The Southern South Part 16

A hot discussion has raged as to which of the two systems is most necessary to the Negro. The champions of the academic side dwell upon the right of the Negro to the same type of education as the white man. In many white minds lies a lurking feeling that academic negro training leads to discontent with present conditions; and that industrial training is more likely to bring about contentment with the things that are. In fact, both types are most necessary. The fifty millions poured into the South by Northern generosity would have been worth while if they had done no more than maintain a Hampton which could train a Booker Was.h.i.+ngton. His ideas of thrift, attention to business, building decent houses, putting money into banks, are ideals specially needed by the negro race; but they also need the DuBois ideal of a share in the world's acc.u.mulated learning; of the development of their minds; of preparation to educate their fellows.

That a supply must be kept up of people acquainted with the humanities, having some knowledge of literature, able to express themselves cogently, competent to train the succeeding generations, is as true for the negro race as for any other; if it is a low race it has the greater need for high training for its best members.

The two difficulties with manual training for either Whites or Negroes are, first, that it may be simply practice in handicrafts, without intimate knowledge of tools or processes, possessing no more educative value than the apprentices.h.i.+p of a carpenter or a blacksmith. The other danger is that the manual part will be dilettante; and anyone who has ever visited any large industrial school for Whites realizes how hard it is to keep students busy with things that actually tell. The weekly hours available for shop work where there are large cla.s.ses are too few to induce skill. Hence manual training may be simply a means of keeping young men and women in elevating a.s.sociations for a series of years, without much positive education. The success of Hampton and Tuskegee and like inst.i.tutions is due to a judicious mixture of book learning and hand learning, backed up by the personality of the founders, General Armstrong in Virginia and Booker Was.h.i.+ngton in Alabama, and of their successors and aids.

Against both industrial and academic training many people in the South feel a strong prejudice, because they believe that both tend to produce leaders who may dangerously organize the fellows of their race. A favorite form of slander has been to charge that the graduates of colleges furnish the criminals, and practically the worst criminals, of the negro race.

Never was there a more senseless or a more persistent delusion. The total number of male graduates of all the Southern colleges during the last forty years is not above two thousand, besides perhaps five hundred graduates of Northern colleges who have found their way into the South.

Many of those inst.i.tutions have kept track of their graduates and are able to a.s.sert that the cases of serious crime among them are remarkably few, no more in proportion probably than among the graduates of Southern and Northern colleges for Whites. The moral effect of the colleges among Negroes is in the same direction as among Whites; the students include the more determined of the race or the children of the more determined. The negro college students are still only about one in one thousand of the children and young people of the race. The total number of living graduates of negro colleges or other inst.i.tutions of college grade are not one in two thousand of the Negroes in the South.

It is true that even that number find it hard to establish themselves in professions or callings which can reward them for the sacrifices and efforts of their education. The negro doctors and lawyers have almost no white practice and not the best of negro practice, but there is an opening for thousands of Negroes in the development of the education of their people. The thousandth of the race in secondary schools and the two thousandth or more in colleges are enough to prove that a large number of individuals in the race are capable of and ought to have the advantages of higher training.

The denial to the Negroes of public secondary education at the expense of the state practically means that most of them will not have it at all. It is denied on the ground that it unfits boys and girls for life--exactly the argument which has been unsuccessfully brought against schools of that grade in the Northern states. It is denied on the ground that beyond twelve years of age most of the Negroes are stationary and cannot profit by a secondary education, a conclusion which does not seem justified by the experience of the few high schools and the numerous private and benevolent schools. Still more serious, the denial of secondary education means that the Negroes are deprived of the most obvious means of training for teachers of their own race.

In the last a.n.a.lysis most of the objections to negro education come down to the a.s.sertion that it puts the race above the calling whereunto G.o.d hath appointed it. The argument goes back to the unconscious presumption that the Negro was created to work the white man's field, and that even a little knowledge makes him ambitious to do something else.

One thing is certain: that no community can afford to neglect the academic side of education. The schools are to many people the only and the final appeal to the higher side of life, the only touch with the world's stock of great thoughts. The accusation is brought against the best Northern city schools that they are not practical, because they deal too much with literature and history and science. The negro child, like the white child, needs to have its mind aroused to the large things in the world; needs the education of thinking, as well as of learning; as DuBois puts it: "To seek to make the blacksmith a scholar is almost as silly as the more modern scheme of making the scholar a blacksmith; almost, but not quite."

On the side of the Negro there are other complaints. One is that his education has not had a fair trial; that the dominant South which lays and expends the taxes has not dealt with the Negro on an equal footing with white children; that the per capita expenditure on the black children in school is probably not more than a third that for white children; that the negro schools have often been exploited by white politicians who have put in their own favorites as teachers; that even where the best intentions prevail, the schools are manned by incompetent teachers; nowhere do the rural colored people enjoy an education to the degree and with the kind of teachers and appliances common in the country districts of the North; the race can hardly be spoiled by education, for it has never had it, not for a single year. Only about a third of the negro children are at school on a given school day. Few of their rural schools hold more than five months, many not more than three, some not at all; and in from sixty to one hundred days in the year, irregularly placed, with teachers on the average not competent for the exceedingly elementary work that they do, the wonder is that children ever go a second day or acquire the rudiments of learning; yet many of them learn to read fluently, to write a good hand, and to do simple arithmetical problems. A race must have some intellectual quickness to pick up anything out of such a poor system. The arguments in favor of negro education have so far been convincing to every Southern community, since negro common schools are maintained and considerable amounts are spent for secondary and higher education.

The arguments against negro education destroy each other; they a.s.sume both that the Negro is too little and too much affected by the education that he receives. On one side we are told that he is incapable of anything more than the rudiments; on the other side, that education is a potent force making the Negro dangerous to the world. The incompetent can never be made dangerous by training into competence. Education cannot change the race weaknesses of the Negro; but it can give a better chance to the best endowed.

CHAPTER XXIV

POSTULATES OF THE PROBLEM

That the South confronts a complexus of problems difficult and almost insoluble is clear to all onlookers, Northern or Southern, candid or prejudiced. So far this book has undertaken to deal rather with conditions than with remedies, to state questions without trying to answer them, to separate so far as may be the real aspirations and progress of the Southern people of both races from conventional beliefs and shop-worn statements which overlie the actualities.

Such an a.n.a.lysis of the physical and human elements of Southern life prepares the way for a discussion of a different nature. Shall the thriftless part of the Southern community remain at its present low average standard of productivity? Are the lower Whites and the still lower Negroes moving upward, however slowly? Can the two races come to an understanding which will mean peace in our time? Are there positive remedies for a state of things admittedly alarming? Any attempt to answer these questions means some repet.i.tion or restatement of things already treated at greater length. A first step may well be to summarize the whole Southern problem as it presents itself to the writer's mind.

(1) The South as a whole, on any basis of material advancement, is below the average of other parts of the Union and of several foreign countries; it is poor where it ought to be rich; it needs economic regeneration.

(2) Measured by intellectual standards also the white South is below the other sections of the Union; the high standing of its leaders does not bring up the average of the more numerous elements. Any radical improvement, therefore, must include the uplift of the lower stratum of Whites.

(3) The South is divided between two races, one of which is distinctly inferior to the other, not only in what it now does, but in the potentialities of the future.

(4) The lower race is so far behind, and so likely to lag indefinitely, that it is necessary for the welfare of the community that the two be kept separate; and this stern edict applies not only to the pure African race, but also to the two millions of mixed bloods, many of whom in apt.i.tude and habits of thought are practically white men.

(5) Both these races are improving, the Whites in great numbers and rapidly; fewer of the Negroes proportionally, and more slowly.

(6) The criminality of both races, and especially the violent criminality of the Negroes, brings into the controversy an element of personal rage and fear.

(7) Partly by superior abilities, partly by an inherited tradition, partly for the defense of the community, the white race dominates in every department of social, industrial, and political life; it owns most of the property; makes the laws for the black man; furnishes for him the machinery of government and of justice; and inexorably excludes him from both the social and political advantages of the community.

(8) This race division interferes with the American principle of equality--that is, the equal right of every man, woman, and child to do the best thing that his abilities and training allow, the inferior doing the best in his stratum, the superior the better best of his cla.s.s.

(9) The two races do not live together harmoniously. The Whites fear some kind of negro domination--the Negroes resent the complete control by the Whites; actual collisions are rare, but there is a latent race hostility.

(10) The white people, though they a.s.sume sole responsibility for whatever adjustment is made, know little of the private life of the best Negroes, and exercise small direct influence on the lower race. Hence the ordinary agencies of uplift--the church, the school, and contact with superior minds--are not brought into operation.

(11) The main reason for this want of touch with the Negroes is an apprehension that any common understanding will a.s.sist a social equality which might lead to miscegenation.

The Southern problem, therefore, to state it in a sentence, is how twenty million Whites and ten million Negroes in the Southern states shall make up a community in which one race shall hold most of the property, and all the government, and the other race shall remain content and industrious; in which one gets most of the good things of life and the other does most of the disagreeable work; in which the superior members of the inferior race shall accept all its disadvantages; in which one race shall always be at the top and the other forever at the bottom; yet in which there shall be peace and good will.

To these conditions, discouraging, hard, implacable to innocent people, out of accord with the usual American principles, any effective remedy must nevertheless adjust itself. Practically all Southern people agree that the question is alarming, but they are at odds among themselves as to the remedy; and they may be roughly divided into the intolerant, the discouraged, and the moderate.

(I) Examples of pa.s.sionate violence are plenty, and Professor J. W.

Garner, a Southerner, suggests some reasons for their abundance: "Next to the difficulties arising mainly from the changed industrial conditions in the South and their resulting effect upon the character of the black race, the most serious obstacle in the way of maintaining harmonious relations between the two races is the persistent, ill-timed, and often intemperate agitation of the race question by a certain cla.s.s of politicians lately sprung up in the South, whose chief stock in trade is the race issue.

Their method consists in working upon the sympathies of a certain cla.s.s of whites by appealing to their pa.s.sions and prejudices, by dwelling upon the brutality and savagery of the negro, by conjuring up imaginary dangers of negro supremacy, by exaggerating real dangers and in every conceivable way exalting the negro problem, as a political issue, to a position out of all proportion to its real importance."

The truth of this statement may be ill.u.s.trated from the published conclusions of some writers and speakers who are representative of the most radical type of Southern feeling. For instance, Hoke Smith, Governor of Georgia in 1908, has declared that "the development made by the Negro in the South came through the inst.i.tution of slavery, from the control of an inferior race by a superior race. I believe that control was absolutely necessary for the development which the Negro made. The continuation of control is, in a measure, necessary to retain for the great ma.s.s of Negroes the progress made by them while in slavery."

(II) Hoke Smith is far from representing the general or the average view in the South. Some of the best spirits there who feel the responsibility of their race are at their wit's end over the whole question and see no way out of the difficulty. Thus a lawyer of Birmingham, Ala., writes: "If my heart did not go out for the Negro, as a human being, or I cared less for my G.o.d and an earnest wish to walk in His ways, I would kill the Negro or die trying. G.o.d must intend that TIME shall work out His ways and not the men of my generation, for after a longer life than most, and all of it spent with and among the Negroes, I give it up.... Credit the Southern people with preserving the Negro, with teaching him Christ, with good will.... Education will do some good--perhaps more than I believe, but I verily believe that we must have the Negro all born again before we can teach him what to do."

(III) Of the more hopeful group of reflective men in the South there are many spokesmen, who suggest various sorts of remedies not always in accord.

Ex-Congressman William H. Fleming, of Georgia, puts it that "We do not know what s.h.i.+fting phases this vexing race problem may a.s.sume, but we may rest in the conviction that its ultimate solution must be reached along the lines of honesty and justice. Let us not in cowardice or want of faith needlessly sacrifice our higher ideals of private and public life. Race differences may necessitate social distinction. But race differences cannot repeal the moral law.... The foundation of the moral law is justice. Let us solve the negro problem by giving the negro justice and applying to him the recognized principles of the moral law. This does not require social equality. It does not require that we should surrender into his inexperienced and incompetent hands the reins of political government. But it does require that we recognize his fundamental rights as a man."

Senator John Sharp Williams, of Mississippi, protests against "Indiscriminate cursing of the whole negro race, good and bad alike included.... Above all, remember this: it is not the educated negro who commits unspeakable crime; he knows the certain result. It is the brute whose avenues of information are totally cut off."

Leroy Percy, of Greenville, Miss., pleads for protection of the black man: "Daily, in recognition of the weakness of human nature, the prayer goes up from millions to a higher power: 'Deliver me from temptation--temptation which I cannot face and overcome I pray Thee to deliver me from.' There is no greater temptation known to man than the hourly, daily, yearly dealing with ignorant, trusting people.... So justice, self-interest, the duty which we owe to ourselves and those who follow us, all demand that we should not permit to go unchallenged, should not acquiesce in the viciously erroneous idea that the negro should be kept in helpless ignorance."

From this summary of general views it is evident that even the most moderate white men pleading for the rights of their black neighbors practically all tacitly accept certain postulates as to any possible remedies, which they believe to be quite beyond discussion and which may be a.n.a.lyzed as follows:

(I) The first is the dominance of the white race, which will not surrender any of the present privileges. As Page puts it: "The absolute and unchangeable superiority of the white race--a superiority, it appears to him, not due to any mere advent.i.tious circ.u.mstances, such as superior educational and other advantages during some centuries, but an inherent and essential superiority, based on superior intellect, virtue, and constancy. He does not believe that the Negro is the equal of the White, or ever could be the equal." That means that the low Negro is inferior to the low White, the average Negro to the average White, and the superior Negro, however high his plane, moral and intellectual, is also to be put into a position of permanent inferiority to the higher Whites. Because inferior morally and mentally, he is held also in political inferiority.

The South does not intend that even intelligent and educated Negroes shall have a share in making or administering the laws.

(II) Partly from a sense of its own superiority, partly from a disdain of a formerly servile race, chiefly from a well-founded belief that amalgamation would be a great misfortune for the community, the South is determined that there shall be no legalized admixture of the races. That miscegenation is still going on in an unknown degree heightens the determination that it shall at least be put under the ban of law; the very danger makes the South more determined that the races shall be kept separate.

(III) The dominant white Southerners are further absolutely determined that any settlement of the question shall come from their volition; and that means that the Southern Negro is not expected to exercise anything more than a mild academic influence. The character of the Negroes, their thriftlessness or industry, their crime or virtue, their stupidity or their intelligence, may deflect the white mind one way or another; their preferences, outside the iron fence which the South has erected round the question, will receive some attention; but they will have to accept what the white people a.s.sign to them.

(IV) The South is as yet little awakened to the idea that the status of the lower Whites is a part of the whole race problem. Inasmuch as the Poor White is emerging from seclusion and poverty, people do not sufficiently realize that he needs education, intellectual and moral; that his pa.s.sions, his animal instincts, his violence stand in the way of the uplift of both races.

(V) The North is expected by the South not to act by legislation or any other active method in behalf of the Negro. The Southerners in general consider the Fifteenth, or suffrage Amendment, to be an affront, which they avoid by s.h.i.+fty clauses in their const.i.tutions and would repeal if they could. Some Southerners resent even inquiry about the South, and apparently remember how their fathers received visiting abolitionists.

(VI) It would, however, be a great injustice to the immense number of broad-minded people in the South to leave the impression that n.o.body down there welcomes investigation or reads criticisms. Upon the negro question in general there are two different and opposing Southern points of view.

The one-sided and arrogant statements of the Vardamans, the Dixons, the Graveses, and the Tillmans have no right to call themselves the voice of the South, in the face of the appeals to common justice and American principles of fair play that flow from the pens of the Ba.s.setts, the Murphys, the Mitch.e.l.ls, the Flemings, and the Percys. It is a happy omen that the South is divided upon its own question; for it means that the taboo has been taken off discussion; that Southern men may honestly differ on the question of the rights and the character of the Negro.

On the one side is a numerous cla.s.s of Whites, some coa.r.s.e and ignorant, others of power and vitality, including many small farmers and managers of plantations, and also a large element in the towns, who are not much interested in the uplift of the Whites and do not wish well to the Negro, but are full of a blind hostility to the negro race and take the ground that this is a white man's government, and accept the Negro only as a tool for their use.

On the other side stand a great part of the high-bred, well-educated and masterful element; the people who count in the church, the club and university, the pulpit and the bench; people who have a material interest and genuine public spirit in providing for the future of their own commonwealth. In general the best people in the South, the most highly trained, most public-spirited, most religious, wealthiest, and most responsible people wish well to the Negro. The plantation owner, the manufacturer, the railroad manager, want efficient laborers; the minister wants G.o.d-fearing people; the judge wants law-abiding men; the educator wants good schools; they all want to raise the community, the bottom as well as the top. How far is the superior cla.s.s in the South to control the action of legislatures and the movement of public sentiment, and the behavior of those of a ruder cast? Which of these two cla.s.ses speaks for the South?

CHAPTER XXV