The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1901-12-08

A neighbor said to me: 'sMajor, what
is all this racket about the niger?
Have they broke loose? Have they riz
again? You remember how they used
to rise before the war, but they gener-
ally went to the corn field or the cotton
patch. I've been readin' The New York
journal and it looks like something must
have happened out in Mississippi or
somewhere, and the bishops and college
folks and yankee women are nightly
bothered about EN-"
Well. it is amusing to read these stale
platitudes and theories about the negro.
few of them are sensible, some of them
a delusion, and some are almost idiotic.
With most of them education seems to
be the panacea for everything and some
of them want kindergarten schools for
the babies and separate schools for the
mothers to learn physiology. Some of
the northern female antiquities want So
cial equality and hint at miscegenation
as the coming remedy. Some say that
separation is the only solution and the
negro must go, and some say that every
dollar spent on their education widens
the gulf between the races. One very
sensible writer says stop their voting and
stop paying taxes for their education.
Take them all together and they don't
harmonic on any plan, though large
majority. with DR.. Curry in the lead, are
for education, more education. Well, 1T
is possible for even so great and good
man as DR.. Curry to be mistaken. He
and Bishop Gambler and some others on
that line have made life long business
of educating young people, and are nat
urally disposed to magnify it's import
ance, but it seems to me when we try
an experiment for thirty years and spend
over one hundred millions of dollars on
it, and the negroes get worse instead of
better, it is time to halt and try some
other method.
These negroes are a new generation
and they know nothing Of slavery. The
northern idea seems to be that these are
the same negroes we had before the war,
, and that they have recently emerged
from slavery and semi barbarism,, and
must be educated into good citizenship.
This is mistake. The old time negroes
had a very good education-not in book
learning, but by contact and association
with their masters and their masters
families and neighbors. Education is not
all gotten from books. 1t comes through
the ear as we'll as through the eye. Our
old time slaves were better educated for
usefulness than are the college graduates
of today. They had more common sense
and far more morality. We had among
them carpenters, masons, blacksmiths,
tanners, shoemakers, timers, wagon
makers. painters paperers, railroaders,
and we had good farmers and ginners
and millers and hostlers.,
Among the women we had weavers,
carders, spinners. seamstresses. cham
bermaids, butter makers, cooks and nurses
and they were all educated in their bus
mess. owned a carpenter who could
plan and build a first-class house and
make handsome mantel and run a mod
ern staircase. l owned another who
grew up from infancy with my child
rem, and who could paint and paper and
cook and put down carpets and do other
useful things, and he was my faithful
bodyguard during the war and is still
devoted to my family. Education, why,
the children taught Tip to read. and that
was enough for him, and he was always
happy and contented. He had the daily
benefit of example and precept. Why is
it that we have now over 1000 convicts
maudlin philanthropy has come from the
idea that our negroes were savages until
freedom came, when the truth is they
were better fed and clothed and housed
and far happier than the poor of the
northern States. / do not remember to
have ever punished but one of our slaves
---our own boys got most of the whip
pings and the negroes grew up in fear
-
that increases crime and fills our prisons,
for it is recorded that AT per cent of the
convicts can read and write. What Is
wanted is good moral training and the
fear of punishment for crime. The me-
groes get none of this from their parents
or their teachers or preachers, while in
slavery their race trait of stealing little
things was curbed and restrained, but it
has come back in full force and now all
of this generation will steal with but few
exceptions. We have not had but one
domestic servant in twenty-five years
who would not steal, or, as they call it,
take little things on the sly. We expect
them to steal and are never disappointed.
1t is just as much race trait in the ne
gro as it is in the Arabs or the posterity
of Ishmael. 1t is to the credit of the ne
gro that he will not cheat you nor betray
your confidence. 1t is to the discredit
of Jews and Gentiles that they will cheat
your or deceive if they can "honorably.'
But the most alarming trait among the
negroes is their utter disregard for chast-
ity and their conjugal obligations. A
large majority of the negro women are
harlots and their children are bastards.
This lack of womanly virtue is no draw
back on their social standing or their
church membership. If woman belongs
to the Daughters of Zion and pays her
mite to the preacher she is one of the
saints. negro is never turned out of
church. They never suffer from remorse
or the stings of conscience. They fear
ghosts and graveyards, but not hell or
the devil Their religion is compound
of emotion and superstition, Neither the
Jail nor the gallows gives them much
concern, for they spend their time in eat
ing and sleeping, and then go straight to
Jesus. They are curious and interest
ing race of people. Initiative of monkeys
they readily fall into all the vices and
follies Of the white folks-negro boys al
smoke cigarettes. The young bucks
about the towns and cities wear tanned
shoes and the girls wear spectacles an6
black stockings because the white girls