6. Resentment and sensitiveness to insults will increase on the part of Negroes as they grow in intelligence, but as their spirits rebel more insistently and positively against insults, it cannot help but have its effect upon white men who ignorantly mistreat them, and if the respect growing out of love does not follow, the respect growing out of tolerance, as in the case of the Jews in America, will ensue and result in recognition of equal intelligence and culture.
7. Literacy must be 100 per cent on both sides to bring about a "complete fusion of interests" or a "quieted process of adjustment." Intelligent Negroes among uneducated whites would aggravate the situation.
8. If Negroes were 100 per cent literate they would command more respect, because men always command more respect when they are intelligent.
9. I believe in education first, last, and always as a leveller and as a bulwark of defense. There is no race prejudice among broadly cultured people. Art knows no such distinctions.
10. (a) Yes. (b) Not, if at the same time the education of the whites is broadened and made more general. (c) Better education of both races will facilitate a fusion of interests, beginning probably in economic relations.
11. It would make them much more bitter, for (a) the Negro would be more sensitive to injustice and have more of the combative spirit which literacy usually gives, and (b) whites would be more jealous and anxious to show the Negro his place. I believe that such an intensification of the struggle is desirable and necessary, as I don't believe that the brilliant ideas necessary for solution of the race problem can come other than as the children of the most intense and bitter racial conflict. Of course it would defeat its purpose if such a conflict were bloody, as then we would have a long period of the nauseating burden such as America suffers with today, viz.: the North attempting to reconcile the South.
12. Literacy will make a difference also in race relations. The difference will increase in degree as literacy advances beyond the mere ability to read and write to a wider participation in every field of educational or intellectual endeavor. As far as I have been able to observe, the breach between whites and Negroes is widened as Negroes advance in education and culture. The educated Negro rarely comes in contact with the white man as a menial or laborer—the only point of contact which the great majority of white people want. He will respect the Negro teacher, lawyer, doctor, or business man who knows his work thoroughly and can do as well as he. He is not likely, however, to find any reason to co-operate with this class of Negroes, and the Negroes do seek such co-operation.
13. (a) Yes. (b) In slavery times whites made it a crime to teach Negroes to read. That desire, in up-to-date garb, remains in the breast of most whites today. To many white persons a Negro of superior talent and refinement is a more detestable production than the most pronounced rogue. Most white persons, even of the best quality, are secretly displeased at a Negro of this type. They were brought up to regard Negroes as being below them, and the sight is a blow to their vanity. (c) A dollar talks much more sweetly than Emerson or Shakespeare and even Christ to most men, therefore a process of adjustment or complete fusion of interests will be effected chiefly through trade relationship, not esthetics.
Question: If unrestricted suffrage were given Negroes throughout the United States, would matters be helped?
Answers: