The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-03-23
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

l
 black belt in deadly earnest
 It was serious enough at the time In
 those days I was busy running over the
 state in the interest of the Alabama -Bap-
 tist. which then owned and edited, and
 saw sights which I will never forget.
 The average negro is just an overgrown
 child, and his emotions are mighty cas-
 fly stirred. and when they grip him he
 weeps with the same abandon as child,
 openly and without any sense of shame
 or effort to restrain himself. Now I have never been very emo tional. but confess that I used to have
 a tugging at my heartstrings when the train would stop at a station and the
 platform would be filled with hundreds
 Of negroes, for have seen trainloads
 moving northward.
 | The black hegira as you will remember, took the able-bodied men and left the | old men, and the women and children at home to work the crops. It was con- ! dition to be later repeated in all the war ring country in Europe. The greatest lproblem France has to face, according to Miss Anne Morgan. is her loss of man power.
 | And so the old men. the negro wom-
 en, and the boys and girls had to go to the fields, and right here in Alabama there was suffering and plenty ana while it was not spectacular, like in the lands lit up by the red glare of war, 1t
 was just as biting, save in the bangs of having ones loved ones killed or maimed,
 and one's home razed to the ground and
 one's farms made desolate. l I'll never forget a ride I had with J. 1 O. Thompson during the height of the ex- odus. We were on a train in middle I Alabama. He had just made the swing round of his many plantations and knew l the conditions from Tuskegee on through
 the country to Union Springs and Scale.
 and he was facing the greatest crisis of
 his life as planter
 |
 | He had irf. warehouses hundreds of bales of cotton on which he had borrowed money when the bottom dropped out of l the cotton market, and the bankers were railing him and advising him to sell. He was firm In the belief that If they would tide him over, both the banks and he would rome out more than whole He outlined to me just what did take place
 later. but he had to sell. Now it was not merely @ great per sonal loss for him, but 1t was a real tra-- gedy for his tenants. Oh, how he pleaded with bankers, merchants and others to stand by him so that he could stand by those dependent on him on his various places. When he was pouring out his soul to me he had reached the end of the row, and he was in prophetic mood and drew a realistic picture of what the next few coming years would bring to the farmers.
 He kept reiterating the fact that it; was a suicidal policy for the bankers the mer- chants and the advancing farmers to sit quietly by and let the negroes flock to the public works or travel to the north and the west in search of employment He told me that he had seen all of his negro tenants and had frankly advised them to look out for themselves, as it was impossible for him to help in the situation.
 I have brought MT. Thompson in this story to show that even as progressive and as kindly disposed man as he is was absolutely powerless in the grip of the unusual conditions to face 1t successfully without the backing of the community
 This Is one thing we have learned out of the war It was burned into our thoughts that no man stands alone. If the situa- ton were to arise again 1t would be solved by being made public instead of a private question. Bankers, mer- chants and farmers would come together
 and pool forces.
 But back again to some of the scenes I witnessed in my goings and comings. saw the breaking up of families in more | intense form that I used to witness when there was a great flow of settlers 1 from Alabama to Texas and the southF west It was sad indeed to see the black | nanmies giving up their stalwart sons, to see the parting of husbands and wives, to see the clinging weeping children as 1 they climbed into the arms of their dad dies or clung to his knees. I'll never forget them to my dying day, but little did l. dream then that before long there would be other tender and heartbreaking groups in our parks or at the station as our boys were leaving for France.
 
 Time brings smany changes. I am not
 an old nj; n, but was born after the close of the civil war and as a lad I passed through the days of reconstruction. when
 the negro question was in its acutest stage owing to the 'carpet baggers'' and the enforced domination in Alabama un- der the power of the federal government, and witnessed things which seem so far away as to be ancient history. I remember company of United States soldiers being encamped at Eufaula for several months. I used to watch them on the streets with awe and would sit in church fascinated as some of them filed in for worship. They were there to keep the peace. for things were at boiling point, and no one knew just when the pot would overflow, but that 1t would was a foregone conclusion.
 I was just a youngster at private