THE CHICAGO INTER-OCEAN.
So vicious a bill deserved a stupid and degrading defense, and it got it. Mr. Glenn says that the bill is passed to prevent the “evident desire of the negroes for marriage with the whites.” Great heavens! And has it come to this? Is this all that your “Southern refinement,” your “years of chivalrous tradition,” and all the rest of the antiquated rot which you dignify by the style and title of “Southern sentiment” has been able to accomplish? Has race pride so thoroughly died out among the young men and women of the South as to force the elders to guard them, by threats of prisons and chain-gangs, from that certain intermarriage of white and black which would follow co-education? Debased, indeed, would be the condition of the South if this were true.
But it is not true. In Chicago and in every other large city of the North, white and colored children attend the same schools, but white and colored do not marry each other. Nor would they in the South, though the race feeling has been lowered as it never was in the North, by frequent and undisguised concubinage of the colored woman to the white man. Savannah shows more children of white paternity from “mothers who were never wed” than Chicago. If half the zeal were shown for the suppression of illegitimate unions between the races of the South as for that of the very few possible legitimate ones, both morality and health would improve. But it is a waste of words to argue upon Mr. Glenn’s proposition. He does not fear a general system of intermarriage. It has happened nowhere. It never will happen anywhere. If it did, it would be preferable to a general practice of illegitimate commerce. * * *
The reports of the educational work and discipline of the Atlanta University, by the State examiners, have invariably been accompanied with the very highest commendation. The comparison between the discipline of the Atlanta University and that of the Athens University has been greatly to the disparagement of the latter in almost every respect. This has exasperated the authorities of the Athens University, and set the newspapers of the State abusing the Commissioners for making such invidious comparisons with the negro school. Whereupon the committee were set to hedge, in order to reinstate themselves in favor. It is at last discovered, what has been open to everyone for a dozen years, that there were in the Atlanta University perhaps half a dozen white children, children of the professors, reciting in the classes along with the 350 colored scholars. This fact was reported to Governor Gordon forthwith. Governor Gordon makes haste to send a special message to the Legislature. The young aspirant for notoriety, Mr. Glenn, jumps at the chance for getting glory from introducing his bill. The rapidity with which he got it through and the unanimous white vote in the House, shows the state of public sentiment. Next week the attempt will be made to rush it through the Senate. And all this, not because of the presence of the professors’ children, but in retaliation for the impudence on the part of the professors and students of Atlanta University in allowing colored youths to behave and do so much better than pupils of the other race in Athens University. These are the facts, facts which nobody in Georgia will deny.
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE.
The infamous Glenn Education Bill, making it a crime to teach a white child in a colored school or a colored child in a white school, has passed the Lower House of the Georgia Legislature. It goes without saying that it will pass the Senate and be signed by the Governor. Practically the law will only operate against Atlanta University, which has seven white scholars on its roll, the children of professors in the institution who cannot be educated elsewhere in the State without insult and ostracism because they are the children of “nigger teachers.” Little hope can be had that the law will be defeated. That it will be executed with vindictive severity goes without saying also, and, as the penalty of the chain-gang is the maximum, it is not improbable that these white Christian teachers, if they persist in their duty, will be fettered by the side of convicts and subjected to the treatment which, upon the authority of its own grand juries, has made the chain-gang system of Georgia a reproach to common humanity and decency. And this is the New South over which Grady bloviated so pathetically! Is there no progress, no shame, in that section?
THE CHICAGO CONSERVATOR; (COLORED.)
The Glenn Bill has passed the House and awaits action equally certain and deplorable in the Senate. The Governor will sign it and thus consummate the most barbarous piece of legislation known since the Fugitive Slave Law. There are those who have perfect faith in the liberality, intelligence and justice of the New South. To them the Glenn Bill is a revelation. Having hailed the silver-tongued Grady as a leader of a higher civilization, they are loth to believe that the very State he represents is the first to stain its statutes with so unholy a law.
But it is there, boastful, brazen, and hideous in deformity. The wheels of progress are stopped and justice is appalled while the New South brands the missionary a felon and persecutes God’s noble men and women for daring to do right. But the curse remains. Poisoned by prejudice, reeking with injustice, dead to shame, and insensible to dishonor, the State of Georgia will push on in its reckless course, indifferent alike to reproof and counsel.
But it will not last long. The reign of injustice is sure to fail. Though much suffering may be endured to-day, still the time will come when Georgia will ask to blot from the book a law so inhuman and vile. Under the circumstances the colored race can do nothing to avert the evils of the iniquitous law. It has suffered much in the past and can suffer still more in the firm assurance that justice will ultimately assert itself and right will finally triumph over wrong.