The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

Fifteen years ago one of the suburbs of Richmond was largely built up by a contractor whose foreman was a Negro. There was no question raised about it. The foreman knew his business; had been raised among the whites; knew how to get along with white men, and was respected and esteemed by them. This was at that time not uncommon.

What is the situation now? The races are more widely divided than ever before. White mechanics and Negro mechanics no longer work together, generally, as of old. No contractor could do now what the man who built “Barton Heights” did fifteen years ago. The number of Negro carpenters and mechanics is greatly reduced; and the writer is informed by intelligent Negroes that such work as they do is mainly among their own people. The causes are not far to seek. It is partly due to a failure of ability in the Negro to hold his place in the struggle of competition, and partly to the changed relations between him and the white. The old feeling of friendliness and amity has waned, and in its room has come a cold indifference, if not actual hostility. The new Negro has been taught that he is the equal of the white, and he is always asserting it and trying to prove it by any way but the right way—the equality of his work.

Washington City has ever since the time of emancipation appeared a sort of Mecca to many of the Negro race. There, numbers of that race have had opportunities which have been wanting to them in the South, and there to-day may be found, perhaps, the best educated element of the race to be found anywhere. Within the last year the Negro organization known as the True Reformers built in that city a handsome and expensive structure for the use of their race, and built it wholly with Negro labor. When, however, the workmen competent to do such work were sought, it was found necessary to go to the South for them.

Yet even in the South the Negro artisan sufficiently trained to compete now with his white rival is comparatively rare.

“The slave-disciplined mechanic has no successor in the ranks of the freedmen....”[36]

So far, then, as statistics would indicate, the improvement that exists among the Negroes is not shown by the race at large as is usually alleged, but is shown, in the main, by the upper fraction.

This proposition is borne out also by the testimony of the great majority of the Southern whites who live in constant touch with the blacks; who have known them in every relation of life in a way that no one who has not lived among them can know them. Universally, they will tell you that while the old-time Negroes were industrious, saving, and, when not misled, well-behaved, kindly, respectful, and self-respecting, and while the remnant of them who remain still retain generally these characteristics, the “new issue,” for the most part, are lazy, thriftless, intemperate, insolent, dishonest, and without the most rudimentary elements of morality.

They unite further in the opinion that education such as they receive in the public schools, so far from appearing to uplift them, appears to be without any appreciable beneficial effect upon their morals or their standing as citizens. But more than this; universally, they report a general depravity and retrogression of the Negroes at large in sections in which they are left to themselves, closely resembling a reversion to barbarism.

It is commonly assumed that progress, as applied to a class or a race, signifies some advance in moral standing, or, at least, some improvement in the elements of character on which morality is based.

It is unfortunate that the statistics in the field of morality cannot be obtained; but in this field, as in others, the testimony of those who have had the best opportunities for observation is all one way. Southerners of every class and calling, without exception, bear witness to the depressing fact that, leaving out the small upper fraction, the Negro race has not advanced at all in morality.