The toilsome processes by which the Georgia negro has climbed from destitution to his present state of comparative prosperity deserve more than a passing glance. Do not think it was the same as if you or your neighbor, or even Mr. Riis’s European, who is to be refashioned into an American, should start today without money or lands, without friends except those destitute as yourselves. We should know where to turn, what work to take up, how to apply whatever of skill or energy or special aptitudes might exist within us. Failing of skill or marked aptitudes of our own, failing even of an ordinarily good education, we should at least have within us inherited instincts to help us out of the difficult situation. Above all, we should know what was in the world, what was worth striving for, where to set our aims.
But what of skill did the negro have, save in the rudimentary forms of agriculture? Whither, save for restraining influences, would his inherited instincts have led him? What did he know of life experientially beyond the log square of a slave’s cabin, or by observation and hearsay beyond the compass of the plantation lord’s domain?
No; set it down that the new freedman was poorer than the poorest, and, except in rare cases, more ignorant than can now be readily conceived of. In such condition, with no higher aims to impel him to work than the bare instinct of self-preservation, his work must of necessity be for many years only a bread-meat-and-shelter matter.
Yet, somehow—who can tell by what strange evolution?—working on blindly, gropingly, toilsomely, he has still contrived to press forward, until today, with a generation scarcely gone, he stands on a plane no one counted on his reaching under a hundred years. And the best of all his gains is that the most intelligent of his race have come to comprehend what true progress means, and to compare the slight space traversed by their people with the vast upward stretch reaching away in front of them.
During one of the large conventions which recently met in a Georgia city, a visitor from New England asked me, with genuine concern: “But where do your better class negroes live? Or are there no blacks decently housed, no places at least approximately clean and comfortable that they can claim as homes? In various cities through your section I have found only swarming and fetid negro quarters, the worst of slums, a menace to municipal health, both physical and moral. Is there nothing more hopeful than this to show for the race?”
Admitting the general truth of his imputation, I was still able to point out to him a few streets, or sections of streets, where the most intelligent and prosperous of the blacks of the city had made themselves real homes. Yet even these, he demurred, bordered too close upon those same slums he had been fretting over. For in Southern cities the people of this race keep together, it will be noted.
But I told my guest to come with me to the country if he would see the negro at his racial best. Agriculture, I assured him, had come very near to spelling out salvation for this people. Instance the state conference of colored farmers convening not so very long ago in Savannah. Nearly two hundred delegates were present, and everyone owned his own home, many being comparatively wealthy. One in particular was pointed out as worth $50,000, made entirely from agriculture.
In the country, then, we must still look for the best average of the negro’s home, his domestic life and virtues, as well as his industry and thrift. A brief investigation of conditions brought our New England friend to the same conclusion, and he went away much better satisfied as to the prospects of the race.
Certain facts and figures which interested this intelligent student of racial conditions will doubtless interest scores of others, and they are, therefore, offered in the present paper.
Georgia has 137 counties, each constituting a small commonwealth in itself. Being settled at irregular periods and under diverse circumstances, varying, moreover, in topography and character of the soil and climate, these counties exhibit each a different ratio of the negroes to the whites.