The New South: A Chronicle of Social and Industrial EvolutionThompson, Holland
History
The New South: A Chronicle of Social and Industrial Evolution
Thompson, Holland
Southern States -- Economic conditions; Southern States -- History -- 1865-1951; Southern States -- Social conditions
These individuals all spell negro with a capital and declare that they
are proud of their race. They parade its achievements--and these are not
small when enumerated all at once--but they avoid intimate association
with the great mass of negroes. They are not at all democratic, and in a
negro state they would assume the privileges of an aristocracy as a
matter of right. It would seem that their demand for full political and
social rights for all negroes has for its basis not so much the welfare
of the race as a whole, as the possibility of obtaining for themselves
special privileges and positions of leadership. They are not satisfied
merely with full legal rights. In those States where there is no legal
discrimination in public places, their denunciation of social prejudice
is bitter. They are not content to take their chances with other groups
but sometimes are illogical enough to demand social equality enforced by
law, though by this phrase they mean association with the whites merely
for themselves; they do not wish other negroes less developed than
themselves to associate with them.
In any city where there is any considerable number of this class, there
is a section of negro society in which social lines are drawn as
strictly as in the most aristocratic white community. To prove that the
negroes are not emotional, these aristocrats among them are likely to
insist upon rigid formality in their church services and upon meticulous
correctness in all the details of social gatherings. Since many of these
individuals have a very large admixture of white blood, occasionally one
crosses the barrier and "goes white." Removal to a new town or city
gives the opportunity to cut loose from all previous associations and to
start a new life. The transition is extremely difficult, of course, and
requires much care and discretion, but it has been made. The greater
part of them nevertheless remain negroes in the eyes of the law, however
much they strive to separate themselves in thought and action from the
rest of their kind. It is this small class of "intellectuals" who were
Booker T. Washington's bitterest enemies. His theory that the negro
should first devote himself to obtaining economic independence and
should leave the adjustment of social relations to the future was
denounced as treason to the race. Washington's opportunism was even more
obnoxious to them than is the superior attitude of the whites. They
denounced him as a trimmer, a time-server, and a traitor, and on
occasion they hissed him from the platform. From their safe refuges in
Northern cities, some negro orators and editors have gone so far as to
advocate the employment of the knife and the torch to avenge real or
fancied wrongs, but these counsels have done little harm for they have
not been read by those to whom they were addressed. Perhaps, indeed,
they may not have been meant entirely seriously, for the negro, like
other emotional peoples, sometimes plays with words without realizing
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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