ty created the
Negro for a menial, he is essentially a servant."

This is the reply of an ex-governor of one of our blackest states to
those who contend that the negro is a problem, a "burden carried by
the white people of the South," because of his ignorance and consequent
inefficiency; and that the lightening of the burden depends upon more
money spent, more earnest efforts made, for the schooling of the black
people. According to this ex-governor, and there are thousands who agree
with him in and out of Mississippi, the race problem is heightened,
rather than mitigated, by all attempts to increase the negro's
intellectual efficiency. The more ignorant he is, the less burdensome he
is to the white man, provided his heart be good, and his hands skillful
enough to do the service of a menial. Nothing but slavery ever partially
civilized him, nothing but slavery continued in some form can civilize
him further!

IV

If we listen vainly for the heart-throb of the race problem in the
Negro's laziness, and criminality, and brutality, and ignorance, and
inefficiency, do we detect it with clearness and certainty in the
personal aversion felt by the white people for the black people,
aversion which the white people can no more help feeling than the black
people can help exciting? Is this the real trouble, the real burden, the
real tragedy and sorrow of our white population in those sections of the
country where the Negroes are many,--that they are compelled to dwell
face to face, day by day, with an inferior, degraded population,
repulsive to their finer sensibilities, obnoxious to them in countless
ways inexplicable? Facts are far from furnishing an affirmative answer.
However pronounced may be the feeling of personal aversion toward the
Negroes in Northern communities, where they are few, or known at long
range, or casually, there is no such thing in Southern communities as
personal aversion for the Negro pronounced enough to be responsible for
anything resembling a problem. How could there be in the South, where
from infancy we have all been as familiar with black faces as with
white; where many of us fell asleep in the laps of black mammies, and
had for playmates Ephrom, Izik, Zeke, black mammy's grandchildren; where
most of us have had our meals prepared by black cooks, and been waited
on by black house-servants and dining-room servants, and ridden in
carriages and buggies with black hostlers? We are so used to the bla