Slavery -- United States; United States -- Politics and government -- 1861-1865; United States -- Race relations
This upper class contains only persons of exceptional blood, talent, or
some other rare fortune. The higher education, and the education which is
now best of all for the negro--industrial education--is for this little
circle only. Hampton and Tuskegee do not open to all comers. Mr.
Tillinghast convincingly proves that those who have got really good
training at the two institutions just named are far above the average
negro in physical stamina, education, and other important
particulars.[184] The graduates go forth, not to benefit their brothers in
the lower class, but to win for themselves surer and higher standing in
the upper class.
Some of the resources which this urban section of the upper class have
enjoyed for a while they are losing, as I shall tell when I hereinafter
summarize the details of white encroachment. But other resources open to
them. Such are professions like dentists, eye, ear, and throat surgeons,
doctors, barbers, and others who must content themselves with only colored
patronage; such the growing retail trade, multiplying boarding-houses,
restaurants, and saloons, finding their custom exclusively in the
increasing negro town population. The number of negroes who become
teachers, lecturers, preachers, authors, etc., steadily augments. Other
resources of this upper class can be pointed out, but it needs not here.
Although nearly always when the father who has struggled up dies, his
property, as we saw to be the case with the negro farmer, goes, and no
child succeeds to his occupation, there is perhaps generally compensation
for his loss by the accession of some other who has got up out of the
lower class by an extraordinarily lucky jump. It is clear that the class
is without the wholesome influence of uninterrupted inheritance, from
generation to generation, of faculty and character progressively
improving. Take this inheritance away from the men and women of any
enlightened nation and it would be to lower them very near to the level of
barbarism. It is also nearly certain that there will be no further
infusion of white blood into this class, by reason of the hostility to
inter-mixture which becomes stronger--yea, intenser--every year. The
probable consequence will be the dilution of much of the white blood now
in the upper class through the lower class to such an extent that it will
practically disappear. But some of it, I think, will persist, perhaps
increase in degree--preserved by the aversion of many to intermarriage
with persons less white than themselves, and occasional intermarriage with
white persons in northern States.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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