Judge T—— insisted on having a teaspoon from the colored girl who waited on us, but was obliged to content himself with the tablespoon laid.
“Teaspoons is sca’ce,” said she.
We stop at various “landing places,” points and creeks and bends, the boat generally coming close to shore. A long plank is thrown out, and then commences the cakewalk of the Negro “rousters” carrying out all manner of goods—in one place it is materials for the building of a church—and bringing back cotton bales or whatever else may be waiting for us. It is a sight at which one could gaze spellbound for hours; for the Negroes keep in step and seem listening to an inaudible music. They lurch with their shoulders, kick out with their flexible knees, and whether taking long strides or marking time they keep in unison with the whole, their heads bent, their eyes half closed and bleared with some inner preoccupation. They are in all manner of ragged garments: one has a lilac-covered hat, another an old dressing gown, others are in sloppy blue overalls, some wear shabby Cuban hats, and they go screeching and singing and dodging knocks on the head, but always keeping step with the dance. The captain, with yesterday’s unlit cigar stuck in the side of his month, gives directions about each bit of freight, using wonderful expressions of abuse and otherwise “encouraging” the “niggers.” Looking at the “rousters” you can easily understand that dancing of a certain kind is innate with the Negro and springs from him. He has an inborn sense of the beating of time which we call rhythm. It is so exaggerated that it tilts out ridiculously with his stomach and controls inanely his bobbing head and nose and dropping eyes. He looks a savage, but he is spellbound. He is completely illiterate and largely unintelligent, but he has solved the problem of carrying huge cotton bales to the ship, providing a rhythmical physical stream for them to flow upon. It is not half the effort that it would be to white people without rhythm.
One of the reasons why the Negroes box so well is because they do it in the same rhythmical way they shift these cotton bales.
Presently they commence to sing while they haul up the anchor, and a rowing boat passing us with Negro oarsmen is also choric with bright, hard, rhythmic music. These people understand music and time in their bodies, not in their minds. Their blood and their nerves have consciousness of tempo.
The many stops in Mississippi State afford opportunities of going ashore, picking up wild pecan nuts, talking to Negroes at their cabin doors. One never sees a white man. This along the Mississippi is the real black belt. According to the census, the Negro is in a clear majority. This causes the Whites to be always apprehensive. The idea prevails that the Black can only be kept in his place by terror. As regards this point of view, the Whites prize above everything solidarity of opinion. They hold that they cannot afford to discuss the matter, and they will tolerate no cleavage. In politics all are of course Democrats, and if the American Democratic party is on the whole much less liable to “splits” than the Republican party, it is largely due to the discipline of the black belt.
“They outnumber us ten to one,” says the agent for timber, exaggerating characteristically. “It’s come to such a point hereabout that they’re pulling the white women out of their houses. It’s done every day.”
I could not believe that.
“But if a Black attacks a white woman hereabouts he is certain to be lynched, and knows it,” said I.
“Yes, it’s the only way.”