The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1886-05-26
THE SOUTHERN NEGRO.
Noticeable Lack OF Progress in the BLACK Hah
Where Unencrmhcred by the Whites


saws a. Johns Island, South Carolina,
correspondent of the Chicago Times.
Thousands of volumes have been written
about him and many ten thousands
of editorials and magazine articles, and
the more we study him the more We
don't know about some of his PECULIAR
ties. And now, after seeing the free
NEGRO in the North, the slave negro III
the South, and the freeman and freed
man both North and South, and after
coming to some conclusions IN regard to
them, I find on this coast and these
islands an entirely new variety OF the
genus, necessitating new theory.
To the best of my knowledge every
prophecy ever made about the American
negro has been completely falsifed by
facts. l do not, just now, remember
one guess, even by the wisest, that has
proved correct, whether the gllesscr was
friend or foe. In the first place, there
were those in England and the colonies
who said the negro would wither away
in bondage; but, unlike every other race
on the globe, and unlike his own race III
other countries, the negro in the United
States fiourished in slavery and multipl-
ed as no other race has.
IDEAL NEGRO SOCIETY.
Here the colored people own the land
and hold the elective offices. They have
all the churches heart could wish, and
at least three preachers to the square
mile They have perfect social equality,
if there be such thing, for they have
all the society there is. The whites are
so isolated that they have none. In
short, the negroes have the land,
climate to suit them, the offices, the
stores, the schools, the churches, perfect
immunity from white oppression, and
free course to run and be gloritied. And
with all this, what progress? Well, you
have to set stakes and take sight to see
that they are moving at all. James
Island presents them at their best on the
coast; Johns is noticeably worse than
James; Wadmalaw is worse than Johns,
and each successive island from here to
Savannah, so the whites tell me, Is worse
than the last, although find this hard
to believe. The exact progress since the
war I, of course, cannot measure, as |
was not here then to take point OF de
parture; but this I insist upon, that the
poorer class could not have lived worse
than now and lived at all. The gain has
been by those who got land, and the
poorest renter in Indiana lives far better
than the best of them on Johns and
Wadmalaw. And now, with all this
evidence, lots of people are prophesying
as confidently as ever all sorts OF good
and evil for the negro's future. Instead
of following this rash example, will pre-
sent the facts OF my trip to this point
the reader may do his own prophesying.
Yesterday morning left the hospita-
BILE home of the well-to-do black brother,
George Brown, and travelled straight
south 10 ( ,gare point. All the fields
were dotted with black laborers, a few
plows were running, but nearly all the
work was done with hoes as large as an
average spade, in the hands Of braw1 V !
men and women. For many hmdreu
yards at time the cabins lined the way
side thick enough for an ordinary VII
lage, but all were empty-the whole
family were back in the fields. The
women handled these heavy hoes quite
as deftly as the men, and ridging for
cotton was in rapid progress. In a last
years cotton patch, where the ridges
were nearly two feet above the burrows,
the boys and girls went first with heavy
baskets of 'tswamp trash, half rotted
leaves and grass aked up at low tide
and scattered it In tide fulrows; the wo-
men came next with hoes and dug down
the grass and loose stuff from the ridges,
with earth enough to cover it and the
sstrash," and then the men with plow
and hoe put enough fresh earth on it to
make the middle ridge as high as the old |
one. In this the cotton is planted, and
the first blowing throws what is left OF
last years ridge to the growing plants.
cit takes
TEE Niger AND THE HOE
to make the Sea Island cotton" is the |
proverb of the whites. Many Of them
have tried machinery to do this work,