Part 2

“1. As to ‘misappropriation.’ The last Legislative committee noticed, with feigned horror, that there were among the students in the Atlanta University three or four of the children of the professors, who recited in Geometry, Greek, Latin, etc., in the same classes with colored pupils. But while the Atlanta University receives $8,000 a year from the State, it receives $19,000 a year from Northern sources. When a mal-administrator wishes to save his mal-administration from coming under legal courts, it is an interesting spectacle to see him pose, on the point of honor, crying out, ‘Misappropriation!’ to the men who not only administer every dollar to the purpose for which it was given, but add to every dollar two dollars more, kindly given them by benevolent friends for that purpose! Misappropriation, indeed!

“2. ‘Social Equality.’ There is no such thing, as the Southerners define it, outside their own imaginations. It is the biggest bugbear that ever frightened respectable minds. If it be a fact that God has made of one blood all mankind, and that Jesus Christ is our common Elder Brother, and we all are, or may be, the children of God, then this caste-mania, which dominates the Southern mind so like an unclean spirit, is something as idiotic as it is unchristian.

“3. ‘Miscegenation.’ It is time, we admit, that Georgia wake up to this evil. She ought to have wakened to it more than a hundred years ago. Atlanta University is not the offender. Had the principles of that school always been regnant in Georgia, there never would have been the evil. Georgians themselves are the sinners. Their witnesses walk before them and are seen every day. A hundred thousand light-colored negroes in Georgia proclaim a hundred thousand white transgressions. It is high time Georgia awoke on the subject of miscegenation. A colored transgressor is quickly strung up to a tree. Why not hang the white transgressor? A few hundred ‘white’ hangings would wonderfully clear up the moral atmosphere down there and get things in good shape for a thorough-going, anti-miscegenation law. Now that Georgia forces herself under the gaze of the civilized world through this action of her Legislature, the decent opinion of mankind calls on them to put a stop to this wickedness within her borders. Make every colored woman who gives birth to a light-colored child disclose the father, and then hang him. Enforce this law as faithfully against the offender of one color as the offender of the other. It is always well to shoot in the direction of the game.

“4. ‘Miscegenation of Ideas.’ The sagacious patriots of the Georgia Legislature speak of ‘miscegenation of ideas’ as something particularly horrible; something almost as bad as the other kind. What they mean by this they do not explain; should they attempt to explain it, all the world outside the white South would laugh them to scorn. They will themselves live to grow ashamed of it. It is too stupid to awaken any mirth, too ridiculous for sober answer, too essentially mean in the spirit and motive of it for anything but contempt and pity. That such a measure as this chain-gang law for Christian teachers could be received with such favor in a State like Georgia, is one of the most dismal signs of the time, or rather signs of the place, that has come to light during the past ten years. But it will fail; yet the curse and stigma of it will long remain to plague those in that State who have any moral sensibility left.

“At the bottom of this miserable and cruel caste-prejudice is jealousy—jealousy of the rising colored man.”

THE CHAIN-GANG.

It is a singular coincidence that this very Legislature, whose lower house has passed this bill to punish Christian teachers for allowing their own children to recite with colored children in the class-room by putting them into the chain-gang, is by a committee investigating the State penitentiary system, pronounced by competent prison reformers to be “perhaps the vilest on earth.” There are some good people in Georgia who want to see the barbarous system exposed and abolished. On the other hand, the supporters of the system are numerous and influential. The Georgia papers do not have much to say about this subject, and probably for the same reason that Russia don’t want the civilized world to know about what is going on in Siberia. The people are afraid to have their deeds of darkness brought to the light, but they are not all silent.

An Atlanta correspondent of the _New York World_, writing under date of July 22d, describes the system as follows:

“The convicts of Georgia, numbering about sixteen hundred, the negroes largely predominating over the whites, are confined in no regular penitentiary. They are worked under State direction and control, but are divided into three companies, known as “Penitentiary Company No. 1,” etc. These companies take all the convicts under a twenty years’ lease, the good, bad and indifferent. The Lease Act originally prescribed certain work that these convicts should do, the intention being to so regulate their employment as to prevent them from being brought into competition with free labor. Now, however, there is no class of work that the convicts are not called upon to do. They work on railroads and in coal mines; they cut pine timber for the saw mills; they are employed about the mills in those places where skilled workmen are generally employed; they make brick; they operate iron furnaces; they constitute the labor in various manufactories; they work upon plantations, and in every possible way they compete in every industry with free labor.

“The lessees of the convicts change from time to time, men selling their interest in the lease just as they would dispose of their property in anything else. The lessees to-day are not wholly and entirely the same lessees as operated the system at the beginning. Senator Joseph E. Brown is one of the few original lessees who still holds his interests. The changes have been many and various, and so are the stories of outrages. Several years ago children began to make their appearance in the penitentiary, not because of any due process of law, but because of shocking immoralities on the part of lessees and their subordinates. In one camp where the principal lessee was a man named Alexander, since dead, these scandals mostly originated. It was a difficult thing to substantiate the charges, and the Legislature never made any investigation. There were no white women in the penitentiary in Georgia at the time, and perhaps the affair alluded to was not so shocking to public opinion as it would otherwise have been.

“To-day there is only one white woman in the penitentiary in this State. She is confined at the camp of the Chattahoochee Brick Company, Penitentiary Company No. 3, about six miles from this city. This poor woman, weak in intellect, untutored and unfamiliar with the wickedness of the camps, has to be locked up and kept in close confinement day and night, to prevent her being ruined. Since the Legislature has shown a disposition to look into these matters, the lessees of the camp at the brickyard have given the strictest orders about this woman. Her door is constantly locked and the key kept by the good wife of the principal boss, who allows no man to cross her threshold, ‘Great heavens!’ ejaculated a member of the House, when this circumstance was told him, ‘what sort of a system must this be when such measures have to be devised?’”

“The lessees at various camps have been from time to time charged with cruelty to their prisoners. A common charge has been working them on Sunday; so it is common to hear of whipping them to death for refusing to work on Sunday, or when they have been worn out with fatigue. The charge of favoritism is so well established and so generally admitted that it has ceased to be urged.

“The ‘Old Town Camp’ has a very bad reputation. Here most of the serious charges have been laid, and here it was proved that whipping-bosses positively whipped men to death.

“Another camp prolific of charges is that of State Senator Smith in Oglethorpe County. He has been accused of working convicts on Sunday, of shooting them down in cold blood, and an affair of honor is now pending between Smith and Principal Physician Westmoreland, of the penitentiary. Westmoreland accuses Smith of gross inhumanity to the poor creatures under his charge, and dares him, or rather invites him, to meet him on the field of honor for the various false accusations and scandal that Smith has made against him.”

_Another Account._

Here is a part of the account which a reporter of the Augusta _Chronicle_ gives of a convict camp, in Richmond County, which he has recently visited on a tour of investigation for his paper.

“Leaving the hospital the reporter went into a barn 80 by 20, divided into two compartments, and they divided by a 10 foot alley. The barn would not be given as a resting-place to a beast that is prized by its owner, as the rain or sun could easily gain admission through the top, and the openings in the sides so affected the house that it gave no protection from the weather. On looking into this place it was horrible to realize that a commonwealth like the State of Georgia would allow the offenders against her laws to be kept in so dirty and filthy a place as that in which the eighty convicts at the camp of the A. and K. Railroad are placed. Along the narrow aisles in the barn smouldering fires were burning, and on the beds sat the prisoners. All of the convicts were seen. They begged that their names would not be used, for they would be lashed if it were known that they told of the treatment. They state that Captain Starns uses the lash freely. Several testify that, overcome with the heat, they stopped to rest and were taken out and whipped. Attention was called to the cruel whipping of Chuck Cooper, a mulatto about twenty-five years old, who was quartered in the hospital. The reporter, without being noticed, repaired to the hospital, and, being assured that the guards were not near at hand, Chuck Cooper disrobed himself and showed huge scars left from the lash, the skin being badly lacerated. Returning to the barn the reporter inquired of Mr. Smith the cause of the filthy beds on which the convicts slept. They were caked in dirt and as black and as filthy as could be imagined. Mr. Smith, the guard, admitted that the blankets and bedding had not been washed for several months, although Mr. Shubrick had notified Captain Starns, and he had promised two months ago to have new straw put in the beds and have them washed. ‘It is seven months,’ Smith said, ‘since we left the brick-yard, and the bedding has not been touched since.’”

And this is the kind of place to which the Georgia Legislature is ready to send the trustees and teachers of Atlanta University!

WHAT THE PRESS HAS TO SAY.

The press North and South has been roused by the introduction of this bill as we have never known it to be before by the action of any State Legislature. In the North it is practically unanimous in condemnation, and for the most part in denunciation. Republican, Democratic and Independent papers are, in this instance, found united. They differ somewhat about the constitutional right of a State to pass such a bill, but they all unite in pronouncing the punishment attached to the Glenn Bill as “disgraceful,” “outrageous,” “infamous,” “wicked.” In the South the colored papers are all against the bill; the white papers, outside of Georgia, somewhat divided, but in the main, so far as we can learn, for the bill. In Georgia the white papers are for it. Were the editorials on this subject by the press of the United States compiled and published they would fill several large volumes. We quote from as many as our space allows:

THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE.

When Mr. Grady made his glowing speech last winter to the Sons of New England at Delmonico’s assembled, he probably did not imagine that such a delightful illustration of the paternal solicitude which the whites feel for the blacks in the Empire State of the South was in store for us. What a pity he was not aware of the boon in preparation! What sweet flowers of rhetoric he would have twined around it! It would have made his nomination for the Vice-Presidency certain.

It is possible that when the facts are known public sentiment will make it appear advisable to drop this cheerful measure, but we are assured upon excellent authority that at the present moment the Georgia Legislature is disposed to pass it; and, moreover, that Governor Gordon’s approval of a recent report connected with the subject indicates a willingness on his part to sign it. Many interesting points are involved in the introduction of this measure, including its constitutionality, and it is safe to say that they will all be discussed with considerable animation before it takes its place on the statute-book.

THE NEW YORK TIMES.

It is very hard to understand the animus of the recent attempts to cripple or destroy this noble school (Atlanta University) by Gov. Gordon and his followers. They have threatened to take away the $8,000 a year of United States money, and a bill is before the Legislature and has been reported favorably from committee to punish with a year of the infamous chain-gang of Georgia and with a fine of $1,000 the crime of some of the white teachers in allowing their own children to enter the classes they instruct. This has been a characteristic feature of the school, and one that has contributed materially to its phenomenal success in putting and keeping the negroes on their best behavior. If some of the most intelligent and refined white people are willing to face the bitter ostracism of the South and work for their benefit to the utmost limit of their strength—and sometimes, as in the case of the late lamented President Ware, far beyond it—and besides all this put their own children into the same classes with them, the negroes must indeed be vile and thankless if it did not stimulate all that is good and repress all that is bad in them.

It is certain that the sort of people sent out by the American Missionary Association will not be deterred by ruffianism of this sort from doing what they believe Christian duty requires. What object Gov. Gordon and his abettors—and it looks very much as if the silver-tongued Grady is among them—can have in stirring up sectional bitterness in this way it is hard to see. But the fact that such an outrage should be even proposed is evidence that the awful lesson of the war as to the impolicy of treating men and women as if they were mere animals has not yet been learned by some who boast that they belong to the new South. That it can be helpful to industrial development and render a residence in Georgia inviting to the most desirable Northern people no one who knows the facts can believe.

THE NEW YORK HERALD.

The Glenn Bill, which passed the Georgia House of Representatives, has caused a great deal of hot-tempered discussion. The constitution of the State is opposed to the co-education of black and white children. All right. The people of Georgia are on the ground and ought to know what is for their best interest. If they see fit to afford educational facilities to colored children in one school and the same facilities for white children in another school, well and good. And if they decree that white teachers shall teach white children and colored teachers shall teach colored children, nobody will shrug his shoulders. The object, which is to offer a good common-school education to every child in the State, will be attained.

To enact a law, however, that the white teacher who admits to his class a colored boy or girl shall be punished in the chain-gang for a period of twelve months, as related elsewhere, is decidedly drastic. That seems to be a pretty heavy penalty for a rather light offence. With a strong public opinion opposed to co-education, such a desperate resort would seem to be hardly necessary.

Colonel Glenn probably had some motive in the introduction of the bill which is not visible to the naked eye. At any rate, he committed a grave blunder, which in this case is almost equal to a crime. The bill has gone to the Senate and will be smothered there.

THE NEW YORK EVENING POST.

There is something very peculiar about the presentation of a bill in the Georgia Legislature, making it a misdemeanor, punishable with a fine of $1,000 and the chain-gang for one year, for any teacher or trustee of any public or private school in the State to allow any white pupils to attend a colored school, or any colored pupils to attend a white school.

Georgia, like every other Southern State, and like many Northern States until recent years, has always maintained separate schools for the two races. The Constitution provides for “a thorough system of common schools,” which “shall be free to all citizens of the State, but separate schools shall be provided for the white and colored races.” The wisdom of this policy, in the present condition of public sentiment on the race question throughout the South, is not doubted by any intelligent man at the North. Public education could never have been established if the attempt had been made by force to bring the two races into the same school-room, and it would be overthrown in a moment if mixed schools were to be ordered now. The legality and the advisability of separate school systems are, therefore, not to be questioned. But it is one thing to provide that the races shall not mix in schools supported by public taxation, and quite another thing to declare that no school, however supported, shall teach whites and blacks together without subjecting everybody responsible for this policy to the risk of a year in the chain-gang. This is an outrage of the very worst sort, for which no defense that is even plausible has been made or can be made. It is simply an outburst of race prejudice in its most offensive form.

* * * * *

The odd feature of the incident is that it occurs in Georgia, which is in many respects one of the most progressive States of the South, while Kentucky, which is in many respects one of the most backward, has already conquered this silly prejudice. When Berea College in Kentucky opened its doors to whites and blacks alike, there was bitter local opposition, which went beyond hard words, and it was as much as a man’s life was worth, politically speaking, for him to show the slightest favor to the institution. But as the years passed and none of the threatened evils came to pass, Kentuckians gradually concluded that they had been worrying themselves unnecessarily, and at last a progressive Democrat was ready to take a part in its anniversary exercises, as Judge Beckner did two years ago. “Already in Kentucky,” says Prof. Wright of the College, in his article on “Southern Illiteracy” in the last _Bibliotheca Sacra_, “the former detestation of Berea has so far yielded that Democratic aspirants for the Governorship speak on its commencement platform.” No member of the Kentucky Legislature in the year 1887 would venture to suggest the chain-gang for teachers in a school which admitted pupils of both races, and it is most anomalous to find the proposition seriously urged in Georgia.

THE NEW YORK WORLD.

Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, the well-known Southern Methodist preacher, who is now the manager of the Slater Fund, declares himself opposed to the Educational bill of William C. Glenn. He says the bill is unwise because it is unnecessary. People vote for such bills not because they favor them, but because they fear being charged with a leaning towards social equality. He thanks God that he knows the white teachers whose children attend the negro college, and he honors them fully as much as he does his own sister, who is now engaged in missionary work in China. There are only fourteen white children in colored schools, and Georgia has no reason to be scared. He winds up by saying: “There is a law in Georgia against intermarriage, a law more violated, ten to one, if not in the letter in the reality and spirit of it, than the law against mixed schools. If now the Legislature will give us a law placing the parents of mulatto children in the chain-gang it would be worth while.”

HARPER’S WEEKLY.

Such leaders as this school provides for their race cannot be trained elsewhere in the State. The maintenance of the University in full vigor is therefore for every reason, for the common interest of the 817,000 white and of the 726,000 colored citizens, one of the most vitally desirable objects in the State. The proposition to send the teachers and managers to the chain-gang unless they expel their own children from their schools is preposterous. The good sense of the State should prevent the further prosecution of the scheme. Every sensible citizen of Georgia would admit that nothing could be more unwise than to stimulate hostility of race in the same population by means of penal laws. Each race in Georgia undoubtedly prefers separate schools for the present, but to punish and disgrace the few persons who are indifferent to the separation, and by that course to retard the indispensable education of half the population, would be an unspeakable folly.

THE JERSEY CITY EVENING JOURNAL.

In Georgia there is still existing, as we read, a dread that white people may be forced into miscegenation with negroes in spite of themselves. The Georgian ought to know himself, and it is droll to hear him pleading that some one will save him from “marrying a nigger,” in spite of himself. The principal objection to public or private schools, in which the two races should be together, is that this would lead to intermarriages of the races. Under pressure of this argument, the Georgia House of Assembly has passed the bill making the teaching of colored persons by white persons a penal offence. A State law already forbids mixed public schools. The new law is intended to prohibit white persons from teaching colored persons in Sunday-schools and private educational institutions. The condition of the Georgia white, liable at any moment to run off and marry a negro, is indeed lamentable. And, joking aside, does not such a state of things show how completely uncured, how woefully unreconstructed are the average ex-rebel, ex-slaveholding people of Georgia? Such a state of things as this proves, that wise were those men who years ago urged that only territorial government should be given to the States just conquered from rebellion, and that they should so remain governed until time sufficient should have elapsed to eradicate all traces of the old semi-barbaric habits of their people. A community which adopts such a law as that mentioned is decidedly unfit to bear a State’s part in the general Government of the Republic.

THE SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN.