66. THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO1

Politically, there still exists "the solid South"; yet, for the more intimate phases of Southern opinion in relation to the most serious of Southern problems, no one may speak as a representative authority. In the presence of the negro we may say truly that the mind of the South is of many minds. Just as the negro divides the sentiment of the North, he divides the sentiment of the South.

Under the different conditions obtaining to-day in our industrial and political life, from year to year and from place to place, the negro is different and the white man is different. In each locality of the South the problem is, therefore, a different problem. Ultimately, of course, the problem is one- is the mutual social, industrial, and political adjustment upon the same soil, of two races between whom the difference in color is perhaps the most superficial of the distinctions which divide them.

As this fundamental problem, however, is presented under the concrete working conditions of Southern life, it assumes a different phase in each State of the South, in each county of the several States, and even in the separate communities of each particular county.2 When studied in the city where the white

1 By Edgar Gardner Murphy. Adapted from The Present South, pp. 153-174, 182-201. Longmans, Green, & Co., New York, 1910.

2 "The variety of conditions in different parts of a single State is often greater than would be imagined. If one were to say that certain counties of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama contain fewer negroes than certain counties of New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, or Rhode Island, it might awaken surprise. But the figures for a number of counties in the South are as follows:

"The twelve counties contain 90,756 people, of whom 575 are negroes, a single negro to 175 of the population. Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, contains more negroes than most of these counties.

population slightly outnumbers the black, where churches and schools are provided, and police protection is abundant, the racial conditions of such a State as Alabama present one problem; in an adjoining county, where the negroes outnumber the white people six to one, where both races are poor, where schools and churches are not numerous or usually impressive, where the constabulary is necessarily inadequate, our racial conditions present what may be readily understood to be a very different problem indeed,

Even in the rural South the problem varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. It is one thing in those regions of light and sandy soil where the farms of the white man and the negro adjoin, where the white man's farm is cultivated by his own labor, where the negro is not to any large extent a dependent class, and where the relation of master and servant exists but to a slight degree; it is another thing where the negro exists in large numbers as a working class upon the plantation of the white man: It assumes still another phase in the regions of black and heavy soil, where the white man who owns the land finds it too unhealthful to work his own plantation, and the large negro population comes into personal relations only with boss, overseer, or superintendent. In our mining regions, moreover, where the negro comes into direct contact with the white man, not as a landowner or overseer, but as a fellow laborer, often with the foreign laborer, we find a different problem still. The problem differs not only from locality to locality, but from man to man. There is a personal equation as well as a local equation.

"But again it may cause surprise to find how small is the proportion of white people in some counties. In Issaquena County, Mississippi, only six people in every hundred are white, and there are five other counties in which the per cent is less than ten. In fourteen counties in the South seven eighths of the people are negroes; in fifty-four counties, three quarters; and in one hundred and eight counties, two thirds. The great difference in race proportions in different counties is shown in Alabama, for example, where the proportion varies from Winston County, in which there are only seven negroes, to Lowndes, in which they number over thirty thousand.

"It needs no argument to show that the 'negro problem' is quite a different thing in Winston from what it is in Lowndes.”. GEORGE S. DICKERMAN, in the Southern Workman, Hampton, Va., January, 1903.

And in addition to a personal and a local equation there is a class equation. In certain sections of the South the negroes themselves are different from those in other sections. Those negroes of Virginia who have been reared in proximity to the white population of the higher type, reflect in aspiration, in character, in manner, the better qualities of their environment. The negroes of other sections who are the descendants of those inferior slaves that were "weeded out" of the better plantations, and sold South," present a far more difficult situation.

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And the white population, also, has its social classifications. Between the more intelligent negroes and the representatives of the planter class- the old aristocracy-there is little if any friction. But between the negro of any class and the representative of the "plain people," the people whose energies are recreating the fortunes of the land, whose prejudices are quite as vigorous as their industry, who have never known the negro at his best and have too often seen him at his worst, between the new negro and the new white man, there is likely to be enmity and there is very sure to be suspicion. The Southern white man also presents those marked varieties of temperament and disposition which go everywhere with a greater complexity and a deeper refinement of social organization. He differs also under the changing and instructive forces of travel, of education, of experience. From class to class, from man to man, as well as from place to place, what has been called "the problem of the races assumes a distinctive phase and becomes a different problem.

There is to-day with us not the negro problem only, under its varied personal and local phases, but other problems with it, and when a man attempts to discuss the negro problem at the South, he may begin with the negro, but he really touches, with however light a hand, the whole bewildering problem of a civilization.

The difficulties of the situation are not simplified by the fact that this civilization is included within a larger civilization and a more democratic order, and that every problem of the one necessarily emerges under its varying political and industrial forms as a problem of the other. It is still true that there is one sense

in which the problem itself is profoundly sectional. Locally as well as historically the negro question is a Southern question. Seven eighths of the negro population are in the South, and they are in the South to stay. There will be occasional movements northward. Long-established negro "colonies" in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati will continue to increase in numbers. But these people, in the mass, and because of the silent, unyielding sway of climatic and industrial forces, will remain south of an imaginary line connecting the cities of Washington and St. Louis. Even within this Southern territory, it is evident that it is the lower South, the South within the South, which is receiving the largest relative increase in the number of its negroes.

And yet, while this is true, it is also true that there are two aspects of our question under which it must assume a national form. Although the larger proportion of the black population lies within the South, the actual number of negroes at the North is steadily increasing; and the national distribution of the negro as a factor of population involves the national distribution of the negro as a problem of American civilization.1 From being a problem which was once accorded a wrong solution in one section of our country, it has become, for every section of our country, a problem which has received no adequate solution whatever.

The issues presented by the negro in American life are national, however, in no merely geographical sense. They are national because of the principles, because of the industrial and political assumptions, which they involve. The national welfare is the larger context of every local problem; and while the negro question finds its locality in the South, it must find its ultimate adjustment if it ever receives adjustment — in the conscience, the wisdom, the knowledge, the patience, the courage of the

1 The city in the United States having the largest number of negroes in 1900 was Washington, D. C., with 86,702; then follow Baltimore (79,258), New Orleans (77,714), Philadelphia (62,613), and New York (60,666). It will be noted that only one city south of Washington has as large a negro population as the city of New York. [The census of 1910 shows the following distribution: Washington, 94.446; New York, 91,709; New Orleans, 89,262; Baltimore, 84,749; Philadelphia, 84.459. Birmingham, Atlanta, and Memphis each had about 52,000 negroes in 1910. ED.]

Nation. The problem under its older form was created by the complicity of the Nation. The problem under its later forms has been created by the deliberate enactments of the Nation. The Nation, including the South, the West, the East, the North, cannot be permitted to evade responsibilities which it has always been zealous to accept but which it has not always been so zealous to discharge. Least of all can the South be a party to that evasion. If national action could be really inspired by the wholesome and constructive spirit of a truly national policy, could be pursued really in the interest of the whole people, rather than in the interest of sectional bitterness or partisan advantage, it would bring significant and lasting benefits. Too often, however, the policies which have been proposed in the Nation's name have been so pursued as to bring the negro into American life as an issue of sectionalism rather than as an occasion for nationality, nationality of temper, of sympathy, of purpose. It is not enough to say that government by parties is inevitable. There are some crimes of which even parties ought to be incapable.

I have not hesitated to speak of the presence of the negro in American life as a "problem." We have been told that the negro. should be regarded not as a problem but as a man. There is truth in the suggestion. And yet out of this truth there arises. the problem he is a man, and yet a man unlike, in history and in racial character, the men about him. Every man, white or black, presents a problem. The problem increases in perplexity when to the characteristics of the individual are added the characteristics which distinguish and differentiate the groupsocial, national, or racial—with which he is associated. When this group is brought into contact with another group, or with other groups, the elements of complexity are increased. The problem grows. The Russian in China is a Chinese problem. The Jew in Russia is a Russian problem. The white man in Africa is an African problem. The African in America is, and will be for centuries, one of the problems of American life.

Nor can we say that the negro presents not a problem but a task. That would be to assume that the supreme need is the need of resources, material and moral, and that all could be well