I met many Whites who boasted of having taken part in a lynching, and I have met those who possessed gruesome mementoes in the shape of charred bones and gray, dry, Negro skin. I said they were fools. Actually to have the signs upon them! Truly they were in the state of mind in which most men seem to be when fate is going to overtake them. They were proud of their “quick way with niggers,” they justified it, they felt the wisdom of lynching could never be disproved. The matter to them was not worth arguing. They assumed that anyone who wished to argue the point must have sympathy with the “niggers,” and that was enough for them. It never occurred to them that one who doubted the wisdom of lynching might be actuated by sympathy or at least apprehensive for them.
I felt sorry for the white women of the South; there will some day be a terrible reckoning against them. Their honor and safety are being made the pretext for terrible brutality and cruelty. Revenge, when it gains its opportunity, will therefore wreak itself upon the white woman most. Because in the name of the white woman they justify burning Negroes at the stake to-day, white women may be burned by black mobs by and by. There is no doubt that almost any insurrection of Negroes could ultimately be put down by force, and that it would be very bad for the Negroes and for their cause, but before it could be put down what might happen? And should it synchronize with revolutionary disturbances among the Whites themselves, or with a foreign war?
I do not believe that there are real conspiracies of Negroes. But there is growing disaffection. The colored people are a friendly, easy-going, fond-to-foolish folk by nature. But their affection and devotion have been roughly refused. It has almost disappeared. Now we have the phenomenon of Negro mothers telling their little children of the terrible things done by the white folk, and every Negro child is learning that the white man is his enemy. Every lynching, every auto-da-fé is secreting hate and the need for revenge in the Negro masses. Because the Negroes are weak and helpless and unorganized to-day, illiterate often, stupid and unbalanced often, clownish and funny and unreliable, white folk think that it will always be so. But they are wrong. While the industrialized masses of the Whites are certainly degenerating, the masses of the Negroes are certainly rising. Trouble is bound to arise and retribution terrible. What the lowbrows of the South are teaching the Negro he will be found to have learned, and as Shylock said about revenge—it will go hard but he betters the instruction.
It may be thought that this is written with too much emphasis, and that this statement on the lynchings is too unmerciful to the white South. But I believe it is absolutely necessary. There are those who would be ready to do again the injustice which was done to the Whites in the South after the Civil War. When discussing these matters in the North I have been horror-struck by the opinions I have heard expressed. This is written in no partisan spirit, and I believe those who would rejoice in the destruction or punishment of the Southern white population are utterly wrong in heart. Punishment and revenge will only perpetuate the strife. But an éclaircissement, a flood of daylight on these matters, a thorough shaking of these stupid people down below the line—a warning in such terrible terms as I have made, might save Black and White for the religion of love and a joy in God’s creatures.
It may come from a stranger, a complete outsider, with more force than from an American. I have, however, found a Southerner who condemned Georgia, the Roman Catholic Bishop, Benjamin J. Keiley, who gave out a very serious warning in Savannah on the 2nd of November of last year. He said:
“It is hardly necessary to state that I am a Southerner.... I warmly love the South; and her story, her traditions, and her ideals are very dear to me.... But I fully recognize the absolute justice of one charge which is made against her, and I look with grave apprehension to the future, for no people that disregards justice can ever have the blessing of God, and we are guilty of great injustice to the Negro. The Negro was brought here against his will; he is here and he will remain here, and he is not treated with justice by us; nay, I will say that he is often not treated with ordinary humanity.
“Look at the statistics in our own State. Georgia stands first in the list of States in the matter of lynching. Has there ever been a man punished in this State for lynching a Negro?
“Lynching is murder, nothing else.
“Besides, is it not the fact that fair and impartial justice is not meted out to white and colored men alike? The courts of this State either set the example, or follow the example set them, and they make a great distinction between the white and the black criminal brought before them. The latter as a rule gets the full limit of the law. Do you ever hear of a street difficulty in which a Negro and a white man were involved which was brought before a judge, in which, no matter what were the real facts of the case, the Negro did not get the worst of it?
“Georgians boast of being a Christian people, and this year they are putting their hands into their pockets to raise millions to bring the light of Christianity, as understood by them, to some less favored peoples in Europe.