Woodville Republican., 1903-05-16
MORE ON THE NEGRO.
Bnl Arp Wants 10 Know Where His
Grindstone Is.
SAYS q NeGro stole a 60 sen or Eiss
1AoaaAt " 49, . thesss-Com-
meats On tistkIaRd's SeN
Nork speech,

Where is my grindstoneg Where is
my rake and my aN9 Did anybody
ever hear OF negro stealing a grind
stone2 He stole Il TO sell or else he
thought IL was a cheese. III bet there
are 20 negroes~in sight of my house
who know all about that grindstene,
but they won't tell. That is race
trait--not to tell on one another. Who
steals my young pigeons before we get
up in the morning. We haven't had a
SQUAD TO eat In three months.
Mr.. Cleveland made good speech
In New York on the race problem, and
so did Mr.. Parkhurst, but you can't
make good citizen out of negro
without he has a master OF 8 5oss on
whom he has to depend. My opinion
from observation is that Tuskegee
can't do it nor any other school. The
more education. the less inclination TO
work for living, Where are the Tus-
kegee graduates2 Just laying around
or teaching school. read In yester-
days paper where o negro school'
teacher was caught in having made a
fake list of his scholars and drew more
money than he was entitled to. But
neither Cleveland nor Parkhurst nor
any other northern man knows enough
about the negro TO talk intelligently
about him. Nor does this generation
of southern men know much more.
Nobody knows now but the few old
men who are left. Our editors and
newspaper men do not know. They
are all too young and most Of them
came from stock that did not own me-
groes in the old slavery times. do not
assert this through conceit, but It
pains and astonishes me to hear north
ern speakers and some editors from
the south saying that since the negro
was set free he had made wonderful
progress, considering that for thou
sand years he had been either savage
or slave. Mr.. Cleveland said there
is still grievous amount Ignorance,
a sad amount of viciousncss and tre-
mendous amount of laziness and
thriftlessness intermingled with their
citizenship"
II Mr.. Cleveland had been an old cit
izen of the south he would have said
Before freedom came the negro
was docile, moral, industrious and as
intelligent as thousands Of the unedu
Gated white people Of the south. Not
an outrage WAS committed by then
during the war from the Potomac tt
the Rio Grande. There was not a con,
vict camp nor chain gang in gll the
south. The marriage relation was
faithfully observed, and negro families
were contented and happy, for most oi
them had kind masters and mistresses
who would get up in the night and min
lister TO their sick. Bad negroes had tC
be punished, of course, and so do bad
white children, but It seldom had tC
be done. Talk about the shackles and
the chains Of slavery. 1t is all ro
and imagination. Our children have
master until they are 21. The negro
had one all his life, and, as DIR. Park
hurst said, most of them needed one
and need one now, and so do thousand
of white people. The fact is there arr
but few people who have not got one
| ] do not admit that have, but j have
mistress, and that Is the same thing
There is not clerk in store, wbethe
male or female, but is under the con
troll of somebody; not a conductor oi
railroad nor a sailor on a ship nor
pupil in the schools nor a policeman
| in the towns. Nine-tenths OF the peo
pie in civilized countries are subor
| dinate to the other tenth, and IL look
| like everybody in these United state'
belongs to Teddy Roosevelt, save few
besides myself and some Mississippi
| bears.
The old-time slaves got good, fai
education from contact with thei
masters and their masters children