THE GLENN BILL IN THE GEORGIA LEGISLATURE.
This infamous bill was passed by the lower house of the Georgia Legislature by a vote of 128 (all white) to 2 (colored), the only colored men in the house. The only speech made in favor of the bill was by Glenn, its author. The two colored men were the only ones to speak against it.
TEXT OF THE BILL.
A bill to be entitled, An Act to regulate the manner of conducting educational institutions in this State and to protect the rights of colored and white people and to provide penalties for the violation of the provisions of this act and for other purposes.
Sec. 1.—Be it enacted that from and after the passage of this act no school, college or educational institution in this State conducted for the education and training of colored people shall matriculate or receive as a pupil any white person, nor shall any school, college or educational institution conducted for the training of white receive or matriculate any colored person as pupil, nor shall any school, college or educational institution receive or matriculate both white and colored persons.
Sec. 2.—Be it further enacted that any teacher or manager or controller of either of such institutions violating the provisions of this act shall be punished as prescribed in section 4,310 of the Code. If such institution be a chartered one, then not only the teachers thereof but the president, secretary and members of the board of trustees, or other persons filling corresponding offices, who shall knowingly permit the same to be violated, shall be subject to indictment and punishment as aforesaid.
Sec. 3.—Be it enacted that all laws and parts of laws in conflict with, this act be, and the same are, hereby repealed.
Section 4,310 of the Code is as follows:—
Accessories after the fact, except where it is otherwise ordered in this Code, shall be punished by a fine not to exceed $1,000, imprisonment not to exceed six months, to work in a chain-gang on the public works not to exceed twelve months, and any one or more of these punishments may be ordered in the discretion of the judge.
WHY THE BILL WAS INTRODUCED.
A correspondent of the New York Tribune, states the case as follows:
“The bill is aimed against Atlanta University. But the University is not the cause of it. It is merely the occasion. The cause is the wicked anti-Christian caste-spirit among the white people of the State. To understand the situation a few facts need to be stated:
“In 1867 the American Missionary Association secured a charter for the Atlanta University, and founded that institution for the education of colored youth. But the well-known principles of the Association, admitting no distinctions on the ground of color, forbade the closing of its doors to any worthy student who might apply for admission. The money to start that school, buy the grounds, erect the buildings, furnish them, and make improvements, was all contributed by benevolent people at the North. Into the grounds and buildings as they stand to-day there have been put something over $150,000—every cent of it contributed by friends in the North. In addition to this, Northern contributors have given toward the running expenses of the institution on an average since 1867 about $10,000 a year. That is to say, Christian people at the North have given the State of Georgia to help educate her children in this one institution something over $350,000! But the money is by far the smallest part of the contribution. The culture, piety, noble character and consecration of the teachers, graduates of Northern colleges and normal schools, have made the Atlanta University a model school to imitate and a constant inspiration to the development of the educational interest of the State. There have been, however, for several years past, a few white pupils in the school. These were the children of the professors and in one instance a child of a missionary of the American Missionary Association. The reasons for the presence of these white pupils were three: (1) The principles on which the institution was founded; (2) The fact that there was no school in Atlanta where the children could receive as thorough training and discipline, and (3) The sentiment of the people against “nigger teachers” was such that to send the children to the white schools would have been to subject them to ostracism and insult. If it were not for the first two reasons, the last would not count for much. Ostracism and insult are the condemnation of those who inflict; the honor of those who suffer.
“But the answer is not yet complete. In the distribution of a national grant of public lands for education in the several States made by Congress in 1862, under the lead of Senator Morrill, of Vermont, Georgia received 270,000 scrip, the interest on which amounts to something over $16,000 a year. And what did the State of Georgia do with it? Appropriated it to its white State University at Athens. With nearly one-half of its population colored, it took the Nation’s gift for the benefit of the whole State and put it where the colored people could have no share in it whatever. Somebody discovered that this was clearly a misappropriation of funds, and that if the United States Congress should learn of it there would probably be ‘music in the air’ of a kind Georgia would not like to hear, and so the State Legislature ‘generously’ voted that it would appropriate $8,000 a year for the education of colored youth in the State! And this money, the gift of the United States to Georgia, was always spoken of as a State appropriation and quoted as an evidence of the wonderful interest the State takes in negro education. But what would $8,000 a year accomplish for the training of teachers to supply the wants of the 725,000 colored people in Georgia? How far would it go in the purchase of grounds, erection and equipment of buildings and the salaries of teachers? It is simply laughable to ask the question. But here was an institution at hand, grounds, buildings, equipments, teachers, everything in operation. Having been placed by the American Missionary Association in the hands of its own Board of Trustees and being undenominational and unsectarian in all respects, why not appropriate the money to this school? The State Legislature appointed a committee to look into the matter. The committee visited the school, were profoundly impressed with its excellence, and unanimously reported in favor of having the appropriation go to the school. Every year since then the appropriation of that $8,000 has gone to the University. Every year since then the reports of the State Examiners have been highly eulogistic. They have admitted, often with astonishment, the splendid educational work done there. The admission was forced that this was, on the whole, the best school in the State. The contrast between the discipline and training in it, and that found in the white State University, was too great not to be noticed.
“But this year the Examiners discovered that there were a few white children, the children of the professors, and the child of the missionary already referred to, in the school, and they have become righteously indignant over their presence. The money, say they, was given exclusively for the education of colored pupils, and behold, some white pupils are receiving benefit from it! Besides it is co-education of the races, and that the State of Georgia will not tolerate! It will introduce ‘Social Equality’ and ‘Miscegenation,’ and ‘Miscegenation of Ideas!’ And these are the reasons why this bill has been brought forward. Strange that they were not discovered before, for they have all been in existence ever since the appropriation was first made, and they were known to be existing by every State committee that has visited the school.”
The Reasons are only Pretenses.
A correspondent in the Advance handles these reasons as follows:
“1. As to ‘misappropriation.’ The last Legislative committee noticed, with feigned horror, that there were among the students in the Atlanta University three or four of the children of the professors, who recited in Geometry, Greek, Latin, etc., in the same classes with colored pupils. But while the Atlanta University receives $8,000 a year from the State, it receives $19,000 a year from Northern sources. When a mal-administrator wishes to save his mal-administration from coming under legal courts, it is an interesting spectacle to see him pose, on the point of honor, crying out, ‘Misappropriation!’ to the men who not only administer every dollar to the purpose for which it was given, but add to every dollar two dollars more, kindly given them by benevolent friends for that purpose! Misappropriation, indeed!
“2. ‘Social Equality.’ There is no such thing, as the Southerners define it, outside their own imaginations. It is the biggest bugbear that ever frightened respectable minds. If it be a fact that God has made of one blood all mankind, and that Jesus Christ is our common Elder Brother, and we all are, or may be, the children of God, then this caste-mania, which dominates the Southern mind so like an unclean spirit, is something as idiotic as it is unchristian.
“3. ‘Miscegenation.’ It is time, we admit, that Georgia wake up to this evil. She ought to have wakened to it more than a hundred years ago. Atlanta University is not the offender. Had the principles of that school always been regnant in Georgia, there never would have been the evil. Georgians themselves are the sinners. Their witnesses walk before them and are seen every day. A hundred thousand light-colored negroes in Georgia proclaim a hundred thousand white transgressions. It is high time Georgia awoke on the subject of miscegenation. A colored transgressor is quickly strung up to a tree. Why not hang the white transgressor? A few hundred ‘white’ hangings would wonderfully clear up the moral atmosphere down there and get things in good shape for a thorough-going, anti-miscegenation law. Now that Georgia forces herself under the gaze of the civilized world through this action of her Legislature, the decent opinion of mankind calls on them to put a stop to this wickedness within her borders. Make every colored woman who gives birth to a light-colored child disclose the father, and then hang him. Enforce this law as faithfully against the offender of one color as the offender of the other. It is always well to shoot in the direction of the game.
“4. ‘Miscegenation of Ideas.’ The sagacious patriots of the Georgia Legislature speak of ‘miscegenation of ideas’ as something particularly horrible; something almost as bad as the other kind. What they mean by this they do not explain; should they attempt to explain it, all the world outside the white South would laugh them to scorn. They will themselves live to grow ashamed of it. It is too stupid to awaken any mirth, too ridiculous for sober answer, too essentially mean in the spirit and motive of it for anything but contempt and pity. That such a measure as this chain-gang law for Christian teachers could be received with such favor in a State like Georgia, is one of the most dismal signs of the time, or rather signs of the place, that has come to light during the past ten years. But it will fail; yet the curse and stigma of it will long remain to plague those in that State who have any moral sensibility left.
“At the bottom of this miserable and cruel caste-prejudice is jealousy—jealousy of the rising colored man.”
THE CHAIN-GANG.
It is a singular coincidence that this very Legislature, whose lower house has passed this bill to punish Christian teachers for allowing their own children to recite with colored children in the class-room by putting them into the chain-gang, is by a committee investigating the State penitentiary system, pronounced by competent prison reformers to be “perhaps the vilest on earth.” There are some good people in Georgia who want to see the barbarous system exposed and abolished. On the other hand, the supporters of the system are numerous and influential. The Georgia papers do not have much to say about this subject, and probably for the same reason that Russia don’t want the civilized world to know about what is going on in Siberia. The people are afraid to have their deeds of darkness brought to the light, but they are not all silent.
An Atlanta correspondent of the New York World, writing under date of July 22d, describes the system as follows:
“The convicts of Georgia, numbering about sixteen hundred, the negroes largely predominating over the whites, are confined in no regular penitentiary. They are worked under State direction and control, but are divided into three companies, known as “Penitentiary Company No. 1,” etc. These companies take all the convicts under a twenty years’ lease, the good, bad and indifferent. The Lease Act originally prescribed certain work that these convicts should do, the intention being to so regulate their employment as to prevent them from being brought into competition with free labor. Now, however, there is no class of work that the convicts are not called upon to do. They work on railroads and in coal mines; they cut pine timber for the saw mills; they are employed about the mills in those places where skilled workmen are generally employed; they make brick; they operate iron furnaces; they constitute the labor in various manufactories; they work upon plantations, and in every possible way they compete in every industry with free labor.
“The lessees of the convicts change from time to time, men selling their interest in the lease just as they would dispose of their property in anything else. The lessees to-day are not wholly and entirely the same lessees as operated the system at the beginning. Senator Joseph E. Brown is one of the few original lessees who still holds his interests. The changes have been many and various, and so are the stories of outrages. Several years ago children began to make their appearance in the penitentiary, not because of any due process of law, but because of shocking immoralities on the part of lessees and their subordinates. In one camp where the principal lessee was a man named Alexander, since dead, these scandals mostly originated. It was a difficult thing to substantiate the charges, and the Legislature never made any investigation. There were no white women in the penitentiary in Georgia at the time, and perhaps the affair alluded to was not so shocking to public opinion as it would otherwise have been.
“To-day there is only one white woman in the penitentiary in this State. She is confined at the camp of the Chattahoochee Brick Company, Penitentiary Company No. 3, about six miles from this city. This poor woman, weak in intellect, untutored and unfamiliar with the wickedness of the camps, has to be locked up and kept in close confinement day and night, to prevent her being ruined. Since the Legislature has shown a disposition to look into these matters, the lessees of the camp at the brickyard have given the strictest orders about this woman. Her door is constantly locked and the key kept by the good wife of the principal boss, who allows no man to cross her threshold, ‘Great heavens!’ ejaculated a member of the House, when this circumstance was told him, ‘what sort of a system must this be when such measures have to be devised?’”
“The lessees at various camps have been from time to time charged with cruelty to their prisoners. A common charge has been working them on Sunday; so it is common to hear of whipping them to death for refusing to work on Sunday, or when they have been worn out with fatigue. The charge of favoritism is so well established and so generally admitted that it has ceased to be urged.
“The ‘Old Town Camp’ has a very bad reputation. Here most of the serious charges have been laid, and here it was proved that whipping-bosses positively whipped men to death.
“Another camp prolific of charges is that of State Senator Smith in Oglethorpe County. He has been accused of working convicts on Sunday, of shooting them down in cold blood, and an affair of honor is now pending between Smith and Principal Physician Westmoreland, of the penitentiary. Westmoreland accuses Smith of gross inhumanity to the poor creatures under his charge, and dares him, or rather invites him, to meet him on the field of honor for the various false accusations and scandal that Smith has made against him.”
Another Account.
Here is a part of the account which a reporter of the Augusta Chronicle gives of a convict camp, in Richmond County, which he has recently visited on a tour of investigation for his paper.
“Leaving the hospital the reporter went into a barn 80 by 20, divided into two compartments, and they divided by a 10 foot alley. The barn would not be given as a resting-place to a beast that is prized by its owner, as the rain or sun could easily gain admission through the top, and the openings in the sides so affected the house that it gave no protection from the weather. On looking into this place it was horrible to realize that a commonwealth like the State of Georgia would allow the offenders against her laws to be kept in so dirty and filthy a place as that in which the eighty convicts at the camp of the A. and K. Railroad are placed. Along the narrow aisles in the barn smouldering fires were burning, and on the beds sat the prisoners. All of the convicts were seen. They begged that their names would not be used, for they would be lashed if it were known that they told of the treatment. They state that Captain Starns uses the lash freely. Several testify that, overcome with the heat, they stopped to rest and were taken out and whipped. Attention was called to the cruel whipping of Chuck Cooper, a mulatto about twenty-five years old, who was quartered in the hospital. The reporter, without being noticed, repaired to the hospital, and, being assured that the guards were not near at hand, Chuck Cooper disrobed himself and showed huge scars left from the lash, the skin being badly lacerated. Returning to the barn the reporter inquired of Mr. Smith the cause of the filthy beds on which the convicts slept. They were caked in dirt and as black and as filthy as could be imagined. Mr. Smith, the guard, admitted that the blankets and bedding had not been washed for several months, although Mr. Shubrick had notified Captain Starns, and he had promised two months ago to have new straw put in the beds and have them washed. ‘It is seven months,’ Smith said, ‘since we left the brick-yard, and the bedding has not been touched since.’”
And this is the kind of place to which the Georgia Legislature is ready to send the trustees and teachers of Atlanta University!
WHAT THE PRESS HAS TO SAY.
The press North and South has been roused by the introduction of this bill as we have never known it to be before by the action of any State Legislature. In the North it is practically unanimous in condemnation, and for the most part in denunciation. Republican, Democratic and Independent papers are, in this instance, found united. They differ somewhat about the constitutional right of a State to pass such a bill, but they all unite in pronouncing the punishment attached to the Glenn Bill as “disgraceful,” “outrageous,” “infamous,” “wicked.” In the South the colored papers are all against the bill; the white papers, outside of Georgia, somewhat divided, but in the main, so far as we can learn, for the bill. In Georgia the white papers are for it. Were the editorials on this subject by the press of the United States compiled and published they would fill several large volumes. We quote from as many as our space allows:
THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE.
When Mr. Grady made his glowing speech last winter to the Sons of New England at Delmonico’s assembled, he probably did not imagine that such a delightful illustration of the paternal solicitude which the whites feel for the blacks in the Empire State of the South was in store for us. What a pity he was not aware of the boon in preparation! What sweet flowers of rhetoric he would have twined around it! It would have made his nomination for the Vice-Presidency certain.
It is possible that when the facts are known public sentiment will make it appear advisable to drop this cheerful measure, but we are assured upon excellent authority that at the present moment the Georgia Legislature is disposed to pass it; and, moreover, that Governor Gordon’s approval of a recent report connected with the subject indicates a willingness on his part to sign it. Many interesting points are involved in the introduction of this measure, including its constitutionality, and it is safe to say that they will all be discussed with considerable animation before it takes its place on the statute-book.
THE NEW YORK TIMES.
It is very hard to understand the animus of the recent attempts to cripple or destroy this noble school (Atlanta University) by Gov. Gordon and his followers. They have threatened to take away the $8,000 a year of United States money, and a bill is before the Legislature and has been reported favorably from committee to punish with a year of the infamous chain-gang of Georgia and with a fine of $1,000 the crime of some of the white teachers in allowing their own children to enter the classes they instruct. This has been a characteristic feature of the school, and one that has contributed materially to its phenomenal success in putting and keeping the negroes on their best behavior. If some of the most intelligent and refined white people are willing to face the bitter ostracism of the South and work for their benefit to the utmost limit of their strength—and sometimes, as in the case of the late lamented President Ware, far beyond it—and besides all this put their own children into the same classes with them, the negroes must indeed be vile and thankless if it did not stimulate all that is good and repress all that is bad in them.
It is certain that the sort of people sent out by the American Missionary Association will not be deterred by ruffianism of this sort from doing what they believe Christian duty requires. What object Gov. Gordon and his abettors—and it looks very much as if the silver-tongued Grady is among them—can have in stirring up sectional bitterness in this way it is hard to see. But the fact that such an outrage should be even proposed is evidence that the awful lesson of the war as to the impolicy of treating men and women as if they were mere animals has not yet been learned by some who boast that they belong to the new South. That it can be helpful to industrial development and render a residence in Georgia inviting to the most desirable Northern people no one who knows the facts can believe.
THE NEW YORK HERALD.
The Glenn Bill, which passed the Georgia House of Representatives, has caused a great deal of hot-tempered discussion. The constitution of the State is opposed to the co-education of black and white children. All right. The people of Georgia are on the ground and ought to know what is for their best interest. If they see fit to afford educational facilities to colored children in one school and the same facilities for white children in another school, well and good. And if they decree that white teachers shall teach white children and colored teachers shall teach colored children, nobody will shrug his shoulders. The object, which is to offer a good common-school education to every child in the State, will be attained.
To enact a law, however, that the white teacher who admits to his class a colored boy or girl shall be punished in the chain-gang for a period of twelve months, as related elsewhere, is decidedly drastic. That seems to be a pretty heavy penalty for a rather light offence. With a strong public opinion opposed to co-education, such a desperate resort would seem to be hardly necessary.
Colonel Glenn probably had some motive in the introduction of the bill which is not visible to the naked eye. At any rate, he committed a grave blunder, which in this case is almost equal to a crime. The bill has gone to the Senate and will be smothered there.
THE NEW YORK EVENING POST.
There is something very peculiar about the presentation of a bill in the Georgia Legislature, making it a misdemeanor, punishable with a fine of $1,000 and the chain-gang for one year, for any teacher or trustee of any public or private school in the State to allow any white pupils to attend a colored school, or any colored pupils to attend a white school.
Georgia, like every other Southern State, and like many Northern States until recent years, has always maintained separate schools for the two races. The Constitution provides for “a thorough system of common schools,” which “shall be free to all citizens of the State, but separate schools shall be provided for the white and colored races.” The wisdom of this policy, in the present condition of public sentiment on the race question throughout the South, is not doubted by any intelligent man at the North. Public education could never have been established if the attempt had been made by force to bring the two races into the same school-room, and it would be overthrown in a moment if mixed schools were to be ordered now. The legality and the advisability of separate school systems are, therefore, not to be questioned. But it is one thing to provide that the races shall not mix in schools supported by public taxation, and quite another thing to declare that no school, however supported, shall teach whites and blacks together without subjecting everybody responsible for this policy to the risk of a year in the chain-gang. This is an outrage of the very worst sort, for which no defense that is even plausible has been made or can be made. It is simply an outburst of race prejudice in its most offensive form.
The odd feature of the incident is that it occurs in Georgia, which is in many respects one of the most progressive States of the South, while Kentucky, which is in many respects one of the most backward, has already conquered this silly prejudice. When Berea College in Kentucky opened its doors to whites and blacks alike, there was bitter local opposition, which went beyond hard words, and it was as much as a man’s life was worth, politically speaking, for him to show the slightest favor to the institution. But as the years passed and none of the threatened evils came to pass, Kentuckians gradually concluded that they had been worrying themselves unnecessarily, and at last a progressive Democrat was ready to take a part in its anniversary exercises, as Judge Beckner did two years ago. “Already in Kentucky,” says Prof. Wright of the College, in his article on “Southern Illiteracy” in the last Bibliotheca Sacra, “the former detestation of Berea has so far yielded that Democratic aspirants for the Governorship speak on its commencement platform.” No member of the Kentucky Legislature in the year 1887 would venture to suggest the chain-gang for teachers in a school which admitted pupils of both races, and it is most anomalous to find the proposition seriously urged in Georgia.
THE NEW YORK WORLD.
Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, the well-known Southern Methodist preacher, who is now the manager of the Slater Fund, declares himself opposed to the Educational bill of William C. Glenn. He says the bill is unwise because it is unnecessary. People vote for such bills not because they favor them, but because they fear being charged with a leaning towards social equality. He thanks God that he knows the white teachers whose children attend the negro college, and he honors them fully as much as he does his own sister, who is now engaged in missionary work in China. There are only fourteen white children in colored schools, and Georgia has no reason to be scared. He winds up by saying: “There is a law in Georgia against intermarriage, a law more violated, ten to one, if not in the letter in the reality and spirit of it, than the law against mixed schools. If now the Legislature will give us a law placing the parents of mulatto children in the chain-gang it would be worth while.”
HARPER’S WEEKLY.
Such leaders as this school provides for their race cannot be trained elsewhere in the State. The maintenance of the University in full vigor is therefore for every reason, for the common interest of the 817,000 white and of the 726,000 colored citizens, one of the most vitally desirable objects in the State. The proposition to send the teachers and managers to the chain-gang unless they expel their own children from their schools is preposterous. The good sense of the State should prevent the further prosecution of the scheme. Every sensible citizen of Georgia would admit that nothing could be more unwise than to stimulate hostility of race in the same population by means of penal laws. Each race in Georgia undoubtedly prefers separate schools for the present, but to punish and disgrace the few persons who are indifferent to the separation, and by that course to retard the indispensable education of half the population, would be an unspeakable folly.
THE JERSEY CITY EVENING JOURNAL.
In Georgia there is still existing, as we read, a dread that white people may be forced into miscegenation with negroes in spite of themselves. The Georgian ought to know himself, and it is droll to hear him pleading that some one will save him from “marrying a nigger,” in spite of himself. The principal objection to public or private schools, in which the two races should be together, is that this would lead to intermarriages of the races. Under pressure of this argument, the Georgia House of Assembly has passed the bill making the teaching of colored persons by white persons a penal offence. A State law already forbids mixed public schools. The new law is intended to prohibit white persons from teaching colored persons in Sunday-schools and private educational institutions. The condition of the Georgia white, liable at any moment to run off and marry a negro, is indeed lamentable. And, joking aside, does not such a state of things show how completely uncured, how woefully unreconstructed are the average ex-rebel, ex-slaveholding people of Georgia? Such a state of things as this proves, that wise were those men who years ago urged that only territorial government should be given to the States just conquered from rebellion, and that they should so remain governed until time sufficient should have elapsed to eradicate all traces of the old semi-barbaric habits of their people. A community which adopts such a law as that mentioned is decidedly unfit to bear a State’s part in the general Government of the Republic.
THE SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN.
The Glenn Bill in the Georgia Legislature, to impose a penalty commensurate with a felony upon the teaching of persons of the two races in any public or private school in the State, is an outburst of barbaric sentiment which will do a vast deal of harm. We may as well say at the outset that we do not favor co-education of the races at the South, so long as the people there do not want it. In Massachusetts, white and black children attend the same school, and are treated just the same. If half or more of our population were colored, we do not doubt it would be a different question, but we do not see that the mingling of youth at school produces any social mixing, or mixture of races. At the South, where there is a large body of each race, separate schools and institutions are well enough, but separate streets, railroad cars, ferry-boats and other public utilities would be a ridiculous and uncalled-for extension of the effort to separate the races.
While a State may plainly indicate its policy by providing separate schools for the two races, and assigning the colored youth to one and the white to the other, to make it a felony for any person to teach youth of different races together, is essentially barbarous, more barbarous than Turkey.
The great Southern excuse for such doings is that the social intercourse of the races is against nature. Very well; if it is against nature, let nature take care of the problem. But the bald and naked fact is that while the South is dreadfully sensitive about the appearance of the two races in the same parlor, or school-room, or opera house, or in the same Episcopal Convention, it is profoundly indifferent to their association together immorally.
Now if the State of Georgia proposes to condemn the Northern men who have gone there to teach, to the chain-gang, for instructing their own children in the classes, it will be guilty of a ridiculous display of race feeling and petty insularity, of a fine exhibition of ingratitude, and of a political blunder of some magnitude. We trust Gov. Gordon, who has been about the world a little, may be able to view this matter in a broader light than the backwoods members of the Legislature.
THE BOSTON EVENING TRAVELLER.
It is possible that the aroused public sentiment of the nation may force the Legislature to drop this shameful, barbarous measure, but nothing short of this will. This is the Empire State of the South—the New South which Editor Grady so eloquently described last Forefathers’ Day in New York, about which so much gush and sentiment have been spoken and written. The question cannot help suggesting itself, whether a little less of boastful sentiment and a little more of civilized humanity would not become the much-talked-of New South.
THE PHILADELPHIA PRESS.
Whether the prejudice against mixed schools is justified or not, the attempt to enforce such penalties as those prescribed in the Glenn Bill, and which are aimed especially against the Atlanta University, would arouse a whirlwind of wrath that even the Southern whites in their stolid indifference to public opinion could not withstand. No white children, except those belonging to the professors in the University, have been taught with the colored pupils. One of the professors writes to the Springfield Republican as follows: “I have taught twelve years in the Atlanta University. The Glenn Bill will cut off my four children and those of the other white teachers from their best educational opportunity in Georgia—in fact, as matters now stand, practically from their only opportunity.” As the funds for founding this institution were given by Northern whites, and as most of the money for sustaining it is derived from the same source, it would seem wise to permit the Northern white teachers some discretion in conducting the enterprise.
According to the census of 1880, Georgia had 446,683 persons over ten years of age who could not read, and 128,934 whites over ten who could not write. With such a discouraging mass of ignorance, it would be supposed that the State would gladly welcome any educational assistance. And yet, judging from this Glenn Bill and the burning of the school at Quitman, the people appear to be more anxious to increase than to lessen the amount of ignorance in the State.
THE CHICAGO INTER-OCEAN.
So vicious a bill deserved a stupid and degrading defense, and it got it. Mr. Glenn says that the bill is passed to prevent the “evident desire of the negroes for marriage with the whites.” Great heavens! And has it come to this? Is this all that your “Southern refinement,” your “years of chivalrous tradition,” and all the rest of the antiquated rot which you dignify by the style and title of “Southern sentiment” has been able to accomplish? Has race pride so thoroughly died out among the young men and women of the South as to force the elders to guard them, by threats of prisons and chain-gangs, from that certain intermarriage of white and black which would follow co-education? Debased, indeed, would be the condition of the South if this were true.
But it is not true. In Chicago and in every other large city of the North, white and colored children attend the same schools, but white and colored do not marry each other. Nor would they in the South, though the race feeling has been lowered as it never was in the North, by frequent and undisguised concubinage of the colored woman to the white man. Savannah shows more children of white paternity from “mothers who were never wed” than Chicago. If half the zeal were shown for the suppression of illegitimate unions between the races of the South as for that of the very few possible legitimate ones, both morality and health would improve. But it is a waste of words to argue upon Mr. Glenn’s proposition. He does not fear a general system of intermarriage. It has happened nowhere. It never will happen anywhere. If it did, it would be preferable to a general practice of illegitimate commerce. * * *
The reports of the educational work and discipline of the Atlanta University, by the State examiners, have invariably been accompanied with the very highest commendation. The comparison between the discipline of the Atlanta University and that of the Athens University has been greatly to the disparagement of the latter in almost every respect. This has exasperated the authorities of the Athens University, and set the newspapers of the State abusing the Commissioners for making such invidious comparisons with the negro school. Whereupon the committee were set to hedge, in order to reinstate themselves in favor. It is at last discovered, what has been open to everyone for a dozen years, that there were in the Atlanta University perhaps half a dozen white children, children of the professors, reciting in the classes along with the 350 colored scholars. This fact was reported to Governor Gordon forthwith. Governor Gordon makes haste to send a special message to the Legislature. The young aspirant for notoriety, Mr. Glenn, jumps at the chance for getting glory from introducing his bill. The rapidity with which he got it through and the unanimous white vote in the House, shows the state of public sentiment. Next week the attempt will be made to rush it through the Senate. And all this, not because of the presence of the professors’ children, but in retaliation for the impudence on the part of the professors and students of Atlanta University in allowing colored youths to behave and do so much better than pupils of the other race in Athens University. These are the facts, facts which nobody in Georgia will deny.
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE.
The infamous Glenn Education Bill, making it a crime to teach a white child in a colored school or a colored child in a white school, has passed the Lower House of the Georgia Legislature. It goes without saying that it will pass the Senate and be signed by the Governor. Practically the law will only operate against Atlanta University, which has seven white scholars on its roll, the children of professors in the institution who cannot be educated elsewhere in the State without insult and ostracism because they are the children of “nigger teachers.” Little hope can be had that the law will be defeated. That it will be executed with vindictive severity goes without saying also, and, as the penalty of the chain-gang is the maximum, it is not improbable that these white Christian teachers, if they persist in their duty, will be fettered by the side of convicts and subjected to the treatment which, upon the authority of its own grand juries, has made the chain-gang system of Georgia a reproach to common humanity and decency. And this is the New South over which Grady bloviated so pathetically! Is there no progress, no shame, in that section?
THE CHICAGO CONSERVATOR; (COLORED.)
The Glenn Bill has passed the House and awaits action equally certain and deplorable in the Senate. The Governor will sign it and thus consummate the most barbarous piece of legislation known since the Fugitive Slave Law. There are those who have perfect faith in the liberality, intelligence and justice of the New South. To them the Glenn Bill is a revelation. Having hailed the silver-tongued Grady as a leader of a higher civilization, they are loth to believe that the very State he represents is the first to stain its statutes with so unholy a law.
But it is there, boastful, brazen, and hideous in deformity. The wheels of progress are stopped and justice is appalled while the New South brands the missionary a felon and persecutes God’s noble men and women for daring to do right. But the curse remains. Poisoned by prejudice, reeking with injustice, dead to shame, and insensible to dishonor, the State of Georgia will push on in its reckless course, indifferent alike to reproof and counsel.
But it will not last long. The reign of injustice is sure to fail. Though much suffering may be endured to-day, still the time will come when Georgia will ask to blot from the book a law so inhuman and vile. Under the circumstances the colored race can do nothing to avert the evils of the iniquitous law. It has suffered much in the past and can suffer still more in the firm assurance that justice will ultimately assert itself and right will finally triumph over wrong.
THE CONGREGATIONALIST.
The bill has been framed adroitly. By providing for the colored race and for the white precisely the same educational advantages, making no discrimination whatever, it is attempted to evade those provisions of the national Constitution which would be infringed by the least effort to deprive either whites or blacks of any educational facilities supplied to the other race. But the bill is so drawn that it neutralizes the operation of this principle of equality. Whites and blacks will not be on the equal footing plainly intended by the Constitution unless they possess in law every privilege granted them in the other States, among which is that of studying in the same schools. Should this matter be carried to the United States Supreme Court—as we have no doubt that it will be, if necessary—there can be little question but that the bill will be pronounced unconstitutional. However this may be, it is too silly and unjust a measure ever to win the respect of judicious and honorable people, in any part of our country.
It is not improbable, and is greatly to be hoped, that as soon as the real nature of this bill becomes understood generally, an opposition to it will spring up, perhaps even in Georgia, which will put a quietus upon it once for all. If the bill pass, Georgia certainly will have taken a long and significant step back towards the dark ages, and business capital, as well as modern ideas, will give such a State the cold shoulder for years to come. Moreover, if any attempt should be made to enforce the law contained in the bill, there will be such a stir throughout the whole country as is not often witnessed.
THE CHICAGO ADVANCE.
Such a law and the execution of it is no new thing in that State. Nor is the application of it to missionary workers anything new in Georgia. Among the Cherokees in the northern part of the State the American Board had a mission planted so early as 1815, and this by 1831 had brought the people on to a large degree of Christian civilization, so that they had schools and churches and were living, as an old army officer told our informant, in a more enlightened way than the white “crackers” around them. But Georgia wanted their lands for the toil of slaves. Of course a sham treaty was the first step. The next was a law passed by the Legislature requiring all white men residing on the Cherokee lands to take the oath of allegiance to the State of Georgia, and get a license from the Governor under penalty, if found there after the first of March, 1831, of penitentiary imprisonment at hard labor, not less than four years. The missionaries, well knowing that this was in open conflict with their rights, under the constitution, laws and treaties of the United States, remained at their post. Rev. S. A. Worcester, D.D., and Dr. Butler, of the American Board Mission, Rev. Mr. Trott, a Methodist Missionary, and a Cherokee named Proctor, and seven others, mostly teachers, were arrested. The latter was for two nights chained by the neck to the wall of the house and by the ankle to Mr. Trott, and was marched two days chained by the neck to a wagon; and Dr. Butler was marched also with a chain about his neck, and part of the time in pitch darkness, with the chain fastened to the neck of a horse. After eleven days’ confinement in a filthy log prison, Judge Clayton sentenced Worcester and Butler to four years of hard labor in prison. To prison they were taken and set at hard labor. A memorial was sent to Andrew Jackson. He replied by Secretary-of-War Lewis Cass that the laws of Georgia had rendered the laws of Congress “inoperative,” and he had no power to interfere. Old Hickory, who could swear by the Eternal that South Carolina should not nullify in a matter of tariff, when slavery lifted its behest, had to succumb! The case was then carried to the Supreme Court of the United States, Chief Justice Marshall presiding, and rendering the decision which reversed and annulled the State action, and ordered the discharge of the prisoners. Here then came in Georgia’s great act of nullification. It refused to obey, and Gen. Jackson said, “Marshall may enforce his decision for himself.” Georgia had her way, awaiting the army of Sherman.
For sixteen months those godly missionaries languished in prison at hard labor. They refused to accept of pardon before they were incarcerated, on condition that they would never again reside in the Cherokee country. And when they came out they went back there to live.
We mention these facts to show to the Governor and Legislature of that State what manner of people are these, whom they propose, in a repetition of history, to thrust into the same filthy prison and chain-gang, which all the world is coming to recognize as one of Georgia’s relics of barbarism.
THE CHRISTIAN UNION.
If this bill becomes a law, it will be possible to punish a professor in the Atlanta University who chooses to teach his own child in the class-room of the University, by making him the associate of thieves and outlaws in the chain-gang for a year. This is simply monstrous, and, in spite of the practically unanimous vote of the lower branch of the Legislature, we do not believe that the intelligent people of Georgia favor any such infamous measure. If they do, then the curse of ignorance and barbarism which once blighted and limited the intellectual and the moral life of the South has not yet been thrown off by that State. The Christian Union, believing heartily in the Christian principle of putting behind the things that are past, has used, and will use, all its influence to soften sectional differences, to destroy sectional hatred, and to make in fact as in name one nation of a people who have shown by their unparalleled sacrifices the vigor and the purity of their patriotism. Those who strive to revive the bitter memories of the past, and to make issues now settled capital for success, the Christian Union has opposed and will oppose to the utmost of its ability; regarding all such men, whether Republicans or Democrats, as either too ignorant to be followed or too selfish to be trusted. But the adoption of such a measure as the bill now pending before the Georgia Legislature will set back the movement toward unity a decade, will put into the hands of selfish politicians in the North the strongest possible weapons against the South, and will discourage and cast down all intelligent and sober-minded lovers of their country. The people of Georgia have shown too much intelligence and good spirit to destroy the influence which they are rapidly acquiring in national affairs and to disgrace a record which, as a whole, has been admirable; we cannot believe they will do it. The South does not yet understand the inestimable service which the North rendered it in its hour of defeat by at once setting in motion educational agencies among the negroes. If now, in the face of such a service as this, rendered in the utmost unselfishness and sustained by the greatest generosity, the great State of Georgia shall lend its name to such a piece of barbarism as the Glenn Bill, it will be guilty of a piece of ingratitude almost without parallel. We refuse to believe that this bill represents the sentiment of the State.
THE NEW YORK OBSERVER.
We regard the Glenn bill as the most extraordinary manifestation of race feeling which has been made in any part of this country in many years. We are surprised at it because we believed that the State of Georgia, as well as other sections of the South, had long since passed the stage when a law like this could be thought of seriously, either as a necessity or as a matter of policy. The bill seems to us to be entirely retrogressive in its action and in the highest degree impolitic. It is an industrious attempt to make a mountain out of a mole-hill. We observe that several Georgia papers, the Atlanta Constitution among the rest, favor the proposed law on the ground that it obviates the danger arising from a mixture of the races. Now, we are not in favor of a mixture of the races, neither do we question the wisdom of the existing law of Georgia, which provides separate schools for colored and white children, but we do deprecate the attempt to incorporate in the statutes of any State such a drastic and offensive measure as the Glenn Bill. Even if such a danger existed as that named in the Constitution the proposed law would not help the matter one iota. It will not have the slightest influence on the question of social equality one way or the other. So far as it affects the future of the race question a more short-sighted, blundering, puerile piece of legislation could not be conceived. The bill ought to be “smothered” out of sight at once and forever.
THE CENTRAL CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE.
This bill is a low grade of revenge, unworthy of the legislators of a free people. The colored people are making the greatest sacrifices to obtain education, and by the generosity of their Northern friends, who have established a number of first-class schools for them in the South, they are making rapid advancement. They are making more rapid progress relatively than the whites. And, strange to say, these efforts to elevate their condition have created alarm, and the cry of social equality has been raised. Intelligent people in the South appear to be overwhelmed with the fear that if the Negroes are accorded the equal rights to which citizenship entitles them, that Southern white men and women will become so eager to marry them that they must be prevented by law.
Certainly this suspicion is unworthy of the people who harbor it. We know that in the old slavery times there was a deplorable amount of inter-racial association and licentiousness in the South. Nearly every plantation and negro quarters furnished proof of it. But we believe that the education of the negro will promote morality, and help to remove the evil. At all events, in a Government like ours, in which all citizens have equal rights, social standing cannot be regulated by law.
THE NEW YORK CHRISTIAN INTELLIGENCER.
It is reported that the galleries and lobbies were filled with a fashionable audience, interested in the passage of the measure. It reminds one of pagan civilization, when Roman ladies attended gladiatorial combats and mercilessly ordered death to the vanquished. It is also reported that Mr. Glenn, the originator of the bill, posed as the champion of this measure, with a button-hole bouquet presented him by his lady admirers. We bespeak for his efforts at fame the frail character of the bouquet. Already it is said that efforts are being made to pigeon-hole the bill in the Senate. The stupidity of the bill is manifest in the argument of its author, that co-education meant ultimate inter-marriage. If the adherents of this bill were as solicitous of their brains as they are of their blood, the matter of co-education would be rightly settled. We are told that Mr. Glenn is a young man who covets a reputation for statesmanship. We fear that this production of his prejudice will blast his budding hopes. He seems to be one born out of due time, about twenty-five years behind. The fifty prominent members who were conveniently absent indicates a conflict between principle and prejudice, or, if not principle, at least good politics and prejudice.
THE ST. LOUIS EVANGELIST.
It is a measure designed to legalize the color line, and notwithstanding the guarantees of the national constitution, to re-construct the old caste régime by a tentative process. This burning question of the old prejudice ought to have been settled so far as individual rights are concerned long ago, but there seems to be an ill-concealed fear of the blacks and of their future dominant influence in the State and in the Church. Properly educated and fairly treated the negro will be quite sure to maintain genuine respect for others of a lighter color. The educational work will go on and with the gospel of Christ be the means of giving prosperity and wholesome restraint to both races. “The New South” cannot afford such an exhibition of fear and prejudice even as a proposition to any one of its State Legislatures. It will take a long time and the patient exercise of prudence to adjust these matters righteously.
THE NEW YORK INDEPENDENT.
The colored people clearly saw through the brutality and meanness of this law, and that it was aimed at their rights. So every colored paper in Georgia denounces the law, and the two colored members voted and spoke against it. They happen to be illiterate men from the south of the State, and could not speak effectively. One of them, however, did call attention to the fact that it applies to not a few Sunday-schools which have colored classes.
It is time for those who wish to keep the Negro down to wake up; and they are doing so. They are none too soon. The Negro is rising. Those who do not wish him to rise must now sit on the safety valve; and that they will do. The unanimity with which this bill passes the Georgia Legislature is appalling. It shows that the white race there is given over to believe a lie, that it may reap the consequences. We shall now not be surprised to see this law followed by others, and enacted in other States, and a war of races provoked. Heaven knows we deprecate it. We pray for peace and liberty. The next thing may be to forbid white men and women to teach in Atlanta and Clark University. Why not? This is a crusade against Negro elevation, against Negroes being allowed to be as good as white men or being treated as well. But the end will come all right, even if it be through peril. It may require great courage and patience for a while. Our deep sympathy will go to those white teachers whose children attend these institutions. Our prayers are with them that they may be led in the Lord’s way. Just now the Devil’s way is popular in Georgia; but the Lord is on the side of the weaker battalions.
EXTRACTS FROM THE SOUTHERN PRESS.
THE AUGUSTA (GA.) CHRONICLE.
It is not new legislation to deprive the colored man of any rights under the law. It is not either harsh or arbitrary legislation. It is no interference with his personal or political rights. The Glenn law merely provides for the enforcement of the constitutional provision and statutory laws governing the public school system of Georgia. That is all that there is in the bill. Public sentiment justifies the enactment and demands a rigid enforcement of the law against co-education of the races.
Our stalwart friends bear false witness against the people of Georgia, unintentionally, we hope, and we desire, if possible, to remove the false impressions under which they labor. If they respect the organic and statute laws of the State, if they have any regard for the convictions and civilization and settled policy of our people, which is irrevocable and firm as the granite of our mountains, they cannot fail to see the injustice done the State by their misrepresentation and abuse. If our contemporaries proceed upon the higher-law theory and have no regard for the constitutional, legal and moral rights and customs of our people—if they have no regard for the right of each State to legislate for and regulate its own domestic affairs—they are advocating the claims of the socialists and communists of the land, who assert that there is a law higher than statutes and more imperative than the most sacred rights of civilization.
There is no law, and there will be no law in Georgia against the education of our brother in black, either in the primary or intermediate department—either in the high schools or colleges. There is a law against the co-education of the races, and if there were no law to prohibit, our civilization would prevent. The constitution of the State prevents co-education of races. The Negroes do not want it. The whites will not have it. It is the fixed policy of the State to do equal and exact justice to the colored man. The people of Georgia will regulate their own domestic affairs without being influenced by outside misrepresentation, or deterred by foolish intimidation. Our Legislature will enact such additional laws in reference to the education of the colored and white races separately as it may deem most conducive to the welfare of each, and secure the enforcement of the same without any regard to the silly ravings or foolish threats of men who know nothing about the educational status of the Negro in Georgia, and the relations that exist between the whites and blacks. Co-education of the whites and blacks in the South is an impossibility, and the reasons are so apparent that it is unnecessary either to present or discuss them any further.
THE SAVANNAH (GA.) MORNING NEWS.
The Glenn Bill is a wise measure for several reasons, but mainly because it will save the public school system from destruction. In the preservation of that system both races are interested. It can only be preserved by keeping the races separate in the schools. If the blacks were to demand mixed schools and were to attempt to secure them through the ballot box, the whites would at once oppose appropriations for schools, and the common school system would be ruined. There are two colored institutions in Atlanta in which white children are now taught. Co-education in these two schools will soon be made the excuse for mixed common schools. The agitation will be productive of much bad feeling and cannot help injuring the common schools by arousing public sentiment against them. The sentiment of the State is clearly against mixing the races in any way, and the Glenn Bill is in harmony with that sentiment.
THE MACON (GA.) TELEGRAPH.
The Glenn Bill, now pending in the Georgia Legislature, is intended to carry out a clause of the State constitution. That the people of the State indorse this clause is shown in the large vote by which the constitution was adopted nearly a decade since. The framers of that instrument declared that there should be no mixed schools in Georgia.
This clause has been openly and flagrantly violated by the teachers of Atlanta University. In that institution social equality has been notoriously taught and practiced, and in that institution colored teachers are prepared for places in the public school system of the State. It would matter but little if only the white children of the professors of the Atlanta University were thus taught and trained, but the example is pernicious and is becoming pervasive. Georgia cannot and will not permit the natural line of demarcation between blacks and whites to be broken down. She will countenance nothing now looking to the mixture of the races in the future, to the misery and possible destruction of both.
The school system of the State provides equal facilities to blacks and whites, and the Glenn Bill does not impair or threaten any right or privilege of the Negro. He is being educated now, by the taxes of white men, to better advantage than these same white men were educated years ago. It is the policy, the interest and the safety of Georgia to keep the line of demarcation between white and black as distinctly marked as is the Gulf Stream in the waters of the Atlantic. The most intelligent negroes favor separate schools and teachers of their own race. Everything is satisfactory, except to certain fanatical philanthropists and mischievous politicians, and the present attempt at intimidation will soon fail.
THE ATLANTA (GA.) CONSTITUTION.
It is understood on every hand that public education at the south would be overthrown in a moment if mixed schools were to be ordered now. This is a fact with which every one here is familiar. This being the case, how is it that the professors of the Atlanta University, who have presumably been among us for some time, do not understand the situation? For all we know they may be trying to make martyrs of themselves, but we tell them plainly that they have struck a blow at Negro education in the South from which it will not recover in the next quarter of a century. If they are really the friends of the Negro they would have waited for time to do its perfect work, but in jumping ahead of time they are responsible for sending back the clock. Thus the matter stands.
THE NASHVILLE CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIAN.
The bill seems to be aimed at the Atlanta University, where there are a few white children—mostly those of the teachers—who have gone there as missionaries to the colored people. A similar state of things exists in the colored schools of this State, and particularly in this city. No harm has ever come of this practice. No white person has ever married a Negro, and there is not the remotest probability that such a thing will ever occur. We think it is far better in the South at least that the two races should be educated in separate schools, and that they should worship in separate churches. But when it comes to making it a crime for missionaries to teach their own children in the schools which they are sustaining with a self-denial that is really sublime, we enter a most emphatic protest in the name of the Christian religion which those people are seeking to propagate among the ignorant and degraded blacks of the South. The author of this bill in the Georgia Legislature attempts to justify it on the ground of his interest in the colored people. He also says that he fears amalgamation. When assured that no such a result is at all probable he explains that he fears intellectual amalgamation even more than physical. This is not even respectable nonsense. If the contact of an inferior with a superior mind produces an intellectual hybrid, then we are all in danger. In denouncing this Georgia bill we do not advocate the co-education of the two races, nor do we believe there is any sensible man in this part of the world who does. If the Georgia legislator’s view is to become the law of the land, then let the Church of God recall its missionaries from heathen lands and acknowledge Christianity a failure. The men and women, all over this land, who have gone among the poor, unfortunate Negroes and taught them knowledge and the way of salvation deserve special honor and thanks at our hands. Every consideration of religion and patriotism ought to make the friends of the Glenn Bill in the Georgia Legislature ashamed of themselves. There is no nobler work in this world than helping the lowly. There is no danger that anybody will be hurt by trying to redeem the negro from ignorance and sin.