Studies in the South and West, with Comments on CanadaWarner, Charles Dudley
History
Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada
Warner, Charles Dudley
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
To this end they want industrial as well as ordinary schools for the
colored people.
It is believed that, with this education and with diversified industry,
the social question will settle itself, as it does the world over.
Society cannot be made or unmade by legislation. In New Orleans the
street-ears are free to all colors; at the Exposition white and colored
people mingled freely, talking and looking at what was of common
interest.
We who live in States where hotel-keepers exclude Hebrews cannot say
much about the exclusion of negroes from Southern hotels. There are
prejudices remaining. There are cases of hardship on the railways, where
for the same charge perfectly respectable and nearly white women are
shut out of cars while there is no discrimination against dirty and
disagreeable white people. In time all this will doubtless rest upon
the basis it rests on at the North, and social life will take care of
itself. It is my impression that the negroes are no more desirous to
mingle socially with the whites than the whites are with the negroes.
Among the negroes there are social grades as distinctly marked as in
white society. What will be the final outcome of the juxtaposition
nobody can tell; meantime it must be recorded that good-will exists
between the races.
I had one day at the Exposition an interesting talk with the colored
woman in charge of the Alabama section of the exhibit of the colored
people. This exhibit, made by States, was suggested and promoted by
Major Burke in order to show the whites what the colored people could
do, and as a stimulus to the latter. There was not much time—only two or
three months—in which to prepare the exhibit, and it was hardly a fair
showing of the capacity of the colored people. The work was mainly
women’s work—embroidery, sewing, household stuffs, with a little of the
handiwork of artisans, and an exhibit of the progress in education; but
small as it was, it was wonderful as the result of only a few years of
freedom. The Alabama exhibit was largely from Mobile, and was due to the
energy, executive ability, and taste of the commissioner in charge. She
was a quadroon, a widow, a woman of character and uncommon mental
and moral quality. She talked exceedingly well, and with a practical
good-sense which would be notable in anybody. In the course of our
conversation the whole social and political question was gone over.
Herself a person of light color, and with a confirmed social prejudice
against black people, she thoroughly identified herself with the
colored race, and it was evident that her sympathies were with them. She
confirmed what I had heard of the social grades among colored people,
but her whole soul was in the elevation of her race as a race, inclining
always to their side, but with no trace of hostility to the whites. Many
of her best friends were whites, and perhaps the most valuable part of
her education was acquired in families of social distinction. “I can
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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