The Truth About Lynching and the Negro in the South: In Which the Author Pleads That the South Be Made Safe for the White RaceCollins, Winfield H. (Winfield Hazlitt)
History
The Truth About Lynching and the Negro in the South: In Which the Author Pleads That the South Be Made Safe for the White Race
Collins, Winfield H. (Winfield Hazlitt)
African Americans; Lynching; Southern States -- Race relations
“He told his spiritual advisers that he had a message for
the public: ‘Tell all the young men to avoid the fate that
awaits me by joining the church and attending its services.’
[Evidently inspired by his preacher advisers] . . . He
slumbered soundly, the guards noticed, and awoke early this
morning apparently indifferent to his doom. . . . With a firm
step he accompanied the officers and his spiritual advisers to
the scaffold which was erected near the Choptank River. Passing
_undismayed_ through the throng which had gathered along
the way from the prison _to the gallows_. _His gaze_ passed
fearlessly around surveying the people.” . . .
Again, in connection with the lynching of Negroes in the South, one
must not lose sight of the conditions that are peculiar to that
section. The greater the number of Negroes in proportion to the whites
in any State or community the easier it is for the Negro to commit
crime and escape. And the Negro criminal does often escape. Seldom
is it found that the Negro will aid in the detection of the Negro
criminal, rather otherwise. Even the hope of escape is a wonderful
encouragement to the criminally inclined.
Now, before the War, as is well known, the South was almost entirely an
agricultural section. It had but few cities and these were small. In
the last thirty or forty years, however, it has been rapidly developing
manufacturing industries. Some of the cities have become great
industrial centers.
Nor is manufacturing confined at all to the large cities. Indeed,
almost every town in some parts has a cotton mill or other
establishment. As illustrations, I may mention Hickory, N. C., and La
Grange, Ga. Hickory, with a population of about 5,000, has two large
cotton mills; the Piedmont Wagon Shops, which employs hundreds of men;
several furniture factories, saw mills, and other industrial interests.
La Grange, a city of about 6,000, has ten cotton mills, one of which is
valued at $1,000,000, and four of the others at $500,000, each. In the
manufacture of cotton alone the South has increased from 316,000 bales
in 1885 to 3,193,000 bales in 1915.
As a consequence the white people have largely been drawn to the
towns and cities: the wealthier own and control the various business
interests while the poorer ones contribute their help or labor.
Few Negroes work in the factories, for the Negro seems to lack the
qualities necessary: namely, punctuality, dependability, and a certain
amount of mental alertness. So, in some parts of the South the whites
are nearly all living in the towns and cities, while the country
districts are filled with Negroes. However, even in such places there
are some whites in the country, and as is evident, in additional danger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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