Meanwhile—and worst of all—he failed to get justice in the courts. Formally called before the bar he knew beforehand that the case was probably already decided against him. A white boy might insult and pick a quarrel with his son, but if the case reached the court room the white boy would be freed and the Negro boy fined $25 or sent to jail for three months. Some trivial incident involving no moral responsibility whatever on the Negro's part might yet cost him his life.
Lynching grew apace. Generally this was said to be for the protection of white womanhood; but statistics certainly did not give rape the prominence that it held in the popular mind. Any cause of controversy, however slight, that forced a Negro to defend himself against a white man might result in a lynching, and possibly in a burning. In the period of 1871-73 the number of Negroes lynched in the South is said to have been not more than 11 a year. Between 1885 and 1915, however, the number of persons lynched in the country amounted to 3500, the great majority being Negroes in the South. For the year 1892 alone the figure was 235.
One fact was outstanding: astonishing progress was being made by the Negro people, but in the face of increasing education and culture on their part, there was no diminution of race feeling. Most Southerners preferred still to deal with a Negro of the old type rather than with one who was neatly dressed, simple and unaffected in manner, and ambitious to have a good home. In any case, however, it was clear that since the white man held the power, upon him rested primarily the responsibility of any adjustment. Old schemes for deportation or colonization in a separate state having proved ineffective or chimerical, it was necessary to find a new platform on which both races could stand. The Negro was still the outstanding factor in agriculture and industry; in large numbers he had to live, and will live, in Georgia and South Carolina, Mississippi and Texas; and there should have been some plane on which he could reside in the South not only serviceably but with justice to his self-respect. The wealth of the New South, it is to be remembered, was won not only by the labor of black hands but also that of little white boys and girls. As laborers and citizens, real or potential, both of these groups deserved the most earnest solicitude of the state, for it is not upon the riches of the few but the happiness of the many that a nation's greatness depends. Moreover no state can build permanently or surely by denying to a half or a third of those governed any voice whatever in the government. If the Negro was ignorant, he was also economically defenseless; and it is neither just nor wise to deny to any man, however humble, any real power for his legal protection. If these principles hold—and we think they are in line with enlightened conceptions of society—the prosperity of the New South was by no means as genuine as it appeared to be, and the disfranchisement of the Negro, morally and politically, was nothing less than a crime.
Footnote 203: [(return)]
In 1914 Kansas and Mississippi each elected eight members of the House of Representatives, but Kansas cast 483,683 votes for her members, while Mississippi cast only 37,185 for hers, less than one-twelfth as many.
Footnote 204: [(return)]
Within recent years it has been thought that the convict lease system and peonage had practically passed in the South. That this was by no means the case was shown by the astonishing revelations from Jasper County, Georgia, early in 1921, it being demonstrated in court that a white farmer, John S. Williams, who had "bought out" Negroes from the prisons of Atlanta and Macon, had not only held these people in peonage, but had been directly responsible for the killing of not less than eleven of them.
However, as the present work passes through the press, word comes of the remarkable efforts of Governor Hugh M. Dorsey for a more enlightened public conscience in his state. In addition to special endeavor for justice in the Williams case, he has issued a booklet citing with detail one hundred and thirty-five cases in which Negroes have suffered grave wrong. He divides his cases into four divisions: (1) The Negro lynched, (2) The Negro held in peonage, (3) The Negro driven out by organized lawlessness, and (4) The Negro subject to individual acts of cruelty. "In some counties," he says, "the Negro is being driven out as though he were a wild beast. In others he is being held as a slave. In others no Negroes remain.... In only two of the 135 cases cited is crime against white women involved."
For the more recent history of peonage see pp. 306, 329, 344, 360-363.