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 must tell, in spite of lack of room, one beautiful story I heard at
Atlanta, which so well illustrates the old relationship. There is in the
family of Dr. J. S. Todd, a well-known citizen of Atlanta, an old, old
servant called, affectionately, Uncle Billy. He has been so long in the
family that in reality he is served as much as he serves. During the riot
last September he was terrified: he did not dare to go home at night. So
Miss Louise, the doctor's daughter, took Uncle Billy home through the dark
streets. When she was returning one of her friends met her and was much
alarmed that she should venture out in a time of so much danger.
"What are you doing out here this time of night?" he asked.
"Why," she replied, as if it were the most natural answer in the world, "I
had to take Uncle Billy safely home."
Over against this story I want to reproduce a report from a Kentucky
newspaper which will show quite the other extreme:
_Tennessee Farmer Has Negro Bishop and His Wife Ejected from a
Sleeping Car_
Irvine McGraw, a Tennessee farmer, brought Kentucky's Jim Crow law
into prominent notice yesterday on an Illinois Central Pullman car.
When McGraw entered the car he saw the coloured divine, Rev. Dr. C.
H. Phillips, bishop of the coloured Methodist Episcopal Churches in
Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas and a portion of Arizona and New
Mexico, and his wife preparing to retire for the night. He demanded
that the conductor order them out of the car, but the conductor
refused.
After he entered Kentucky he hunted for an officer at every station
and finally at Hopkinsville Policeman Bryant Baker agreed to
undertake the task of ejecting the Negroes from the car. The train
was held nine minutes while they dressed and repaired to the coloured
compartment.
I have now described two of the three great classes of Negroes: First, the
worthless and idle Negro, often a criminal, comparatively small in numbers
but perniciously evident. Second, the great middle class of Negroes who do
the manual work of the South. Above these, a third class, few in numbers,
but most influential in their race, are the progressive, property-owning
Negroes, who have wholly severed their old intimate ties with the white
people--and who have been getting further and further away from them.
_A White Man's Problem_
It keeps coming to me that this is more a white man's problem than it is a
Negro problem. The white man as well as the black is being tried by fire.
The white man is in full control of the South, politically, socially,
industrially: the Negro, as ex-Governor Northen points out, is his
helpless ward. What will he do with him? Speaking of the education of the
Negro, and in direct reference to the conditions in Atlanta which I have
already described, many men have said to me:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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