My Southern Home: Or, the South and Its People

by William Wells Brown

“How many schools were in that county?”

“About five.”

“When do they open?”

“About once every two years and keep open for two or three weeks. And then they have a certain kind of book for the children. Those that have dogs, cats, hogs, cows, horses, and all sorts of animals in them. They keep the children in these and never let them get out of them.”

“Have you any colleges in the State for colored men?”

“No, they haven’t got any colleges and don’t allow any. The other day I asked a Republican how was it that so many thousands of dollars were taken for colleges and we didn’t get any good of it? He said, ‘The bill didn’t pass, somehow.’ And now I guess those fellows spent all that money.”

“As a general thing, then, the people are very ignorant?”

“Yes, sir; the colored man that’s got education is like some people that’s got religion—he hides it under a bushel; if he didn’t, and stood up for his rights as a citizen, he would soon become the game of some of the Ku-Klux clubs.”

Having succeeded in getting possession of power in the South, and driving the black voters from the polls at elections, and also having them counted in National Representation, the ex-rebels will soon have a power which they never before enjoyed. Had the slaveholders in 1860 possessed the right of representing their slaves fully instead of partly in Congress and in the Electoral College, they would have ruled this country indefinitely in the interest of slavery. It was supposed that by the result of the war, freedom profited and the slaveholding class lost power forever. But the very act which conferred the full right of representation upon the three million freedmen, by the help of the policy, has placed an instrument in the hands of the rebel conspirators which they will use to pervert and defeat the objects of the Constitutional amendments. Through this policy the thirty-five additional electoral votes given to the freedmen have been “turned over to the Democratic party.” Aye, more than that; they have been turned over to the ex-rebels, who will use them in the cause of oppression scarcely second in hatefulness to that of chattel slavery. In a contest with the solid South, therefore, the party of freedom and justice will have greater odds to overcome than it did in 1860, and the Southern oligarchs hold a position which is well nigh impregnable for whatever purpose they choose to use it.

Of the large number of massacres perpetrated upon the blacks in the South, since the ex-rebels have come into power, I give one instance, which will show the inhumanity of the whites. This outrage occurred in Gibson County, Tennessee. The report was first circulated that the blacks in great numbers were armed, and were going to commit murder upon the whites. This created the excitement that it was intended to, and the whites in large bodies, armed to the teeth, went through Gibson, and adjoining counties, disarming the blacks, taking from them their only means of defence, and arresting all objectionable blacks that they could find, taking them to Trenton and putting them in jail.