The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1909-06-03
THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO.
An Unusually Fair Northern View.

We do not study the South
enough by leisurely visits off the
beaten track, away from the "Flori-
da Special and the tourist routes,
from which nothing of much value
can ever be learned. Our war preju-
dices, the old distortion and blind
ness, are still overwh Ginning us, al
though we boast sometimes that we
have shaken them off.
I say this to myself every winter
as, returning from the quail and
snipe regions, I add new experiences
of appreciation. I stopped over this
time at Union Springs, in Alabama,
merely a cotton town far removed
from tourist lines. 1t is situated,
with wide, well-shaded streets, on
good-sized hill, or ridge, with extern
sive views over very curious region,
a sort of notified country of pine for
ests and red-soiled cotton fields-a
paradise for spOrtsmen and followers
of the cunning quail, with high-bred
dogs wandering about the streets. I
sat on the steps of the courthouse
with my own dog, and talked with
one of the judges.
The field sports and their broaden
ing genial influence are perhaps the
best equipment for the serious task
of these Southern judges, the most
serious task that perhaps has ever
been given to their race. Union
Springs is in the midst of the black
belt, and the negroes outnumber the
whites ten to one. The white men
seemed to me like band of broth
ers, united, disciplined, trained
through generations, like jovial sol
diers, to hold down the black race.
Their Southern qualities, that eX-
IRENE and ready sociability, that
frank directness, seemed the more
intensified because they were so des-
perately united to protect Anglo
Saxon decency and order from being
overwhelmed by Africa.
The blacks, Judging from those |
saw, may have been descended from
the last slaves imported just before
the trade was stopped. They seemed
very close to Africa. One of the
young men I went to see is a college
graduate, and a magistrate, who
seems to spend large part of his
time trying negroes for all sorts of
misdemeanors. | watched another
young man in an Office adjoining the
courthouse, with negro after negro,
male and female, coming before him;
they were waiting in groups before
the door, and he seemed to be LEG
turing and explaining to them much
of the time. These negroes are not
the selected ones that we know, but
the great mass of the 100000;
the 100000 of the 100000. 1t
will take long time to lecture and
explain AngloSaXon ideas into the
black mass. 1t will never be done in
any time that can be estimated; and
yet the Southerner goes on with it
day after day, with the greatest pa
thence and good temper; he has been
going on with it in that way for gen.
erations, and he will go on with it to
the end of time, while we theorize
and talk about it in the North.
| wonder where it will all end?
Will the Southerner continue to hold
down with one delicately moulded,
but iron hand, while he explains and
explains and shows great kindness
with the other hand; and meantime
the years and decades pass, and in
fifty years the present ten millions
of negroes have grown to twenty mil
lions, and in another fifty years to
forty millions, and so on until at last
there is a small white population,
desperately united, high-strung band
of brothers, holding down an enOr-
nous black mass just as in India