A Mississippi View of Race Relations in the South

by Dunbar Rowland

There is no danger so great to the affairs of any republic as an ignorant factious citizenship, whose tendencies have always been to overturn social order, political system, liberty, justice and right. Mississippi's greatest relief from this source of evil has been for many years found in the efficiency of her free schools and her colleges. The liberality, therefore, of the legislature in the past, in providing funds for their proper maintenance, has been both wise and patriotic, and I heartily commend the continuation of the same liberal spirit toward all the State's educational interests and institutions. The free school fund is now distributed among the counties per capita of the educable children in each. The relative attendance upon the free schools in the white is much greater than in the black counties, and hence, by reason of the fewer schools required for the accommodation of the attending pupils in the black counties affords those counties the use of the funds set apart to the non-attending children therein; hence, those counties are enabled from said fund to extend the term of their schools taught and to pay teachers better salaries than can the white counties where the larger proportion of the children attended the schools. Since the manifest purpose of the law is to favor equal educational facilities to all of the children of the State alike, I would commend to the legislature the submission of an amendment to section 206 of the constitution, so as to require the State free school fund to be distributed among the counties according to the actual attendance upon the schools, rather than per capita, as now.

There has been some urgent insistence for the submission by this legislature of an amendment to the Constitution to provide for the distribution of the free school funds between the white and negro schools of the state, so as to give the benefits thereof to each race in proportion to the school tax which it pays. Though it may seem a little outside of the governor's expected prerogative to speak of the matter here (in advance of legislative action on the subject), I shall, nevertheless, at the risk of being considered meddlesome, venture to express the hope that no such amendment will find approval at the hands of the legislature. Without stopping here to discuss the constitutional conflicts which would be brought about between the State and Federal Constitutions, or if it be admitted that there would be no constitutional vice in such amendment because of its class or race distinction, its effect, which would be to take school benefits largely from the negro children, would be contrary to that broad and deep philanthropic spirit that has always moved the great common heart of Christian man and womanhood in Mississippi to a love of justice and fair play toward the weak and needy, whoever and wherever they are. It must be borne in mind that the negro is our neighbor and is here to stay; that he is the dependence largely of the white people for labor; that it is also in a great measure due to that labor that in the past the South's cotton, sugar and rice industries have brought the section's greatest wealth, and given it a commercial importance in every land and country where the nation's flag protects the American shipping. Besides, he is of our citizenship, and being of a weaker race, becomes a ward of the white people of the State, and they should not violate the trust by taking from him the benign influences of education, which help to make him a better man, a better citizen and a better Christian.

The Southern people have shown their faith in the negro by spending one hundred million dollars for his education during the past thirty years. There are now 1,750,000 negro children enrolled in the public schools of the South. The nine cotton states, where the great mass of the negroes live, that is, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, had in 1860 an assessed valuation of property for taxation of $3,244,231,406. In 1870, the valuation had decreased to $1,830,863,180 or 43 per cent. The ability to raise money by taxation had decreased one-half. The burden of negro education had been placed upon the people of the South in their poverty. There has been murmuring at the burden in Mississippi, and efforts have been made to confine appropriations of money for negro education to the amount of money raised from negro taxation for the benefit of schools, that plan, however, has never met with popular approval. There are a few men in the South who contend that the negro should be kept in an eternal state of ignorance, but their following is small.

The most convincing argument of the fairness of the South to the negro is the industrial opportunity which is afforded him. All professions and callings and all industries are open to the negro. There is absolutely no discrimination in industrial lines on account of color. The negro is at liberty to sell his power to work everywhere. The negro is not confined to menial employment. There are negroes in Mississippi who are lawyers, doctors, teachers, and a few of them are preachers. They are engaged in the various branches of the mercantile business and in all of the trades. They are blacksmiths, carpenters and shoemakers. When they can do their work as skilfully as the white man they are employed. In the professions, of course, their duties are confined to their own race.

It is a well known fact that the negro is eliminated as an industrial factor in the North by trades unionism. It may be right and this statement is not made in a spirit of criticism, but for the purpose of showing the advantages which the South offers the negro. There is a determined purpose in the South to curtail the power of the negro to vote, but he has the same chance as the white man to earn his bread.

The common every day relations between the white man and the negro are sincere and kindly. There is no persecution of the negro in Mississippi.

Rev. Edgar Garner Murphy beautifully and truthfully describes the relations between the whites and the blacks in his very able paper on "The White Man and the Negro at the South." Mr. Murphy says:

"The Northern man sees in the men and women of the weaker race a great deal of ignorance, indolence, shiftlessness, poverty and crime, but also a great deal of humble probity, of every day willingness to work, of charming good humor, of happy contentment, and of naive dependence in every emergency of life upon the white man who is supposed to hate him. He sees the stronger race with infinite generosity and with incredible patience responding to his dependence. He sees the business man giving advice, lending money, (which he knows he will probably never see again) advancing wages and generally assuming a sort of paternal interest in the welfare of his negro hands. He sees the white man's attorney freely defending many a negro client. He sees the white man's physician freely caring for a negro patient. He sees the white man's minister befriending many a negro in illness, or need, or sorrow."

That picture should disarm all unkind, unthinking criticism of a slandered South. What an object lesson of love, and trust and faithfulness it would be if the beautiful relations existing now between the old slaves, who are rapidly passing away, and their former masters could be presented to every good man in the United States. The old uncles and aunties of the South, as the old slaves are called, have never faltered in their devotion to their "white folks" and thousands of them are being tenderly cared for in their old age by their former owners. There is not a town or a hamlet in the South where you will not find old and helpless negroes being provided with all of the comforts of life by white people simply because they were faithful servants of the long ago.

The greatest obstacle to the advancement of the negro is his defective moral nature, and that phase of negro character is the dark part of the race problem. There is a rapid increase in crime and lawlessness among negroes under forty years of age. The criminal class among negroes is confined largely to the younger generation. That question is exhaustively treated by Prof. W. F. Wilcox, of Cornell, General Statistician of the Census Office, in his very learned article on "Negro Criminality."

The people of the South do not fear the clouds which may darken the future. They believe in themselves and in their power to meet and solve the problems which the presence of the negro forces upon them. They want the intelligent help and sympathy and good will of good men everywhere. They see the threatening clouds, but behind them they behold the brightness and glory of the future.