THE SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW

The Southern point of view can be gathered together in a very short chapter. Its expression has so crystallized that it can be set down in a series of paragraphs and phrases. Whosoever doth not believe, without doubt he shall be damned everlastingly. Wherever you meet a Southerner, be it in the remotest corner of the earth, it is the same as in native Alabama. I was talking to the Mother Superior of a convent one day in a genial English countryside. Although I did not know it, she derived from Mississippi. I mentioned the subject of the Negro, and from her quiet face, meager with fasting and pale with meditation, there flashed nevertheless the Southern flame—like lightning across the room.

You have only to mention the Negro sympathetically in a public meeting and some one of Southern extraction will be found opposing to you a statement of the Southern creed. Thus, after speaking one morning at Carnegie Hall, some one came up to me and said very emphatically: If you had lived among the Negroes you would not speak of them as you do—the inevitable Southerner.

This is his creed:

1. We understand the niggers and they like us. When they go North they’re crazy till they get back to us. The North does not understand the nigger, pets him and spoils him, and at last dislikes him more than any Southerner.

2. We have occasionally race riots in the South, but they are generally caused by Yankees who have come South. In any case the worst riots in recent years have taken place in the North—at Washington, right under the President’s nose, and at Chicago.

3. Few Northerners or Englishmen understand or can understand the Negro problem. Those who understand, agree with us. Those who do not agree, do not understand.

4. The nigger is all right as long as he is kept in his place. You must make him keep his distance. If once you are familiar with him, you are lost. He will give himself such airs that it will be impossible to get on with him.

5. The nigger is an animal. The male of the species we generally call a “buck nigger.” Like the animals, he is full of lust. Like the animals, also, he does not feel pain. When he is burned it is not the same as a white man burning. Like the animals, he has no soul either to lose or to save, and Christianity and education are alike wasted on him. The polished Negro is merely disgusting, like an ape in evening dress. You clothe him and dress him and put him at table, but he’s an animal all the same and is bound to behave like one. You can’t trust him.

6. Under the influence of alcohol the Negro becomes a wild beast. He goes out of control. No fear of consequence can stop him. That is why some of the Southern States have been so ardently prohibitionist.

7. If you had to live with them you’d understand how terrible it is.

8. The nigger is a liar. He will say anything to your face to please you, or anything he thinks you want him to say. He’ll tell you stories of lynchings that would make you think we lynched a nigger every week, instead of it’s being the rarest occurrence.

9. When we lynch ‘em it’s for a very good reason—to protect our white women. Ask any of your English or Northern friends, who pity the Negro, whether they’d be willing to let their daughters marry a Negro. It’s a horrible thought. But that is what the Negro is always after—the white woman. His fancy runs to her, and if it were not for the terror of being lynched we should never be able to leave our wives and daughters in security. The R in the middle of the Negro’s name stands for his favorite proclivity. We burn ‘em alive, yes, and do it slow, because killing’s too good for them, and we get just so mad that everyone wants to be there, and have his part in putting them to death. In the North they do not lynch the Negro, but if one commits a crime they blame the whole Negro race. In the South we find the guilty man and punish him.

10. When the white man goes to the Negro girl, it’s different. He ought to be ashamed of himself, but there, it’s human nature, and you can’t be too stern with him.

11. The white man is master, and must remain master. But you do not realize how precarious his position is, outnumbered as he is, ten to one, in many districts. If the niggers joined hands against us we might be all killed in a night.

12. They have votes. By the greatest injustice ever committed in this country, the Constitution of the United States was amended to give these people votes and give them power over us. It is true we prevent them using their votes, and override the Constitution at every election. But political agitation goes on all the time. Every Negro would vote Republican if he had a chance, just because we vote Democrat. The Republican party knows that, and is always conspiring to restore to the Negro his lost power of voting. It will never succeed, but you can see the anxiety it causes us.

13. As for education, it’s bad for the nigger almost every way, and every new educated nigger makes it more difficult to keep ‘em down. But kept down they must be.

14. Justice? Well, you ask any nigger which he’d prefer, a Southern court of justice and a Southern judge, or a Northern one. He would always prefer the Southern one, because in the South we understand him. And we’re very fond of them and they of us. We get on very well together.

Southern belief rarely strays out of this codified expression of thought. Get into converse with a Southerner on the subject of the Negroes, and you will almost always be able to refer his talk to 1 or 6 or 10 or some other paragraph of the foregoing. It is sufficiently pat and parrot-like to be amusing at last. The Negro himself is amused and pained by it. It amounts to this: The Southerner has made the Negro a pair of boots and he says they fit very well. The Negro says they don’t fit. But the Southerner says he’ll risk his salvation on it—he made the boots, and he knows his trade. The Negro, however, has to wear them.

Perhaps if it were merely opinion, the idleness of the spoken word, the Southern point of view would merit less attention. Talk might be discounted, as mere talk is discounted by responsible minds. But it has unfortunately a remarkable counterpart in action. It is the concomitant of mob murder and torture. It is expressed not only in narrow and bitter phrase, but in actual flesh twisting; not only in the flames of fanaticism, but in real flames.

Lynching is a popular sport in the South. It is perhaps popular in idea all over the world. Even in Great Britain, where the policeman is on a sort of moral pedestal, and is paid immense respect, how often among the masses does one hear the sentiment that such and such a person should be put against a wall and shot. Even in a nation that has such a phrase as “the majesty of the law” the idea of taking the law into one’s own hands is generally popular. In Russia, samosudi, as they are called, are frequent, and there is a short and terrible way with pickpockets when the crowd finds them out. France’s passion for la lanterne does not need to be enlarged upon.

It is said that in countries where the laws are badly administered and the police held in little respect, lynchings are the more frequent. This is so. And while lynching can have a moral sanction at first, it may, if unchecked, grow to be a popular sport, a means of “national” holiday, like the shows of Rome, the auto-da-fÉ’s of Spain, bullfights, and boxing competitions. When sufficient cause for a lynching is lacking, cause may have to be invented, just to let the folk have some “fun.” In the United States to-day there are not sufficient crimes committed by the Negroes to satisfy the hunger of the crowd for lynchings. So inevitably many innocent black men are sacrificed just for sport’s sake.

Last year seventy-seven Negroes were lynched in America; fourteen of them were burned alive. Burning appears to be on the increase, and is an obvious indication of growing mob lust. This form of brutality has long ago ceased in the Europe from which perhaps it was derived. Spaniards burned the Indians. Indians burned the settlers. Settlers burned their runaway slaves. And still to-day in comparatively large numbers the white Southern mob burns its Negro victims. It has its historical background. The thought of burning supposed delinquents alive is common in Southern minds. “Make ‘em die slow” is even a watchword.

The Southern half of the United States is fond of saying that the North is now quite as bad in its treatment of the Negro. Happily, that is untrue. Seventy-two out of the seventy-seven lynchings occurred south of the Mason-Dixon line, and the rest occurred in the Western States. The North was immune. Unfortunately, this good record was marred by some bad race riots in Northern cities.

Of all the States, Georgia had the worst record for lynching. During last year she lynched twenty-two persons, almost twice as many as the next worst, Mississippi. Two of these were for alleged attacks on white women. The rest were for a variety of crimes and misdemeanors. Thus, in April, a soldier was beaten to death at Blakely for wearing his uniform too long. In May, at Warrenton, Benny Richards was burned to death for murder. In the first week in August a soldier was shot for refusing to yield the road, and another was hanged for discussing the Chicago race riots. At Pope City another soldier was lynched for shooting. In the belief that the Negroes were planning a rising, Eli Cooper was taken at Ocmulgee and publicly burned at the stake. On September 10th, in the Georgian city of Athens, another Negro, Obe Cox, was burned for murder. In Americus, in October, Ernest Glenwood was drowned as a propagandist. On October 5th, Moses Martin was shot for incautious remarks. Next day, at Lincolnton, one Negro was shot for misleading the mob, and two others were burned alive for committing murder. Next day another was shot at Macon for attempted murder. Two were hanged at Buena Vista for intimacy with a white woman, and before the end of the month three more met their end from the mob for shooting and manslaughter.

As far as Georgia is concerned, this record disposes of the theory that lynching only takes place when white women have been attacked. As a matter of fact, the commonest motive for lynching of Negroes throughout the United States has been shown to be mob condemnation, of violence—not of lust. By far the greatest number of lynchings are for supposed murder. The mob lynches the Negro as a man shoots his dog when the latter has turned on him. Formerly, attacks on women provided the greater number of cases. If the Negro were fool enough ever to make eyes at a white woman, he risked his life. Many innocent admirations and misunderstandings have resulted in lynchings. As for rape, the Negro who commits it is bound to come to a violent end. Very few escape lynching, and the South claims that whatever immunity it enjoys from Negro sexual crimes is due to the deterrent of lynch law. It claims that if the criminals were merely dealt with according to the law, sexual crimes would speedily multiply.

White people with the white-race instinct are generally ready to condone lynching when it is proved that it thus acts as a deterrent. Perhaps they are right, and they ought not to put it to themselves from the black man’s point of view. But there is the other point of view, and there is the collective opinion of the colored people on the subject, and that opinion is being organized and will make itself felt. It is worth attention and sympathy.

Granted that the black man is the under man as far as the Whites are concerned, is he not entitled to some protection for his own women? One of these Georgia lynchings which occurred last year was a characteristic affair. It occurred at the town of Milan. Two young white fellows tried to break into a house and seize two colored girls living there with their mother. They ran screaming to a neighbor’s home. The Whites tore down a door, ripped up flooring, fired a gun, and made a great disturbance. One old Negro woman was so frightened she jumped into a well, and a worthy Negro grandfather of seventy-two years came out with a shotgun and fired in defence of the women. One of the white men fired on him. The Negro fired back and killed him. The other white man fled. Now, for that deed, instead of being honored as a brave man, the Negro was seized by the white mob and hanged on a high post, and his old body was shot to pieces. This man was a good and quiet citizen who went to chapel every Sunday, and had performed his duty at peace with God and man for a lifetime. The man who led the lynchers was a “Christian” preacher. Sworn evidence on the matter was taken, but the officers of the law in the county refused to act.

This lynching was by no means exceptional in its character. To cite an exceptional affair, one might well take the happenings in Brooks and Lowndes Counties, Georgia, in May, 1918. Here a white bully with a pronounced spite against Negroes had been in court and paid the fine of thirty dollars for gambling which had been pronounced against a certain colored man called Sidney Johnson, and the latter had been sent to his estate to work off the debt. This is an example of the abuse of the law for keeping Negroes still in a state of slavery—a characteristic example of peonage.

Johnson did the work to pay off the fine, but the farmer held him to do a great deal more. Eventually the Negro feigned sickness as an excuse for not doing any more. The farmer then came to his house and flogged him. It must be supposed this roused the devil in Johnson; he threatened the farmer, and he paid a return visit to the white man’s house, fired on him through the window, killing the man himself and dangerously wounding his wife. At once the usual lynching committee was formed, and for a whole week they hunted for Johnson, who had gone into hiding. During that time they lynched eleven Negroes, of whom one was a woman.

The white farmer had given cause for much hatred. He had constantly ill-treated his colored laborers. On one occasion he had flogged a Negro woman. Her husband had stood up for her, and he had him arrested and sentenced to a term of penal servitude in chains. The white mob concluded that he must have shot the farmer for revenge, and they accordingly lynched him. He was shot to death. His wife would not be quieted, but kept insisting that her poor husband had been innocent. The mob therefore seized her. It tied her upside down by her ankles to a tree, poured petrol on her clothing, and burned her to death. White American women will perhaps take note that this colored sister of theirs was in her eighth month with child. The mob around her was not angry or insensate, but hysterical with brutal pleasure. The clothes burned off her body. Her child, prematurely born, was kicked to and fro by the mob and then—— Well, that is perhaps sufficient. There are many details of this crime which cannot be set down in print. But all these facts were authenticated and submitted to the governor of the State. The point that struck me was the pleasure which was taken by the mob in the sufferings which it was causing. It was drunk with cruelty. Here was little idea of a deterrent. Here was no question of racial prudence. From the point of view of the natural history of mankind, it put those white denizens of Georgia on a lower level than cannibals.

It was America’s glorious May, when she was pouring troops into Europe and winning the war; hundreds of thousands of Negroes were clad in the uniform of the army and were fighting for “freedom and justice” in Europe. The moral eloquence of the President was in all men’s minds. America had the chance to take the moral leadership of the world.

But away back in Georgia the mob pursued its horrible way. At length it found the original Johnson who had committed the murder, and he defended himself to the last in a house with gun and revolver, and died fighting. His dead body was dragged at the back of a motor car through the district, and then burned.

The facts were brought to the attention of the governor, and he made a statement denouncing mob violence. But no one was ever brought to justice, though the names of the ringleaders were ascertained. No committee of inquiry was sent from Washington. In fact, the people of Georgia were allowed thus to smirch the glorious flag of the republic and to lower the opinion of America in every capital of the world; for the facts of this story have been printed in circular form and distributed widely. It is undoubtedly a remarkable example of lynching.

It seems rather strange that lynching crowds allow themselves to be photographed. Men and women and children in hundreds are to be seen in horrible pictures. One sees the summer mob all in straw hats, the men without coats or waistcoats, the women in white blouses, all eager, some mirthful, some facetious. You can upon occasion buy these photographs as picture postcards. The people are neither ashamed nor afraid.

Northern Negroes go down to investigate lynchings, buy these photographs, bring them back to safe New York, and then print them off in circulars with details of the whole affair. Southern newspapers, though reticent, cannot forego giving descriptions of lynchings, everyone is so much interested in them. Newspaper reports are also reprinted. There is no need to resort to hearsay in telling of the mob murders of the South. They are heavily documented and absolutely authenticated. The United States Government cannot, for instance, prosecute such a Negro association as the N. A. A. C. P. for the pamphlets it issues on lynchings, because it does no more than publish facts which have been publicly authenticated. If prosecuted, worse details would see light. Therefore, these pamphlets go forth.

The first thing they do is tell the colored people as a whole what has been happening. The Negroes of Alabama and Tennessee hear what has been happening in Georgia; the Negroes of Florida and Louisiana hear what has taken place in Arkansas and Texas. Above all, the educated Northern Negroes know of it. Advanced papers such as the Crisis, the Chicago Defender, and the Negro Messenger are giving the Negro people as a whole a new consciousness. First of all in Christianity in the days of slavery and in their melancholy plantation music they obtained a collective race consciousness. And now, through persecution on the one hand and newspapers on the other they are strengthening and fulfilling that consciousness. Destiny is being shaped in this race, and white men are the instruments who are shaping it. May it not emerge eventually as a sword, the sword of the wrath of the Lord.

I met many Whites who boasted of having taken part in a lynching, and I have met those who possessed gruesome mementoes in the shape of charred bones and gray, dry, Negro skin. I said they were fools. Actually to have the signs upon them! Truly they were in the state of mind in which most men seem to be when fate is going to overtake them. They were proud of their “quick way with niggers,” they justified it, they felt the wisdom of lynching could never be disproved. The matter to them was not worth arguing. They assumed that anyone who wished to argue the point must have sympathy with the “niggers,” and that was enough for them. It never occurred to them that one who doubted the wisdom of lynching might be actuated by sympathy or at least apprehensive for them.

I felt sorry for the white women of the South; there will some day be a terrible reckoning against them. Their honor and safety are being made the pretext for terrible brutality and cruelty. Revenge, when it gains its opportunity, will therefore wreak itself upon the white woman most. Because in the name of the white woman they justify burning Negroes at the stake to-day, white women may be burned by black mobs by and by. There is no doubt that almost any insurrection of Negroes could ultimately be put down by force, and that it would be very bad for the Negroes and for their cause, but before it could be put down what might happen? And should it synchronize with revolutionary disturbances among the Whites themselves, or with a foreign war?

I do not believe that there are real conspiracies of Negroes. But there is growing disaffection. The colored people are a friendly, easy-going, fond-to-foolish folk by nature. But their affection and devotion have been roughly refused. It has almost disappeared. Now we have the phenomenon of Negro mothers telling their little children of the terrible things done by the white folk, and every Negro child is learning that the white man is his enemy. Every lynching, every auto-da-fÉ is secreting hate and the need for revenge in the Negro masses. Because the Negroes are weak and helpless and unorganized to-day, illiterate often, stupid and unbalanced often, clownish and funny and unreliable, white folk think that it will always be so. But they are wrong. While the industrialized masses of the Whites are certainly degenerating, the masses of the Negroes are certainly rising. Trouble is bound to arise and retribution terrible. What the lowbrows of the South are teaching the Negro he will be found to have learned, and as Shylock said about revenge—it will go hard but he betters the instruction.

It may be thought that this is written with too much emphasis, and that this statement on the lynchings is too unmerciful to the white South. But I believe it is absolutely necessary. There are those who would be ready to do again the injustice which was done to the Whites in the South after the Civil War. When discussing these matters in the North I have been horror-struck by the opinions I have heard expressed. This is written in no partisan spirit, and I believe those who would rejoice in the destruction or punishment of the Southern white population are utterly wrong in heart. Punishment and revenge will only perpetuate the strife. But an Éclaircissement, a flood of daylight on these matters, a thorough shaking of these stupid people down below the line—a warning in such terrible terms as I have made, might save Black and White for the religion of love and a joy in God’s creatures.

It may come from a stranger, a complete outsider, with more force than from an American. I have, however, found a Southerner who condemned Georgia, the Roman Catholic Bishop, Benjamin J. Keiley, who gave out a very serious warning in Savannah on the 2nd of November of last year. He said:

“It is hardly necessary to state that I am a Southerner.... I warmly love the South; and her story, her traditions, and her ideals are very dear to me.... But I fully recognize the absolute justice of one charge which is made against her, and I look with grave apprehension to the future, for no people that disregards justice can ever have the blessing of God, and we are guilty of great injustice to the Negro. The Negro was brought here against his will; he is here and he will remain here, and he is not treated with justice by us; nay, I will say that he is often not treated with ordinary humanity.

“Look at the statistics in our own State. Georgia stands first in the list of States in the matter of lynching. Has there ever been a man punished in this State for lynching a Negro?

“Lynching is murder, nothing else.

“Besides, is it not the fact that fair and impartial justice is not meted out to white and colored men alike? The courts of this State either set the example, or follow the example set them, and they make a great distinction between the white and the black criminal brought before them. The latter as a rule gets the full limit of the law. Do you ever hear of a street difficulty in which a Negro and a white man were involved which was brought before a judge, in which, no matter what were the real facts of the case, the Negro did not get the worst of it?

“Georgians boast of being a Christian people, and this year they are putting their hands into their pockets to raise millions to bring the light of Christianity, as understood by them, to some less favored peoples in Europe.

“I would like to know if it is entirely compatible with Christian morality to treat the Negro as he is treated here? My belief is that the Negro and the white man were redeemed by the blood of Christ shed on the cross of Calvary, and that the Christian religion absolutely condemns injustice to anyone and forbids the taking of life.

“To me the murder of a Negro is as much murder as the killing of a white man, and in each case Christian civilization demands that the punishment of the crime should rest in the hands of the lawfully constituted authorities.

“I have lived to see in Georgia an appeal made to the highest authority in the State for protection of the lives of colored men, women, and children, answered by the statement that the Negro should not commit crimes! The people of Georgia vest in certain officials the execution of justice. Yet no lyncher has ever been punished here, and I regret to state that public sentiment seems to justify the conduct of the officials.

“Only a short time ago I was reading the strange news of the race riots in the Northern and Western cities. Thank God, we have had none of these riots in the South. Do you know the reason? The only reason is the forbearance of the Negro. He has been treated with gross injustice; he has not retaliated. In all these cases gross disregard for law and order are either the cause or the direct consequence of those disturbances.

“Are there not numbers of honest, law-abiding citizens of Georgia who know that I am telling God’s truth, and who will protest against this injustice to the Negro? Is there not a just and fearless man on the bench in this State who will have the courage to announce that there shall be no difference in his court between the white man and the colored man?

“Injustice and disregard of law and the lawful conduct of affairs are the sure forerunners of anarchy and the loss of our liberty, and we are drifting in that direction.

“The Negro will not stand asking for justice from Georgia laws or Georgia courts. He has been patient, and I hope he will remain so, but he well knows where the remedy lies, and he will very soon be found knocking at the door of the Federal Congress, asking protection. And Congress will hear him.

“If appeals to right, justice, to Christian morality, do not avail to put a stop to this injustice to the Negro and protect him against the murderous lynchers, then Georgia will see Federal bayonets giving him protection.”

Such a voice is very rare. The warning is the more worth heeding.