White South

“ On the whole there is surprisingly little friction between the blacks and the whites. One may live a long time in many parts of the South without realizing that the most important problem of the United States lies all about him. Then an explosion comes, and he realizes that much of the South is on the edge of a volcano. For a time the white South attempted to divest itself of responsibility for the negro. ”

“ Second.—Another danger in the South, which should be guarded against, is that the whole white South, including the wide, conservative, law-abiding element, may find itself represented before the bar of public opinion by the mob, or lawless element, which gives expression to its feelings and tendency in a manner that advertises the South throughout the world. ”

“ The Old South was never quite so aristocratic as the North believed, and today the white South is much more nearly a democracy than New England. Even in 1860 this was true of some parts of the South, as compared with some parts of New England. The rural South was always democratic except in comparatively limited areas, and it is so everywhere today. In those communities which have felt the new industrial spirit the question of birth plays little part. Any presentable young man can go where he chooses. ”

“ Is it prejudice against a low race, or a black race? To say that the white Southerner looks down upon and despises every black Southerner would not be fair, for there is still much personal [Pg 162] liking between members of the two races, and the South is right in claiming that it has a warmer feeling for individual Negroes than Northern people. ”

“ Measured by intellectual standards also the white South is below the other sections of the Union; the high standing of its leaders does not bring up the average of the more numerous elements. Any radical improvement, therefore, must include the uplift of the lower stratum of Whites. ”

“ Black and White Land, Labor, and Politics in the South By Timothy Thomas Fortune 1884 Author's Preface In discussing the political and industrial problems of the South, I base my conclusions upon a personal knowledge of the condition of classes in the South, as well as upon the ample data furnished by writers who have pursued, in their way, the question before me. That the colored people of the country will yet achieve an honorable status in the national industries of thought and activity, I believe, and try to make plain. ”

“ But neither race lives alone, neither can live alone. The commercial prosperity of the Whites largely depends on negro labor; high standards for the negro race depend on white aid and white example; neither race is free, neither race is independent. They are the positive and negative poles of a dynamo, and terrific is the spark that sometimes leaps from one to the other.
In one sense, the Southern Whites are the South, inasmuch as they have complete control of the state and local governments, of the military, of public education, of business on a large scale, and of society ”

“ The South, knowing that he is not oppressed, draws therefrom the juster inference that he naturally, wilfully, and inevitably allies himself against the White simply upon a race line and stands, irrespective of reason, in persistent opposition to all measures which the White advocates.
The North sees in the Negro’s attitude only the proper and laudable aspiration of a citizen [Pg 248] and a man; the South detects therein a desire to dominate, a menace to all that the Anglo-American race has effected on this continent, and to the hopes in which that race established this nation. ”

“ Yes, every emigrant Southward-bound is a white man, and he helps to fortify the ascendancy of the white race there. And if the Southern people were not so foolish as to drive away new-comers who do not agree with them in politics, with petty annoyances and persecutions, and even bloody threats and violence, there would probably have been an increase of the white population in the South of one or two millions since the close of the war. ”

“ Some people in despair predict that the Whites will eventually find their way into the West and Northwest, leaving the fruitful South to the Negro. Although there is a steady drift of white people out of the Southern states, it is of the same kind as the movement from New England and the Middle states to the West, and the Whites have not the slightest intention of abandoning their section; buildings go up, mills appear, skyscrapers intensify the city, and in every Southern state the Whites grow richer and more powerful. ”

“ None of the forcible remedies meets the most obvious difficulty in the South—that the present condition of the lower race is not a foundation for great wealth and high prosperity. If the Negro has reached his pitch, if he is to remain at his present average of morals and industry and productivity, the South may well be in despair, for it is far below that of the low Southern White, and farther below that of the Northwestern farmer. The condition of the black is a menace to society—if it must stay at the present level. ”

“ But unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge and efficiency. ”

“ An analysis of the elements of white population may begin with the less prosperous and progressive portion commonly called the Poor Whites. As used in the South the term means lowlanders; and it is necessary to set off for separate treatment the mountaineers, who are, if not typical Southerners, at least unlike anything in the North. No other inhabitants of the United States are so near the eighteenth century as the people to whom an observer has given the name of “Our contemporary ancestors.” ”

“ Southern political economists labor hard to make it appear that the vastly increased production of wealth in the South since the war is to be traced largely to the phenomenally increased percentum of small white farmers, but the assumption is too transparent to impose upon any save those most ignorant of the industrial conditions of the South, and the marvelous adaptability to the new conditions shown by colored men. ”

“ I know of municipalities in the South to-day, where capable colored men are regularly voted into responsible positions by the best white men of their cities. And why not? Do not colored men vote white men into office? And, pray, is the white man less magnanimous than the black man? Perish the thought! No; the politics of the South will readily adjust themselves to the best interest of the people ”

“ The real standards and aspirations of the Negroes are crudely defined and little known outside themselves, and if they were better understood they would still have scant influence upon the white point of view. The “Southern temperament,” therefore means the temperament of the Southern Whites, of the people who control society, forum, and legislature. It is always more important to know what people think than what they do, and every phase of the race question in the South is affected by the habits of thought of thinking white people. ”

“ The South, with her natural resources and advantages of climate and soil, feels that she is perfectly able to take care of herself and her affairs, and all she wants is that the legislation of the country, both Federal and State, should be that which will mete out justice to all her citizens, colored as well as white. ”

“ Although to the Southern mind the community is made up entirely of white people, numerically almost one third of the inhabitants of the former slaveholding states are Negroes, and in the Lower South there are five million blacks against seven million Whites. The moral and material welfare of the South is intimately affected by their presence, and still more by their character. They are as much children of the soil as the Whites; they are everywhere distributed, except in the mountains; their labor is necessary for the prosperity of the section ”

“ Whenever I have been tempted to grow embittered or discouraged about conditions in the South, my acquaintance with such men as Mr. Parker and Colonel Watterson has given me new strength and increased my faith.
I have been fortunate also in the coloured men with whom I have been associated. There is a class of Negroes in the South who are just as much interested as the best white people in the welfare of the communities in which they live. They are just as much opposed as the best white people to anything that tends to stir up strife between the races. ”

“ Often these reports are written by newspaper men, who give the impression that there is a race conflict throughout the South, and that all Southern white people are opposed to the Negro's progress, overlooking the fact that, while in some sections there is trouble, in most parts of the South there is, nevertheless, a very large measure of peace, good will, and mutual helpfulness. ”

“ The expatriation of 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 people to an alien country needs only to be suggested to create mirth and ridicule. The white men of the South had better make up their minds that the black men will remain in the South just as long as corn will tassel and cotton will bloom into whiteness. ”

“ The well-to-do part of the community, and it does it uncomplainingly, with its eyes open, gladly. The South likewise is educating the Negroes principally for the advantage of the white race, for the efficiency of the whole region in which the Whites have the greatest stake, and from which they derive the greater benefit, material and moral. ”

“ Aside from the ignorance of the black citizens and the insatiate greed and unscrupulousness of their carpet-bag leaders—a band of vultures more voracious and depraved than any which ever before imposed upon and abused the confidence of a credulous people—the white men of the South had been educated to regard themselves as, naturally, the factors of power and the colored people as, naturally, the subject class, no factor at all. ”

“ The South is as yet little awakened to the idea [Pg 345] that the status of the lower Whites is a part of the whole race problem. Inasmuch as the Poor White is emerging from seclusion and poverty, people do not sufficiently realize that he needs education, intellectual and moral; that his passions, his animal instincts, his violence stand in the way of the uplift of both races. ”

“ If the temper of the North is expressed in their words, the South can do nothing but rally her sons for their last defense and await in silence what the future may bring forth. This much should be said: The negro can never be established in dominion over the white race of the South. ”

“ In what degree of latitude—pray tell us—in what degree of latitude do the rays of the sun become too calorific for white men? Certainly in no part of the United States, for in the extreme South we find a very large number of non-slaveholding whites over the age of fifteen, who derive their entire support from manual labor in the open fields. The sun, that bugbear of slaveholding demagogues, shone on more than one million of free white laborers—mostly agriculturists—in the slave States in 1850, exclusive of [Pg 299] those engaged in commerce, trade, manufactures, the mechanic arts, and mining. ”

“ All the faults of the Southern men who are practical amalgamators add weight to the bottom contention of the South that a mixture of the races, now or in the future, would be calamitous. That belief rests [Pg 158] upon the conviction that the negro race, on the average, is below the white race; that it can never be expected to contribute anything like its proportion of the strength of the community; and hence to fuse the races means slight or no elevation for the Negro, and a great decline for the white race. ”

“ In the first place, the colonies of the North were settled by people from the lower and middle classes, who had been accustomed to working for themselves and who thus had no use for slaves, while the South was settled largely by adventurers, who had never worked and who looked upon labor as dishonorable. In the second place, the North had a temperate climate in which any man could safely work, while the heat of the South was so intense that a white man endangered his life by working in it, whereas the Negro was protected by facility of acclimation. ”

“ Nobody gets into Congress from the South but by their direction; nobody speaks at Washington for any Southern interest except theirs. Yet there is, at the South, quite another interest than theirs; embracing from two to three times as many white people ”

“ The South has two kinds of frontier,—that which has never been settled, and once thickly settled parts that have grown up to wild woods and wastes since the war. In old times the slave had a half-holiday on Saturday, which custom the colored brother still keeps up; and a more picturesque scene is not to be found than that presented by a town, say of three thousand inhabitants, where the county has seven colored people to one white. ”

“ A. I suppose there is a liberal proportion of them to the population; we have to have our artisans and mechanics; but as a rule the white population of the South are small farmers, either owners of the land themselves or tenants. ”

“ Lacking in nearly all the things that made the old South, at least the upper crust of it, the most civilized section of America at that time, he saw his friends and all they stood for inundated by this flood of crudeness and viciousness, until only a few remained left high and dry like bits of wreckage from a foundered ship cast up on the shore to rot away, while all around them raged this new regime, no longer poor in purse but eternally impoverished in culture and civilizing influences. ”