[29]. It appears, however, that in many cases the great demand for negro labour operates in favour of the negro who has been guilty of serious crime—he escapes with a fine which is paid by his white employer, and has to be worked off. Here, for instance, is a report from the township of Prendergrass, Georgia: “The Negroes in general are in a bad shape here. There are about eighty criminals here out on bond, some for murder, some for selling whisky, some for gambling, some for carrying concealed weapons, some for shooting, and most of them are guilty, too; but their captain (i.e. employer) takes their part in court. They generally pay about $25 and work the Negro from one and a half to two years, and the Negro never knows what it cost.”—Atlanta University Publications, No. IX. p. 47.
[30]. “Besides the penitentiary convicts there were in Georgia in 1902, 2221 misdemeanour convicts undergoing punishment in county chain-gangs, of whom 103 were white males, 5 white females, 2010 coloured males, and 103 coloured females.”—Atlanta University Publications, No. IX. p. 35.
“I have seen twelve-year-old boys working in chains on the public streets of Atlanta, directly in front of the schools, in company with old and hardened criminals; and this indiscriminate mingling of men, women and children makes the chain-gangs perfect schools of crime and debauchery.”—W. E. B. Du Bois: “The Souls of Black Folk,” p. 180.
[31]. Since writing this I have seen an apparently authentic statement that in 1907 the profits from the Georgia chain-gangs had gone up to $354,853, or nearly £71,000.
[32]. “According to the census of 1890,” says Mr. Kelly Miller (“Race Adjustment,” p. 97), “the negro constituted only 12 per cent. of the population, and contributed 30 per cent. of the criminals.” But he goes on to say, “No person of knowledge or candour will deny that the negro in the South is more readily apprehended and convicted on any charge than the white offender. The negro constitutes the lower stratum of society, where the bulk of actionable crime is committed all the world over.” On the other hand, Mr. E. G. Murphy (“The Present South,” p. 176) says: “Petty crimes are often forgiven him, and in countless instances the small offences for which white men are quickly apprehended are, in the negro, habitually ignored.” A negro study of negro crime (Atlanta University Publications, No. IX.) says, “It seems fair to conclude that the negroes of the United States, forming about one-eighth of the population, were responsible in 1890 for about one-fifth of the crime.” This purports to be a correction of the estimate above quoted by Mr. Kelly Miller. Complete statistics of a later date do not seem to be available; but according to the same publication, negro crime reached its maximum about 1895, when negro convicts numbered 2·33 per thousand of the whole negro population. Since then the percentage has notably decreased. In 1904 it stood at 1·78 per thousand.
XII
AN INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY
It is very difficult to get at the true truth as to public education for the negro in the South. The probability is, in fact, that there are as many truths as there are points of view. One high authority (a negro) told me that for every single dollar expended on a black child about five dollars are expended on a white child. That is very likely true; but it is probably no less true that the sums expended on negro education are large out of all proportion to the sums paid by negroes in taxes. “Let us reduce their education to the scale of their taxation,” I have heard it said, “and where would they be?”[[33]] The true question is: Where would the South be? Probably half-way back to barbarism.
But if we ask: Has the South neglected its plain duty towards the children of the freedmen? or has it heroically, in its poverty, devoted to the education of the black child money that could be ill spared from the beggarly education fund of the white child?[[34]] we cannot rest content with the answer, “It depends on the point of view.” On the whole, I am inclined to believe that the favourable judgment is the true one; but I should hold it with greater confidence if there had not existed in the past, and did not survive to some degree in the present, a violent feeling against the very idea of negro education. In many places white teachers of black children are to this day ostracised.[[35]] One may even say, I think, that, as a general rule, it takes some strength of mind for a white man or woman to follow the vocation of teaching negroes.
The hostility to negro education has, however, lost much of its former strength. |A Teacher of Negroes.| This is apparent from the case of Professor Patterson, head of an excellent State school for negroes in Montgomery. The Professor (a title as lightly accorded in the South as Major or Colonel) is a sturdy Scot. When he first came to the South in Reconstruction days chance led him to a county in the State of Alabama where there was, indeed, already a school, but it was kept by a negro who could neither read nor write. An educator by instinct, if not by training, Mr. Patterson determined to set up a school of his own. For this misdemeanour he was twice shot at, and was finally arrested, and put under a bond of 15,000 dollars to desist from teaching in that county. He went into another county, and started a school in the frame building that served as a negro church; but here the negroes themselves had to turn him out, as they were warned that if they did not the church would be burnt. These experiences only stiffened the professor’s backbone. He said: “I will teach—teach in Alabama—and teach negroes!” And here he is to-day, head of a fine large school in the State capital, and partially maintained by the State—a school well planned, well built, and with an excellent system of industrial training going on in various annexes in its spacious grounds.
As I passed through one of the senior school-rooms, a boy had just written on the blackboard, in a fine round hand, a quotation from a recent speech by Senator Foraker on the Brownsville affair—the affair of the negro regiment which President Roosevelt is alleged to have treated with high-handed injustice. The sentence ran: “We ask no favour for them because they are negroes, but justice for them because they are men.” Evidently there is no affectation of excluding from the schoolroom the all-absorbing problem.