“How do you make that out?”
“They’re just animals,” said he. “They were never in the Garden of Eden, for Adam and Eve were white. Consequently, as they had no part in original sin, they have no share in our salvation either. Christ did not come to save those who never fell from grace.”
“I never heard that before,” said I, and was so greatly amused I could not help showing it.
The attorney sought me out afterwards with Biblical proof. The sons of Cain, it appears, took themselves wives from the daughters of men; these other men were not descended from Adam and were probably Negroes—the attorney was perfectly serious. The judge, however, to whom we referred the matter, was of a cynical turn of mind, and chuckled heartily. “I am a subscriber to foreign missions,” said he. “If they have not Adam for their father, why do we send missionaries to Africa?”
One of the chief places which I wished to visit was the Negro city of Mound Bayou, in the Mississippi Delta. In the blackest part of the State of Mississippi this is a city which is entirely Negro, possesses a Negro mayor, Negro policemen, and indeed is entirely without accommodation for white men. I stayed there a night in a Negro hotel where the old wall paper was in hundreds of peeling strips hanging on the walls, and everything in the bedroom was broken. It is a musical sort of city, all a-jangle with the banjo and the brassy clamor of the gramophone. Places of amusement are many—the Lyceum, the Casino, the Bon-Ton café (with jazzy music), the Luck Coles restaurant, etc.; one sees many advertisements of minstrel shows. But it is a working city, and at present, with the high cotton prices, it is tasting real prosperity. It is situated in the rich land of the Delta, very malarial and snake-haunted, and therefore not very suitable for white men, but the district produces the highest quality of cotton in the United States. It is in a way a one-man city, and owes most to Charles Banks, who is one of those agreeable and talented African giants, who, like Dr. Moton and others, seem to have an unexpected capacity for greatness. His energy and calm foresight and his money guarantee the gins and the cottonseed-oil factory and the Negro bank and probably the local newspaper and one or other of the churches.
In Mound Bayou is no segregation and no racial trouble, and the Negroes show how happily they can live when unmolested. It is a type of settlement well worth encouraging. The chief interest of the city just now is the building of a “consolidated school.” All the small schools are to be pulled down, and the money has been subscribed for the building of a handsome new school on modern lines. It will be put up facing the Carnegie Library Building. I was sorry to see the latter devoid of books, and used as a Sunday school, but the building was given before the city was ready for the responsible work of organizing and controlling a public library. I talked in the infants’ school to a strange array of children with heads like marbles, and found a common chord in interest and love for animals. We imitated together all the animals we knew, and agreed that no one who did not love animals ever came to anything in this world. But if they loved their animals, they must love teacher too. I talked in the beautiful Wesleyan church on the difference between E pluribus unum and E pluribus duo, but that was to grown-ups—and they were so dull, compared with the children. The point was, however, that though the United States might fail to obtain unity of race, her peoples, white and black and yellow, Teutonic and Slav and the rest, could still be one in ideal.
“We are trying here to understand the beauty of being black,” said one of the audience edifyingly. “Solomon’s bride herself was black,” said he.
Mound Bayou is the pride of Mississippi, as far as the black part of it is concerned. The crowds that appear when a train comes in remind one of similar pictures in Africa. America seems to have disappeared and Africa to have been substituted. An entirely black South, or even one State entirely black, is, however, unthinkable. The white man has shed too much blood for his ideals there. He can never easily abandon any part of it. He must rise to the standard of his sacrifices. To my eyes, Mound Bayou was a little pathetic—like the sort of small establishment of a woman who has been separated from a rich husband through estrangement or desertion. It is not quite in the nature of things, and is more like a courageous protest than the beginning of something new. It stands, however, as a symbol of incompatibility of temperament.
There are many who say that when left to himself the Negro slips back from civilization into a primitive state of laziness or savagery, and they instance life in Haiti and the supposed failure of Liberia. It is said that he does not keep up the white man’s standard, he is not so strenuous, he is not a good organizer, nor dependable. That is not entirely true, but there is some truth in it. Mound Bayou is situated in a highly malarial region, unfitted for white habitation, but being surrounded with the best cotton-growing land in America it ought to be exceedingly prosperous. The best that can be said is that the local planters are in a better plight than their neighbors who are intermingled with Whites. Complete financial failure has threatened the little city in the past, and if it were not for the founder, Mr. Montgomery, and its financier, Mr. Banks, most of the proprietorship must have passed over into white hands. To all appearances, the Negro needs decent white co-operation in business, and mixed commercial relationships are better than segregated ones. The difficulty is to find conscientious business Whites who realize that the prosperity of the Negro is worth while. The fixed idea of the white business man is to fool the Negro and exploit him to the last penny.