W. E. B. Du Bois

“ Then again the poor and semi-criminal class looms large in the eyes of the white community because of their dependence and their delinquencies, and when there comes the question of the reformation or proper punishment of this class the white community is at an utter loss as to where to appeal. They see with perfect justice that the Negro laborer although himself honest is not capable of bearing the burden of reforming his criminals. ”

“ I do not believe that the systematic deception concerning the situation in the South either on the part of white men or black men will in the long-run help that situation a single particle.{12} I sincerely hope, therefore, that out of the white silent South and from the ranks of the silent and sensitive Negroes will come men who will approach the lyncher and fighter with their barbaric honesty of purpose and will bring to the situation that large knowledge and moral courage which will enable them to say that this is wrong in the South and that is right, and I am fighting for the right ”

“ The whites themselves cannot do it because they lack the human contact and charity. They consequently make no trial and leave this class to be abused by the economic and social exploitation of their own worst white elements. This but inflames and degrades and makes worst the Negro criminal classes. On the other hand, the upper class of Negroes has no way of communicating with its white neighbors at any rate of speaking with sufficient authority, so that these whites will realize that they are at least the nucleus of the class who can deal with the problem of race contact and crime. ”

“ In his section of the city few or no white people live, consequently his children grow up with colored companions; in his home a white person seldom if ever enters; all the family meals, amusements and ceremonies are among his own people. Now such a situation means more than mere separation from white people; it means, as I have intimated before, not simply separation but organized provision for the service of this colored group. ”

“ On the part of the Negro there are avowed also the three types: the wiley and crafty man who tells the North and the Negro of the kindness of the South and advance of the black man; the fighter who complains or shoots or migrates; and the silent sensitive black man who suffers but says nothing. ”

“ In France on the other hand we find continually a tendency for monarchs like Louis XIV to gain such power that they forced even the aristocracy to be their sycophants, and men who, like the rest of the monarch’s subjects had no rights which the monarch was bound to respect. ”

“ Consequently there has grown up in the new South among the city groups certain well defined social classes with comparatively few social chasms. Roughly speaking, there is a large middle class of working people; an upper class of professional people and a lower class of the poor and semi-criminal. The upper class find their social intercourse among themselves and in contact with the mass of laborers whom they meet in church, in the lodge, in the school and neighborhood and in the streets. ”

“ We often compare the North and South with regard to these things and pointing to the tremendous co-operation of the southern city group we urge the Northern group to follow its foot-steps without stopping to think that tremendous and even harsh differentiation must precede and accompany all such integration and in so far as that differentiation is absent in the North, it is this absence here that it gives a chance for a slower but larger integration in the North which may in the long run, and already has, helped the smaller intenser integration of the black Southern group. ”

“ The real owner could be a beneficent monarch—and was in some cases in the South—or he might be the brutal, unbridled tyrant—and was in some cases in the South. Just where the average lay between these two extremes is very difficult to determine with any degree of accuracy but the experience of the world leads us to believe that abuse of so great power was in a very large number of cases inevitable. ”

“ The chief results among both blacks and whites is evidence of peculiar moral strain. A strain which does not always voice itself; indeed which finds it difficult to choose words, but a strain nevertheless which is manifested in a hundred different ways. Both white men and black men try to hide it. Ask a black man about conditions in the South and he is evasive ”

“ This makes physicians and their kind, like teachers, preachers and lawyers drawn to the mass of their people by strong cords of self-interest because their bread and butter lies in the masses hands, while on the other hand, this same mass is tremendously dependent upon this intellectual aristocracy for such organization of their life as will make their life pleasant and endurable. ”

“ With them the evil and the vision, there must be among both black and white a daily and hourly compromise. The black man can daily balance things and say “Is the vision of a strongly developed race worth the present insult, or blow or discrimination?” ”

“ When therefore, emancipation came it found the cultured house-servant further on the road to civilization, followed by the less cultured but more effectual artisan and both dragged down by the great unnumbered weight of largely untouched field hands. ”

“ The whole tendency of the plantation was toward communism of eating, children and property.—Facts which show their definite results among us to-day—some good and some bad. The beautiful hospitality, for instance, among our poorest Negroes and the willing adoption of orphan children is balanced against bad systems of eating and living and illegitimate births. In and over all these plantation organizations there must of course have arisen that thing so characteristic of monarchal power, namely, the tale bearer and the thief. ”

“ Now these facts are perfectly real to one who knows the South and are true in some degree of Northern cities, but they lead to certain results to which few people give intelligent thought. Namely: in case the white group wishes to communicate with the Negro group its only method of communication is through the middle class of workingmen. The white people of Atlanta do not know the colored teachers, physicians, lawyers or merchants. They do know the servants, the porters and the artisans. ”

“ They do not realize first that there is a group{10} of greater education and ability than they have met right in their own midst and secondly they do not realize that that higher group is an organ unit with the mass of workingmen, and that consequently it is quite impossible to deal to-day with the mass of Negroes without taking this upper class into account. ”

“ In this way the house-servant became even a more dangerous person than the mechanic.—More dangerous because he could command a more careful protection of his master a more intimate protection, and because he inevitably had chances for education which the mechanic did not. ”

“ He is the direct ancestor of the city Negro. Side by side with the slave mechanic and in some cases identical with him arose the house-servants; as the mechanic gained his power by ability and economic demand the house-servant gained a more tremendous and dangerous power by personal contact until on some plantations it was actually a question as to whether the master would rule his servants or his servants rule him, but when such a statement is made it must be interpreted as applying to the house-servant and the house-servants were but a small per cent of{6} the total number of slaves ”

“ But fought as you will perceive, not by the most highly educated and able members of the group but, usually, by the middle class workingman and very often too the tendency is rather to separate that group of men from its natural intellectual leaders ”

“ The white man must say “Is the promise of a real democracy worth the present lie and deception and cruelty?” The necessity of these daily compromises leads to three sorts of mental attitudes among both races. ”

“ No matter how much we may believe the country the place for the Southern Negro or stress its certain advantages to him there, the sad truths remains that the black man who can take advantage of these opportunities is represented in the country districts in very small numbers and cannot under present circumstances be represented by larger numbers save through con{7}scientious, systematic group effort. ”

“ This in the Southern city group of yesterday was possible, but is to-day being made more{9} and more impossible because these natural leaders are seeking economic improvement as leaders of the integrating forces of the race. They depend, therefore, for their enumeration upon this mass of workingmen and upon the loyalty with which this mass of workingmen co-operate in organization. They must, therefore, cater to the whims and likes and dislikes of the mass of the Negro people. ”