To live and die in Dixie.”
Poor quaint little mortals! They were unconscious of any irony in the sentiment.
In every negro school or college that I visited—at Tuskegee among the rest—I saw several young people in whom my eye could not discern the slightest trace of black blood.[[46]] But it was in Charleston, at an endowed school for negroes, that the most remarkable instance of this kind came under my notice. I was present at the morning muster of the whole school; and while the hymn was being sung I could not take my eyes off two boys of thirteen or fourteen, evidently brothers, who stood side by side in one of the upper classes. They were not only white, but (one would have said) peculiarly and resplendently white. Their features were delicate and distinguished, their eyes blue or grey, their hair a light brown. They were slightly built, and, although their dress was quite plain, they had somehow an air of grace and breeding. They could have gone to Eton or Winchester and excited no remark.
Shall I confess that the contrast between these boys and the ebony and chocolate manikins among whom their lot was cast stirred in me the race instinct in all its unreasoning crudity? I wanted to swoop down upon them and rescue them from what I felt for the moment to be their horrible and unnatural surroundings. They seemed to me like children in a fairy-tale, carried off by some tribe of brownies or gnomes. And who shall say, indeed, that the impulse to rescue them was wholly quixotic? If they remain in America, there can be no doubt that the life that lies before them will be one of painful misunderstandings, heart burnings, and humiliations.
Before leaving Charleston, let me record a curious little street-car incident. |A Street-car Incident.| Coloured people, in this city, are not confined to a special part of the car; but, each seat being designed to accommodate two passengers, a coloured person and white person must not sit side by side on the same seat. One afternoon I was in a car which was full save for one place. The foremost seat on the left hand was occupied by one negro girl, and there was, of course, a vacant place at her side. Presently a white woman got in and sat down in this place. “Hallo!” I thought, “here is a violation of the rule,”—and I wondered what would happen. The conductor was equal to the occasion. The foremost right-hand seat was occupied by a cadet of the Charleston Military Academy in his neat grey uniform, and by a lady. The conductor touched the cadet on the shoulder and whispered to him. The young man at once stood up, the white woman who had last entered the car transferred herself to his place, and for the rest of the journey the cadet hung on to the strap, while the seat beside the negro girl remained vacant!
[45]. It would appear that in Mississippi there are 15,000 registered negro voters out of a negro male population of voting age stated by the census of 1900 at 197,936, of whom 53 per cent. were illiterate. For four other States the numbers stand as follows:—
| Registered negro | Negro males of | Percentage of | |
| voters. | voting age. | illiterates. | |
| Virginia | 23,000 | 146,122 | 52 |
| S. Carolina | 22,000 | 152,860 | 54 |
| Louisiana | 6,400 | 147,348 | 61 |
| N. Carolina | 6,250 | 127,114 | 53 |
In several States, according to Mr. E. G. Murphy (“The Present South,” p. 198), “Many negroes have been discouraged from offering to register by reason of the fact that the State organization of the party with which they have been associated recently refused to admit even their most respected representatives to its Conventions. [This is the ‘lily-white’ policy referred to by Mr. Shipton, p. 34.] Large numbers have also refrained from registration because of their unwillingness to meet the poll-tax requirement. The interest of the masses of the negroes in things political has, for quite different reasons, been much exaggerated by the representatives of both parties.”