Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1902-08-07
EMORY PROFESSOR :
EXCITESI INDIGNATION.

icisms-it has been largely sectional; and
by consequence, it has been for the most
| part partisan.
| Northern writer's, with practically no
| knowledge or experience of actual con-
/ ditions, have theorized to meet a condi-
| ton that they did not understand. Since
/ emancipation, the negro has been re-
| garded as the rightful protege of the
section that wrought his freedom; and
i his cause has been championed with a
/ bitter and undiscriminating zeal as ear
| nest as it is misguided. Southern writer's,
/ on the contrary, remembering the negro
/ as the slave consider him and his rights
] from a position of proud and contemp-
| tuous superiority, and would deal with
( him on the ante-bellum basis ofAhis SER
vile state"
He then proceeds to show how both sec
lions have treated the question from par
| tisan views and says:
1.-THE south has regarded 1t as a local
| and not national matter; has refused to
| receive any light upon 1t from outside
| sources; and has met any suggestions and
| offers of outside help with a surly invita-
ton to mind your own business The
| north, on the other hand, considering
| the question in its wider bearings, has
approached it from the side of performed
theories. rather than of actual facts; in a
| spirit of fearful or indignant sentiment
| LallIY, imam CdlAL unbiased EGd-
| son; and has therefore proposed RENE
| dies that must, in the very nature of
| things. be at once undesirable and i'm
| possible. As is usual in such cases, the
| truth lies between the two extremes.
He then argues on his first hypothesis
that the negro belongs to an inferior race
and among other things says
1.-THE negro is lower in the scale of de-
| velopment than the white man. His
| inferiority is radical and inherent, a ply
! siological and radical inequality that may,
/ indeed, be modified by environment, but
cannot be erased without the indefinite
| continuance of favorable surroundings
and the lapse of indefinite time. But
what the negro race may become in the
| remote future by process of development
| and selection is not a matter for present
| consideration. The fact remains that now
| the negro race is an inferior race.
DehumanizIng the Negro. 81
1t is in arguing his second hypothesis
that Mr.. Sledd roughly attacks the atti-
| tude of the white people of the south
toward the negro:
rights.
while the north has erred in APP
preaching the negro question with the
| assertion of the equality of the races,
| and seeking to solve 1t on that unsound
postulate, the south has, much more
grievously erred in precisely the OPP
| pOsite direction. For our section has
| carried the idea of the negro's inferi-
| ority almost, If not quite, to the point of
dehumanizing him. This is an unpalata-
BILE truth; but that it is the truth, few
| intelligent and candid white men, even
| of the south, would care to deny. Bla-
| tant demagogues, political shysters, court
| ing favor with the mob; news sheets,
| hattering the prejudices, and pandering
| to the passions of their constituency;
ignorant youths and loud-voiced men
| who receive their information at second
hand, and others do not or cannot see,
| these and their followers, assert with
frothing Yehemence that the negro is
fairly and kindly treated in the south,
| that the southern white man is the me-
| gro's friend, and gives him even more
| than his just dessert. -
But If we care to investigate, evil
| dences of our brutal estimate of the black
man are not far to seek. The hardest
| to define is perhaps the most impressive,
the general tacit attitude and feeling
! of the average southern community to-
/ ward the negro. He is either nothing
| more than the beast that perishes, UNI
| noticed and uneared for so long as he
| goes quietly about his mental toll (as
a young man recently said to the writer,
| The farmer regards his niger in the
| same light as his mule" but this puts
| the matter far too favorably for the ne
| gro); or, If he happens to offend, he is
| punished as a beast with a curse or a
/ kick, and with tortures that even the
| beast is spared; or, II he Is thought of
at all in a general way, it is with the
| most absolute loathing and contempt.
| BE is either unnoticed or despised. AS
/ for his feelings he hasn't any. How
| few-alas how few-words of gentle
ness and courtesy ever come to the black
| mans earl But harsh and imperious
i words nnnTcnnacc and NurGfnp how thew
come upon him, whether with excuse or
in the frenzy of unjust and unreasoning
| passion. And his rights of person.
| propriety, and sancity of home-who
| ever heard of the rights of a 'nigger?'
| This is the general sentiment in the air,
intangible, but strongly felt; and it is, in
a large measure, this sentiment that Gre
ates and perpetuates the negro prob
lem" $50
Salvation Unanswered.
1--WE do not now speak of the utterly
worthless and depraved. There are many
such; but we whose skins are white need
to remember that our color too has it's
numbers of the ignorant, lecherous, and
wholly bad. But take a good negro-well
educated, courteous, God-fearing. There
are many such; and they are in every
thing Save color, superior to many white
men. But what is their life?
CAS- they walk our streets. they lift
their hats In passing the aged or the prom
inent, whether man or woman; yet no
man returns their salutation. They would
| go away; at the depot they may not enter
| the room of the whites, and on the train
| they must occupy their own separate and
| second-class car. Reaching their destin-
| alton, they may not eat at the restaurant
| of the whites, or rest at the white hotel.
| If they make purchases, shop ladies and
messenger gentlemen look down upon
| them with manifest contempt. and treat
| them with open brusqueness and con-
tumey. And If, on a Sabbath they
would worship in a white mans church,
| they are hidden to call upon God, the
maker of the black man as well as of
| the white, and invoke the Christ, who
| died for black and white alike, from a
| place apart. And so, from the cradle to
| the grave, the negro is made, in southern
| phrase, to know and keep his place.
| SIN the case we are considering, these
| distinctions are not based on this negroes
| ignorance on HIS viciousness, on his
| offensiveness of person or of manner;
| for he is educated, good, cleanly, and
| courteous. They are based solely on the
| fact that he is a negro. They do not so
| operate in the case of a white man. But
| the black man, because of his blackness,
| is put in this lowest place in public es-
| TEEN and treatment.
| 'Lynching, again, is but more in
| famed and conspicuous expression Of this
same general sentiment. An investiga-
| ton of the statistics of this practice In