So personal relationships, the solving touch of human nature, play havoc with political theories and generalities. Mankind develops not by rules but by exceptions to rules. While the white aristocracy has indeed succeeded in controlling local government in the South almost completely, it has not been able to dominate the federal political organisations, which include many Negroes. And though often opposing education for the Negro, the aristocracy has not, after all, monopolised education; and the Negro, in spite of Jim Crow laws and occasional violence, has actually been pushing ahead, getting a foothold in landownership, entering the professions, even competing in some lines of business with white men. So democracy, though black, is encroaching in the world-old way on aristocracy; how far Negroes can go toward real democratic citizenship in the various lines—industrial, political, social—no man knows. We can see the fight; we do not know how the spoils of war will finally be divided.

CHAPTER XII

THE BLACK MAN’S SILENT POWER

HOW THE DOMINANCE OF THE IDEA OF THE NEGRO STIFLES FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH IN SOUTHERN POLITICS

At present the point of view of a large proportion of Southern white people on the Negro question is adequately expressed by such men as Tillman, Jeff Davis, and Hoke Smith. They are the political leaders. Their policies are, in general, the policies adopted; they are the men elected to office. Even in the border states, where the coloured population is not so dense as in the black belt, the attitude of the politicians is much the same as it is in the black belt. So far as the Negro question is concerned, Governor Swanson of Virginia stands on practically the same platform as Tillman and Hoke Smith—though he has not found it necessary to express his views as vigorously. And the position of the black-belt states in regard to the disfranchisement of the Negro and the extension of “Jim Crow” laws is being accepted by the border state of Maryland and the Western state of Oklahoma.

But there also exists, and particularly in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, a vigorous minority point of view, which I have referred to in a former chapter as the “broadest and freest thought of the South.” Although it has not yet attained political position, it is a party of ideas, force, convictions, with a definite constructive programme. To this constructive point of view I have been able, thus far, to refer only incidentally.

In the present chapter I wish to consider some of the effects upon Southern life of the domination of the Negro as a political issue, and the result of the continued supremacy of leaders like Tillman.

J. POPE BROWN
of Pulaski County, Georgia		EX-GOVERNOR
JAMES K. VARDAMAN
of Mississippi
Photograph by Harris-EwingCopyright, 1906, by Hallen Studios
SENATOR JEFF DAVIS
of Arkansas		GOVERNOR HOKE SMITH
of Georgia
Photograph by F. B. Johnston
SENATOR B. R. TILLMAN
of South Carolina		EX-GOVERNOR W. J. NORTHEN
of Georgia