My Southern Home: Or, the South and Its People

by William Wells Brown

CHAPTER XX.

The moral and social degradation of the colored population of the Southern States, is attributable to two main causes, their mode of living, and their religion. In treating upon these causes, and especially the latter, I feel confident that I shall throw myself open to the criticism of a numerous, if not an intelligent class of the people upon whom I write. The entire absence of a knowledge of the laws of physiology, amongst the colored inhabitants of the South is proverbial. Their small unventilated houses, in poor streets and dark alleys, in cities and towns, and the poorly-built log huts in the country, are often not fit for horses. A room fifteen feet square, with two, and sometimes three beds, and three or four in a bed, is common in Tennessee.

No bathing conveniences whatever, and often not a wash dish about the house, is the rule. The most inveterate eaters in the world, yet these people have no idea of cooking outside of hog, hominy, corn bread, and coffee. Yes, there is one more dish, it is the negro’s sun-flower in the South, cabbages.

It is usual to see a woman coming from the market about five o’clock in the evening, with a basket under her shawl, and in it a piece of pork, bacon, or half a hog’s head, and one or two large heads of cabbage, and some sweet potatoes. These are put to cook at once, and the odor from the boiling pot may be snuffed in some distance off.

Generous to a fault, the host invites all who call in, to “stop to supper.” They sit down to the table at about nine o’clock, spend fully an hour over the first course, then the apple dumplings, after that, the coffee and cake. Very few vegetables, except cabbages and sweet potatoes, are ever used by these people. Consequently they are not unfrequently ill from a want of the knowledge of the laws of health. The assembling of large numbers in the cities and towns has proved fatal.

Nearly all the statistics relating to the subject now accessible are those coming from the larger Southern cities, and these would seem to leave no doubt that in such centres of population the mortality of the colored greatly exceeds that of the white race. In Washington, for instance, where the negroes have enjoyed longer and more privileges than in most Southern cities, the death-rate per thousand in the year 1876 was for the whites 26.537; for the colored 49.294; and for the previous year it was a little worse for the blacks. In Baltimore, a very healthy city, the total death-rate for 1875 was 21.67 in one thousand, of which the whites showed 19.80, the colored 34.42. In a still healthier little city, Chattanooga, Tenn., the statistics of the last five years give the death-rate of the whites at 19.9; of the colored, 37. The very best showing for the latter, singularly enough, is made in Selma, Ala. It stands per one thousand, white, 14.28; colored, 18.88. In Mobile, in the same State, the mortality of the colored was just about double the rate among the whites. New Orleans for 1875 gives the record of 25.45 for the death-rate of the whites, to 39.69 for that of the colored.

Lecturers of their own race, male and female, upon the laws of health, is the first move needed.

After settling the question with his bacon and cabbage, the next dearest thing to a colored man, in the South, is his religion. I call it a “thing,” because they always speak of getting religion as if they were going to market for it.

“You better go an’ get religion, dat’s what you better do, fer de devil will be arter you one of dees days, and den whar will yer be?” said an elderly Sister, who was on her way to the “Revival,” at St. Paul’s, in Nashville, last winter. The man to whom she addressed these words of advice stopped, raised his hat, and replied:

“Anty, I ain’t quite ready to-night, but I em gwine to get it before the meetins close, kase when that getting-up day comes, I want to have the witness; that I do.”