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My views are more impressions than opinions. I have a distinct aversion to close association with Negroes generally. On the other hand I have a distinct liking for particular Negroes whom I have been thrown with. Aside from the more educated ones, they seem to me to be of a sluggish mentality and of somewhat low moral character. They seem to have more of the animal in them. I am not sure that this is not an impression rather than an opinion.
I have no basis for my views except my own experience and what I have read in papers and periodicals.
I had two Negro classmates in college; I saw a good deal of Negroes as a boy; and I have known Negroes, some well educated, since I came to Chicago from the law school.
Although my contacts were largely casual, I particularly remember one very old Negro man whom I regarded as a sort of patriarch and of whom I was a little bit afraid. Then I recall vividly my impression of the filth and sordidness of "darky-town" in the small city in which I lived as a boy. I was never forbidden, so far as I can remember, to associate with Negroes. In public school there was no separation of the races. As a small boy, it seems to me my playmates in school were partly Negroes. Of course the Negroes, as is usual, lived in a separate part of the city. I should say that this seemed to me then to be a natural and necessary arrangement. Negroes were black and we were white. That was about all there was to it.
Very early I became race conscious, I should say along about the fourth or fifth grade in school, perhaps even before.
I regard as authorities on the question teachers or officers of Fisk University, Tuskegee Institute, those who have to do with criminals; employers of Negroes; persons who have dealt with Negroes as a class as well as individually. Booker T. Washington's writings should be an authority.
I have made very few inquiries for information. I know few Negroes in Chicago. Those that I do know are of the better educated type. Some of them, I think, have been at Fisk University. I do not know the leaders in the city, nor do I know the leaders in the country; but I should say they are the heads of the great Negro universities and colleges, like Fisk, Tuskegee, Lincoln Institute. Booker Washington was, of course, a leader. I do not know who his successors are.
So far as I know, I have seen only one Negro periodical, some years ago. The article I read in it I happened to be interested in because I was dealing with the subject of it, and it was undoubtedly a prejudiced article founded on misinformation and a rather wilful disregard of facts. As I recall the paper as a whole its main motive and purpose was an apparent hatred of the white race. I realize that this is not enough to base an opinion on.
The discussion of labor, politics, especially questions connected with southern politics, almost any question relating to the South, education, home missions, living conditions, the servant problem, crime, most frequently lead to the Negro.