The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
A Los Angeles, Cal., correspondent informs me that the editor of
the Times of that town, who I trimmed up last month for
permitting impudent coons to insult Southern white women through
his columns, is named "Col." H. G. Otis, and that during the war
he commanded a negro company. He also sends me the following
extract from the alleged newspaper published by the ex-captain of
the Darktown Paladins:
In considering the crimes of which some negroes are frequently
guilty it should not be forgotten that these traits of violent
sensuality are undoubtedly inherited from mothers and
grandmothers who were subjected to the lust of their masters
under the slavery system. In other words, the sins of the fathers
are being visited upon their children to the third and fourth
generation.
That is a vast improvement over the original statement published
by Coon-Captain Otis to the effect that Southern white women seek
black paramours, and that most lynchings are caused by the guilty
parties getting caught. It is a matter of utter indifference to
the ex-slaveholders what this calumnious little fice says about
them, if he will but refrain from voiding his fetid rheum upon
their families. Doubtless some slaveholders were degraded
sensualists, but such were exceptions to the rule. Not one yaller
nigger in a hundred is the child of its mother's old master.
There were comparatively few mulattoes in the South before the
war, most of these were the offspring of white overseers--and it
is a notorious fact that a majority of our professional
"nigger-drivers" were from the North. This is no reflection on
the character of the Northern people--these fellows were simply
the feculent scum, the excrementitious offscourings of
civilization. And now I remember that a second-cousin of mine in
Kentucky has an overseer from Ohio named Otis. A very thrifty and
choleric man was my cousin, and considering a yaller nigger less
valuable than a black one, he threatened to subject his overseer
to a surgical operation if another half-breed pickaninny appeared
on the place. I do wonder if this "Col." Otis--who knew so much
about the management of coons that he was placed in command of a
colored company--can be the same fellow; also what was the result
of my relative's ultimatum? Can anybody in Los Angeles tell me
what state this "Col." Otis came from, or send me a good picture
of the ex-commander of coons?
. . .
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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