The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-04-10
A STUDY IN BLACK.
How Sentiment Is Sometimes Upset
by Facts.

Every visitor to this part of the country
is impressed with the sobriety of the ne
groes. While many desperate characters
wear black skins, and. as l have shown
in recent letter, 80 per cent. of the per-
sons convicted of crime are of that race.
drunkenness is rare, and, instead Of spend
ing his time and money around the sa-
looms when he comes to town, the negro
and his family indulge themselves in
pink lemonade, sarsaparilla pop and other
soft drinks" that are freely offered him
at every street corner on Saturday. The
negro farmer works only five days in a
week. Sunday is devoted to religion and
Saturday to social recreation, ana as Of
ten as the day comes around Sambo and
all his family get up early in the morn
ing, eat their breakfast of cornbread and
bacon, harness the mule or the steer or
the heifer into the old cart and start for
town soon after daybreak to remain until
sunset. They may have no business to
transact or eruands to do, but that makes
no difference. They know that they will
meet all their neighbors on the road, and
have an opportunity to chat with their
acquaintance from the whole township
during the day. This habit was acquired
shortly after emancipation. and it has be-
come more and more general and arbi-
trary until planters now fix wages and
lay out plans on a basis of only five
working days a week for each negro. 1t
is said that no emergency will induce the
ordinary hand to forego his weekly holiday
and remain in the field. The loss of fifty
two days work and wages each year is
for
but the social qualities of the race are as
deeply rooted and as thoroughly devel-
oped as their religious instincts.
There has been a great deal of COM
plant among the native white people
of the south that the negro is being over
educated with northern money, and in that
way disqualified for the sta
ton in life to which their
unwritten laws have assigned him.
They have no objection to negro schools.
nor to industrial and manual training
In every city you will find free primary
schools open to negres on equal terms with
the white children, although In separate
buildings. There is also an industrial
school at Savannah for colored pupils,
supported by an approximation by the leg.
islature from the land scrip funds but
there is a decided opposition to the higher
education of the race. igf
A Massachusetts man who has lived here
for nine years. and is still republican,
explains 1t in this way:
NEGRO boys and girls from the coun-
try who go to school and learn to read and
write never go back to the plantation.
They prefer to live In town. They become
servants in the hotels and private families
or are employed around the shops. Some
times the most Industrious ones become
mechanics. and some of the brightest girls
teach school, but they Will never be will
ing to work in a field or in affarm house
again, and being easily tempted. too often
go to the bad.
There is no career for college-bred
negroes in the south except as teachers
and preachers, and that field is limited.
The bright boy who gets, a college educa-
ton usually insists upon studying a pro-
fession, which is Improbable. The col
ored people invariably prefer a white law
yer or white doctor to one of their own
race, because they have more confidence
in them. Thus. finding nothing to do the
educated negroes moves north or else goes
into politics and seeks an office. Then
he is often and usually corrupted, and dis
graces himself.
THE Industrial schools offer the most
useful and practical education tor negro
children. They teach the girls to sew and
cook and do housework, and train the fin
gers and develop the manual skill of the
boys so that they take up a trade as soon
as they earn enough money to buy a set
of tools and generally do well at II. The
people down here do not call for a high
order Of mechanical skill, and boy who
gets a start in one of those schools can
perfect himself by experience and prac-
tice.
People have prejudice against edu-
Gated negroes. They are not so fractable
and are too often impert.nent, You want
a servant to keep his place, and don't like
to have him talk back at you. In select
ing a servant down here the experience
house wife invariably prefers one that
cannot read or write. 1t is the cold and
undeniable fact that there is a greater de-
mand for illiterate than for educated ser
wants. and you Will find it to be quite as
true among northern people who talk
about the elevation Of the race as among
the native southerners who believe the
negro to be an inferior order of being.
mo matter how much people theorize
and declaim about the black and the
white being equal before God and having
immortal souls and all that sort Of thing
the fact Is that in the south there is no
use for an educated negro, and the more
education he gets the more useless he be-
comes The white man viii continue to
be master in this country unless he be-
comes extinct or until the millennium ar
riVes, and the black man will continue to
be his servant, and the wisest thing the
black mans friends can do IS to qualify
him for that duty. I came down here from
Massachusetts with all the sentimental
notions that prevail in New England, but
they have been knocked out of me by prac-
teal experience"