I stopped at Greensburg, Ind., on my way East and found there a remarkable illustration showing just how feeling arises in the North. Greensburg is a comfortable, well-to-do, conservative, church-going old town in eastern Indiana. Many of the residents are retired farmers. The population of 7,000 is mostly of pure American stock, largely of Northern origin. And yet last April this quiet old town was shaken by a race riot. I made careful inquiries as to conditions there and I was amazed to discover how closely this small disturbance paralleled the greater riot at Atlanta which I have already written about. Negroes had lived in Greensburg for many years, a group of self-respecting, decent, prosperous men and women. They were known to and highly regarded by their white neighbours. One of them, named Brooks, owned a barber shop and was janitor for the Presbyterian Church and for one of the banks. Another, George W. Edwards, whom I met, has been for years an employee in the Garland Mills.
“There isn’t a better citizen in town than Edwards,” a white lawyer told me; and I heard the same thing from other white men.
Another Negro, George Guess, is an engineer in the electric light plant. Of the local Negro boys, Robert Lewis, the first coloured graduate of the local schools, is now teaching engineering at Hampton Institute. Oscar Langston, another Negro boy, is a dentist in Indianapolis. These and other Negroes live in good homes, support a church and have a respectable society of their own. I found just such a body of good coloured people in Atlanta.
Well, progress brought an electric railroad to Greensburg. To work on this and on improvements made by the railroad hundreds of labourers were required. And they were Negroes of the ignorant, wandering, unlooked-after sort so common in similar occupations in the South. When the work was finished a considerable number of them remained in Greensburg. Now Greensburg, like other American cities, was governed by a mayor who was a “good fellow,” and who depended on two influences to elect him: party loyalty and the saloon vote. He allowed a Negro dive to exist in one part of the town, where the idle and worthless Negroes congregated, where a murder was committed about a year before the riot. Exactly like Decatur Street in Atlanta! A rotten spot always causes trouble sooner or later. Good citizens protested and objected—to no purpose. They even organised a Good Citizenship League, the purpose of which was to secure a better enforcement of law. But the saloon interests were strong and wanted to sell whiskey and beer to the Negroes, and the city authorities were complaisant.
“Who cares,” one of them asked, “about a few worthless Negroes?”
But in a democracy people must care for one another.
A Negro Crime in the North
One day last April a Negro labourer who had been working for Mrs. Sefton, a highly respected widow who lived alone, appeared in the house in broad daylight and criminally assaulted her. His name was John Green, a Kentucky Negro; he was not only ignorant, but half-witted; he had already committed a burglary and had not been punished. He was easily caught, convicted, and sentenced. But the town was angry. On April 30th a crowd of men and boys gathered, beat two or three Negroes, and drove many out of town. They never thought of mobbing the city officials who had allowed the Negro dives to exist. And, as in Atlanta, the decent Negroes suffered with the criminals: a crowd broke windows in the home of George Edwards, and threatened other respectable coloured men. As in Atlanta, the better white people were horrified and scandalised; but, as in Atlanta, the white men who made up the mob went unpunished (though Atlanta did mildly discipline a few rioters). As in Atlanta, the newspaper reports that were sent out made no distinction between the different sorts of Negroes. The entire Negro population of Greensburg was blamed for the crime of a single ignorant and neglected man. I have several different newspaper reports of the affair from outside papers, and nearly all indicate in the headlines that all the Negroes in Greensburg were concerned in the riot and were driven out of town, which was not, of course, true. As a matter of fact the respectable Negroes are still living in Greensburg on friendly terms with the white people.
Human Nature North and South
In fact, the more I see of conditions North and South, the more I see that human nature north of Mason and Dixon’s line is not different from human nature south of the line.