forced a Negro to defend himself against a white
man might result in a lynching, and possibly in a burning. In the period
of 1871-73 the number of Negroes lynched in the South is said to have
been not more than 11 a year. Between 1885 and 1915, however, the number
of persons lynched in the country amounted to 3500, the great majority
being Negroes in the South. For the year 1892 alone the figure was 235.

One fact was outstanding: astonishing progress was being made by the
Negro people, but in the face of increasing education and culture on
their part, there was no diminution of race feeling. Most Southerners
preferred still to deal with a Negro of the old type rather than with
one who was neatly dressed, simple and unaffected in manner, and
ambitious to have a good home. In any case, however, it was clear that
since the white man held the power, upon him rested primarily the
responsibility of any adjustment. Old schemes for deportation or
colonization in a separate state having proved ineffective or
chimerical, it was necessary to find a new platform on which both races
could stand. The Negro was still the outstanding factor in agriculture
and industry; in large numbers he had to live, and will live, in Georgia
and South Carolina, Mississippi and Texas; and there should have been
some plane on which he could reside in the South not only serviceably
but with justice to his self-respect. The wealth of the New South, it is
to be remembered, was won not only by the labor of black hands but also
that of little white boys and girls. As laborers and citizens, real or
potential, both of these groups deserved the most earnest solicitude of
the state, for it is not upon the riches of the few but the happiness of
the many that a nation's greatness depends. Moreover no state can build
permanently or surely by denying to a half or a third of those governed
any voice whatever in the government. If the Negro was ignorant, he was
also economically defenseless; and it is neither just nor wise to deny
to any man, however humble, any real power for his legal protection. If
these principles hold--and we think they are in line with enlightened
conceptions of society--the prosperity of the New South was by no means
as genuine as it appeared to be, and the disfranchisement of the Negro,
morally and politically, was nothing less than a crime.

CHAPTER XV

"THE VALE OF TEARS," 1890-1910

1. _Current Opinion and Tendencies_

In th