There is something very peculiar about the presentation of a bill in the Georgia Legislature, making it a misdemeanor, punishable with a fine of $1,000 and the chain-gang for one year, for any teacher or trustee of any public or private school in the State to allow any white pupils to attend a colored school, or any colored pupils to attend a white school.
Georgia, like every other Southern State, and like many Northern States until recent years, has always maintained separate schools for the two races. The Constitution provides for “a thorough system of common schools,” which “shall be free to all citizens of the State, but separate schools shall be provided for the white and colored races.” The wisdom of this policy, in the present condition of public sentiment on the race question throughout the South, is not doubted by any intelligent man at the North. Public education could never have been established if the attempt had been made by force to bring the two races into the same school-room, and it would be overthrown in a moment if mixed schools were to be ordered now. The legality and the advisability of separate school systems are, therefore, not to be questioned. But it is one thing to provide that the races shall not mix in schools supported by public taxation, and quite another thing to declare that no school, however supported, shall teach whites and blacks together without subjecting everybody responsible for this policy to the risk of a year in the chain-gang. This is an outrage of the very worst sort, for which no defense that is even plausible has been made or can be made. It is simply an outburst of race prejudice in its most offensive form.
The odd feature of the incident is that it occurs in Georgia, which is in many respects one of the most progressive States of the South, while Kentucky, which is in many respects one of the most backward, has already conquered this silly prejudice. When Berea College in Kentucky opened its doors to whites and blacks alike, there was bitter local opposition, which went beyond hard words, and it was as much as a man’s life was worth, politically speaking, for him to show the slightest favor to the institution. But as the years passed and none of the threatened evils came to pass, Kentuckians gradually concluded that they had been worrying themselves unnecessarily, and at last a progressive Democrat was ready to take a part in its anniversary exercises, as Judge Beckner did two years ago. “Already in Kentucky,” says Prof. Wright of the College, in his article on “Southern Illiteracy” in the last Bibliotheca Sacra, “the former detestation of Berea has so far yielded that Democratic aspirants for the Governorship speak on its commencement platform.” No member of the Kentucky Legislature in the year 1887 would venture to suggest the chain-gang for teachers in a school which admitted pupils of both races, and it is most anomalous to find the proposition seriously urged in Georgia.
THE NEW YORK WORLD.
Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, the well-known Southern Methodist preacher, who is now the manager of the Slater Fund, declares himself opposed to the Educational bill of William C. Glenn. He says the bill is unwise because it is unnecessary. People vote for such bills not because they favor them, but because they fear being charged with a leaning towards social equality. He thanks God that he knows the white teachers whose children attend the negro college, and he honors them fully as much as he does his own sister, who is now engaged in missionary work in China. There are only fourteen white children in colored schools, and Georgia has no reason to be scared. He winds up by saying: “There is a law in Georgia against intermarriage, a law more violated, ten to one, if not in the letter in the reality and spirit of it, than the law against mixed schools. If now the Legislature will give us a law placing the parents of mulatto children in the chain-gang it would be worth while.”
HARPER’S WEEKLY.
Such leaders as this school provides for their race cannot be trained elsewhere in the State. The maintenance of the University in full vigor is therefore for every reason, for the common interest of the 817,000 white and of the 726,000 colored citizens, one of the most vitally desirable objects in the State. The proposition to send the teachers and managers to the chain-gang unless they expel their own children from their schools is preposterous. The good sense of the State should prevent the further prosecution of the scheme. Every sensible citizen of Georgia would admit that nothing could be more unwise than to stimulate hostility of race in the same population by means of penal laws. Each race in Georgia undoubtedly prefers separate schools for the present, but to punish and disgrace the few persons who are indifferent to the separation, and by that course to retard the indispensable education of half the population, would be an unspeakable folly.
THE JERSEY CITY EVENING JOURNAL.
In Georgia there is still existing, as we read, a dread that white people may be forced into miscegenation with negroes in spite of themselves. The Georgian ought to know himself, and it is droll to hear him pleading that some one will save him from “marrying a nigger,” in spite of himself. The principal objection to public or private schools, in which the two races should be together, is that this would lead to intermarriages of the races. Under pressure of this argument, the Georgia House of Assembly has passed the bill making the teaching of colored persons by white persons a penal offence. A State law already forbids mixed public schools. The new law is intended to prohibit white persons from teaching colored persons in Sunday-schools and private educational institutions. The condition of the Georgia white, liable at any moment to run off and marry a negro, is indeed lamentable. And, joking aside, does not such a state of things show how completely uncured, how woefully unreconstructed are the average ex-rebel, ex-slaveholding people of Georgia? Such a state of things as this proves, that wise were those men who years ago urged that only territorial government should be given to the States just conquered from rebellion, and that they should so remain governed until time sufficient should have elapsed to eradicate all traces of the old semi-barbaric habits of their people. A community which adopts such a law as that mentioned is decidedly unfit to bear a State’s part in the general Government of the Republic.