STUDIES IN THE SOUTH.
FROM THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A Black Planter.
There is a class of colored men in the South who are laying the foundations of a better state of things than now prevails, by sheer industry and devotion to money-making. I found a conspicuous illustration of this type in the person and work of a negro in one of the old Southern States. He could not read, but had learned within a few years, by instruction from his young wife, to write well enough to enable him to “keep the time” of his hands by recording it in his book of farm accounts. He had “begun without nothin’,” he said. At the end of the war he gathered up some “lame and sick gov’ment mules that had been turned out fuh de crows, an’ doctor’d ’em up.” Then he worked on the plantations near him, at first by the day, but soon began to rent land and “hire hands.” He said he “lived on nothin’, or what other folks frowed away; but I reckon I fed my mules mighty well.” He had bought land, a little at a time, and when I visited him owned many hundred acres of the best land in that region. He still worked hard himself, and exacted, most rigidly, the amount of labor which he thought his hands ought to perform. “I don’t lay out fuh ’em to do as much as I does, boss; but dey mus’n’t shirk.” His residence was but a few miles from a considerable town. The year before I was there a neighboring planter had wanted a twenty-acre wood-lot cleared off. It was heavily timbered, and this black man offered to clear the ground for the wood which was to be removed. This was accepted, and he “had de choppin’ done in de wintah, when dey wusn’t no wuk, an’ han’s wus cheap.” The wood was drawn out and piled up on a vacant lot near the road. “Nex’ summah eberybody’s out o’ wood in town; dey allays is; dey nebber luks ahead mo’ ’an twel’ dinnah time. Nobody hain’t no time to haul wood den. Eberybody’s in de cotton. But ebery night, ahtah we done done de day’s wuk in de fiel’, den my wagons every one takes loads o’ wood to town. De bigbugs pays good price den, ’cause dey ain’t no wood fuh to be hed. So dah, den [becoming animated], hi, boss, I sells de wood, see! An’ I pays all de spences fuh cuttin’ it, an’ in de nex’ place I buys de lan’ what de wood come off, an’ I hab suffin lef’ in de bank.” The guttural chuckle with which he ended I am powerless to represent. The principal citizens of the town said this story was true.
This man reared cattle, sheep, and hogs, and had better blooded animals than any other planter near him, white or black. He was saving all the manure that his farms yielded, and drawing more from the town—“de profit’s on de back load.” His fences were good, and, what is rare in the South, the fence-rows were kept clean, and free from weeds, briars and bushes.
The Fortunes of the Negroes.
Many of the negroes are acquiring land, and are farming successfully and profitably, in nearly all parts of the South, while multitudes of others still work as “hired hands,” and save nothing, consuming a large portion of their wages for intoxicating drinks. The general inclination of the negroes to leave the plantations and congregate in the towns is injuring the race seriously, in many ways. There is not sufficient employment in the towns for those who are already there, and great numbers become idle, dissipated and vicious. Most of the colored people are better adapted to farm-work than to other occupations, though many are doing well as mechanics, blacksmiths, carpenters, bricklayers, and plasterers. In the towns and cities nearly all the cartmen and porters are negroes. Whatever may be the extent to which idleness prevails among them, it is certain that the negroes perform a vast amount of labor which is not only necessary or convenient for their employers, but highly profitable as well. The labor of the colored people is at present an important and, indeed, indispensable factor in the chief wealth-producing industries of the South. If the negroes could be brought to understand existing conditions and tendencies in the regions which they inhabit, they might soon greatly improve their fortunes, and secure for themselves and their children most important advantages from opportunities which are likely soon to pass away, never to be presented again, or at any rate, not during the reign of the influences which are now becoming dominant in the South.
Black Ministers.
Some of the colored preachers in most parts of the South are ignorant, fat, lazy and licentious. Many of them use intoxicating liquors freely. The influence of such men is of course a curse to the colored people, and is the cause of much immorality among the married women who are members of the “colored churches.” But it would be most unjust to allow my readers to infer that colored ministers generally belong to this class. Here, as in the description of all classes of people in the South, discrimination is necessary. The new order of things is manifesting itself in a conflict between opposing tendencies in the negro churches, and among their ministers. Except in the larger towns, most of the older ministers depend on mere noise and excitement to influence their hearers. They work themselves into incoherent fury, stamp and yell, and appeal only to the “feelings” of their uninstructed followers. These old men denounce “de high-flyin’ preachin’ we has dese days.” They say “it’s all book-l’arnin’; dey ain’t no Holy Ghos’ in it, at all. Dis new religion mighty smaht, an’ mighty proud, but it hain’t got no feelin’ to it.” There is a great deal of truth in this. The more intellectual preaching of the younger educated men is ill suited to the tropical and impulsive nature of the colored people. Their life is far more a matter of instinct than of thought, and to attempt to teach religion to them by means of appealing to their reason is to disarm religion at once of all its potency. The preachers and missionaries who are best adapted to the peculiar conditions and needs of the colored people are the young men who have received an industrial education, who have been trained to manual labor, and have learned either farming or some mechanical art at such schools as the Normal and Agricultural Institute at Hampton, Virginia, or the other admirable institutions of learning fostered by the American Missionary Association and the churches of the South. Of course, this class is still very small, but it comprises some excellent men, whose influence is already widely felt in the South, and is a potent factor in the soundest and most hopeful religious work now going on there.
Educating the Negroes.
The foremost men in the Southern States—I mean those who are foremost in business, and in the social and moral life and activities of the local communities—are everywhere taking up the subject of education for the negroes in a serious and business-like spirit. I did not find anywhere, except in Southwestern Texas, any manifestation of prejudice against negro education, or feeling of jealousy regarding the advancement of the colored people in intelligence or capability of self-elevation.
Many of the Southern people appear to me to be rather sanguine and extravagant in their expectations regarding the results of popular intellectual enlightenment. They talk very much as Horace Mann and his fellow-laborers talked, when they were beginning the intellectual revival which led to the establishment of the New England public-school system. They will of course find, as has been shown in the Northern States, that even after the public schools have educated the mass of the people, other problems of a serious nature remain.
NEGRO PRAYER MEETING.
A Class with No Friends.
The negroes are being educated more rapidly, in large portions of the South, than are the people known as “poor whites,” More interest is felt and greater efforts are made in behalf of the negroes than for this class of white people. The negro has the advantage of being in the world’s eye and mind. He is somewhat picturesque, and occupies a position of historic interest. He has powerful friends. The poor whites have no friends: there is no picturesqueness, no historic interest, connected with their situation. The leading white men of the Southern States, democrats, seem to me to feel a more kindly interest in the negroes than in this class of poor people of their own race. They know much more about them. Greater effort is likely to be made, for a long time to come, for the education and improvement of the negroes than for the advancement of the poor whites; and yet the class is not at all so degraded or so worthless as is popularly believed. These people are primitive in character, and in the conditions and methods of their life, but they are not degraded. There is, however, great danger that many of them will be debased under the changed conditions of the new order of things in the South. No other class in that portion of our country is so little understood, or would better repay careful study. It is highly important that the attention of thoughtful, philanthropic and patriotic men, both North and South, should be directed to their position and probable tendencies in relation to the new life of the country in which they live. In blood and inherited qualities they are not, generally, vicious or low. But they have no friends, no sympathy, either North or South.
Mixed Schools for the Two Races.
There is one important feature or division of the subject of education in the Southern States which I have not yet brought forward in these studies; that is, the question of separate or mixed schools for the two races. The sentiment, feeling and judgment of the Southern people are at present strongly and almost universally opposed to the idea of educating white and black children, or young people, in the same schools. But a change in this matter is already in progress. After attentively studying the subject everywhere, I am convinced that there will soon be mixed schools, for white and colored children, in many parts of the South. There are already a few such schools, and the effect of considerations of convenience, cheapness and practical efficiency are likely, I think, to cause a rapid increase in their number. I look for a decided revolution in Southern thought and feeling within twenty years in regard to this subject. A few of the most intelligent and far-seeing among Southern leaders—some of the foremost “Bourbons”—say that mixed schools are “sure to come,” and they are not disturbed by the prospect.
Educational Work of the A. M. A.
The educational work already accomplished in the South by the American Missionary Association is of a high character, and it deserves all possible recognition and assistance. The best Southern people everywhere spoke of it gratefully and enthusiastically. At the Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Virginia; Talladega College, in Alabama; Tougaloo University, Mississippi; Tillotson Normal School, Austin, Texas; and at several other colleges and normal schools which I saw, though the money endowments are scanty compared with the amounts which are needed, the endowments in personal qualities and character, as represented by the teachers, are of a remarkably high order. This is necessary, for the work of educating the colored people of the South requires the best teachers that can be obtained.
In many of these institutions the boys learn something of various trades or mechanical operations, and of farming, and the girls are taught sewing, cooking, and the care of a house. I examined a great number of the negro common and high schools, which are taught by graduates and students of the colleges and normal schools which I have named, and I think it wonderful that so many of these negro teachers are successful. They have to struggle against many disadvantages, but nearly all whom I saw had the confidence and respect of the leading white citizens where they were at work. There were a few fools among them, of course, but a great majority appeared to be serious and sensible young men and women.