Following the color line : $b An account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy
History
Following the color line : $b An account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy
African Americans; United States -- Race relations
I stopped at Greensburg, Ind., on my way East and found there a remarkable
illustration showing just how feeling arises in the North. Greensburg is a
comfortable, well-to-do, conservative, church-going old town in eastern
Indiana. Many of the residents are retired farmers. The population of
7,000 is mostly of pure American stock, largely of Northern origin. And
yet last April this quiet old town was shaken by a race riot. I made
careful inquiries as to conditions there and I was amazed to discover how
closely this small disturbance paralleled the greater riot at Atlanta
which I have already written about. Negroes had lived in Greensburg for
many years, a group of self-respecting, decent, prosperous men and women.
They were known to and highly regarded by their white neighbours. One of
them, named Brooks, owned a barber shop and was janitor for the
Presbyterian Church and for one of the banks. Another, George W. Edwards,
whom I met, has been for years an employee in the Garland Mills.
"There isn't a better citizen in town than Edwards," a white lawyer told
me; and I heard the same thing from other white men.
Another Negro, George Guess, is an engineer in the electric light plant.
Of the local Negro boys, Robert Lewis, the first coloured graduate of the
local schools, is now teaching engineering at Hampton Institute. Oscar
Langston, another Negro boy, is a dentist in Indianapolis. These and other
Negroes live in good homes, support a church and have a respectable
society of their own. I found just such a body of good coloured people in
Atlanta.
Well, progress brought an electric railroad to Greensburg. To work on this
and on improvements made by the railroad hundreds of labourers were
required. And they were Negroes of the ignorant, wandering, unlooked-after
sort so common in similar occupations in the South. When the work was
finished a considerable number of them remained in Greensburg. Now
Greensburg, like other American cities, was governed by a mayor who was a
"good fellow," and who depended on two influences to elect him: party
loyalty and the saloon vote. He allowed a Negro dive to exist in one part
of the town, where the idle and worthless Negroes congregated, where a
murder was committed about a year before the riot. Exactly like Decatur
Street in Atlanta! A rotten spot always causes trouble sooner or later.
Good citizens protested and objected--to no purpose. They even organised a
Good Citizenship League, the purpose of which was to secure a better
enforcement of law. But the saloon interests were strong and wanted to
sell whiskey and beer to the Negroes, and the city authorities were
complaisant.
"Who cares," one of them asked, "about a few worthless Negroes?"
But in a democracy people _must_ care for one another.
_A Negro Crime in the North_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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