Following the Color Line Part 13

"In Grant," said his white neighbour, "the county lost a capable labourer--in its present situation, a most valuable a.s.set--and a good citizen."

Here, then, we have race hatred versus economic necessity. The important citizens and employers of Habersham County came to Atlanta and presented a pet.i.tion to Governor Terrell, January 18, 1907, as follows:

TO HIS EXCELLENCY, J. M. TERRELL, GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA, ATLANTA:

Whereas, on the night of December 16, 1906, parties unknown came to the quiet home of one Frank Grant, coloured, a citizen of this county, and shot into his residence, and then went to the home of Henry Scism, coloured, a tenant of said Frank Grant, and shot promiscuously around his (the said Scism's) house, and demanded of him to leave the county under severe penalty.

This has caused the tenant, Henry Scism, to leave, and Frank Grant to sell his little house at a sacrifice and leave. It comes to us that Frank Grant is a quiet, innocent, hard-working citizen. Therefore, we, the undersigned officers and citizens of Habersham County, Georgia, pray you to offer a liberal reward for the arrest and conviction or these unknown parties--say $100 for the first and $50 for each succeeding one.

(Signed) C. W. GRANT, _County School Commissioner_.

J. A. ERWIN CLERK, S. C., M. FRANKLIN, Ordinary J. D. HILL, T. C. H. C.

But, of course, nothing could be done that would keep the Negroes on the land under such conditions.

_Why Negroes Are Driven Out_

What does it all mean? Listen to the explanation given by a prominent white man of Habersham County--not to me--but to the Atlanta _Georgian_, where it was published:

"It is not a problem of Negro labour, because there is little of that kind there. The white labour will not work for the fruit growers at prices they can afford, even when it is a good fruit year. Often they decline to work at any price. They have many admirable qualities; among them is a spirit of pride and independence, which, rightly directed, would uplift and make them prosperous, but which misguided and blind, as it sometimes is, keeps them in poverty and puts the region in which they live at great disadvantage.

"Landowners and employers, native, and new, are indignant but helpless.

They are in the power of the shiftless element of the whites, who say, 'I will work or not, as I please, and when I please, and at my own price; and I will not have Negroes taking my work away from me.' This is not a race question, pure and simple; it is an industrial question, a labour issue, not confined to one part of the country."

Here, it will be observed, the same complaint is made against the "poor white" as against the Negro--that he is shiftless and that he won't work even for high wages.

Generally speaking, the race hatred in the South comes chiefly from the poorer cla.s.s of whites who either own land which they work themselves or are tenant farmers in compet.i.tion with Negroes and from politicians who seek to win the votes of this cla.s.s of white men. The larger landowners and employers of labour, while they do not love the Negro, want him to work and work steadily, and will do almost anything to keep him on the land--so long as he is a faithful, obedient, unambitious worker. When he becomes prosperous, or educated, or owns land, many white people no longer "have any use for him" and turn upon him with hostility, but the best type of the Southern white men is not only glad to see the Negro become a prosperous and independent farmer but will do much to help him.

_Vivid Ill.u.s.tration of Race Feeling_

I have had innumerable ill.u.s.trations of the extremes to which race feeling reaches among a certain cla.s.s of Southerners. In a letter to the Atlanta _Const.i.tution_, November 5, 1906, a writer who signs himself Mark Johnson, says:

The only use we have for the Negro is as a labourer. It is only as such that we need him; it is only as such that we can use him. If the North wants to take him and educate him we will bid him G.o.dspeed and contribute to his education if schools are located on the other side of the line.

And here are extracts from a remarkable letter from a Southern white working man signing himself Forrest Pope and published in the Atlanta _Georgian_, October 22, 1906:

When the skilled negro appears and begins to elbow the white man in the struggle for existence, don't you know the white man rebels and won't have it so? If you don't it won't take you long to find it out; just go out and ask a few of them, those who tell you the whole truth, and see what you will find out about it.

_What Is the Negro's Place?_

All the genuine Southern people like the Negro as a servant, and so long as he remains the hewer of wood and carrier of water, and remains strictly in what we choose to call his place, everything is all right, but when ambition, prompted by real education, causes the Negro to grow restless and he bestir himself to get out of that servile condition, then there is, or at least there will be, trouble, sure enough trouble, that all the great editors, parsons and philosophers can no more check than they can now state the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about this all-absorbing, far-reaching miserable race question. There are those among Southern editors and other public men who have been shouting into the ears of the North for twenty-five years that education would solve the Negro question; there is not an honest, fearless, thinking man in the South but who knows that to be a bare-faced lie. Take a young Negro of little more than ordinary intelligence, even, get hold of him in time, train him thoroughly as to books, and finish him up with a good industrial education, send him out into the South with ever so good intentions both on the part of his benefactor and himself, send him to take my work away from me and I will kill him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMPANION PICTURES

Old and new cabins for Negro tenants on the Brown plantation]

The writer says in another part of this remarkable letter, giving as it does a glimpse of the bare bones of the economic struggle for existence:

I am, I believe, a typical Southern white workingman of the skilled variety, and I'll tell the whole world, including Drs. Abbott and Eliot, that I don't want any educated property-owning Negro around me. The Negro would be desirable to me for what I could get out of him in the way of labour that I don't want to have to perform myself, and I have no other uses for him.

_Who Will Do the Dirty Work?_

One ill.u.s.tration more and I am through. I met at Montgomery, Alabama, a lawyer named Gustav Frederick Mertins. We were discussing the "problem,"

and Mr. Mertins finally made a striking remark, not at all expressing the view that I heard from some of the strongest citizens of Montgomery, but excellently voicing the position of many Southerners.

"It's a question," he said, "who will do the dirty work. In this country the white man won't: the Negro must. There's got to be a mudsill somewhere. If you educate the Negroes they won't stay where they belong; and you must consider them as a race, because if you let a few rise it makes the others discontented."

Mr. Mertins presented me with a copy of his novel called "The Storm Signal," in which he further develops the idea (p. 342):

The Negro is the mudsill of the social and industrial South to-day.

Upon his labour in the field, in the forest, and in the mine, the whole structure rests. Slip the mudsill out and the system must be reorganised.... Educate him and he quits the field. Instruct him in the trades and sciences and he enters into active compet.i.tion with the white man in what are called the higher planes of life. That compet.i.tion brings on friction, and that friction in the end means the Negroe's undoing.

Is not this mudsill stirring to-day, and is not that the deep reason for many of the troubles in the South--and in the North as well, where the Negro has appeared in large numbers? The friction of compet.i.tion has arrived, and despite the demand for justice by many of the best cla.s.s of the Southern whites, the struggle is certainly of growing intensity.

And out of this economic struggle of whites and blacks grows an ethical struggle far more significant. It is the struggle of the white man with himself. How shall he, who is supreme in the South as in the North, treat the Negro? That is the _real_ struggle!

CHAPTER V

RACE RELATIONSHIPS IN THE SOUTH

I

Generally speaking, the sharpest race prejudice in the South is exhibited by the poorer cla.s.s of white people, whether farmers, artisans, or unskilled workers, who come into active compet.i.tion with the Negroes, or from politicians who are seeking the votes of this cla.s.s of people. It is this element which has driven the Negroes out of more than one community in the South and it commonly forms the lynching mobs. A similar antagonism of the working cla.s.ses exists in the North wherever the Negro has appeared in large numbers--as I shall show when I come to write of the treatment of the Northern Negro.

On the other hand, the larger landowners and employers of the South, and all professional and business men who hire servants, while they dislike and fear the Negro as a race (though often loving and protecting individual Negroes), want the black man to work for them. More than that, they _must have him_: for he has a practical monopoly on labour in the South. White men of the employing cla.s.s will do almost anything to keep the Negro on the land and his wife in the kitchen--so long as they are obedient and unambitious workers.

_"Good" and "Bad" Landlords_

But I had not been very long in the black belt before I began to see that the large planters--the big employers of labour--often pursued very different methods in dealing with the Negro. In the feudal middle ages there were good and bad barons; so in the South to-day there are "good"

and "bad" landlords (for lack of a better designation) and every gradation between them.

The good landlord, generally speaking, is the one who knows by inheritance how a feudal system should be operated. In other words, he is the old slave-owner or his descendant, who not only feels the ancient responsibility of slavery times, but believes that the good treatment of tenants, as a policy, will produce better results than harshness and force.

The bad landlord represents the degeneration of the feudal system: he is in farming to make all he can out of it this year and next, without reference to human life.

I have already told something of J. Pope Brown's plantation near Hawkinsville. On the November day, when we drove out through it, I was impressed with the fact that nearly all the houses used by the Negro tenants were new, and much superior to the old log cabins built either before or after the war, some of which I saw still standing, vacant and dilapidated, in various parts of the plantation. I asked the reason why he had built new houses:

"Well," he answered, "I find I can keep a better cla.s.s of tenants, if the accommodations are good."