I—
The Negro seems to me to be evolutionally handicapped, but possesses the qualities of children—imitativeness, affection, loyalty, receptiveness, lack of responsibility, carelessness, improvidence. They also seem to me to lack racial pride, for which their history in this country may well account. There are fine Negroes and those who are as worthless as "poor white trash." To judge them all by either the best or the worst would be manifestly unfair. I feel that they have, as a race, never had a fair chance for their finest development.
I have lived among them and practiced medicine in their families for ten years.
The most tender, loving service, beyond monetary recompense, of one Negro woman who worked in my family for ten years. Her intimate, gentle, faithful services to members of my family in health and sickness will always endear her to us and make us more conscious of the possibilities of members of that race.
The community in which I was raised had so few Negroes that there was no occasion for contacts or prohibitions to association. I suppose as a boy I first became conscious of race difference.
I have discussed this question with intelligent Negroes, have heard some fine sermons by Negro preachers, and am somewhat familiar with the writings of Booker T. Washington and Du Bois.
I do not read their periodicals.
Mention of the servant cited in a foregoing question, newspaper accounts of lynchings, house-bombings most frequently lead to discussion of Negroes among our personal friends.
I feel that Negroes would be happier if segregated in neighborhoods which allowed contact with the dominant race. I feel that they are as unhappy to be isolated among whites as the whites would be to be isolated among Negroes. I feel they should have the right to live under decent conditions, with those things which make life livable and enjoyable. Probably part of my unwillingness to have them for neighbors lies in the fear of undesirable neighbors (bad citizens), in the fear of property depreciation which would follow, and because of the lack of interests in common that make for neighborly intercourse. I suppose I am as inconsistent as others in this, for in my heart I have no prejudice of which I am aware, yet I believe I am infected with the universal indefinite prejudice, if I could but analyze it thoroughly.
Their education should not be curtailed, but enlarged. Their demands should be granted if not incompatible with the common good.