Awakened by a sense of the fearfulness of these conditions, such a strong paper as the New Orleans Times-Democrat has been conducting a campaign for laws which shall punish the white man who maintains illicit relations with Negroes. For years attempts have been made in the legislatures of several states (in part successfully) to enact such legislation, but the practice has been so firmly entrenched that many of the efforts have failed.
On February 15, 1906, the Times-Democrat put the case in stronger language than I would dare to do:
It is a public scandal that there should be no law of this kind (against miscegenation) on the statute book of Louisiana, and that it should be left to mobs to break up the miscegenatious couples. The failure to pass a law of this kind is attributed to white degenerates, men who denounce social equality yet practice it, men who are more dangerous to their own race than the most inflammatory Negro orator and social equality preacher, and who have succeeded by some sort of legislative trickery in pigeon-holing or killing the bills intended to protect Louisiana from a possible danger. Such men should be exposed before the people of the state in their true colours.
It will thus be seen how deep-seated the difficulty is. And yet, as I have followed the editorial expression of many Southern newspapers, I have been astonished to see how people are beginning to talk out. Here is an editorial from the Star of Monroe, La.:
DESTRUCTIVE CRIME OF MISCEGENATION
There can be no greater wrong done the people of any community than for public sentiment to permit and tolerate this growing and destructive crime of miscegenation, yet in many towns and cities of Louisiana, especially, there are to-day white men cohabiting with Negro women, who have sweet and lovable families. This is a crime that becomes almost unbearable, and should bring the blush of shame to every man’s cheek who dares to flaunt his debased and degrading conceptions of morality in the eyes of self-respecting men and women.
In January, 1907, District Attorney J. H. Currie, in Judge Cochran’s court at Meridian, Miss., addressed a jury on what he called “the curse of miscegenation.” In the course of his speech he said:
“The accursed shadow of miscegenation hangs over the South to-day like a pall of hell. We talk much of the Negro question and all of its possible ramifications and consequences, but, gentlemen, the trouble is not far afield. Our own people, our white men with their black concubines, are destroying the integrity of the Negro race, raising up a menace to the white race, lowering the standard of both races and preparing the way for riot, mob, criminal assaults, and, finally, a death struggle for racial supremacy. The trouble is at our own door. We have tolerated this crime long enough, and if our country is not run by policy rather than by law, then it is time to rise up and denounce this sin of the earth.”
Anti-Miscegenation League is Formed
Strong men and women, indeed, in several states have begun to organise against the evil. At Francisville, La., in May (1907), a meeting was called to organise against what one of the speakers, Mr. Wickliffe, called the “yellow peril” of the South. He said that “every man familiar with conditions in our midst knows that the enormous increase in persons of mixed blood is due to men of the white race openly keeping Negro women as concubines.” Out of this meeting grew an organisation to help stamp out the evil. About the same time, a mass meeting was held in Vicksburg, Miss., and an Anti-Miscegenation League was formed.