Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the SouthFortune, Timothy Thomas
History
Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South
Fortune, Timothy Thomas
African Americans -- Southern States; Southern States -- Economic conditions; United States -- Race relations
deliberately proceeded to murder innocent men and women for POLITICAL
REASONS and to systematically rob them of their honest labor because
they were too accursedly lazy to labor themselves._
But this highly abnormal, unnatural condition of things is fast
passing away. The white man having asserted his superiority in the
matters of assassination and robbery, has settled down upon a barrel
of dynamite, as he did in the days of slavery, and will await the
explosion with the same fatuity and self-satisfaction true of him in
other days. But as convulsions from within are more violent and
destructive than convulsions from without, being more deepseated and
therefore more difficult to reach, the next explosion will be more
disastrous, more far-reaching in its havoc than the one which
metamorphosed social conditions in the South, and from the dreadful
reactions of which we are just now recovering.
As I have said elsewhere, the future struggle in the South will be,
not between white men and black men, but between capital and labor,
landlord and tenant. Already the cohorts are marshalling to the fray;
already the forces are mustering to the field at the sound of the
slogan.
The same battle will be fought upon Southern soil that is in
preparation in other states where the conditions are older in
development but no more deep-seated, no more pernicious, no more
blighting upon the industries of the country and the growth of the
people.
It is not my purpose here to enter into an extended analysis of the
foundations upon which our land system rests, nor to give my views as
to how matters might be remedied. I may take up the question at some
future time. It is sufficient for my purpose to have indicated that
the social problems in the South, as they exfoliate more and more as
resultant upon the war, will be found to be the same as those found in
every other section of our country; and to have pointed out that the
questions of "race," "condition" "politics," etc., will all properly
adjust themselves with the advancement of the people in wealth,
education, and forgetfulness of the unhappy past.
The hour is approaching when the laboring classes of our country,
North, East, West and South, will recognize that they have a _common
cause_, a _common humanity_ and a _common enemy_; and that, therefore,
if they would triumph over wrong and place the laurel wreath upon
triumphant justice, without distinction of race or of previous
condition _they must unite_! And unite they will, for "a fellow
feeling makes us wond'rous kind." When the issue is properly joined,
the rich, be they black or be they white, will be found upon the same
side; and the poor, be they black or be they white, will be found on
the same side.
_Necessity knows no law and discriminates in favor of no man or race._
APPENDIX
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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