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
Mr. Brown has other methods for keeping the tenantry on his plantation
satisfied. Every year he gives a barbecue and "frolic" for his Negroes,
with music and speaking and plenty to eat. A big watermelon patch is also
a feature of the plantation, and during all the year the tenants are
looked after, not only to see that the work is properly done, but in more
intimate and sympathetic ways. On one trip through the plantation we
stopped in front of a Negro cabin. Inside lay a Negro boy close to death
from a bullet wound in the head. He had been at a Negro party a few nights
before where there was liquor. Someone had overturned the lamp: shooting
began, and the young fellow was taken out for dead. Such accidents or
crimes are all too familiar in the plantation country. Although Pulaski
County, Georgia, prohibits the sale or purchase of liquor (most of the
South, indeed, is prohibition in its sentiment), the Negroes are able from
time to time to get jugs of liquor--and, as one Southerner put it to me,
"enjoy the resulting trouble."
The boy's father came out of the field and told us with real eloquence of
sorrow of the patient's condition.
"Las' night," he said, "we done thought he was a-crossin' de ribbah."
Mr. Brown had already sent the doctor out from the city; he now made
arrangements to transport the boy to a hospital in Macon where he could be
properly treated.
_Use of Cocaine Among Negroes_
As I have said before, the white landlord who really tries to treat his
Negroes well, often has a hard time of it. Many of those (not all) he
deals with are densely ignorant, irresponsible, indolent--and often
rendered more careless from knowing that the white man must have labour.
Many of them will not keep up the fences, or take care of their tools, or
pick the cotton even after it is ready, without steady attention. A
prominent Mississippi planter gave me an illustration of one of the
troubles he just then had to meet. An eighteen-year-old Negro left his
plantation to work in a railroad camp. There he learned to use cocaine,
and when he came back to the plantation he taught the habit to a dozen of
the best Negroes there, to their complete ruin. The planter had the entire
crowd arrested, searched for cocaine and kept in jail until the habit was
broken. Then he prosecuted the white druggist who sold the cocaine.
Some Southern planters, to prevent the Negroes from leaving, have built
churches for them, and in one instance I heard of a school-house as well.
Another point of the utmost importance--for it strikes at the selfish
interest of the landlord--lies in the treatment of the Negro, who, by
industry or ability, can "get ahead." A good landlord not only places no
obstacles in the way of such tenants, but takes a real pride in their
successes. Mr. Brown said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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