The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-27
Yankees Impressions of Alter Three Years Residence

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 lit then. Fancy me thinking of send ing one of my children to the same school with niggerl Up north the mig ger Is surrounded with the myths. fairy tales and romance of the civil
 war. Come down here and get behind the scenes and the awakening is ab- rupt, to say the least.
 You will wonder what I'm talking about and you never will understand
 what I am talking about until you
 have lived in the south for one year.
 The fundamental truth of the whole thing, Jim, Is that the negro race is not the equal of the white race and never will be. The United States gov ernment made mistake when the at tempt was made to make the two equal and there will always be dissension and strife until the mistake is rem edied. The civil war was fought for just cause and slavery was wrong and all that. Don't think I'm trying to re- flute all those old and almost buried facts. What I'm driving at is that after Ine saves were lTttu they 0Ol have been made citizens of the coun- l try with equal suffrage rights. negro
 can be educated, he can learn to read flaw, he eau learn to practice medicins,
 he can learn any other profession but
 he learns it in the same way that
 parrot learns to talk or that a monkey llearns to ape the actions of white
 man. The white race for thousands of
 years, generation after generation, has
 been educating itself away from bar
 parity; only three or four generations
 ago and the negroes were aborigines i in Africa Each succeeding generation
 of the white man inherited the ad-
 vanced civilization of it's forbears and
 took up the march of civilization where Il its fathers left off; I don't say the ne-
 gro isn't doing the same thing, but
 he's starting about 25,o0o or 3o,0oo years behind time. Will he ever catch lup or are the two races equal?
 l Pardon me for the Aggression for
 don't want you to think I am writing
 a treatise on the solution of the ne-
 gro problem. l merely knew youd think I was a fool in what l had
 said and I tried to defend myself little in advance. But to get back to
 telling you what you'll find here I'll
 continue and tell you some of my ob-
 servatons on the niggers and you can gather opinions and make deductions
 to suit yourself.
 | The triggers live in settlements and in servant houses in the alleys of the city. In the country their cabins are scattered
 about promiscuously, wherever it might
 be convenient The alleys of Birmingham
 form a very interesting contrast. Great
 office buildings or residences face the
 streets, while in the alley between are little nigger huts that in the majority of
 cases are mere shacks and dives. One ot
 the first "southernly" sights that will at
 tract the eye of a northerner on his first
 trip into the south will be the niggers l carving bundles of clothes. buckets, ire
 wood, etc., on their heads. The way l they balance these loads is actually won
 derful, as they walk along talking and paving not the least attention apparently l to what they have on their heads An !, other of the first sights which will ap- peal to you in the city is the "chain l gang" It is a band of convicts. neariy
 always niggers, who wear chain shackles
 on their ankles and, surrounded by sew eral white guards, sweep and clean the
 streets of the city every night and cart away the rubbish. These men work out their sentences in this way, and 1t IS generally admitted that the police force | Is inefficient when not enough negroes
 are arrested and convicted to keep the streets of the city swept clean.
 One of a niggers most predominant characteristics is his begging faculty. You
 never get them to do any odd job about the office or your home but that they find a hat, or coat. or pair of shoes, or
 something that they manage in getting you to give them. Refuse to tip the boys in a barbershop, hotel q restaurant, a club or any such place and you are very
 carefully avoided by every servant in
 the place the next time you visit the es- tablishment.
 Very few of the niggers ever vote: all of which is a demonstration of how the people of the south have taken their ne- gro problem into their own hands and are solving it themselves. The reason they don't vcte is that as far practical re- suits are concerned in the south there is only one party, the democrats, composing the much abused ''sold south" Practi- cally all the niggers down here are re- publicans if they are anything. at all Yes, they could be democrats if they wanted to, but political affiliation to the demo- cratic party in the south is not particu- larly healthy to the negro race; there fore what negro democrats there are never show up at the polls. Consequently there never are any real elections in most of the counties of Alabama and the