in small towns the husband cannot
venture to leave his wife alone for an hour at night. At no time, in no
place, is the white woman safe from the insults and assaults of these
creatures." These statements, I presume, represented the feelings
and the conditions that existed, at the time of the writing, in one
community or county in the South; but thousands of Southern white men
and women would be ready to testify that this is not the condition
throughout the South, nor throughout any Southern state.

Fifth. Owing to the lack of school opportunities for the Negro in
the rural districts of the South, there is danger that ignorance
and idleness may increase to the extent of giving the Negro race a
reputation for crime, and that immorality may eat its way into the fibre
of the race so as to retard its progress for many years. In judging the
Negro we must not be too harsh. We must remember that it has been only
within the last thirty-four years that the black father and mother have
had the responsibility, and consequently the experience, of training
their own children. That perfection has not been reached in one
generation, with the obstacles that the parents have been compelled to
overcome, is not to be wondered at.

Sixth. Finally, I would mention my fear that some of the white people of
the South may be led to feel that the way to settle the race problem is
to repress the aspirations of the Negro by legislation of a kind that
confers certain legal or political privileges upon an ignorant and
poor white man, and withholds the same privileges from a black man in a
similar condition. Such legislation injures and retards the progress of
both races. It is an injustice to the poor white man, because it takes
from him incentive to secure education and property as prerequisites
for voting. He feels that because he is a white man, regardless of his
possessions, a way will be found for him to vote. I would label all such
measures "laws to keep the poor white man in ignorance and poverty."

The Talladega News Reporter, a Democratic newspaper of Alabama, recently
said: "But it is a weak cry when the white man asks odds on intelligence
over the Negro. When nature has already so handicapped the African in
the race for knowledge, the cry of the boasted Anglo-Saxon for still
further odds seems babyish. What wonder that the world looks on in
surprise, if not disgust? It cannot help but say, If our contention be
true that the Negro is an