.
The civil society of the South where the negro was to work out
his economic salvation lacked many of the elements of stability.
Nothing less than the highest order of statesmanship could have
brought the negro safely through this period.
The slave had very naturally come to regard physical labor
and a stationary life as the badges of his degradation. When
he was no longer forced to work and when no restrictions were
placed upon his movements, he was tempted to drift into shift
less, vagrant habits. His Northern friends failed to impress
upon him the dignity of labor and sometimes discountenanced
any desire on his part to work for his former masters. He was
alienated from the whites of the South.
This was the strategic time in the development of the Afro-

6. Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro,
317.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 105
American. He had no traditions that came to him from the
past. In slavery he had had no legal marriage, no legal family,
no legal control over his children. He was adrift upon the sea
without a chart; to mix metaphors, he was doled out cake when
he needed bread. He possessed freedom to the point of satiety
but it was an unregulated freedom. And it is not possible for a
race that has known only bondage to change to the status of the
freedman without some resulting evil effects. If there had arisen
among the negroes at this time a great constructive leader who
would have concerned himself not so much with rights as with
opportunities, the negro might have passed through this critical
period with greater safety. But in his racial ignorance he drifted
into habits of pauperism and vagrancy, and pauperism and va
grancy in the disorders of these days meant crime. And it is at
this time that the criminal negro emerges as one of the compli
cations of the race question.
Negro Law.
In the days of slavery, the negro could become a criminal in
the eyes of the law only by the enactment of specific legislation.
The presumption was that his conduct was not criminal unless
the state in whose jurisdiction he resided had passed laws pro
viding specifically that such action when committed by a negro
slave was indictable. Each Southern commonwealth passed so-
called slave codes which enumerated the offences for which the
negro could be punished and fixed the penalties. Very often the
same crime carried different punishments according to whether
the author was black or white. If a white man and a negro were
accomplices in manslaughter, the white man could be punished
with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment while the crime
was a capital offence for the negro. On the other hand, petit
larceny was not even regarded as a misdemeanor when com
mitted by a negro slave yet it was punishable with a prison sen
tence if the offender were white.
But with emancipation, the negro was placed on a basis of
absolute equality with the white man before the law. Theoret
ically no discriminations in his favour or to his injury were made
when he violated the laws of organized society. The equality

106 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
which the Abolitionists had demanded for him was now his, but
it was an equality of legal responsibility which worked the freed
man as much injustice as justice.
The attitude assumed by many men in the South toward the
negro is based upon the assumption that there are radical dif
ferences between the white man and the black man — differences
which obtain in every aspect of human life. It is contended that
between the two races there intervene centuries of evolution.
The white man of America is the product of the highest stage
of civilization yet reached; the negro is representative of a bar
baric race just struggling up from the darkness of dense igno
rance into the light of culture. In the face of such manifest dif
ferences, can it be expected that the same law should be enforced
with an impartial severity to the two races? Should a body of
laws evolved by the white man to govern principally the actions
of the white man be invoked against the negro without abating
one jot or tittle of its original provisions? Can the same civic
responsibility which the Anglo-Saxon has built up through num
berless generations be relied upon to guide the negro who is so
few generations away from the barbarism of the African jungles ?
Can it be argued tbat what is good for the white man is good for
the negro? If the negro would only live up to the law of the
white man, he would cease to be a problem. But can we expect
him to meet the same ideals of law-abiding citizenship which we
are justified in expecting from the white man? Are we war
ranted in excusing actions on his part which we punish in the case
of the white man?
Many judges of Southern courts are often lenient toward ne
gro offenders when they are especially severe toward white per
sons guilty of the same violations. In cases of other crimes,
they reverse the discriminations and punish the negro to the
full extent of the law while letting the white man off with the
minimum penalty. They justify their distinctions in grading
punishment with the contention that a violation of the law does
not carry the same degree of criminality when committed by the
negro and by the white. Local conditions as affected by the
enforcement of the laws in question are the determining in-

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 107
fluence in many cases. This judge-made law is called "negro
law" in the South.
Mr. S. F. Davis of the Mississippi Bar is an article which ap
peared in a recent issue of Case and Comment refers to "Negro
Law in Mississippi" in the following descriptive paragraph:
"The 'negro law' of Mississippi is a law of many parts, and
is composed partly of the common law, statutory law and the
unwritten law, and to be able to tell just which one of these
several branches of the law applies in any given case is an art
rarely possessed except by a native born attorney. From the
letter of our statutes, a stranger might justifiably infer that they
applied to all persons within this state, without regard to race,
color, or previous condition of servitude, but nothing is farther
from the truth. The judges, lawyers, and jurors all know that
some of our laws are intended to be enforced against everybody,
while others are to be enforced against the white people, and
others are to be enforced only against the negroes ; and they are
enforced accordingly."
In die fundamental rights of property, the negro is fully pro
tected. His privileges of ownership are guaranteed to him by all
courts of law and this guarantee is fulfilled with equal justice to
all races. The Southern people realize very clearly that the hope
of the negro race lies largely in the incentive to the accumulation
of property. To destroy or weaken this incentive would be sui
cidal. Such discriminations would confirm the negro in his
nomadic habits and would militate against those stable influences
which the white leaders have striven to introduce. The law must
assist in the effort to make the negro a propertied class.
Discriminations in the administration of justice ordinarily arise
when the penalty inflicted upon the alleged offender is incom
mensurate with the nature of the crime committed. It is ob
vious that discriminations may be either positive or negative.
The punishment may be too severe or too lenient as judged by
the standards which prevail in the community.
Positive discriminations against the negro in the South arise
in those cases where the offence committed is of such a nature
and involves such a degree of moral turpitude as to aggravate

108 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
existing race prejudices. They are most usually crimes of bod
ily violence which have some racial significance.
Negative discriminations, on the other hand, are found in those
cases where the offence indicates a moral lapse of no grave im
portance racially speaking. It must be confessed that our com
plex civilization has labelled some actions as criminal which are
not criminal in intent. Some Southern courts take the ground
that the negro is particularly prone to commit such offences
and consequently they are unwilling to punish them according to
the full letter of the law.
Bigamy in the South is usually punished with a heavy peni
tentiary sentence. The very orthodox views which are general
among the whites as to the sanctity of marriage has created a
public opinion which demands that bigamists be punished se
verely if they are white. Yet a negro can commit this same of
fence almost with impunity ; he need have little fear that he will
ever be indicted. Such a distinction in the eyes of the court is
probably due to the prevailing belief that marital fidelity is an
impossible ideal for the negro. In the last analysis such a dis
crimination is unfortunate. One of the evil effects of slavery
was to be found in the practically complete absence of any true
family life and legal marriage among the negro slaves. Today
the negro's.- lapses from the accepted standard are perhaps most
often found in sexual immorality. It is a short-sighted wisdom
which discriminates in favour of such immoral tendencies. The
law should,' set its face sternly against such practices on the part
of the negro rather than attempt to compromise with them. The
negro needs a stiffening of the law in this respect; he should be
forced to preserve the sanctity of the marriage tie.
In some sections of the black belt, the carrying of dangerous
weapons by the white men is a very common practice and seldom
punished according to the provisions of the law. Raymond Pat
terson, a Northern newspaper man who visited the South in
preparing a series of articles for the Chicago Tribune was very
much impressed with this "pistol-toting" habit, and argued that
the negro imitated the white man in this regard. In certain "de
ductions" which he drew from his observations, he declared:
"Sew up every pistol pocket south of Mason and Dixon's line."
And then, we are led to believe, the problem would be solved.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 109
^ Mr. Davis in making reference to the Negro Law in Missis
sippi with regard to the carrying of concealed weapons
writes: "If a negro be guilty of selling whiskey, cocaine or
carrying a pistol, he is severely dealt with, that being necessary
to protect the lives of both white and black, for there never was
a more dangerous combination than a negro, whiskey or cocaine,
and a pistol. On the other hand, all able-bodied males above the
age of sixteen years who live in the black belt, where the negroes
outnumber the whites ten to one, are supposed to have pistols of
standard make and size, and are supposed to carry them at all
times, either concealed or otherwise, and are supposed to know
how to use them to the best advantage on the shortest possible
notice, notwithstanding the statute says that if any person who
carries concealed, in whole or part, any bowie knife, dirk knife,
butcher knife, pistol, etc., shall, on conviction, be fined not less
than $25, etc., but this law applies only to the negro and to the
whites who live in the white belt, and has no application to the
whites who live in the black belt."
It is confessedly true that in some parts of the Lower South
the negro is punished with the maximum penalty if he is de
tected with a concealed weapon on his person. Such severity is
absolutely necessary to protect the negro against his own temp
tations to kill when the provocation is given him. The unwritten
law which condones the offence when committed by the white
person also justifies itself on the ground of necessity; in a com
munity where the negroes outnumber their white neighbors by
a threateningly large margin, the latter feel that they are at the
mercy of the former and consequently must be given every op
portunity to protect themselves against any violence. Any dis
crimination that this unwritten law countenances is not so
much against the negro as it is in favor of the white man. It is
not a question of the negro's being punished more severely than
he does few other objects in this world; it has a strange kind of
severely than he deserves. The average negro covets a firearm as
he does few other object in this world; it has a strange kind of
fascination for him. And sometimes when his anger is sud
denly aroused, he will commit murder if his pistol is ready at
hand; keep him away from a pistol or dangerous weapon until
his passions have cooled and he will soon forget the provocation.

110 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
The average negro has not sufficient control over his temper to
be trusted with a dangerous weapon on his person and for his
own good and for the protection of society he should be severely
punished for such offences.
This Negro Law extends almost throughout a long category of
criminal offences punishable in the South, lessening the penal
ties in some instances while increasing them in others. That it
is the product of local conditions and local considerations is true;
that it sometimes works to the advantage of the negro and some
times to his disadvantage as a citizen is equally as true. Those
who do not understand' the causes of its existence would do well
to withhold judgment until they have resided in a Southem
black-belt district long enough to realize the discouraging con
ditions with which the Southem judge and jury must reckon.
The South is faced with a terrible responsibility when it attempts
to administer the same law with equal justice to two radi
cally different races living side by side in large numbers. To
one of these races, this law is the expression of its past history
and present hopes; to the other race, this law is strange, some
times incong'ruous, often foreign to the temper of the people.
The ideal is justice but justice does not always mean that all
persons guilty of the same crime shall be punished with exactly
the same penalty. The law itself recognizes that between in
dividuals there are different degrees of guilt and in realization
of this fact gives to the judge certain discretionary powers in the
fixing of punishments. And if the Southem judge exercises
this same prerogative in furtherance of a racial purpose, friends
of the ne,gro should pause a long time before accusing him of
prejudiced discrimination. The average trial judge of the South
ern courts is honest, far-sighted and typical of the best class of
yjthe section; he is usually a sincere friend of the negro race. He
¦jwould not countenance discriminations in the administration of
/justice which were counselled by petty racial vanity or prejudice.
•Attitude of Average iNegro Toward Crime.
The Anglo-Saxon race has ibeen described as being preemi
nently possessed with the passion for law and order. Lecky in
referring to the Romans declared that "a deep reverence was

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH HI
long one of their chief moral characteristics and in order that it
might be inculcated from die eariiest years it was a part of the
Roman system of education to oblige the children to repeat by
rote the call of the decemvirs.''
But the American negro has no past that impels him to obey
the laws of the states ; he has no body of traditions that group
around the ideal of the majesty of the law. He had no hand in
the making of the laws ; they represent the result neither of his
moral purpose nor his mental activities. To him government
is an agency in whose creation he had no voice and which at
best he but faintly understands.
In his native haunts of Africa, law and order were concepts
which were foreign to him. The restraints that were placed
upon his actions were few, sometimes traditional, but never per
manent enough to assume the qualities of an organized govern
ment. When he was imported to this country and sold into slav
ery, he found himself subject to restraints which in their private
way almost amounted to absolute despotism. When after several
generations of servitude he was emancipated,- he found himself
faced with the same civic responsibility that confronted the
average white citizen. Henceforth, he was to be held accounta
ble for his own actions; he was to be regarded as subject to
laws in whose making he had no voice, of whose content he was
totally ignorant and whose purposes he did not know. Equality
came to him by a sudden revolution but it was an equality that
demanded equal accountability to the laws of the white man's
government. "In his past stands no long history of spiritual adventure, of
social struggle and civic education, — no memories of a Martel at
Tours, of a Luther at Worms, of a Thomas More at London,
Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights are the historic symbols of
a collective struggle, of a social and political achievement, to
which he has not contributed, but within which he has been
adopted. The very law which he now invokes has come up
out of the suffering and patience of another social group. It is
the flowering of the consciousness of another race, is in its genius
and expression the white man's law made out of the texture of
the white man's experience, and shot through and through with

112 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
the instinctive assumption of a psychology to which the negro as
a negro is largely alien. This is one reason why he makes no in
timate response to it, why it is hard for the negro as a negro to
understand it and obey it." ''
The average negro in the South if asked to define the pur
poses of govemment will answer with the indefinite word, "pro
tection." To him, "protection" covers a multitude of ideas. It
usually means a protection that is devised by the white man to
protect the white man. It is not often clear that law as an ab
stract principle operates to protect the peaceful negro from the
vicious negro or from the vicious white no less than to protect
the white man from the vicious negro or vicious white. This
child-like attitude of the negro toward govemment is well il
lustrated in the romantic qualities with which he invests the
policeman. To him the policeman personifies his concept of the
majesty of the law. If the policeman is kind and considerate,
then to the negro the law whose feeble instmments the police
man chances to be is benevolent. The negro never looks beyond
the blue-coated "limb of the law" and the prison docks and sees
the true substance. Is it strange that the average negro fails to
respond to the appeal to obey the law for the law's sake? Is it
anomalous that his response to law-abiding instincts is feeble?
The negro who violates the law most often sees the shame
not in the crime itself, not in the public opinion which he has
outraged, but in the punishment. And even then the shame which
he feels has little power in deterring him from further breaches.
,/The negro who pilfers and who serves his prison sentence for-
Jfeits little of the esteem in which he is held by his fellows. If
he injures one of his race, if he steals from or assaults or mur
ders another negro, he may lower himself somewljat in the esti
mation of the mass of his people. But if his crime is directed
against a white man, the public opinion of his race is much
kinder to him ; sometimes, such an offence will raise him in the
recognition of his fellows and give him an added prestige be
cause of his courage in attempting to set at naught the white
man's law.

7. Murphy, The Basis of Ascendancy, 9.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 113
Policemen, sheriffs and detectives declare that it is difficult to
catch the negro offender because the negroes in general will not
cooperate with the authorities in giving information of his
whereabouts or in rendering any assistance in his detection.
Often they conceal him and give him food, shelter and comfort,
and refuse absolutely to turn him over to the courts no matter
how heinous his crime. It is a consideration of this fact that has /
led many prosecuting attorneys in the South to be particulariy J
severe in trying negro accessories.
If the friend of the Afro- American is truly interested in reduc
ing negro criminality, he must above all other things teach the
negro that the law is his law and that he is equally as responsible
as his white neighbor for its enforcement. Somehow or other
the negro must be impressed with the fact that any violation of
the law must be punished and that it is the crime more than the
penalty that constitutes the disgrace. Negro clannishness with
respect to the harboring of criminals must be destroyed. If we
could only convince the average negro that justice is a human
rather than a racial consideration, if we could lead him to look
to the courts for the final adjudication of rights, the outlook for
the reduction of negro criminality would be more hopeful and "^^^
we could look to the future more optimistically for some solution
of this phase of the problem of the South.
The Negro and the Southern Courts.
William Archer, the English author, in his "Through Afro-
America" concludes a very illuminating discussion of the rela
tion between the negro and the Southem courts with the bold
assertion: "This is one of the few points on which there is lit
tle conflict of evidence — ^the negro, in the main, does not get
justice in the courts of the South." ^ No one can question the
sincerity of purpose with which Mr. Archer has approached the
negro question ; he has attempted to make his study as scholarly,
and generally as impartial as his hasty trip through the United
States would justify. His book is decidedly more valuable than
the majority of treatises on the American race problem written

8. William Archer, Through Afro-America, 97.
—8

114 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
by ambitious visitors to this country. But was he warranted by
the facts of the case in making such a sweeping accusation
against the Southem courts?
If it be true, as Mr. Archer avers, that the negro is denied the
full justice of the courts of law, then the negro is made the object
of a heinous form of oppression. If the Afro-American
is really dealt with unjustly by the Southern courts, if he is op
pressed by the institution which should throw every protection
about him, the Southern program for .the solution of the prob
lem is being nullified by the agency which should be of the great
est assistance.
Many negro leaders have criticized the attitude that the South
ern courts have assumed in trying cases in which the accused is
of the black race. This criticism has been especially severe when
coming from negroes who live in the East and who view condi
tions from a distance. They contend that when a negro is
charged with a crime against a white person and is brought into
the court for trial, he is presumed guilty and is not given a fair
hearing according to the facts of the case. Furthermore, once
he has been convicted, he is punished with undue severity.
Kelly Miller, the negro educator, expresses the more thought
ful opinion of these critics in the following extract taken from
an address which he delivered before the thirteenth annual Hamp
ton Conference, July 15, 1909: ^
"When negroes commit crimes among themselves they are not
apt to ibe punished with undue severity, but when they commit
crimes against the white race punishment is sure, swift and se
vere. On the other hand, when the white man commits an of
fence against the negro, acquittal is almost sure to follow; and
even if convicted he is released with a slight fine and does not
go to swell the prison record of his race. Even where the white
man commits an offence against his own race he is not apt to re
ceive the full rigor of the law. When two races are living to
gether, the race which assumes superiority is wont to regard it
self as sacred in the eyes of the other, and is very reluctant to
humiliate any of its members, even by due process of law."

9. Southern Workman, September, 1909, 474.

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 115
"The Twentieth Century Negro Literature," a symposium of
negro thought and purposes, published a few years ago, carried a
very interesting discussion of the attitude of Southern courts in
punishing negro offenders. The contributors to this volume are
prominent negroes and their varying opinions can be regarded as
typical of the race.
R. S. Smith, a negro lawyer of Washington, bears the fol
lowing testimony: "Whether or not the negro charged with
crime is justly dealt with in the courts of the South can only be
answered relatively, for in some localities fair trials are granted
even to negroes charged with the commission of crime. But for
the most part it must be admitted that negroes brought into the
courts of the South accused of crime against white people are
not accorded a fair trial."
I. L. Purcell, a negro lawyer of Florida, is strongly of the
opinion that the negro does not secure an evenhanded justice.
Another contributor, George T. Robinson, a negro law teacher,
also answers with an emphatic negative. The most interesting
views are expressed by Thomas Hewins, a lawyer of Virginia :
"Whether the negro be tried for a crime he commits in the
North or South, he will get as fair a verdict upon the law and
evidence presented in the Southem courts as in the courts of
any State in this Union."
In writing of the attitude of the Southem courts toward negro
attorneys, Hewins declares that "never in my life has anyone
of them (Virginia judges) treated me amiss in their courts, nor
can I point to a single case where snap judgment was meted out
to a man of color, for the simple reason that he was colored."
He concludes his discussion with the following statement: "If
a man is of my color and he is wrong, I am against him. If a
man is of my color and he is right,'! am for him. Let the negro
adopt this as a maxim and justice in the courts of the South is
his, now and forever."
This charge of racial injustice is not new. It is as old as
negro freedom in this country. Many years ago Henry Grady
felt himself impelled to defend the South from the charge that
her courts of justice were closed to the black man. Speaking
in Boston in 1889, two weeks before his death, he denied the

116 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
accusation which thundered from the North at that time, claim
ing that the negro was legally oppressed in his section :
"What is the testimony of the courts? In penal legislation we
have steadily reduced felonies to misdemeanors, and have led
the world in mitigating punishment for crime, that we might
save, as far as possible, this dependent race from its own weak-
mess. In our penitentiary record sixty per cent, of the prosecu
tors are negroes, and in every court the negro criminal strikes
out the colored juror, that white men may judge his case.
"In the North, one negro in every 185 is in jail — in the South,
only one in 446. In the North the percentage of negro prisoners
is six times as great as that of the native whites; in the South
only four times as great. If prejudice wrongs him in the South
ern courts, the record above shows it to be deeper in Northern
courts. I assert here, and a bar as intelligent and upright as the
bar of Massachusetts will solemnly indorse my assertion, that
in the Southern courts, from the highest to the lowest, plead
ing for life, liberty or property, the negro has a distinct advan
tage because he is a negro apt to be overreached, oppressed— and
that this advantage reaches from the juror in making his ver
dict to the judge in measuring his sentence."
There is a wide contrariety of opinion among the students of
the question as to whether the negro gets an equal measure of
justice with the white man in the courts of the South. It must
be confessed that it is not so much a problem of abstract justice
as it is of relative justice, if there be such a conception as rela
tive justice. The negro generally speaking does not receive pun
ishments incommensurate with the grade of the offence; he is
rarely convicted on leaky evidence which does not warrant a
conviction. The critics of the Southern courts base their argu
ments on the contention that the white man guilty of the same
violation is punished lightly while the negro is too often given
the maximum penalty. It is not sd much a problem of the negro
criminal's being punished too heavily as it is a question of the
white criminal's being punished too lightly.
The Southern courts have not been able to adjust themselves
completely to the fact that they are forced to try cases in which
the defendants come from the two most diverse races in the

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 117
world. And many judges in exercising their prerogative of grad
ing punishments are tempted to believe that the same offence
may be committed by a negro and a white person and call for
different penalties. And in fixing the punishments, they are not
always harsh upon the negro; many times they tum the black
offender free with the admonition, "not guilty but don't do it
again," while sentencing the white man to the maximum penalty.
Kelly Miller once admitted that he believed "from observation
and examination, that, taking the Southern courts as a whole,
the Negro in some cases is treated unusually severely, and in
others with unusual lenity." ^^
William H. Sanford, of Montgomery, Alabama, in an address / St-^
delivered before the Southern Sociological Congress in 1912 de- «-****'
clared that the treatment which the negro received at the hands '^
of the Southem courts varies with the different sections. He
divided the South into three distinct sections :
"First, where the population is composed largely of Negroes,
sometimes .in the ratio of as many as ten to one. Second, where
the population is largely white, usually at a ratio of about two
to one. Third, where the population is almost entirely white.
"In the first of these, in the administration of the criminal law,
the Negro usually gets even and exact justice, sometimes tem
pered with mercy. The average white man who serves on the
juries in these counties, in his cooler moments and untouched
by racial influences, is a believer in fair play, and for the most
part is the descendant of the men who builded the foundation of
our states. But in these communities, a white man rarely, if
ever, gets a fair and impartial trial, and, if indeed he is indicted
by a grand jury, his conviction or acquittal is determined more
upon his family connections, his business standing or his local
political influence than upon the evidence in the case as applied
to the law.
"In the second of these communities the law is more nearly
enforced as to both classes, and except in cases where the rights
of the one are opposed to those of the other, convictions may be
had, and indeed are often had, against the members of both races
for offences of the more serious nature.

10. Southern Workman. September, 1909, page 473.

118 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
"In the third of these communities the white man usually gets
a fair trial and is usually acquitted or convicted according to the
evidence under the law, while the negro, the member of an op-,
posite race has scant consideration before a jury composed en
tirely of white men, and is given the severest punishments for
the most trivial offences."
There are very few communities in the South where "the pop
ulation is almost entirely white." And it is to be seriously ques
tioned whether even these few communities deserve the whole
sale criticism which Mr. Sanford has offered. The bulk of the
Southern communities fall under his first two divisions. It is
inadvisable to divide the South into three parts so far as the ad
ministration of racial justice be concerned. Such an apportion
ment presents too great a temptation to rash generalizations,
over emphasizes the importance of the numerical ratio between
the two races and ignores the personality of the local judges
which is of primary importance. At best, such a division can
only be used as indicative of tendencies.
An article upon "Negro in Crime" which appeared in the In
dependent for May 18, 1899, clips the following items from an
issue of the Atlanta Constitution:
"Egbert Jackson (coloured), aged thirteen, was given a sen
tence of $50, or ten months on the chain gang, for larceny from
the house of  .
"The most affecting scene of all was the sentencing of Joe
Redding, a white man, for the killing of his brother, John Red
ding * * * Judge  is a most tender-hearted man and
heard the prayers and saw the tears and tempered justice with
moderation, and gave the modern Cain two years in the peniten
tiary." This "deadly parallel" seems to argue that such apparent dis
criminations are common practices of the Southern courts, that
the negro boy received the long sentence because he was colored,
while the murderer was punished lightly because he was white.
A similar comparison of the inequalities of punishments can be
paralleled in any state of the Union. It is wrong to attempt to
excuse or explain away such instances of injustice. But it is
equally as wrong to fasten them upon the South as a peculiar

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 119
and distinguishing feature of its judicial system. At the time
when this is being written the papers are carrying the account
of a young boy in New Jersey who was sentenced to a year in
the penitentiary because he killed a rabbit out of the game sea
son : and the rabbit was in his back yard, eating vegetables out
of the garden at the time when he killed it. The same issues of
the New York papers chronicled very sensationally how a cer
tain doctor had been sentenced to two years for using the mails
to defraud investors out of one million dollars.
Alfred Holt Stone, who is probably the best informed and
most broad minded student of the Southern Race Problem, tes
tifies very interestingly on the subject of legal injustice in the
South :
"In a county in Mississippi in which the Negroes outnumber
the whites by 9 to 1, I have seen a Negro tried by a white jury
for the killing of a white man, and walk out of the court room
free and without molestation and the incident excited no word of
comment or surprise. I have seen white men hanged who had / ^hj^
been convicted of murder on Negro testimony. Within the same ) ^*'._
week in my state last year a Negro was acquitted by a white
jury of a charge of assaulting a white woman, and a white man
was sent to the penitentiary for whitecapping Negroes. There
is not a community in the South where such things as these do
not constantly occur, but their record is buried in the musty
documents of courts, • instead of being trumpeted abroad. The
white people in these communities accept such incidents as mere
matters of course; they are not grouped and paraded in the
pages as rare and striking phenomena." ^^
In Asheville, North Carolina, several years ago a negro des
perado crazed with cocaine, killed two policemen and wounded
another before he went into hiding. Two days later he was
found by a posse, offered resistance and was shot to death. Dur
ing the next few months the police authorities of the city re
ceived several anonymous letters from negroes threatening to
kill every policeman in the town. Three years later a policeman
arrested a negro charged with stealing a cow and was carrying

11. Alfred Holt Stone, Studies in the American Race Problem, 73.

120 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
the offender to the jail when the negro overpowered and killed
the officer. The negro escaped to South Carolina but shortly
afterwards a negro who seemed to answer the description of the
murderer was apprehended and brought to Asheville for trial.
The Southern people are especially severe in their condemnation
of negroes who assault sheriffs or policemen ; they interpret the
offence as being the most violent way of expressing absolute hos
tility to the law and the punishment which they have meted out
to such murderers has always been swift and severe. Naturally
this murder following close on the double murder of a few years
previous tended to inflame the pubUc thinking. When the case
was called, certain damning evidence was presented yet it was
not sufficiently strong in the eyes of the white jurors to convict
the accused and he was acquitted. This incident did not attract
any attention as a phase of the ubiquitous negro question; there
was nothing strange about the verdict and it was accepted as
something coming in the natural course of events.
It is hard for those who have not lived in the Southern States
to appreciate the difficulties under which the courts try to ad
minister justice with an even hand between the two races. A
judge who believes in the deterrent value of punishment and
who realizes the proneness of the negro to crime is sorely
tempted at times to fix the maximum penalty. Sometimes the
Southern people faced with the apparent hopelessness of the
problem and remembering how many of the crimes are com
mitted by negroes lose a little of their patience with their back-
/ward race. Justice cannot always be administered without dis
criminations when one race contributes a disproportionate share
lof criminality.
»ft must be remembered that the negro is "the man farthest
down" in the South. He represents the lowest stratum of so
ciety. His poverty prevents -him from hiring a lawyer to defend
him in the courts when charged with a crime ; even when repre
sented by an attorney, his lack of money precludes him from ap
proaching a first class lawyer. There has grown up in the South a
body of lawyers whose inefficiency keeps them from securing a
respectable practice and who make a specialty of defending ne
gro offenders. This inadequate legal representation in the court

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 121
room naturally does not increase the negro's chances of securing
a fair verdict according to the facts of the case. Such lawyers
as the average negro is able to employ cannot compete with the
prosecuting attorney who represents the commonwealth.
Booker Washington in an open letter addressed to the South
em papers under the date of November 27, 1904, declared: "I
have said that such lawless conditions exist in only a 'few coun
ties' and I used the word advisedly. In the great majority of the
counties in the South, life and property are just as safe as any
where in the United States."
It is likely that some Southem judges are unduly harsh in their
punishment of negro offenders. But the rule should not be es
tablished by the exception. Unfair judges can be found occasion
ally wherever justice is administered according to fixed rules
and by human agencies. The Southem people realize that they
will not profit by any injustice that may be dealt out to the negro;
rather will such injustice react to compUcate the problem with
which their lives and their fortunes are so intimately associated.
Sometimes in a moment of passion or impatience with the black
man, they may countenance unfair treatment of the negro; but
their sober second thought teaches them the injustice no less than
the danger of such policy.
Judge W. H. Thomas, who has been a trial judge in Mont
gomery, Alabama, for many years, touched the heart of the prob
lem when he declared in a speech delivered before the Southem
Sociological Congress in 1912:
"My observation has been that the courts try the Negro fairly.
I have observed that juries have not hesitated to acquit the Negro
when the evidence showed his innocence. Yet honesty demands
that I say that justice too often miscarries in the attempt to en
force the criminal law against the native white man. It is not
that the Negro fails to get justice before the courts in the trial
of the specific indictment against him, but too often it is that
the native white man escapes it. It must be poor consolation to
the foreign-bom, the Negro and the ignorant generally to learn
that the law has punished only the guilty of their class or race,
and to see that the guilty of the class, fortunate by reason of
wealth, learning or color, are not so punished for like crime.

122 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
There must be a full realization of the fact that if punishments
of the law are not imposed on all offenders alike, it will breed dis
trust of administration."
And the problem reduces itself to this: with the present
scheme of judicial administration how can the better class be
made amenable to the law and the punishments which the law
decrees for its infraction? This problem is not peculiar to the
South. It is world-old. Probably it is part of the wages of our
sin, part of the penalty which we must pay for neglecting to per
fect our system for the administration of an even-handed justice.
Conclusion.
Some students have begun their study of the Negro Question
in the fullest spirit of optimism. They have approached every
phase of it with high hopes of discovering some ready-made so
lution to this problem of American civilization. But all too soon
they reach sometimes the point of disillusionment. When they look
back over the results of their investigations and take up the task
of summarizing their conclusions, their optimism falls from them
like some ill-fitting garment. The hard facts of the problem
dominate and when they sit down to the peaceful work of com
mitting their thoughts to print, the note of pessimism enters in
and they become oppressed by the apparent hopelessness of the
whole question.
Truly enough a careful study of the race question will yield
much that may daunt the spirits of the most ardent friend of
the Afro-American. The tangled features of the problem are
eternally presenting themselves to depress and to bewilder the
optimistic student. They cannot be escaped for they are im
bedded in the very nature of the relationship between the ad
vanced and backward race.
William Garrott Brown writing on "The Lower South in
American History," sounds a true note. It may appear as being
discouraging but it is a pessimism which is based upon facts and
which reaches out after the mental attitude which in time will
bring a reasoning optimism :
"We must take up every new plan with the chastening knowl
edge that most of our devices have failed, that nothing which

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 123
can be quickly accomplished will go deeply enough to last ; that
no sudden illumination will ever come, nor any swift breaking
of the clouds shed sunlight on our shadowed land. Africa still
mocks America from her jungles. 'Still,' she jeers, 'with the
dense darkness of my ignorance, I confound your enlightenment.
Still, with my sloth, I weigh down the arms of your industry.
Still, with my supineness, I hang upon the wings of your aspira
tion. And in the very heart of your imperial republic I have
planted, sure and deep, the misery of this ancient curse I bear." 12
This temptation to pessimism is especially strong to the student
of negro criminality who in the nature of things is dealing with
the most revolting features of the question. He sees the depths
of depravity to which the Afro-American sometimes sinks. He
is concerned with the conditions which after all furnish the most
concrete evidence of the failure of the negro to measure up to
the demands of an ordered civilization. It is the negro of the
docks, of the prison house, of the electric chair whom he studies.
He seldom looks beyond these associations to the peaceful, thrifty
ways of the better class of negroes.
But even the student of negro criminality sees the light of a
better day. As he considers the unfortunate conditions under
which the negro began his life as a free citizen, as he traces the
increase of criminality from the days of Reconstruction to the
high water mark in the nineties, as he studies the gradual de
crease which has set in within the last twenty years, he must be
optimistic in his outlook. He cannot escape the conviction that
with the improvement of conditions which environ the black man
the criminal negro as a distinct complication of the negro ques
tion will disappear. Of course, no one can conscientiously be- v-
lieve that the negro will ever reach the point where he will be jf'jf^
equally as susceptible to the restraints of the law as the white jj \P
man. Such a millenium will come only when the negro estab- ,ft^y
lishes himself as the equal of the white man in basic education ^
and character. The white man has imbedded in his nature the
Anglo-Saxon passion for justice and for the majesty of the law;
this passion can never be the negro's in an equal measure.

12. William Garrott Brown, The Lower South in American His
tory, 371.

124 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
Attention has already been directed to the fact that the prob
lem of negro criminality is relative. It grows out of the differ
ences in the comparative criminality of the two races. The ideal
is to reduce these differences to a minimum. That the negro is
becoming more law-abiding, that he is developing a firmer re
spect for the mandates of organized society is a fact that has
been established by statistics and by authoritative investigations.
But the ideal has not been realized and it is safe to assert that
it will not be realized in the immediate future. Yet it is gratifying
to know that the students of the negro question have awakened
to the importance of this particular phase. In the past, serious
mistakes have been made. These errors have been errors of
omission, rather than commission. The criminal negro as a sub
ject alike of denunciation and unreasoning defense has not been
neglected but the criminal negro as the subject of honest study
and charitable purposes has been seriously neglected.
The real hope for the establishment of harmonious race rela
tionships in the South is to be found in the temper of the leader
ship which concerns itself with the problem. This leadership
with respect to the criminal negro has not always been wise and
sincere. All the parties involved have committed very serious
blunders. It is high time that these errors be candidly recog
nized and that the program of the future represent the best
thought and the purest purposes of all who are in any way as
sociated with the moulding of public opinion with regard to negro '
criminality. A senator from a Southern commonwealth has used on the
floor of the United States Senate and on the lecture platform
these expressions : "Yes, we have stuffed ballot-boxes, and will
stuff them again; we have cheated niggers in elections, and will
cheat them again; we have disfranchised niggers, and will dis
franchise all we want to; we have killed and lynched niggers
and will kill and lynch others; we have burned niggers at the
stake and will bum others; a nigger has no right to live any
how, unless a white man wants him to live. If you don't like
it, you can lump it."
The governor of South Carolina in 1914 in giving his reasons
for commuting the sentence of a negro murderer from death to

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 125
life imprisonment declared: "This defendant was convicted of
killing another negro. I am naturally against electrocuting or
hanging one negro for killing another, because if a man had two
fine mules running loose in a lot and one went mad and kicked
and killed the other he certainly would not take his gun and
shoot the other mule, but would take that mule and work it;
therefore, I believe that when one negro kills another he should
be put in the penitentiary and made to work for the state."
These sentiments do not represent the real opinion of the
thoughtful Southern people. Few Southerners agree with the
author of "The Storm Signal" in his contention that the negro
is "the mudsill of the social and industrial South today." The
danger is to be found in a condition of things which would en
able men of this ilk to secure the reins of government and to
change the laws of the state to conform to these brutal senti
ments. As a counter-blast to these radical opinions which have been
trumpeted as the public opinion of the South, there have come
out of the North mistaken statements which argue that the negro
is being oppressed, that the full justice of the courts of law is
denied him and that he is the object of cruel and un-American
discriminations. The criminal negro has been invested some
times with a sentimental interest. The crime which he has com
mitted and the society whose laws he has broken are ignored.
His innocence is presumed and the wayward sympathy of a de
luded, even if sincere, person are given him. Such a mistaken
view is slightly less fatal than the fire-eating utterances of cer
tain southern demagogues. When a negro violates a statute,
he would be punished according to the provisions of the law;
to tell him that he is a persecuted creature serves no other pur
pose than to confirm him in his criminal instincts and to offer
an incentive to others of his race who may be tempted to commit
the same crime.
The negro leaders have not always dealt fairly with the crim
inal element of their race. Instead of upholding the law in its
effort to protect life and property, they have often sided with
the criminal and been guilty of inflammatory statements. They
have looked at the law as being the "white man's law" rather

126 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
than as a protective agency to be invoked impartially in behalf
of both races. Ray Stannard Baker in his "Following the Color
Line" refers to the clannish instinct which has been developed
among the Afro-Americans and which evidences itself "in the
way in which the mass of negroes refuse to turn over a crim
inal of their own color to white justice."
The progress of the negro race in America has suffered from
the prejudices which have blurred the vision of those who have
assumed leadership. The negroes have been faced with the re
sponsibility of choosing between two schools of leadership within
their own race. One school teaches the ideal of industrial train
ing and enjoins the black man to worry less about his rights and
more about his opportunities. The other is the school of dis
content, of militant unrest. The ablest expounder of this view
point is Dr. W. E. B. DuBois who has continually sounded the
note of oppression and has called upon the negro to arise and
assert his rights. The mass of the race has been divided in its
loyalties, some ranging under the standard of Booker Washing
ton while others have embraced the opinions of DuBois. The
teachings of the discontented leaders have been unfortunately
directed and have tended to inflame racial passions. They have
certainly contributed nothing truly serviceable in abating negro
criminality. Their contentions are well expressed by DuBois in
the following paragraph:
"The dangerously clear logic of the negro's position will more
and more loudly assert itself in that day when increasing wealth
and more intricate social organization preclude the South from
being, as it so largely is, simply an armed camp for intimidating
the black folk. Such waste of energy cannot be spared if the
South is to catch up with civilization. And as the black third of
the land grows in thrift and skill, unless guided in its larger
philosophy, must more and more brood over the red past and
the creeping, crooked present, until it grasps a gospel of revolt
and revenge and throws its new-found energies athwart the cur
rent of advance. Even today the masses of the Negroes see all
too clearly the anomalies of their position and the moral crooked
ness of yours. You may marshal strong indictments against
them, but their counter cries, lacking though they be in formal

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH 127
logic, have burning truths within them which you may not wholly
ignore. O Southern Gendemen! If you deplore their presence
here, they ask. Who brought us? When you cry. Deliver us
from the vision of intermarriage, they answer that legal marriage
is infinitely better than systematic concubinage and prostitution.
And if in just fury you accuse their vagabonds of violating
women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The rape
which your gentlemen have done against helpless black women
in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two
millions of mulattoes and written in ineffaceable blood. And
finally when you fasten crime upon this race as its peculiar trait,
they answer that slavery was the arch-crime and lynching and
lawlessness its twin abortion; that color and race are not crime,
and yet they it is which in this land receives most unceasing con
demnation. North, East, South and West." ^*
Raymond Patterson in the preface to "The Negro and His
Needs" wrote: "The Southern man is too close to the negro
and the Northern man too far away. Somewhere between these
two widely different points of view must be found the solution
of the negro problem." But why canno! the thoughtful leaders
of the North and South and of the negro race pool their en
thusiasm and high resolves and unite their strength in the at
tempt to bring peace and order out of the snarl? They are all
striving for the same ends if they would silence the radical and
deluded members and present their sane, honest considerations.
The South — the silent, thoughtful South — ^must realize how in
separably her interests are bound up with the welfare of the
negro. It is no gain to her that the negro fills her penitentiaries
and stocks her court dockets, for crime in its very essence is a
loss. She does not profit by ill-considered hatred and unnatural
prejudices. The Northern friend of the Afro-American must
realize that his sympathy is wrongly placed and his efforts at
reform are futile as long as the negro continues to commit crimes
to an abnormal degree. All his philanthropy will avail nothing
when the negro persists in the habits of law-breaking. The hon
est, statesmanlike leaders of the negro race must realize that the

13. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 105-6.

128 PHELPS-STOKES FELLOWSHIP PAPERS
negro can only progress by cultivating a respect for laws and by
abiding by the statutes of organized society. To ignore the
\ crime and to center attention on the penalty is to throw about the
criminal a sentimental interest which never operates as a deter
rent or counteracts the lawless tendencies of the race.
Negro crime will never be reduced to the minimum as long
as the leaders stand apart and nurse the prejudices which they
have inherited from the past. They can better conditions only j
when they analyze the causes and approach the question in a!
dispassionate manner with the determination to achieve results.
If there are laws in the South which work an injustice to the
negro race, then abolish these laws. Some courts in the South
may be denying the negro offender a fair hearing with all the
facts entered. Then strike at this evil in all strength of will and
sincerity of resolve. Try the accused according to the best ideals
of justice and once convicted punish him according to the pre
scribed penalties of the law. Let the negro leaders raise up
their voices in earnest warning to their race to revere and obey
the laws of the several states. Let the negroes discontinue all
habits that they may have of harboring or sympathizing with
the criminals of their race. Let the Northern friends of the
Afro-American unite with the white and negro leaders at the
South in carrying out this program.
He is irrevocably committed to optimism who can foresee the
coming of the time when the negro will be as law-abiding as his
white neighbor. But that excessive criminality is due in a meas
ure to conditions which can be remedied should give hope to
those who are truly interested in the progress of the black man.
Patience and slow time, sympathy and judgment — these must be
trusted to attain the results that will come under the regime of
broad-gauged, whole-souled leadership.

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