Southern States -- Social conditions; United States -- Race relations
The volume from Dixon's pen which has had most influence is "The Leopard's
Spots," the accuracy of which is marked by such assertions as that
Congress made a law which gave "to India and Egypt the mastery of the
cotton markets of the world"; and that it cost $200,000,000 to pay the
United States troops in the South in the year 1867. The book has been
traversed with great skill by a negro writer. When Dixon asks: "Can you
change the color of the Negro's skin, the kink of his hair, the bulge of
his lip or the beat of his heart with a spelling-book or a machine?" Kelly
Miller replies: "You need not be so frantic about the superiority of your
race. Whatever superiority it may possess, inherent or acquired, will take
care of itself without such rabid support.... Your loud protestations,
backed up by such exclamatory outbursts of passion, make upon the
reflecting mind the impression that you entertain a sneaking suspicion of
their validity."
Many Southern writers are disposed to put their problems into the form of
novels, and there are half a dozen other stories nearly all having for
their stock in trade the statutes of Reconstruction, the negro politician
who wants to marry a white woman, and the vengeance inflicted on him by
the Ku Klux. In the latest of these novels the President of the United
States is pictured as dying of a broken heart because his daughter has
married a man who is discovered to be a Negro.
A book very widely read and quoted in the South is Frederick L. Hoffman,
"Race Traits and Tendencies" ("Am. Economic Association Publications," xi,
Nos. 1, 2, and 3, 1896). "Race Traits" is written by a man of foreign
extraction who therefore feels that he is outside the currents of
prejudice; it is well studied, scientifically arranged, and rests chiefly
on statistical summaries carefully compiled. The thesis of the book is
that the Africans in America are a dying race, but many of the
generalizations are based upon statistics of too narrow a range to permit
safe deductions, or upon the confessedly imperfect data of the Federal
censuses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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