In the car with the three colored ladies were five convicts chained down to their seats in a most ghastly condition, and 15 white men. The ladies were compelled to hoist the windows in hope of shirking the profane language and intense heat and smoke from 15 cigars. The ladies were evidently professional ladies, and of no mean ability and character, but their high attainments were depreciated, being told abruptly, “Go in that car there, that’s the nigger car.” Many ministers and other representative colored men are smokers per force. They must ride in cars with the lowest smoking classes, but when the smokers are through, retire to the “white car.” Many persons who would never smoke, are forced to smoke to protect their system during their ride in a car filled with deathly odor.
MISSISSIPPI “DELTA.”
The real state of affairs in the Mississippi “Delta” or “Bottoms,” are unknown to those who have not travelled the plantations and rivers, viewing the situation of the people as they are. Indeed many parts of that turbid valley are inhabited by a people whose object is to humiliate the farmer as did the slave holder in his time. Newspapers and other mediums of spreading the happenings abroad are not used. This dismal section of country lies about 50 miles west of the Illinois Central Railroad, separated from Arkansas by the Mississippi River. There are two other smaller rivers, viz.: Yazoo and Tallahatchie. On the banks of these rivers are colored immigrants from many southern States, with the hope of bettering their condition.
Soon after slavery many men, women and children, exiled to the Mississippi Delta, the employers, to curtail railroad expenses, put the emigrants in freight box cars, after getting them a distance from their homes. Their present condition is grievous and miserable, some plantations having as many as 500 employees and a white family. The agents are what the overseer has once been. The general environments are such that even 500 persons must stoop to the command of 4 or 5 men. Some laborers have not had a payment for their work. They are furnished with pickled pork and corn bread for food, but few of them are allowed to have money. Wooden cheques from five cents and upward are paid to those who pay to the Church. In this case the cheques are only good at the plantation store. That which 25 cents could profitably buy in the Dominion of Canada or the northern States, costs one dollar at the “plantation store.” Cotton is the chief product; and owing to the unfavorable atmosphere the colored people are told that whiskey must be used to prevent sickness. In this way many unfortunate persons are misled to the degraded habit of drinking excessively.
East Mississippi is usually called the “Hills” by the inhabitants of the swamp. When any one succeeds in making good his or her escape, it is by the “underground railroads,” or a similar channel to that of the abolitionist in securing colored men and women into Canada in the days of slavery. Mr. Mark Coleman, brother of the author of these facts, has been and is to this day operating the underground railway line on the Yazoo River. His beginning of this movement was attended with many experiences which attended the rugged way of the beloved white men and women who sympathized for the black man to the extent of devising a road on which he could reach the safe shores of Canada.
An investigation of the oppressed people in the Mississippi Delta is necessary, and is solicited. The high water of 1897 revealed a part of the destitute cases near the rivers and railroads, but “Wild Woods,” and a host of other obscure islands have never been heard from. The ways of right cannot be properly diffused among the people of color in the Mississippi “bottoms.” The word of the Lord should have free course. Any instruction leading up to higher morality and Christianity is impeded. The Arkansas side of the valley is chiefly barren; especially that being parallel with the Little Rock and Memphis railroad. The labor record of the Negro has grown ever since the landing of 20 at Jamestown, Va., in 1619. “He has made America what it is,” for this reason the colored people of many Southern States have been solicited to settle in this vast watery territory along the L. R & M. R. R. In view of the hardships which befell those in Mississippi Delta, the Negro refuses the offer. The refusal of the Negro to occupy the Arkansas desert is looked upon by his enemies as being slothful. But this view of the Negro is commonly taken when he is shrewd enough to shirk danger. The Oklahoma movement in 1892 was upheld by the colored Southerners with a hope of reaching a home where equal rights would be imparted to all. Since their settlement in Oklahoma, they have fallen victims to the mob and rope bands of white men, who have made it a famous event to enter the homes of the black men and overpower them with war arms, and commit rape on their wives and daughters. Bishop Turner, in defence of his race, gave advice that they should protect themselves. This advice was given in the Voice of Missions, missionary organ of the A. M. E. Church. Numerous Northern newspapers endeavored to put the entire South against the godly Bishop for attempting to protect the ladies of his race from being destroyed by night mobs. The Bishop’s idea of family protection in many unfriendly localities is commendable. The Indians in the Oklahoma regions and elsewhere have always protected their families. 25 white citizens of Oklahoma were killed by Indians in Jan., 1898, by way of race protection.
CHAPTER VI.
IGNORANCE OF DECENCY AND LIMITED CHRISTIANITY.
There can be no better method of emphasizing and clearly establishing the facts which have been stated on the various subjects preceding this, than to end syllogistically:
(1) It is obvious that the colored race equals the white race in decency. They could not wash their white sister’s clothes without washing for themselves. They could not cook decently for the white families’ hotels and other public places, if they were not suitable for the position. Thousands of young men and women graduating annually, in all the professions and branches of labor, warrant the fact that the colored people cope with the white people in intellectual and industrial progress.