The Southern South

by Albert Bushnell Hart

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 passionate 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 class 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 class of whites by appealing to their passions 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 illustrated 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 institution 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 mass 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 God and an earnest wish to walk in His ways, I would kill the Negro or die trying. God 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 shifting phases this vexing race problem may assume, 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 analyzed as follows: