The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-07-21
THE WORTH AND THE NEGRO.

their prompt acton when lyhcnln8 was threatened at Gadsden. What The Star says of those officials is nothing more than their due. but we reprint the article especially on account of the double admission made by our contem- porary; first, that If conditions were the same there would be more lynch ings North than South: and. second, that the people here have moro pa tience with the negro than the North ern people have.
 The first proposition is one The Ad- vertiser has always insisted on, but we rarely find a Northern supporter.
 The Northern people have not the same degree or extent of patience with the negro. nor the same tolerance for his faults that we who have always known him at close range have. The Southern people have always lived with the negro and know him thoroughly. They know his faults. his weaknesses una his shortcomings. Many of his minor offences are forgiven or ignored because we know that they are due to moral weakness, to heredity and to nature. A real negro has not. and cannot have the same fine perception of right and wrong that the whites have. What our race would look on as a grave fault. if not a crime, Is re- garded by the genuine son of Ham as too small . matter to be censured. and they think it strange that they should be punished for such little side steps. Example, precept and education cannot change a genuine negro in this respect. It is in him, has always been in him and will always remain
 It is because we of the South fully understand the negro that we toler ate some offences that would not be forgiven him elsewhere. and 1t is be- cause the Northern people do not un- derstand the negroes as a race that they have so little patience with them. As rule, the Northern speakers. teachers. newspapers and all others talk vociferously and lavishly about the poor down-trodden negro in the South. crate about his treatment, and tell us what we should and should not do. and show their ignorance of the Subject in various ways. To listen at them or read after them one would decide that in the estimation of our friends up there the negro is merely white man with a black skin.
 That this delusion is dispelled when they are brought into close contact with the colored brother has been proven in so many instances that 1t would be a task to enumerate them In various States of the North and Northwest we read of lynchings. race riots, other race troubles, and of me- groes being asaulted and driven out for no other cause than that they are black and that they are not acceptable neighbors or competitors in the strug- gle for existence. These events are getting to be common and they occur because the people up there are be- coming better acquainted with the ne- gro and have less patience with him. One recent case has brought forth from two of our Republican con- temporaries admissions as significant as are those of The Star. The affair is thus briefly outlined by The New York Tribune:
 According to one story. the trouble started through an attack by white dler, who was also white. The race is- sue was only injected later, when a negro boy was attacked for defending the peddler and a negro rufflan at fau mt aA ahnnf a n0lipennan who helping to protect the peddlers black ally and restore peace in the block. Without any real cause or warrant. section thereupon began to Lombard each other with brIckbats and pistol volleys. The fusilade lasted several licemen had to be called out to re- establish order.
 Then The Tribune adds: @+-..
 In one sense such an exhibition of race antipathy approaches the riiicu- menacing and deplorable. We are given to criticising the lawlessness which in Southern communities leads ings. but in the South such outbreaks usually follow some fragrant crime and aim at punishing known or suspected ths nsn.e for Tn FSa vnurs wholly lacking. On trivial grounds, or without any grounds at ali whites attacked blacks and blacks attacked whites. Both classes seem to have acted on the merest impulse of race prejudice and race rancor.
 Then tho paper goes on to state that the negroes are much to blame, and that by This own vicious and iisor- derly conduct he often invites the hos tility of his white neighbors," but adds in sort of perfunctory way that the colored race should receive better treatment. and we agree with it.
 The Evening Mail gives about the same account of the beginning of the trouble. and declares that the dis grace is the greater in our case from the fact that the Southern lynchings almost always take place in country towns or rural districts. where police protection Is wanting; whereas our race riots are in the heart of a city where there are more policemen on duty to the square mile than anywhere else in the world. We do not hear of negroes being mobbed in New Orleans. Atlanta or Charleston because they have hired a house and paid their rent or because black man has performed an act of common humanity. In fact, we do not hear of race riots in those cities at all"
 This was one of the worst race riots hot a