University of California Berkeley 
 
THE ONE 
 GREAT QUESTION 
 
 A STUDY OF SOUTHERN CON 
 DITIONS AT CLOSE RANGE 
 
 By SUTTON E. GRIGGS 
 
 Author of "Imperium in Imperio," 
 " Overshadowed," " Unfettered,'* 
 " Dorian's Plan," " The Hin 
 dered Hand," Etc., Etc., Etc. 
 
 THE ORION PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA. PA. q NASHVILLE, TENN. 
 

 
 Copyrighted, 1907, by 
 
 THE ORION PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 Nashville, Tenn. 
 
' ' Is the statesmanship of our times 
 adequate to avert a direful crisis? Or, 
 will it fail to solve the Negro problem, 
 just as the statesmanship of 1860 failed 
 to find a solution by the bloody expedient 
 of civil war. That is undoubtedly the one 
 great question for American civilization to 
 answer." HARPER'S WEEKLY. 
 
Contents 
 
 - 
 
 PART I. 
 
 PACK 
 
 The Case Stated 7 
 
 Applying the Test 10 
 
 The Queen City 11 
 
 An Illuminating Incident 15 
 
 The Penalty for Saying "Yes" 16 
 
 A Young Woman Fined 18 
 
 Fleeing from Injustice 19 
 
 Guarians of the Peace 20 
 
 The Tom Ray Case 21 
 
 The Officer Creeps 22 
 
 i 
 
 Just to See Him Run 24 
 
 The Writer an Eye-witness 26 
 
 For Standing by His Sister 28 
 
 Prison Life 29 
 
 A Roll Call 31 
 
 A Tuskegee Professor 33 
 
 5 
 
Contents 
 
 PART II. THE CASE ARGUED. , 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To Be Expected 39 
 
 The Larger Results 40 
 
 The Aspiring Negro 42 
 
 Broad Road to Depths, But Not to Heights 44 
 
 The White South Affected 45 
 
 Destroying the Sentiment of Justice 46 
 
 Leadership of the White South. 47 
 
 Cheapened Political Life 51 
 
 Must Find Fault 51 
 
 The Nation 52 
 
 The One Solution 54 
 
 A Plan of Action 55 
 
The One Great Question 
 
 PART I. THE CASE STATED. 
 
 The late Hon. Carl Schurz, in the course of an 
 article published a few years since, bearing upon the 
 question of the relation of the races in the South, wrote 
 as follows : ~ 
 
 "And here is the crucial point : There will be a 
 movement in the direction of reducing the Negroes 
 to a permanent condition of serfdom the condition 
 of mere plantation hands, 'alongside the mule/ 
 practically without any rights of citizenship or a 
 movement in the direction of recognizing him as a 
 citizen in the true sense of that term. One or the 
 other will prevail." 
 
 In a more recent article appearing in the Century 
 Magazine, the Hon. Charles Francis Adams quotes, 
 with evident approval, the following from Baker : 
 
 "So long as it is generally considered that the 
 Negro and the white man are to be governed by 
 the same laws and guided by the same manage 
 ment, so long will the former remain a thorn in 
 the side of every community to which he may un 
 happily belong." 
 
 Owen Wister, in his recent book, "Lady Balti 
 more," essaying to photograph the current thought of 
 the young North groping its way toward settled con 
 victions, represents it as now feeling that the final 
 status of the American Negro is to be and ought to be 
 "something between equality and slavery." 
 
The Hon. E. W. Carmack, the rather brilliant 
 young United States Senator from Tennessee, said, in 
 a speech delivered not long since, upon the occasion of 
 the opening of his campaign for re-election : 
 
 "I believe this is a white man's country, a 
 white man's civilization and a white man's govern 
 ment. We belong to a race that has never yet 
 divided sovereignty and dominion." 
 
 His successful opponent, ex- Governor Robert L. 
 Taylor, in stating his position on the race question, said 
 that the Negro had been thoroughly eliminated from 
 the political life of the South, and therefore, in that 
 respect, was no longer an issue. 
 
 Says John C. Reed, in his "The Brothers' War" : 
 
 "Booker Washington is a great, a decisive au 
 thority on this question. He counsels the Negro to 
 eschew politics. This is wise. It is the solid inter 
 est of the Negro masses that they accept the inev 
 itable, just as the South gave up slavery when we 
 could hold on to it no longer." 
 
 In the course of an editorial bearing on the race 
 question, Harper's Weekly, in a recent issue, remarks : 
 
 "The policy personified in Governor Varda- 
 man and Mr. Hoke Smith points, of course, 
 straight to serfdom. * * * A step was taken 
 in that direction when the Negro was disfran 
 chised * * *." 
 
 Remarks the Baptist Argus (Kentucky) : 
 
 "Has the Negro in America enough wisdom to 
 adjust himself to the conditions yearly growing 
 more critical ? That is an important question ; one 
 of far-reaching moment. Negro leaders need to 
 realize that the future of their people depends upon 
 their ability to make the best of the fact that they 
 are in a country governed by a more powerful race ; 
 a race which would reverse all of its history and 
 
do violence to all of its ambitions should it consent 
 to turn any part of its government over to another 
 race. This is a fact, and not a theory, which con 
 fronts our Negro brethren, and foolish is the 
 Negro leader, foolish and criminally blind, who 
 would inflame his people with any hope to the con 
 trary. Booker Washington is right. The only 
 hope of the Negro is to improve himself, to get 
 education and property, and by wise counsels get 
 the best terms, as the future unfolds, which the 
 white race may see its way to give." 
 
 The Wall Street Journal, supposed to represent 
 more or less the capitalistic view of matters, said in a 
 somewhat recent editorial : 
 
 "The race question is settled if the dominant 
 party will only allow it to stay settled." 
 
 In the citations here given we have certain north 
 ern white men of wide repute suggesting that the 
 nation abandon as idle its dream of establishing among 
 its citizens an equality of citizenship without regard to 
 "race, color or previous* condition of servitude;" south 
 ern men proclaiming it as the fixed policy of the white 
 South to deny the Negro a share in the government, 
 and the organ of the money power proclaiming that the 
 race question is now settled if the dominant political 
 party will only allow it to so remain. 
 
 These expressions bear out in full the prediction of 
 Mr. Schurz as to a movement looking toward the aban 
 donment of the contest for full-fledged citizenship for 
 the Negro. 
 
 The content of the suggestion put forth is that the 
 South be definitely cut off from the rest of the nation ; 
 that in other sections the country's march towards its 
 destiny be made over the hopeful highway of a democ 
 racy, while in Dixie the journey is to be made in a soft 
 ol oligarchical by-path. 
 
The more humane among those who hold that the 
 ideal situation is one in which the government is admin 
 istered for the Negroes and the whites by an exclusive 
 white regime promise that the system will stimulate the 
 Negroes along material lines, will foster education, ad 
 minister justice, safeguard human life and advance the 
 interests of civilization in general. The more rational 
 of the advocates of this plan of adjustment of the rela 
 tion of the races do not favor an agitation looking to the 
 repeal of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, 
 but hope for its nullification through a policy of non- 
 enforcement, backed by an acquiescing public opinion. 
 
 APPLYING THE TEST. 
 
 Precisely the system which is here proposed as a 
 permanent solution of the race question, a system with 
 the Negro occupying that "something between equality 
 and slavery" condition suggested by Mr. Wister, has 
 been in vogue in various of the southern States for a 
 number of years. In view of the prominence of those 
 supporting the proposition to make this condition per 
 manent a careful scrutiny of its fruitage would seem to 
 be peculiarly in order. Being somewhat familiar with 
 the actual workings of this system, having seen it thor 
 oughly tested on sundry occasions, we have thought to 
 pilot our readers on a visit to the regions in question, 
 that they may note the kind of fruit the tree of repres 
 sion bears. 
 
 Such of the whites of the South as are opposed to 
 according the Negro the full measure of his rights as 
 set forth in the Constitution have usually found the 
 means of making it thoroughly uncomfortable for such 
 southern white men as Professor Sledd and George 
 W. Cable, who have written contrary to their point of 
 view, and having thus practically acquired a monopoly 
 
 10 
 
of local expression have been wont to taunt those who 
 write from a distance with the fact that they are not on 
 the scene, do not thoroughly understand local condi 
 tions and hence write as mere theorists. A premium 
 has thus been laid on first-hand knowledge of the situa 
 tion. The writer has lived in the South practically the 
 whole of the thirty-four years thus far accorded him, 
 and for the past seven years has resided in the city of 
 Nashville, Tennessee. For the purpose of meeting the 
 most exacting demands of those who call for first-hand 
 knowledge, and at the risk of being accused of descend 
 ing to the particular, we shall confine our recital of con 
 ditions largely to such incidents as have come more or 
 less under our own observation or the observation of 
 persons known to the writer personally. 
 
 THE QUEEN CITY. 
 
 It occurs to us that there is a unique value at 
 tached to the fact that our portrayal of conditions will, 
 under the rule laid down, be confined largely to our 
 present place of residence, Nashville, Tennessee in 
 view of the high standing of that city as an exponent of 
 southern civilization at its best. 
 
 Upon the general proposition that Nashville does 
 thus represent southern civilization, we would scarcely 
 expect much dissent. During a visit to the city a few 
 years since the Hon. Charles H. Grosvenor, of Ohio, 
 remarked in the course of an address to the Legislature 
 of Tennessee : 
 
 "Taken all in all, Nashville is about the best 
 city in the South." 
 
 Philanthropists, with the education of the two races 
 at heart,, seemed to regard the city as a rather ideal, 
 strategic educational center for both races, and as a 
 
 ii 
 
result more than eight millions of dollars are here 
 invested in educational institutions. 
 
 In the course of an address delivered somewhat 
 recently in the Academy of Music, in the city of Phila 
 delphia, Prof. Booker T. Washington spoke substan 
 tially as follows : 
 
 "We are accustomed to hear much about race 
 prejudice in the South. You will pardon me if I re 
 late some of my personal experiences, a thing 
 which I do not like much to do. Take the city of 
 Nashville, for an example. Recently I visited that 
 city and one of the most aristocratic white churches 
 of the city threw open its doors to me to address 
 the white people, and the building was crowded 
 before the hour for the speaking to begin." 
 The impression created upon the minds of his 
 hearers by Mr. Washington's remarks was very favor 
 able to the city of Nashville, which impression was, 
 perhaps, a true reflection of that made upon his mind 
 by the hospitality extended him by the white people of 
 that city. If we are to credit the public expressions of 
 other visitors made from time to time, it is a fact that 
 Nashville has a way of commending itself quite gener 
 ally to the good will of the stranger within its gates. If, 
 then, in Nashville we are to behold the South's highest 
 mountain peak, the imagination of the reader is at lib 
 erty to conceive its deepest valley. "If they do these 
 things in the green tree, what shall be done in the 
 dry?" 
 
 To begin with, Nashville is a repressionist city, 
 having all the earmarks of such. During the recent 
 presidential campaign it was in this city, and before 
 what was said to be the flower of the white race, that 
 Senator E. W. Carmack made the applause-provoking 
 declaration : 
 
 "The man who does not know the difference 
 
 12 
 
between a white man and a 'nigger* is not fit 
 to be President." 
 
 Somewhat recently, one of Nashville's and Ten 
 nessee's most noted citizens, the Hon. John J. Vertrees, 
 took the position in a published statement that the 
 Negro should be denied the right to vote because of his 
 race, and that the white people of the South will re 
 sort to violence, if necessary, to eliminate the Negroes 
 from politics when in large numbers they overcome the 
 present handicaps of illiteracy and poverty and meas 
 ure up to all the requirements imposed by the present 
 disfranchising laws. 
 
 The elimination of the Negro from the politics of 
 the city of Nashville is not brought about directly by 
 legislation, but by the predominance of the repression- 
 ist sentiment among the whites. Primaries are held 
 from which Negroes are excluded because of their 
 racial connection, and, when the primaries are regarded 
 as having been fairly conducted, contumely is visited 
 upon any white man who dares to attempt to thwart 
 the expressed wish of the white primary by an alliance 
 with Negro voters. 
 
 We are now to see how the Negroes fare in this 
 ideal southern city in which, by the sentiment of so 
 many of their white neighbors, they are denied a voice 
 in the city's government. 
 
 In the city of Nashville there are three univer 
 sities for the education of the Negroes, and the in 
 fluence of these institutions, coupled with the work of 
 the public schools, has quickened the interest of the 
 Negro population in the matter of the education of their 
 young. The facilities for the accommodation of the 
 Negro children in the city public schools are not now 
 and for years have not been adequate for their needs. 
 
 13 
 
It is estimated by competent authorities that seating 
 facilities exist for not more than one out of four Negro 
 children of school age. As a result many Negro chil 
 dren are annually denied admission to the schools from 
 a sheer lack of room. The writer remembers quite well 
 the look of keen disappointment on the face of his 
 seven-year-old girl when he was told by the principal of 
 the school to which he had taken her that there was no 
 room for her. 
 
 Mass meetings have been held by the Negroes, 
 committees have been appointed to lay the facts before 
 the School Board, City Councilmen have been person 
 ally besieged, School Superintendents have pointed out 
 the need of more room to Boards of Education, and the 
 Boards of Education have recommended increases to 
 the City Council, but all to no avil. When the writer 
 last inquired of the Negro leader of the movement for 
 increased facilities as to the status of affairs, the fol 
 lowing was the answer: 
 
 "Our friends among the whites have told me to 
 keep quiet ; that the Board of Education has asked 
 for an appropriation of sufficient size to enable 
 them to squeeze out another building for us. And 
 if the appropriation is made as asked for, we may 
 get the school by having kept the City Council in 
 ignorance as to what was being done." 
 
 This is the manner in which the repressed have to 
 struggle in the enlightened repressionist city of Nash 
 ville to save their children from ignorance and evil- 
 breeding idleness. The City Councilmen are hedged 
 about by the white primary system, and care nothing 
 for the agonizings of the Negroes from whose political 
 wrath they are securely shielded. 
 
 14 
 
AN ILLUMINATING INCIDENT. 
 
 Negro roustabouts engaged in the Cumberland 
 river traffic between Nashville and other points began 
 to give accounts of life on the river that poisoned the 
 minds of Negro laborers in general against that form of 
 employment. Among other things they charged that 
 the men were worked without proper shifts in the force 
 being made; that they were not provided with decent 
 sleeping quarters, but were compelled to sleep on the 
 bare floors and near the boilers for warmth ; that their 
 food was served to them in one huge pan out of which 
 all the workmen were compelled to eat at the one time, 
 each using a large spoon ; that the petty officers were 
 very tyrannical, feeling themselves amply protected by 
 stringent United States laws against insubordination 
 on the seas; that often when a piece of freight was 
 dropped by accident into the water the party dropping 
 it had to choose between jumping into the river after it 
 or being clubbed by the white officer in charge of the 
 work, and that roustabouts thus forced to jump over 
 board had lost their lives. As a result of these accounts 
 of the treatment accorded roustabouts, that form of 
 labor lost all attraction for Negro laborers. 
 
 When boat owners found themselves in straits for 
 labor, they repaired to the City Hall and related how 
 difficult it was for them to get roustabouts even by 
 offering greater pay than was usual. To solve the prob 
 lem, on one occasion a squad of policemen appeared on 
 certain business streets, rounded up indiscriminately all 
 Negroes that happened to be in sight at that time, and 
 drove them aboard one of these boats needing labor, as 
 they would so many slaves. 
 
 During the summer months these river boats 
 are used largely for excursion purposes to carry the 
 
 15 
 
various Negro churches and Sunday Schools on annual 
 outings. As a protest against the alleged treatment of 
 these roustabouts these forty or fifty churches, with 
 possibly two exceptions, joined in a boycott of the 
 boats and declined their use for pleasure purposes 
 throughout the summer following this crisis in the 
 labor situation on the river. 
 
 But the practice of enforced labor has not been 
 abandoned. Whenever there is a scarcity of labor on 
 the river, complaint is made at the City Hall and police 
 men are forthwith sent to arrest Negroes who have the 
 appearance of being out of work, and who, when ar 
 rested, are told to choose between being fined and sent 
 to the chain gang and going to work on the boats. 
 
 The business men who help to make Mayors re 
 ceive prompt attention from the hands of the author 
 ities. The dumb laborers, shut out from the governing 
 force, cannot so much as get their grievances investi 
 gated. 
 
 THE PENALTY FOR SAYING "YES." 
 
 We pass now to the matter of the administration 
 of justice in the city of Nashville, choosing such cases 
 to illustrate its operation as have come more or less 
 under the direct observation of the writer. If we go 
 somewhat minutely into this phase of our subject, bear 
 with us, as the results issuing from the Courts are far- 
 reaching in their bearings upon the welfare of the na 
 tion, a fact that will soon perhaps be apparent to the 
 mind of the most unwilling reader. 
 
 In the city of Nashville there resides a Negro 
 minister, who, though comparatively unlearned, has 
 succeeded in building up a religious publishing house to 
 the point where it does a business of over one hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars annually. This Negro insti- 
 
 16 
 
tution, it is said, does a larger amount of business with 
 the Nashville postoffice than any other local concern. 
 
 One evening one of the young women in the steno 
 graphic department was detained after hours in order 
 that some very urgent correspondence might receive 
 due attention. When in the earlier part of the night 
 the young woman was ready to leave, the daughter of 
 the head of the establishment loaned her a cloak to 
 protect her from the increased chilliness of the air, 
 while a son of the publisher offered his services as an 
 escort. 
 
 When, a few minutes later, the young woman ar 
 rived at her door, she handed the borrowed cloak to 
 the young man to be returned to his sister. He threw 
 the cloak across his arm and proceeded toward his 
 home, it still being in the early part of the night. 
 
 Two policemen saw him and called to him to halt. 
 Not knowing that they were addressing him, he contin 
 ued walking. They called a second time, saying, "you 
 fellow there with the cloak on your arm." 
 
 The young man now halted and the officers drew 
 near. They questioned him as to his residence and so 
 forth, he replying to their queries. In answer to one of 
 their questions he said "yes." 
 
 "Don't you say 'yes' to me, you d d nigger 
 you ; I'll beat your head off," said the enraged officer. 
 . The young man was taken to the city jail, locked 
 in a cell and kept there for some time before he was 
 allowed to communicate with his family. Finally his 
 father was reached and came to furnish bail. 
 
 In due course the young man was arraigned for 
 trial. The cloak was his sister's, and the ownership 
 thereof was never in dispute. The hour at which the 
 young man was abroad was not an unseasonable one, 
 
 17 
 
and no objection was due on that score. He was by no 
 means a vagrant, as he was engaged in legitimate 
 service, drawing a larger monthly salary, perhaps, than 
 the officers that arrested him. There were present in 
 the Court white persons and Negroes high in the busi 
 ness world to testify to the young man's character. 
 This young man was one of the most orderly, straight 
 forward, inoffensive young men it has been the pleas 
 ure of the writer to know. Yet he was adjudged a 
 criminal and a fine of ten dollars was set down upon 
 the books opposite his name. 
 
 After the record had been made and the young 
 man's name handed down to posterity as a criminal, 
 to the marring of the family record of the publisher, 
 the Court magnanimously decided to remit the fine, 
 taking care, however to allow the judgment of guilty 
 to stand. The offense charged was abusive language 
 addressed to the officers, which the young man, on his 
 oath, swore was nothing more nor less than the leaving 
 off of the "sir" in response to a question. His accusers 
 did not mention a single word of abuse that he used, 
 simply stating to the Court that the young man's man 
 ner was very offensive. As it was very offensive in 
 some quarters for a Negro to leave off the "sir," there 
 was no necessary conflict between the testimony of the 
 young man and the officers on this point. 
 
 A YOUNG WOMAN FINED. 
 
 A young Negro woman, highly esteemed by the 
 people of her race, a graduate of the City High School 
 and from the business course of one of the local uni 
 versities for colored people, was arraigned before the 
 City Judge about whose Court we have just written. 
 The charge against the young woman, in the Judge's 
 own words, was that she "might have given the white 
 
 18 
 
lady a more civil answer" to a question. She had been 
 dragged from her parents' home into which policemen 
 had entered without due warrant of law. Her father 
 had been refused the privilege of taking her to the 
 station in his own vehicle, and the mother the privilege 
 of riding with her in the patrol wagon. 
 
 She was adjudged a criminal and fined five dollars. 
 There was absolutely no mention of vulgarity, boister- 
 ousness, or abusive language. The reply of the young 
 woman to a commonplace question by a white woman 
 was not deemed as civil as it might have been, and so 
 the young Negro woman had her name entered upon 
 the record books as a criminal. 
 
 During the proceedings in the City Court in both 
 of the cases cited the writer was present throughout 
 and saw for himself the workings of the Court. Such 
 was the justice meted out when the parties accused 
 were intelligent, members of good families, having 
 records in the community absolutely untarnished, and 
 able to employ legal talent to defend themselves. 
 
 FLEEING FROM INJUSTICE. 
 
 All elements of the Negro population have grown 
 to regard the Courts as the temple of injustice, rather 
 than the temple of justice. The spot of all others that 
 should be deemed sacred to the cause of right is regard 
 ed as doubly sure to be guilty of wrong. 
 
 The lower stratum of Negro life gathers in great 
 numbers on Court days and keenly watches the dis 
 pensing of the repressionist brand of justice. The 
 Negroes have come to the conclusion that, as between 
 an accusing policeman and a prisoner, there is abso 
 lutely no chance for the prisoner. 
 
 This prevalent belief has influenced the Negro 
 youths, however innocent, to decide to take no chances 
 
 19 
 
before this Court. As a result when they are accosted 
 by a policeman, if they feel that they have anything 
 like a chance to get away, they run, regarding their 
 conviction, be they guilty or innocent, as an assured 
 fact if but arrested. To counteract this running habit 
 the policemen adopted the practice of shooting to kill 
 all Negroes who, when accosted, dared to run. 
 
 GUARDIANS OF THE PEACE. 
 
 We shall now cite several cases, the first four of 
 which occurred within a period of about six weeks. 
 
 At a wholly seasonable hour of the night a number 
 of Negro youths were walking along in the southern 
 part of the city. They were in no way breaking the law, 
 but an officer, for some reason, desired to interrogate 
 them. They were respectable young boys, belonging to 
 good families, and unaccustomed to Court troubles. 
 Though conscious of the fact that they were not guilty 
 of any offense, yet fearing that they would be fined, 
 they ran. The policeman fired several times at the flee 
 ing group, and succeeded in killing one of the number, 
 the fatal bullet having entered the victim's back. No 
 punishment of any character has ever been meted out to 
 this officer. 
 
 A Negro man, evidently a stranger in Nashville, 
 was walking through the railroad yards when he was 
 called upon by the guard to halt. He was making 
 no threatening demonstration was simply passing 
 through the yards. Failing to stop when called to by 
 the guard, he was shot and killed. No punishment was 
 administered to his slayer, who was not even brought 
 to trial. 
 
 A Negro was arrested for vagrancy, fined five dol 
 lars and placed in the chain gang. The pick that was 
 placed about his ankle to prevent his escape dropped 
 
 20 
 
off in the course of the day. Finding himself so unex 
 pectedly unhampered, the Negro began to run in the 
 hope of escaping. Though the offense charged was but 
 vagrancy, and the fine being worked out but five dol 
 lars, the guard felt warranted in taking the life of the 
 fleeing Negro. He fired, killing the Negro. No pun 
 ishment was inflicted upon this guard. 
 
 THE TOM RAY CASE. 
 
 We shall now cite a case in which the position of 
 the Negro in the community in the matter of having his 
 life protected was most squarely brought to a test. As 
 we are trying to set forth the essential character of 
 Nashville civilization, typical of a repressionist regime, 
 we again beg pardon for the minuteness which will just 
 now characterize our statement. 
 
 Two young Negro men called one evening to see a 
 young Negro woman. These parties were all of the 
 humbler, though not criminal walks of life. Tom Ray, 
 one of the two young men, seems to have offended the 
 young woman by leaving her home and taking the 
 other caller, in whom the young woman was interested, 
 away sooner than she desired. 
 
 On a Saturday evening, we think, candidates for 
 Democratic primary nominations were holding a meet 
 ing in one of the wards, and Tom Ray was stand 
 ing on the outskirts of the throng listening to the 
 speeches. The Negro girl whom he had offended in the 
 manner mentioned above, saw him, approached and 
 chided him for having treated her as he did. Tom dis 
 avowed responsibility for the leaving of the other 
 young man, but this did not pacify the young woman. 
 In order to wreak vengeance on Tom she accosted an 
 officer and told him that he was carrying a pistol. 
 
 21 
 
The officer sought Tom and caught hold of him 
 for the purpose of making an arrest. Tom shed his 
 coat, leaving it in the hands of the officer while he made 
 his escape. The officer fired, but did not succeed in hit 
 ting him. 
 
 On a previous occasion this officer had arrested 
 Tom as a vagrant, but Tom's white employer having 
 appeared for him, he was not convicted. Tom's previ 
 ous victory over this officer, and his escape in the pres 
 ent instance, seems to have nettled the policeman. 
 
 In order to make clear what is now to follow, we 
 submit the following diagram : 
 
 MARK 5T. 
 
 UJ 
 
 -J 
 
 PO tCHte 
 
 SALO3N 
 
 LI5CHEY 
 
 . 
 
 ALLEY 
 
 GATE 
 
 
 or 
 
 UJ 
 H 
 
 O 
 
 QJ 
 
 THE OFFICER CREEPS. 
 
 On the Tuesday night following the Saturday night 
 mentioned above, a number of persons sitting on 
 porches at the point indicated in the diagram, saw Tom 
 Ray walk out of a saloon on Foster street and enter 
 the mouth of Lischey street He turned back rather 
 suddenly and went across Foster into Mark street. 
 While the persons on the porches were still wondering 
 why Tom had changed his route so suddenly, two 
 
 22 
 
officers were seen entering Foster street from Lischey. 
 The trouble that Tom Ray had on Saturday night 
 having been duly reported in the daily papers, the 
 parties on the porches knowing Tom, now readily 
 understood that he had seen the officers, whom he was 
 about to meet, and as a consequence had changed his 
 course. 
 
 The two officers conversed a while on the corner of 
 Foster and Lischey, one going west on Foster and the 
 other east. The officer going east entered a gate and 
 crouched out of sight almost directly opposite the 
 porches on which the persons mentioned were sitting. 
 
 Tom Ray passed down Mark street to alley I, came 
 through alley i to alley 2, through alley 2 back to Fos 
 ter street. Approaching the people sitting on the first 
 porch, he said : "Did you see two cops pass here 
 a while ago?" 
 
 The parties addressed were afraid to talk freely to 
 Tom, for the officer in hiding across the street could 
 easily hear whatever might be said. One of the women 
 on the porch said : "You had better go on about your 
 business, Tom." Her husband, who was sitting, arose 
 and walked rapidly across his porch trying to hint to 
 Tom to be in a hurry. 
 
 Tom did not apprehend what the man was seek 
 ing to convey. He said : "You know the cops are after 
 me. I am willing to be arrested by the day cops, but not 
 by the night ones, for they have a way of clubbing you 
 nearly to death. They club you up for nothing." 
 
 "You had better go on, Tom," remarked the 
 woman, who had previously spoken to him. 
 
 Tom left the porch and walked diagonally across 
 the street, toward the mouth of Lischey, stopping an 
 instant in the middle of the street to adjust his shoe. 
 
 23 
 
The policeman now crept from his hiding place and be 
 gan to move stealthily toward him. 
 
 At about this time a number of men and women 
 from a nearby Negro church were entering Foster 
 street from Mark, and saw the Negro walking along 
 and the officer creeping up behind him. They watched 
 with extreme interest what was taking place, as did also 
 the persons sitting on the porches who, as we have seen, 
 had for many minutes been eye-witnesses of the ma- 
 noeuvering of Tom and the officers. 
 
 According tp the sworn affidavits of eye-witnesses, 
 whom the writer has known for years, and for whose 
 general truthfulness he can most positively vouch, 
 when the officer drew near to Tom, to the amazement of 
 all he lifted his pistol and fired, the fatal bullet entering 
 Tom's jugular vein. Tom sprang into the air and the 
 officer leaped toward him, the two falling together. 
 
 An effort was made to have this officer indicted, 
 but all to no avail. A Negro lawyer who had been em 
 ployed in connection with a white lawyer to labor for 
 an indictment was spoken to thus by the court official 
 whose duty it was to. summon witnesses : 
 
 "You are the cause of all this," said he, referring to 
 the investigation. "If it hadn't been for you there 
 would not have been anything of it. The first thing 
 you know, you are going to be killed." This court 
 official, and all others under a repressionist regime, can 
 afford to use the entire legal machinery for the protec 
 tion of those who murder Negroes and yet fear noth 
 ing, as the white primary shields them from the Negro 
 voter that would vote for court officials who would 
 punish rather than shield crime. 
 
 JUST TO SEE HIM RUN. 
 
 There are numbers of white men in the South who 
 revolt at wrong, and will aid the cause of justice when 
 
 24 
 
their attention is called thereto. But we are now to cite 
 a case that will show just how much justice can be 
 wrung from the courts of the repressionists in cases in 
 which Negroes are involved, even when white people of 
 standing are engineering matters. 
 
 An aged, inoffensive Negro boarded a street car on 
 his way home. He gave the conductor, he claimed, 
 fifty cents, and was handed five cents in change. He in 
 sisted on getting forty-five cents, but was refused. 
 When the car reached the end of the line the conductor 
 got off and likewise the Negro, who renewed his re 
 quest for proper change. The conductor thereupon 
 opened fire upon him. The Negro turned to run and 
 the conductor chased him, firing four shots in all. The 
 Negro was wounded, dragged himself home and died. 
 
 The white people who held him as their property 
 in the days of slavery heard of the incident and took 
 an active interest in the effort to punish the conductor. 
 Being influential, they succeeded in having him indicted 
 and brought to trial. His defense was that he shot in 
 self-defense. 
 
 "Well, if you were shooting in self-defense, why 
 did you shoot after he began to run ?" asked a lawyer. 
 
 "Well, I just shot at him to see him run," was his 
 reply. 
 
 In the face of the sworn statement that he shot at 
 the Negro to see him run, the jury assessed his punish 
 ment at five years in the penitentiary. An empty flask of 
 whiskey was found in the jury room, and upon the 
 strength of this find the lawyers for the defense ap 
 plied for and were granted a new trial for the con 
 ductor. On the occasion of the second trial the con 
 ductor was given two years in the penitentiary. He 
 stayed there a few months, when a petition was circu- 
 
 25 ' 
 
lated in his behalf and he was pardoned by the 
 Governor. 
 
 THE WRITER AN EYE-WITNESS. 
 
 A Negro boy, whom, for the sake of a name, we 
 call Henry, got into an altercation with some white 
 boys, in which altercation no one was hurt. He was ar 
 rested, tried and sentenced to ten months on the county 
 farm. Having heard horrible tales as to the treatment 
 accorded prisoners on this farm, to which conditions 
 we advert later, Henry decided to jump out of the 
 court house window and make an effort to escape. 
 *"Arising quickly he sprang up into the court house 
 window. An officer rushed toward him to intercept 
 him, but it was too late. Out of the window he jumped, 
 dropping to the pavement below. He dashed out of the 
 side gate of the court house yard and ran southward 
 across the square, in the center of which the court 
 house stood. Coming to the street which led to the 
 bridge over the river that intersected the city, he 
 turned eastward and started across the bridge with all 
 the speed at his command. 
 
 The court officials were now in hot pursuit of the 
 fleeing lad, one officer seizing a buggy, another jump 
 ing upon a street car and ordering the motorman to 
 proceed at his utmost speed. 
 
 Henry had almost covered the full length of the 
 bridge when the cry of the officers, caught up from 
 one to another, had about come up with him. When 
 he had all but reached the farther end of the bridge, 
 in order to avoid an officer whom he saw standing 
 awaiting him with a drawn pistol, he leaped over the 
 railing and dropped about twenty feet, striking the 
 
 * The Hindered Hand. 
 
 26 
 
embankment reared up for a resting place for the end 
 of the bridge. 
 
 This officer of the law saw Henry leap, and ran 
 to the steps, which were not far from the spot whence 
 he had jumped. The officer reached the steps in time 
 to see Henry sliding toward the water's edge. The 
 officer began running down the steps, shooting as he 
 ran. The people on the bridge crowded to the side over 
 which Henry had leaped and witnessed the race be 
 tween Henry and the shooting officer. Henry fell, and 
 it was thought that he was hit, but he arose and con 
 tinued his running. He turned under the bridge and 
 ran along parallel with the waters of the river. After 
 passing fully under the bridge, Henry plunged into the 
 stream and ran somewhat diagonally toward the center 
 of the river until he was up to his neck in water. 
 
 'Move a step further out and I will kill you/ said 
 a bareheaded officer who had at last reached the river 
 bank, brandishing his pistol as he spoke. 
 
 By this time hundreds perhaps a thousand or so 
 of people had gathered on the bridge. Henry stood 
 in the water tossing his arms up and down. He feared 
 to come ashore and was equally afraid to try to swim 
 further out, feeling that he would be killed in any 
 event. Some one on the bridge lifted a revolver to the 
 railing, leveled it at Henry's head and fired. 
 
 'Shame! Shame! Shame!' was the word passed 
 from lip to lip as the noise of the shot was heard. 
 Henry threw up his hands and fell, his arms up- 
 stretched above his head as he disappeared beneath the 
 surface of the water. No one of the thousands stirred. 
 In breathless silence they watched the spot where the 
 lad had sunk out of sight. Some felt that Henry had 
 simply dived and in due time would rise. Second after 
 
 27 
 
second passed; on the brief moments of time flew, 
 while the eager eyes of the multitude were fastened 
 on the murky waters of the river. Henry did not rise. 
 He was dead. When it was known that life must be 
 extinct, officers of the law rowed out to where he was 
 last seen and fished his body out." 
 
 The killing of this boy was not even investigated. 
 The writer was an eye-witness of this tragedy and as 
 such wrote the above accurate description of the occur 
 rence, which appears in his story, "The Hindered 
 Hand." 
 
 FOR STANDING BY HIS SISTER. 
 
 There resided near Springfield, Tennessee, a Negro 
 widow, who was the mother of two children, a boy 
 and a girl. 
 
 The owner of the farm on which they lived, a 
 white man, desired to pay attention to the girl, but 
 regarded the boy as being in his way. He ordered the 
 boy to leave the farm, which the boy refused to do, 
 knowing the man's designs toward his sister. The 
 white man and the Negro youth eventually came to 
 blows over the matter, and in the fight the white man 
 was seriously injured. 
 
 The Negro was arrested and carried to Springfield, 
 ostensibly for safekeeping. The sheriff who had the 
 Negro boy in charge on the way to Springfield got into 
 a conversation with a fellow-passenger. He asked the 
 passenger to come back from Springfield that night, 
 stating that they were going to have some fun with 
 this Negro. This fellow-passenger, as it happened, had 
 Negro blood in his veins, though traces of such were 
 not discernible to the eye. He was riding in the coach 
 set apart for whites and was presumed to be white. 
 
 28 
 
Upon arriving in Nashville this Negro gathered a 
 delegation of the more prominent Negroes and waited 
 on the Governor, citing the remarks of the sheriff and 
 asking his intervention to save the life of the prisoner. 
 For a time he seemed to take an interest in the case, 
 until a chance remark let him know that the white- 
 looking man was a Negro. Finding that his delegation 
 was composed of Negroes entirely, he stated that there 
 was nothing that he could do. Being urged to com 
 municate with the sheriff, he declined, saying he could 
 only act when appealed to by the sheriffs of the coun 
 ties. That night a mob took the Negro youth from the 
 jail, hanged him to a tree and riddled his body with 
 bullets. 
 
 PRISON LIFE. 
 
 Such is t'he life of the free Negroes. Perhaps 
 something should be said concerning those who are not 
 free those who are imprisoned by the duly constituted 
 authorities that we may see just what sort of a prison 
 system a repressionist regime evolves. 
 
 The writer remembers having seen a man who had 
 just returned from the county farm with one foot eaten 
 to a nub, the result of being frost-bitten through ex 
 posure on the farm, to which he had been sent for a 
 minor offense. He also recalls having seen a woman 
 who testified that she had been made to lie on her 
 stomach and receive a whipping from the guard, with 
 her clothes thrown over her head. As she was leaving 
 the room the man who had whipped her knocked her 
 in the eye with his elbow, saying, "Take that, you 
 hussy." As a result of that blow the woman was blind 
 in that eye when relating her treatment to the writer. 
 The tales, of horror coming from the county farm equal 
 those coming from Russia's Siberia. 
 
 29 
 
A Negro lawyer purchased a printing press and 
 sold it before he had finished his payments on it. Other 
 than this offense his record seems to have been good. 
 For the offense cited he was sent to the State peniten 
 tiary. He states that during his incarceration, covering 
 a period of twenty-three months, four Negroes were 
 wantonly murdered by prison officials, and that one of 
 this number was killed while being shot at as a target 
 by one of the guards. 
 
 We confess that we were more than inclined to 
 discount this story, but when we recall the manner in 
 which Tom Ray was killed by a policeman, and re 
 member that a street car conductor swore that he shot 
 at a Negro "just to see him run," which conductor was 
 pardoned by the Governor, we pause and ask the ques 
 tion : Who knows but that this Negro lawyer is telling 
 the truth; who knows what abuses have grown up in 
 the prison life of the South under the one-party system 
 of government? 
 
 This lawyer also states that when Negro women 
 are whipped they have on but one garment, which is 
 first wet that it may cling close to the flesh' while the 
 lash is being applied. 
 
 We pass these statements from the Negro lawyer 
 over to the reader for whatever they are worth. This, 
 however, we do know to be a fact : that quite recently 
 the Governor had under consideration charges against 
 an official connected with the penitentiary management 
 of so revolting a nature that the newspapers declared 
 them to be unprintable. The answer of the accused 
 was also said by the newspapers to be virtually an ad 
 mission of guilt. 
 
 Such is the state of affairs begotten in and about 
 Nashville by the policy of repression, the policy of the 
 
 30 
 
controlling influence among the whites to establish a 
 gulf between the Negroes and the governing force hav 
 ing in its care and keeping their lives and, to a large 
 extent, the destinies of themselves and their children. 
 It is by no means here contended that there are no 
 good white people in the city. There are many who, 
 personally, are as high-minded and humane as can be 
 found anywhere. Nor do we seek to convey the im 
 pression that Negroes must dodge bullets every step 
 they take as they walk along the streets. But we do 
 most emphatically assert that the general feeling of 
 the Negro population is one of insecurity; that they 
 regard the government machinery as actively hostile; 
 that they feel that not so much as the weight of a 
 feather can be laid upon any white man of murderous 
 instincts who may see fit to claim a Negro as his victim. 
 In marked contrast with Prof. Booker T. Washing 
 ton's quoted opinion as to the feebleness of race preju 
 dice in this city is the following comment from one of 
 Nashville's leading colored citizens, who is likewise a 
 special friend of Mr. Washington: "The phase of life 
 (in Nashville) that is making more progress and 
 greater strides than anything else, is the feeling against 
 the Negro. Conditions are fast becoming unbearable." 
 
 A ROLL-CALL. 
 
 Nor can the conditions in Nashville be dismissed 
 with the assertion that they are abnormal. 
 
 The writer has for years been in touch with the 
 Negroes of the repressionist region. He has been at 
 pains, in season and out of season, to make diligent 
 inquiry as to how all classes of Negroes are faring, and 
 the story has ever been the same, namely, that wrong 
 and repression are twin sisters and ever go hand-in- 
 hand. Wherever the Negro's hands have been tied the 
 
baser spirits among the whites have regarded them 
 selves as licensed to kick and cuff him. 
 
 Choose whatever spot you will where repression 
 reigns, thrust in the lance and you will find oozing 
 therefrom helplessness on the part of the Negro in the 
 face of aggression, unrestrained maltreatment on the 
 part of the mean of heart, cruel indifference, paralyzing 
 self-interest and sometimes wanton oppression on the 
 part of the chosen governing agencies chosen with the 
 distinct understanding that the Negroes, having no 
 voice in their making, are to be utterly ignored as a 
 factor in determining their policies. 
 
 To further demonstrate the essential character of 
 a repressionist regime, we shall now call the roll of a 
 number of States which are avowedly repressionist 
 and cite some more or less conspicuous fruitage of the 
 system. 
 
 ALABAMA. This State should possess a peculiar 
 interest for the sociological investigator, for the reason 
 that it has for a quarter of a century been the home 
 of the two most conspicuous bearers of the olive branch 
 that the Negro race has produced since emancipation 
 Professors Booker T. Washington and W. H. Council. 
 The philanthropy of the nation as it touches the Negro 
 has of late years been largely concentrated on an indus 
 trial institution in this State. Let us briefly glance at 
 what we have here. 
 
 First, the type of leadership for the Negro that the 
 dominant element of the white South applauds. 
 
 Second, the kind of education favored by the white 
 South. 
 
 Third, the nation, by means of Presidential visits, 
 mention in a Presidential message, the practically 
 unanimous voice of the public press, the inaction of 
 
 32 
 
Congress, committing itself for the time being to the 
 plan of adjustment advocated by the type of leadership 
 approved by the white South. 
 
 To illustrate just how much security exists even in 
 such a State, we will simply cite a few incidents con 
 nected with the town of Tuskegee. During the recent 
 Presidential campaign the most violent of all the utter 
 ances reported throughout the nation was that of the 
 successful Democratic candidate for Congress from 
 the Congressional District in which Tuskegee is lo 
 cated, the speaker suggesting that a bomb blowing up 
 the President and Mr. Washington would be engaged 
 in a rather good work. One of the first steps taken by 
 this Congressman upon entering Congress was the in 
 troducing of a bill providing for "Jim Crow" street cars 
 for the District of Columbia. 
 
 A TUSKEGEE PROFESSOR. 
 
 One day one of the instructors of Tuskegee Insti 
 tute, in company with his wife, drove into the town for 
 the purpose of making some purchases at the grocery 
 where they were accustomed to trade. The proprietor, 
 a white man, on all former occasions the instructor 
 being alone had invariably addressed him as professor. 
 On this one occasion, the instructor's wife being pres 
 ent, the proprietor dropped the word professor and 
 called him bluntly by his given name. Stung by what 
 he regarded as undue familiarity, brought on, perhaps, 
 by the presence of his wife, the instructor and his wife 
 left the store without another word to the proprietor. 
 
 Upon reaching his home the instructor wrote a 
 note to the offending groceryman, expressing in a polite 
 manner his displeasure at the latter's calling him by his 
 given name. It seems that the letter, before reaching 
 the proprietor, fell into the hands of one of the clerks, 
 
 33 
 
who exhibited it to such white men as came into the 
 store. The conclusion was reached by those who read 
 the note that the teacher had been guilty of an offense 
 calling for summary punishment, so a mob was formed 
 to take him in charge. News of the determination to 
 visit violence upon the instructor reached Mr. Wash 
 ington, and he went to the town with a view to calming 
 matters. His efforts, however, were of no avail. 
 
 During the night a guard was stationed around the 
 instructor Mr. Washington himself doing guard duty. 
 In some way the rumor got afloat that the instructor 
 had left, and the mob dispersed. It was suggested to 
 the instructor that it was perhaps better for him to 
 leave, as finding him still there after the impression 
 had gone out that he had left might bring about a 
 reaction against the school on the presumption that it 
 was a party to the deception. He was kept secreted 
 upon the campus until ready to take his departure, and 
 under cover of the night he was driven across country 
 to a station some few miles away, where he boarded 
 the train and came to Nashville, Tennessee. It was 
 from the lips of this instructor himself that the writer 
 got the account as here related. 
 
 The instructor spoke feelingly of Mr. Washington, 
 stating that he would ever remember his efforts to 
 save his life. Mr. Washington was powerless. Ala 
 bama is a repressionist State. Negroes have no voice 
 in making and unmaking the administrators of the gov 
 ernment. They may plead with the officials to perform 
 their sworn duty, but there looms before these officials 
 the day of reckoning at the ballot-box; and, in their 
 visions, seeing no Negroes present, they proceed to act 
 or fail to act in a way to curry favor with the voters. 
 How powerless is a voteless element even when but 
 tressed by the walls of a Tuskegee ! 
 
 34 
 
GEORGIA. During the reconstruction period the 
 better class of southern white people of Georgia acted 
 somewhat differently to those in other States. They 
 co-operated with the authorities in bringing order out 
 of chaos, and as a result Georgia escaped the bad fea 
 tures of the reconstruction period complained of by 
 those States in which the repressionist sentiment was 
 more rampant. For years Georgia refused to counte 
 nance any attempt to disfranchise voters in any manner 
 repugnant to the Federal Constitution. As a result of 
 this comparatively liberal atmosphere, Georgia Negroes 
 were forging to the front and were everywhere loud 
 in their praise of their State whenever it was thrown 
 into comparison with other States. It was contrib 
 uting its quota of distinguished Negroes to the work 
 of the uplift of the race : the Rev. J. W. E. Bowen, 
 seriously considered for the Bishopric of the M. E. 
 Church; the learned W. H. Crogman, president of 
 Clark University; I. Garland Penn, director of the 
 Negro Department of the Atlanta Exposition ; Bishops 
 Henry M. Turner and J. W. Gaines, of the A. M. 
 E. Church; Judson W. Lyons, ex-Register of the 
 Treasury; the Rev. C. T. Walker, the most noted 
 Negro Baptist preacher of his day; Professor John 
 Hope, president of Atlanta Baptist College ; Professor 
 R. R. Wright, Sr., ex-paymaster in the army ; Professor 
 W. E. B. DuBois, the spokesman of the culture of his 
 race. 
 
 Here emerges the Hon. Hoke Smith, who went 
 into retirement with the receding of the Cleveland 
 wave in the South, and who now feels that a powerful 
 agency is needed to restore life to his political corpse. 
 Theretofore generally regarded as a friend of the 
 Negro, he turns demagogue, and preaches everywhere 
 
 35 
 
in the most violent language the doctrine of repression. 
 And then comes Atlanta's bloody orgy ! 
 
 FLORIDA. There now resides in the city of New 
 York a brilliant young Negro lawyer, formerly a mem 
 ber of the City Council of Jacksonville, Florida. One 
 day as we sat in his New York office he bowed his head 
 on his desk in a troubled manner, and spoke substan 
 tially as follows : 
 
 "What are we going to do? You take my 
 State Florida. It is only in a few counties of that 
 State that we have jury trials. Negroes are haled 
 before magistrates, who send them to the State 
 prisons. In many counties there are no opportuni 
 ties for appeal from the decisions of the magis 
 trates. We have the convict-lease system there, 
 and the State is paid a certain amount for each 
 prisoner. The convicts are often forced to work in 
 the turpentine swamps in water up to their necks. 
 Often the poor fellows catch the malarial fever and 
 become so sick that they are unfit for service. As 
 the lessees of the convicts have to pay the State for 
 the services of these men so long as they are in 
 their charge alive, some of the poor fellows, when 
 seen to be unfit for further service, are beaten to 
 death that the lessees may be exempt from the 
 further support of the sick. I have asked white men 
 who know of the abuses of the system to attack it 
 in the State Legislature, but they have told me 
 that it would simply mean their political ruin, with 
 no good accomplished." 
 
 The following account of conditions in the prison 
 life of Florida, which appears in the book entitled 
 "Overshadowed," penned by the writer, is drawn from 
 that periodical of high standing, The Missionary Re 
 view of the World : 
 
 "Negro women are forced to labor side by side 
 with men hardened in crime. With these same 
 hardened criminals the small boys and girls, pres- 
 
 36 
 
ent in the convict camp for their first offenses, had 
 to labor. The Negro women were sometimes the 
 victims of outrages committed by their white 
 bosses. Illegitimate offspring born in prison were 
 taken possession of and doomed to perpetual 
 slavery. 
 
 Men, women and children slept together like a 
 herd of cattle, as many as sixty being crowded 
 into a room eighteen feet square with a ceiling 
 seven feet high, there being no ventilation what 
 ever. After a hard day's work the convicts had to 
 cook their own food fat bacon and corn bread 
 on small fires made on the ground. A downpour 
 of rain would not induce the bosses to allow the 
 convicts to quit work and seek shelter. Slight 
 offenses were punished by brutal whippings, and 
 one aged Negro, in the prison for stealing food for 
 a starving family, was beaten until he died ; beaten 
 because he expressed an opinion as to the decency 
 of the conduct of one white boss toward a Negro 
 woman, his niece, in the penitentiary as accessory 
 to his crime. 
 
 Whenever showers of rain drenched the entire 
 lot of convicts they did not have changing gar 
 ments, but had to wear and even sleep in their wet 
 clothing until they dried upon them. When the 
 few small houses were filled to their utmost capaci 
 ties a tent was spread, and all fresh comers were 
 assigned to sleep beneath this on the bare ground. 
 If some convict more adroit than his fellows made 
 his escape, the bloodhounds would soon be on his 
 trail and ere long would have their fangs buried 
 in his quivering flesh. 
 
 Filth abounded on every hand, vermin covered 
 everything in the convict quarters, and sanitation 
 was a thing unheard of. Disease walked boldly 
 into their midst and bade death mow down with 
 his scythe twenty out of each hundred, this being 
 the proportion of those who died." 
 
 MISSISSIPPI. The Hon. James K. Vardaman! 
 
 37 
 
NORTH CAROLINA. The Rev. Thomas Dix- 
 on, Jr. ! 
 
 SOUTH CAROLINA. The Hon. Benjamin F. 
 Tillman ! 
 
 TENNESSEE. The defiance on the part of a mob 
 of an order of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
 an occurrence without a parallel in the history of the 
 nation. 
 
 VIRGINIA. Virginia, since the days of Thomas 
 Jefferson, has had a large number of influential white 
 people in love with the doctrine of human rights. 
 Slavery was all but abolished by the State Legislature 
 in Jefferson's day. The institution was milder there 
 than in other portions of the South. Virginia was the 
 last State to join the seceders from the Union, and also 
 the last to pass laws discriminating against Negro vot 
 ers. Thanks to the hitherto favorable atmosphere, the 
 Virginia Negroes have made marvelous progress. In 
 Richmond there are more Negro merchants doing suc 
 cessful business than in any other city in the country. 
 When a State law was passed some time since requir 
 ing all insurance companies to make deposits of $10,000 
 each, five Negro companies were strong enough to 
 make the deposit. The most successful co-operative 
 effort of the race The True Reformers' organization 
 operates from the city of Richmond. There are five 
 successful Negro banks operating there and four 
 weekly newspapers greet their readers each week. In 
 spite of the splendid showing being made by the 
 Negroes, repression came. But the repressionists were 
 not sure of the State, and so, when the repressionist 
 Constitutional Convention was through with its work, 
 it dared not submit it to a vote of the people, adopting 
 the expedient of proclaiming it. Now that repression 
 has been resorted to, the relations between the races 
 are growing more strained and the conditions are get 
 ting worse. A recent visit of the writer to that State 
 convinced him that the evils that follow in the wake 
 of repression are heading Virginia-ward. 
 
 And thus the story runs. 
 
 38 
 
Part II The Case Argued. 
 
 TO BE EXPECTED. 
 
 But in all candor, does not the experience of his 
 tory warn us to expect a harvest of evil under any 
 system of government in which one set of men exer 
 cises arbitrary control over another? 
 
 Every drop of blood spilled in the French Revolu 
 tion, every minie ball that whistled its way to the 
 breast of the opposing soldier in the war between the 
 American colonies and the mother country, is an argu 
 ment against the subjection of one class of men to 
 another. The masses of Europe and the American Col 
 onists could not endure their political submergence 
 even when their rulers were tied to them by ties of 
 race. They attested with their blood their unalterable 
 conviction that their best interests demanded that they 
 have a voice in the choice of the pilots that were to 
 guide the ship of state. 
 
 If members of a common household racially found 
 themselves unable to trust their destinies to the simple 
 goodness of heart of their rulers, and felt that they 
 must unyieldingly insist that the rulers be responsible 
 to the ruled, how much less is it to be expected that 
 officials separated by social and racial ties from a large 
 part of their constituency will have due regard for the 
 separated ones if the separated ones have no means of 
 rewarding faithfulness, rebuking neglect and over 
 throwing a regime when it becomes guilty of oppres 
 sion. 
 
 39 
 
Nature has planted in man the spirit of self-inter 
 est that he may have the inclination to expend the 
 energy to propel himself through life. She has also 
 planted in the other man the desire, and has equipped 
 him more or less with the ability, to defend himself. 
 While the hand is made so it can open and grasp, it is 
 also so constructed that it can double and strike. The 
 fatal, the absolutely incurable, defect in the system of 
 repression is that it gives full sway to the instinct of 
 self-interest on the one hand and on the other denies 
 all facilities for resisting encroachments. 
 
 Let the spirit of self-interest found in human 
 nature continue in full force and withdraw all power 
 of self-defense and there will as certainly be encroach 
 ments as that a rock hurled over a precipice will de 
 scend to the bottom of the gorge. 
 
 THE LARGER RESULTS. 
 
 Let us now consider some of the larger results that 
 flow from the conditions begotten by a system of re 
 pression. 
 
 The failure of the Courts to administer justice, the 
 unfeeling and often cruel handling of criminals, the bar 
 barous excesses of mobs which show that their hostil 
 ity is directed not only against the victim's crime, but 
 his color as well these things ripen the hearts of men 
 for evil and thus multiply criminals. When the prison 
 door opens and the wronged and brutalized felon steps 
 forth, he is more an enemy to society than ever, and it 
 is hardly to be wondered at that this State-made beast 
 does beastly deeds that excite the horror of the entire 
 social body. When the public turns out to dance 
 around the victim as he writhes in the flames, and to 
 fight for his ashes as souvenirs of the event, how little 
 does it dream that a careful sociological investigation 
 
 40 
 
would more than likely trace the parentage of this de 
 generate to the social order, and could point to a huge 
 nest on which the social order sits in unreasoning 
 mood, hatching out others and yet others. 
 
 The North and the West are at present projected 
 upon a higher economic scale than the South. This fact 
 is fast percolating the South, and there is a decided 
 drift of the Negro population away from portions of 
 the South. Among those who come are to be found 
 this criminal class nurtured in a debasing environment 
 and made ready for the slum life of northern cities. 
 This criminal element coming to the North has its 
 effect in reducing the general average of the northern 
 Negro and in altering materially the good opinion 
 hitherto entertained for the race. 
 
 In the course of an article touching the coming of 
 Negroes to the North, the New York Press asserted 
 that the West Indian Negroes were winning marked 
 favor as compared with the Negroes from the South, so 
 much so that persons advertising for colored servants 
 usually added "West Indians preferred." The Nash 
 ville American, in the course of its comment on the 
 Press editorial, remarked : 
 
 "There is some satisfaction in hearing such 
 complaints from the North, from whence have 
 come, for forty years, ignorant criticism of south 
 ern whites and impertinent advice as to how they 
 should treat the Negro." 
 
 The writer has taken pains to sound such West 
 Indians as he has met with regard to the treatment 
 received at the hands of their government. Without 
 exception the praise of their government has been un 
 qualified. How different has been the note of the 
 Negro from the South ! If, with the Nashville Ameri 
 can, the South should gloat over the fact that it is 
 
 4* 
 
pouring a less acceptable and more vicious type of 
 Negro into the North than the West Indies, it but 
 glories in its own shame. 
 
 In this connection it is pertinent to quote the re 
 marks of Prof. Collins, Bishop of Gibraltar, who, after 
 a visit to Jamaica, wrote as follows concerning the re 
 lations of the race in that island : 
 
 "As regards political privileges in this island, 
 the colored and black man stand on the same plat 
 form as the white. * * *" 
 Again : 
 
 "Inter-racial feeling is scarcely perceptible ; all 
 classes live together harmoniously; there are few 
 instances of revolting against legally constituted 
 authority ; justice is meted out evenhandedly to the 
 black as to the white. The fact is significant to one 
 who has studied the complexities of the Negro 
 question in America, that in this island there is not 
 on record a case where a white woman has been 
 molested. Visitors can roam at will all over the 
 colony without losing the feeling of perfect se 
 curity." 
 
 THE ASPIRING NEGRO. 
 
 The conditions in the South are not without their 
 effects upon the better and more prosperous element 
 of Negroes. The Negro is beyond all doubt and of ne 
 cessity a student of American civilization. Upon the 
 more thoughtful element of the race there has dawned 
 a full conception of the meaning of liberty, of freedom, 
 of equality. An ineradicable passion exists within the 
 bosom of the Negro to stand before the law the undis 
 puted peer of his fellows. Any denial of this right is 
 calculated to breed soreness, discontent, brooding and 
 scheming in his heart. This restlessness is not suscep 
 tible of being allayed, so a solution of the problem can- 
 
 42 
 
not be looked for along this line, for be it remembered 
 that the stream of literature necessary to hold the great 
 millions of America true to the ideals of the fathers 
 would of itself keep the fires alive in the Negro bosom 
 were he otherwise disposed to go to sleep. The im 
 pregnating air of America will be sure to do its work. 
 Right clearly did the slave owner perceive that it was 
 necessary to keep the Negro in ignorance if he was to 
 be easily kept in slavery. 
 
 Granted, then, this perpetual discontent attendant 
 upon a policy of repression, let us trace its influence. 
 It calls to the frontier, to deal with external complica 
 tions, soul forces that would under normal conditions 
 be directed toward internal improvement. The work of 
 uplift is going on, it is true, but by no means at the rate 
 that it could advance if the soul forces of the race 
 were relieved from frontier duty, from a weary dis 
 tracted vigil of the ever-present menace. 
 
 If ever a people stood in need of internal work, it 
 is the Negro race. It has just emerged from slavery, 
 which was itself entered from barbarism. It is turned 
 loose in all this maze of American civilization to find its 
 way. It stands with the censorious eyes of the world 
 upon it. Indeed, every available influence is needed in 
 the internal work. At this needy, this crucial hour, the 
 strength of the race is divided, its genius is summoned 
 to deal with the external. The sermons from the pul 
 pit become sociological discourses, the churches them 
 selves become, as Mr. DuBois puts it, socio-religious 
 institutions ; ministerial meetings and conferences often 
 allow civic questions to monopolize their time. Thus 
 forces that under normal conditions would be directed 
 toward the spiritual uplift of the race are diverted in 
 the direction indicated. 
 
 43 
 
BROAD ROAD TO DEPTHS BUT NOT TO 
 HEIGHTS. 
 
 There are arguments embedded in the very fact of 
 communal life itself that testify to the danger of repres 
 sion. Communal life has within itself doubly quicken 
 ing power for both good and evil. If from our cities 
 have sprung the marvels of civilization, it must also be 
 remembered that in the cities have developed forms of 
 vice of a depth and ingenuity unparalleled. No com 
 munity can strike a proper balance between good and 
 evil where the communal influence for evil is allowed to 
 be exploited to its full extent, while the influence for 
 stimulation to good is restrained. 
 
 The added temptations and opportunities that 
 come as a result of man's gregariousness are counter 
 balanced in the normal civilized community by the re 
 wards of various kinds that the group life offers those 
 who serve it, rewards such as offices of emolument, 
 posts of honor, mention in history and so forth. 
 
 *"A11 history shows that a race stands in need of 
 great men, in need of the contribution of their superior 
 powers, and the inspiration that their names will carry 
 from generation to generation. 
 
 Grappling with the affairs of state affords unique 
 opportunities for growth, while the honor of having 
 served the state operates as a magnifying glass enlarg 
 ing the inspirational force of individuals so honored. 
 Thus a race having the privilege of committing great 
 trusts to its members draws as a dividend men of en 
 larged powers and names which will inspire. These 
 influences, reapplied to the needs of the state, serve 
 mightily to pull the people forward." 
 
 * The Hindered Hand. 
 
 44 
 
To all these rewards from organized society the 
 Negro is almost a total stranger. Barring the fact that 
 Negroes are employed by the State to teach Negroes in 
 the public schools, practically the only badges of dis 
 tinction offered the Negroes of their several States are 
 the picks around their ankles when in the chain gangs 
 and striped suits when in the State prison. 
 
 In the penitentiary of Tennessee a system of re 
 wards was somewhat recently instituted, and the pris 
 oners that behaved better than the others were to be 
 given a slightly different order of clothing. If in all the 
 borders of Tennessee the State makes any other effort 
 to appeal to the element of hope for promotion to be 
 found in the bosom of Negroes, in common with all 
 other men, it has escaped the writer's notice. It was 
 evidently the original intention of our present President 
 to place a Negro in some conspicuous office in every 
 southern State to serve as a sort of rainbow of promise 
 to his race, to the end that all might be inspired. 
 But the repressionist South would not have it so. 
 With the Negroes caught in the inevitable swirl of 
 communal life and denied the sustaining influences 
 that help others to put evil behind them, it ought not 
 to occassion surprise if degeneracy here and there 
 appears. 
 
 THE WHITE SOUTH AFFECTED. 
 
 But the evils of the system of repression are by no 
 means confined to the ranks of the Negroes. In many 
 ways, the white people of the country are gravely 
 affected. The Negro exodus from the South and from 
 the rural districts of that section to the cities thereof 
 has come at a time when that section is all the more in 
 need of helpers for the prosperous times that are upon 
 it. Lacking such immigration as has enabled the North 
 
 45 
 
to take care of its booms, the South is clutching desper 
 ately after its Negro population which is inadequate for 
 its demands. Hence the cry for vagrancy laws and the 
 resort to peonage camps. The widespread lack of labor, 
 due to the restlessness of the Negro and the boom con 
 ditions in the South, is the economic factor that is back 
 of the present acute situation in the South. The well- 
 to-do among the whites are more or less vexed because 
 of their inability to get the labor to develop their 
 resources. Fertile fields untilled, bounteous harvests 
 ungathered, possibilities of wealth abounding on every 
 hand unexploited, are the factors that are contriving to 
 make the South the modern Tantalus. 
 
 DESTROYING THE SENTIMENT OF JUSTICE. 
 
 But the effects of the treatment of the submerged 
 element are by no means confined to the material things 
 of the South. They have their reflex influence upon the 
 very heart and core of southern life in its entirety. The 
 lifting of the bandages from the eyes of justice so that 
 she may see the color of the prisoner at the bar, and her 
 immoral handling of the scales when the prisoner is a 
 Negro, has had a tendency to pervert her sensitive soul 
 so that she has lost the art of dispensing evenhanded 
 justice as between white people. Taught to regard the 
 taking of human life as a slight affair when the life of a 
 Negro was involved, the result has been the cheapen 
 ing of the estimate of all human life, until the man 
 with a smoking pistol with a dead victim before him has 
 practically become the hero of the hour. Says the 
 Charleston (S. C.) News and Courier: 
 
 "In South Carolina, as we have noted, the 
 safest crime is the crime of taking human life. The 
 conditions are the same in almost every southern 
 State. Murder and violence are the distinguishing 
 
 4<5 
 
marks of our present-day civilization. We do not 
 enforce the law. We say by statute that murder 
 must be punished by death, and murder is rarely 
 punished by death, or rarely punished in any other 
 way in this State, and in any of the southern 
 States, except where the murderer is colored, or is 
 poor and without influence. Now this state of 
 affairs cannot last forever. We have grown so ac 
 customed to the failure of justice in cases where 
 human life is taken by violence that we excuse one 
 failure and another until it will become a habit and 
 the strong shall prevail over the weak, and the 
 man who slays his brother shall be regarded as the 
 incarnation of power." 
 
 There must be no one element in the human family 
 on which the murderous instinct is allowed to grow fat, 
 if the entire body would not be gravely affected. 
 
 When justice dies, well may civilization mourn 
 and the graveyard of buried barbarism take on a happy 
 smile and prepare for a resurrection. 
 
 LEADERSHIP OF THE WHITE SOUTH. 
 The very question of the leadership of the South 
 is bound up in this matter. The cultivation of the 
 spirit of repression, an overshadowing passion, makes 
 it soon the measuring stick for statesmen. Thus the 
 rule of all enlightened government is reversed. Instead 
 of looking for a leader upon the mountain top of good 
 will, he will be sought for and procured in the slimy 
 dungeon of hate. 
 
 * "With repression the order of the day, and 
 the process of the survival of the fittest operating 
 along this plane, that man who best exemplifies the 
 repressive faculty will survive in the political war 
 fare, and thus will be brought to the front the ele 
 ment out of touch with the broadening influences 
 of the age, whose vision is yet bounded by the nar 
 row horizon of race." 
 
 *:. * The Hindered Hand. 
 
 47 
 
With each repressionist community choosing its 
 most narrow spirit, its best hater of the Negro, as a 
 leader ; with these best haters choosing the best of the 
 best as their leader, it can readily be seen what the 
 pinnacle of repressionist leadership must of neces 
 sity be. 
 
 * "The administration of the government, then, 
 inevitably falls into the hands of the less refined, 
 and a contemned race of an alien blood is handed 
 over to them to be governed absolutely. As might 
 be expected under a system that picks its rougher 
 spirits for rulership, the governing force is often 
 worse in its attitude toward Negroes than are the 
 great body of the whites. Instead, therefore, of the 
 government being the guide, piloting the people 
 to broader conceptions, the governing power often 
 sets in motion brutalizing tendencies that eventu 
 ally sweep down and affect the people. 
 
 "Local sentiment has been invoked to hold in 
 check the wrathful outpourings of United States 
 Senators, Legislatures have held in check rampant 
 Governors, and cities have cried out against the 
 acts of Legislatures imposing repressive measures 
 not warranted by local conditions things that 
 signify that repression sends to the front men 
 whose tendency is to lower rather than advance 
 civilization." 
 
 The presidential campaign of 1904 was conducted 
 in the State of Tennessee with Negro repression as the 
 dominant note. 
 
 The following comments from Democratic news 
 papers concerning Democratic legislators chosen dur 
 ing this campaign speak for themselves : 
 
 "There were many men in the last Legislature 
 upon whose faces the mark of incompetency or 
 worse was as plain as the noonday sun." The 
 Nashville American. 
 
 * The Hindered Hand. 
 
 48 
 
"It would be better for Tennessee to groan 
 on under present laws and let the Legislature 
 meet no more in ten years if it were possible under 
 the Constitution." Lebanon Banner. 
 
 "Mediocrity was in the saddle, and picayunish 
 partisan politics held the center of the boards." 
 Franklin Review-Appeal. 
 
 "The Legislature has adjourned. Many praises 
 unto the 'Great I Am/" Murfreesboro News- 
 Banner. 
 
 "Throwing bricks at the Legislature is a favor 
 ite pastime, but really a brick is hardly big enough 
 for the purpose." Franklin County Truth. 
 
 "In our opinion the present Legislature will go 
 down in history as the most incompetent body of 
 lawmakers that ever sat in the capitol of Ten 
 nessee." Tullahoma Guardian. 
 
 "The Tennessee Legislature has adjourned 
 and perhaps done less to commend itself than any 
 of its predecessors." Obion Democrat. 
 
 "The people elect the legislators and the 
 people are responsible for the character of men 
 they elect and send to Nashville to make and un 
 make laws. We know the Legislature was bad, 
 even miserable, but the members got their com 
 mission from the people." Gallatin News. 
 
 "The weekly press of the State is almost 
 unanimous in its condemnation of the late Legis 
 lature. * * * As we have said before, the gen 
 eral littleness of the body, its petty conduct in 
 many instances, its trades and combinations, the 
 autocratic methods of self-seeking members, the 
 quarrels, the cheap declamations and intemperate 
 and undignified and unwarrantable public denunci 
 ations by members who should have shown a bet 
 ter sense of dignity and decency, the dishonesty in 
 juggling with bills, the unreliability of promises 
 the general record and conduct of the body marked 
 it as unworthy of the State or the approval of the 
 people. What man of established reputation would 
 care to be known as a member of such a Legisla- 
 
 49 
 
ture as the one recently adjourned?" The Nash 
 ville American. 
 
 As has been noted elsewhere, the repressionist 
 leader, evolved by the repressionist system of South 
 Carolina, is the Hon. Benjamin F. Tillman. As to how, 
 in one particular at least, this leadership has affected 
 the life of the people of that State apart from the race 
 question, may be inferred from the following comment 
 in the Charleston News and Courier concerning the 
 passing of the State Dispensary, an institution which 
 Mr. Tillman's influence had imposed upon the State : 
 
 "The State Dispensary, with all its corruption 
 and knavery and outlawry, and its brutal domi 
 nation of the political affairs of the State, will no 
 longer menace the public peace. For thirteen 
 years it has been the controlling influence in South 
 Carolina, and brought only shame and disgrace to 
 the State. Its course from beginning to end has 
 been stained with blood. Corruption has stalked 
 in its shadow; fortunes have been made in its 
 credit; reputations have been destroyed in its 
 service; education has been dishonored by its 
 tainted revenues ; the people of self-respecting com 
 munities have been denied the right of local self- 
 government because they would not touch the un 
 clean thing ; courts have been overthrown in order 
 that the constitutionality of the institution might 
 be established, and small men have been elevated 
 to places of distinction in the public service be 
 cause of their 'loyalty' to the whisky machine. At 
 last the people of the State realized the character 
 of the business and rendered their verdict against 
 it. Not even the wonderful hold of Senator Till 
 man upon the confidence of the people could save 
 his pet scheme from destruction, and in its failure 
 he is condemned. There is no way by which the 
 dead who were sacrificed to the dispensary can be 
 brought back to life, no restitution that can be 
 made for the outrages committed upon the rights 
 
 50 
 
of citizens, no legislation that will restore the repu 
 tations that have been lost in the State whisky 
 business ; the written record will remain." 
 
 A leadership conceived in the womb of race hatred 
 cannot be limited in its activities to the one question 
 that gave it birth, and, running amuck, is liable to in 
 jure in matters far removed from the one issue. 
 
 CHEAPENED POLITICAL LIFE. 
 
 To one who has the welfare of the white South 
 genuinely at heart, it is sickening to note how repres 
 sion immeasurably cheapens the whole political life of 
 that section, denies to the masses the real food for 
 thought given elsewhere during canvasses. 
 
 To visit the North and West in the time of the 
 tremendous intellectual ferment incident to a heated 
 campaign, and then drift southward to witness the 
 petty personal issues upon which campaigns are so 
 often waged, brings a feeling of pity for the South. In 
 the city of Nashville the writer has known the time 
 when such pleas as the following were made by candi 
 dates for office : "I am a lame man ;" "I was the first to 
 introduce the Jim-Crow Car Bill ;" "I want the office be 
 cause I need the money." A candidate for re-election to 
 the Governorship of the State, whose earlier public 
 record had been attacked, closed an ardent appeal to 
 the voters to return him to the office that he might 
 stand vindicated in the eyes of his wife and children. 
 
 MUST FIND FAULT. 
 
 Again the moral sense of the world is and will 
 continue to be opposed to the holding of a people back 
 because of their color or race. Any section of the 
 world that practices this will find itself out of tune with 
 the enlightened sections of the human family. 
 
In an effort to establish a comity between itself 
 and the outer world, a repressionist section will seek to 
 show just cause for its action. Where the simple argu 
 ment of color fails to justify, other means will be 
 sought. This puts a repressionist people on a search 
 for defects. Pitiable indeed is that section that grows 
 to believe that its esteem in the world will depend upon 
 the amount of carrion it finds in its neighbor's back 
 yard. The suppression of the good, the magnifying of 
 the evil, the ready coining of vague suspicion into fact, 
 are the inevitable consequences of such a policy. 
 
 The committee appointed by the business interests 
 of Atlanta to investigate the Atlanta riot gave voice to 
 the following sentiment: "If half the publicity were 
 given to those (Negroes) who are trying to do right 
 that is given to the crimes of the few, our people and 
 the world would view them in a different light." But 
 the course complained of is an integral part of a system 
 of repression. 
 
 The better element of the white South spews the 
 Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., and his grossly misleading 
 productions, out of its mouth, but his adroit groupings 
 of half-truths which make abominable untruths are but 
 the legitimate fruit of a system of repression, a system 
 repugnant to the moral sense of civilization. It is a 
 case of a father committing a crime, a son committing 
 perjury to shield the father and the father chastising 
 the boy for his sin. 
 
 THE NATION. 
 
 Nor can the rest of the nation escape the blight 
 of repression. The money of the North is finding its 
 way to the South in constantly increasing quantities. 
 In the upheavals and the disorganization inevitably 
 attendant upon the slow strangling of a voiceless 
 
 52 
 
people, hoarded wealth will vanish as if into a bottom 
 less sea. The wealth of the North should learn from 
 Atlanta that no money is safely invested where repres 
 sion and all its train of attendant evils abide or are 
 due at any moment. 
 
 But the damage to the rest of the nation is spiritual 
 as well as material. 
 
 The North, having fought out within its borders 
 many of mankind's gravest problems, having deter 
 mined upon the quest of right, it matters not in what 
 nooks and corners the customs of the ages have seques 
 tered it, most worthily covets the honor of a seat at the 
 council table of the Board of Directors of the World, 
 But how can Columbia flay the Russian murderer of the 
 Jew and ignore the squirming victim of repression in 
 the South and yet feel in her heart that she is all that 
 she ought to be? 
 
 On the one hand her consciousness of an awful 
 wrong at home will make her timid, while on the 
 other, if duly outspoken, she will have her prestige im 
 paired by having attention called to the glass house in 
 which she abides. Thus is she halted in her world 
 duties. Have not the oppressed of all the earth an 
 equity in our republic ; and do we not owe to the sub 
 merged everywhere at least an untarnished name? But 
 this tarnished name is the inevitable fruitage of the 
 system of repression. 
 
 Again, let it be branded upon the mind of this 
 nation that ours is a democratic form of government; 
 that all elements of the voting population contrib 
 ute their quota of strength to the governing force; 
 that whatever leadership is tossed up by the system 
 of repression must be accepted by the nation; that 
 this repressionist output, representing not the ad- 
 
 53 
 
vancement of the people, but the left-over relics of the 
 more savage days of man, will have a voice in the guid 
 ance of this nation, that this ill-gotten strength is suf 
 ficiently great to form a union with other disaffected 
 elements that can endanger the welfare of the nation 
 and even the peace of the world. It is not a very far 
 cry from making speeches blistering the Negroes to 
 the giving forth of rabid utterances in the halls of 
 Congress that needlessly irritate the potential leader of 
 the colored world, the Empire of Japan. Schooled in 
 the art of ignoring the sensibilities of Negroes, repres- 
 sionist statesmanship is prepared for a like pastime on a 
 larger scale regardless of the cost. 
 
 The steamship, the cable, the printing press, the 
 news-gathering agencies, the mad quest of riches, the 
 exigencies of commerce are conspiring to link all races 
 of men together as never before in all the world's his 
 tory. Repression furnishes but sorry help for this new 
 order of things in which men of many races must 
 work side by side, each worker having due regard for 
 the sensibilities of his fellows. 
 
 THE ONE SOLUTION. 
 
 No ; repression will not do. He is no true friend to 
 the South, to the nation, nor to the world who would 
 have the South journey over repression's highway, for 
 that is assuredly a highway of skulls and leads directly 
 to the land of wreckage, of national shame. 
 
 Is it wise to spurn the work of souls sobered and 
 deepened by an insight almost divine that comes with 
 the world's great crises? Standing at the end of a 
 century of bitter controversy that had culminated in the 
 horrors of civil strife, in full view of the fresh-made 
 graves gripping forever so many of the loyal sons of 
 both sections, with bowed head the nation said by the 
 
 54 
 
adoption of the fifteenth amendment: We who would 
 not commit our welfare unreservedly to King George, 
 though bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh ; we who 
 could not endure a system that yielded a slave to the 
 unbridled passion of a possible Legree ; we, the chast 
 ened by the fire and the sword of the God of Hosts, 
 will now see to it that all beneath the Stars and Stripes 
 shall be equal before the law, each armed with a com 
 mon sword the ballot with which to ward off the 
 encroachments of the unjust spirit and to work out on 
 our shores, in amity and in righteousness, the question 
 of the whole duty of man. 
 
 Right clearly did the new nation builders see the 
 very touchstone of the future life of the Republic when 
 they decreed that the Constitution should at last keep 
 step with the Declaration of Independence, which pro 
 claims that "all men are created equal and endowed 
 with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, 
 liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This is the one 
 solution of the political phase of the question of the 
 relation of the races. 
 
 A PLAN OF ACTION. 
 
 There may be those of our readers ready to con 
 cede the truthfulness of the record herein presented; 
 ready to admit the logic of the deductions drawn; 
 ready to cry out against our nation's accepting repres 
 sion as its fixed policy, who are nevertheless puzzled 
 as to the best means of bringing about the desired re 
 sult. With all due deference to the magnitude of the 
 task, the writer begs to submit the following sugges 
 tions : 
 
 i. As occasion arises, let the exponents of public 
 sentiment in the country at large, the pulpit, the press, 
 the platforms of political parties, set forth in calm but 
 
 55 
 
forcible language that they regard any suggestion that 
 the nation stop with the Negro at some half-way house 
 as nothing less than an invitation for it to hug a corpse 
 whose decomposing odors will mean the nation's moral 
 death. Let it be unambiguously proclaimed, in spite of 
 northern apostates or southern reactionaries, that the 
 genius of the American nation will never in all the 
 cycle of time regard any question as settled until it is 
 settled right. 
 
 2. Permit us to renew here a suggestion made by 
 the late Mr. Schurz, that agencies be established with 
 a view to educating public opinion in the South on this 
 question. There are men in the South among both 
 whites and colored able to speak to the minds and 
 hearts of the people; such men among the Negroes as 
 Prof. W. E. B. DuBois and among the whites as W. H. 
 Fleming and E. Gardner Murphy, together with others 
 in both races. Likewise there are publications by 
 northern writers, such as Merriam's "Negro and the 
 Nation," that beyond doubt would do great good if 
 generally read in the South. 
 
 Philanthropy could scarcely do the world a better 
 service than by endowing a bureau able to scatter light 
 throughout the South. The . terrible price socially, 
 financially and politically that an enemy of repression 
 is so often called upon to pay is the influence that re 
 tards the movement within the South for a larger life. 
 Let this bureau find the means of aiding this stifled 
 force. 
 
 3. As fast as the nation, in justice to other interests, 
 can so do, let it invite to high station, regardless of 
 party affiliations, such white men in the South as make 
 bold to resist the crusades of the demagogues. And 
 when the nation has grown to the point where it can 
 
 56 
 
call to its executive chair an acceptable citizen without 
 regard to the State from which he hails, may it please it 
 to honor some southern white man, of proper caliber 
 and spirit, who has not bowed his knee to Baal. 
 Whether this suggestion comes within the range of 
 practicability or not, we are quite certain that the 
 nation could not do wiser than to find some conspicuous 
 way of making it known in the South that a just atti 
 tude contains far more of promise in every way than 
 demagogy. 
 
 4. Many white men of the South are Democrats, 
 not because of hostility to the Negro, but because of 
 their opposition to the Republican party along other 
 lines. These men feel that they cannot join hands with 
 the Negroes because of their connection with the Re 
 publican party, while the Negroes feel that they cannot 
 go to them in the Democratic party, which is often in 
 the South the bulwark of repression. Let the intelligent 
 Negroes of the South learn a lesson from recent reform 
 movements in various parts of the country in which 
 men in different parties found a way of combining for 
 the common good. Let the better class of Negroes 
 enter politics and stand ready to advance the interests, 
 in local matters, of such white men as will do the right 
 by all the people, regardless of the parties with which 
 these men may ally themselves when it comes to funda 
 mental ideas of government. 
 
 5. Finally, Congress has been given the power to 
 make the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution 
 effective. Let it act. Let it see to it, as far as lies with 
 in the power of the Federal Government to so do, that 
 all men of equal merit are given like opportunities to 
 express their choice as to who shall exercise rule over 
 them. Let it withdraw the present high premium on 
 
 57 
 
repression which tempts men to browbeat rather than 
 uplift and treat with consideration an aspiring element 
 of citizenship whose only offense is the wearing of the 
 color which nature gave. 
 
 With the importance that will attach to the Negro 
 voter as a result of the action of Congress within the 
 bounds set for it by the Constitution, as a fulcrum, he 
 will be able to form such alliances as will materially 
 aid him in spheres beyond congressional control. Thus 
 Congress has in its hands the key to the whole situa 
 tion. 
 
 May the present-day dominant element of the 
 white South be granted the wisdom to look down the 
 corridors of time and behold the harvest of horrors fore 
 ordained for a system of repression. May it learn that 
 its daughters will be beautiful and charming, its sons 
 chivalrous, able and brave, all in vain, all in vain if, as 
 their souls expand, they meet the dwarfing influence of 
 the soul-crushing repressionist system. May it learn 
 for its own highest good that even a foundation must 
 have something to rest upon, that its industrial base, 
 the Negro, will surely render their entire fabric inse 
 cure if given quicksand for a buttress, if denied the 
 protection that inheres in the right of suffrage. 
 
 However dark the outlook may from time to time 
 appear to be, let it be borne in mind ever that the 
 chiefest factor working toward a brighter day is the 
 deepening darkness itself, brought on by the system of 
 repression. This system day by day and night by night 
 is bearing fruit, is clearly demonstrating its inherent 
 and inescapable tendencies, is, Haman like, building 
 its own gallows while fancying that others are to hang 
 thereon. 
 
% * frHMH** * * * ******* * * * * * *** * * * * * * **** 
 
 A Picture of the Life of the Negro Race in its 
 Tragic, Unequal Struggle in the Southland. 
 
 " ' Overshadowed ' is the most 
 interesting book it has been 
 my good fortune to read in many 
 a day. It required a well- 
 
 develorjed mind to write such a book. It has my 
 
 unqualified endorsement." 
 
 RT. REV. A. WALTERS, 
 
 Bishop of A. M. E. 
 
 Zion Church. 
 
 "The name of the author at REV. E. C. MORRIS, D. D. 
 once inspired interest in the President National Bap- 
 volume, and I read it, and tist Convention. 
 
 while it deals with a very del 
 
 icate subject, I have no hesitancy in saying that it is 
 logical and chaste in every detail. It can be trusted 
 in any home." 
 
 JOHN E. BRUCE. "No book yet written by any au- 
 
 (Bruco Grit.) thor portrays more strikingly and 
 
 truly the real conditions, political 
 
 and social, which environ the Negro than 'Over 
 
 shadowed.' If 'Overshadowed' is ever dramatized, 
 
 it will make one of the most exciting plays ever 
 
 written." 
 
 Overshadowed, 217 Pages; 12mo. 
 Cloth Edition, $1.00 ; postage prepaid. 
 Paper Edition, 50c.; postage prepaid. 
 
 THE ORION PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa. Nashville, Tenn. 
 
"UNFETTERED" 
 
 A story with a philosophical bent that throws a 
 flood of light on the whole situation. A clear voice 
 from the inner life of the Negro race, showing how 
 the Negro views his own problem. Indicates lines 
 along which the thoughtful minds of the race feel 
 that salvation is to come. A book of great value to 
 all interested in the great American problem : 
 
 The Philadelphia Press: 
 
 "Button E. Griggs, who wrote a rather striking 'book 
 called ' Imperium In Imperio,' has produced another treat 
 ment of the Negro problem under the guise of fiction, called 
 ' Unfettered.' The book is serious, it is readable, and it is 
 thoughtful." 
 
 The Philadelphia Daily Telegraph: 
 
 " The book in question has many elements of power ; it is 
 sincere, deep, forcible and very muoh in earnest." 
 
 The New York Werld: 
 
 "The writer's utter sincerity maintains for him and his 
 book people the readers' constant interest and consideration." 
 
 The Chicago Daily News: 
 
 " The author is evidently a man of education, who has thought 
 long and deeply." 
 
 Rev. J. 6. Merrill, President Fisk University, Nashville, Tena.: 
 
 " It is the work of a man who hat given profound study to one 
 of the most vital problems of the hour. The story is interesting, 
 the plot novel, and the outcome pleasing." 
 
 The Examiner, New York : 
 
 "Button E. Griggs, author of several books on the Negro ques 
 tion, well deserves the hearing he asks. Those who are interest- * 
 ed in this problom and the Negro's way of looking at it, will be 
 helped by Mr. Griggs' story, 'Unfettered.' " 
 
 The Gazette, Cleveland, 0.: 
 
 " Is fascinating in the extreme and will hold the attention of 
 any reader throughout." 
 
 Unfettered, 12 mo.; 276 pages; Cloth Binding 
 Price, $1.00, postage prepaid 
 
 THE ORION PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa. Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 E. >> * * * * * * >t * * * * * * * * * * ***** * * * * * * * * * * X 
 
By SUTTON E. GR1GGS 
 
 T I 
 
 BOOK in which the whole 
 Southern Situation passes in 
 review before your mind's-eye. 
 
 The most complete 
 The most thrilling 
 
 
 
 The ablest story 
 
 Yet written on the Southern Situation 
 from the Negro's point of view. 
 
 All Americans and others interested 
 
 in the Great American Problem 
 
 should read this book. 
 
 Bound in cloth, I2mo, ; 305 pages 
 Price, $ J,0(X Add 10 cts* for postage 
 
 THE ORION PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa. Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 4' * * * * * * 
 
OF INTEREST TO ALL 
 
 We make a specialty of all books 
 of peculiar interest to the American 
 people bearing upon the race question 
 in the United States. If you have 
 seen or heard of any such book that 
 interests you and would like to own it, 
 order the same through us. 
 
 Such books as we do not publish 
 ourselves will be promptly secured for 
 you. 
 
 THE ORION PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Nashville, Tenn. 
 
t 
 * 
 
 * 
 * 
 
 * 
 
 A Special 
 Offer 
 
 BEYOND all question Sut- 
 ton E. Griggs is the ac 
 cepted spokesman in the 
 realm of fiction of the cultured, 
 aspiring Negroes of the United 
 States. Any library of American 
 literature is incomplete without 
 copies of Mr. Griggs' books, 
 which bring to the world of let 
 ters the offering of the culture of 
 the Negro race in the line of 
 fiction. Take note of our special 
 offer: 
 
 "Overshadowed" - - - $1.00 
 
 "Unfettered" .... 1.00 
 
 "The Hindered Hand" - 1.00 
 
 Total $3.00 
 
 To persons ordering the 
 three works at one time, 
 $2.25. 
 
 ADD 20 CENTS FOR POSTAGE 
 
 $ THE ORION PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 2 
 
 <* Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Tenn. 
 
 'I' 
 
7