Part 19

Mound Bayou has its own Negro cotton buyers, who give a fair price for the cotton. But it is with the greatest difficulty that a Negro planter can obtain from a white buyer the true market price, and it is rare that a landlord who receives cotton bales as rent will take into consideration the enhanced price of cotton, even though the enhancement is supposed to be primarily due to the smallness of the harvest. Where the white man is in control it is true the Negro produces more because he has to in order to live, but he is nevertheless the victim of a systematized swindling, and he knows it. It is causing a growing discontent among the black peasantry, and I was continually told about it.

One of the worst riots of 1919 took place on the other side of the river—in the State of Arkansas, at Elaine. It is also in this so-called Delta region. The origin of the riot was rooted in the economic problem. The white buyers and landlords had been consistently defrauding the Negro countryside by overlooking the enhanced value of cotton. Cotton had risen in price from a pre-war average of ten cents a pound to twenty-eight cents in 1917 and actually to forty cents in the current year. Formerly it was generally represented to the Negro that he was always deep in debt for his “rations” or his rent. The white policy was to keep the Negro in debt. It was never the custom to render him accounts or to argue with him when he claimed more than was handed him.

“You had a fine crop—you’re just about straight,” was a common greeting in the fall of 1919.

But with the prolific Delta crop of cotton and a quadruple price, the discontent of the Negro can be imagined. It was intense, and was growing.

There are two versions of the outcome of it. One is that a firm of white lawyers approached some of the Negro planters with an idea of taking the matter to court and seeing what could be obtained in redress. The other is that the Negroes “got together,” organized a body called “The Farmers’ Progressive Union,” which then approached the firm of lawyers on its own account. I incline to think that the former is the more probable. The white firm thought there was money to be made from fighting Negro claims. Some of the Negroes were actually agreed to take the matter to a Federal Grand Jury, and charge the Whites with frustration of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

The Negroes were undoubtedly daring, and held public meetings and used sufficient bravado to alarm the local white population. The rumor flew from farm to farm that the Negroes were plotting an insurrection. Someone discovered a heap of rifles stacked where they had been left and forgotten when the Armistice had interrupted drilling. This gave the necessary color to the idea. Besides the rusty rifles, the Negroes were seen to be not without firearms of one kind or another. The Negro loves weapons, as an Oriental loves jewelry. Shotguns and revolvers in plenty are to be found in the cabins of the colored country folk. The Whites put up a _provocateur_ as before a pogrom in Russia. He started firing on Negroes at random in the Elaine streets. Then two white officials attempted to break into a Negro meeting, resorted to arms, and were met by firing in return. One of the Whites was killed, the other wounded. This started the three days of destruction in Phillips County. The whole Negro population was rounded up by white troops and farmers with rifles. Machine guns were even brought into play against an imaginary black army. A great number of Negroes were put in a stockade under military arrest, many were killed, many wounded. And three hundred were placed in jail and charged with riot and murder. No Whites were arrested. The governor, a Mr. Brough, was largely responsible for this method of investigating the alleged conspiracy of the Negroes to make an insurrection. The whole occurrence was astonishingly ugly, and it was followed by ten-minute trials before exclusively white juries, and swift sentences to electrocution for some Negro prisoners, and to long terms of penal servitude for others. The riot and the trials so exasperated Negroes throughout the United States that there is no doubt a Federal Commission of impartial men might well have been appointed to investigate the whole affair, both as regards its inception and as regards its military culmination and its aftermath of trial and punishment. As it is, though Governor Brough says to the Negroes, “You _did_ plan an insurrection,” and though the Whites of Elaine may feel happier and more secure, it is an obvious truism that the white population of other States cannot be feeling more secure because of it, and that the Negroes in other districts feel less secure—they feel the need to arm. It has caused a great increase in public insecurity. Perhaps because of this the riot has been more discussed than other riots. Somewhat shocked and fretful, the governor, who is probably a brisk business man, and in no way like one of those more neurotic governors of Russian provinces which occur in Aùdreyev’s tales, called a meeting. Some four hundred Whites and tamed Negroes were brought together to see what could be done to improve race relationship. This was a month after these events.

The _Commercial Appeal_ of Memphis reports the governor’s remarks:

“This meeting has been called for the purpose of a heart-to-heart discussion of the relations between the white people and the Negroes of the State. These relations have become strained, especially by the recent rebellion in Phillips County. I say ‘rebellion’ advisedly and without qualifications, for it was an insurrection, and a damnable one.

“And I want to say in the beginning that Arkansas is going to handle her own problems. I do not intend to go to New York City or to Topeka, Kansas. When I want advice from Negroes I shall ask it from Arkansas Negroes, and when I want similar advice from white people, I shall get it from the white people of Arkansas.

“I also wish to say that I do not intend to be intimidated by any publications or any letters I may receive. I have already received several letters which said that if I permitted the execution of these twelve Negroes from Phillips County to go through, I would be assassinated. One of the letters contained a crude drawing of a coffin, represented to be my own in case the Negroes were electrocuted. I received one letter to-day which stated that the entire city of Helena would be burned if these Negroes went to their death. But I repeat that I will not be intimidated by any outside influence in this question. Our own questions must be settled within the boundaries of our State, and I believe that there are not enough representative Negroes in the State to do this.”

So said the governor, but it is rather a question whether in these days of Leagues of Nations and Alliances and “sympathies” one State like Arkansas, washed partly by a great river, can live entirely within its own boundaries and without outside consideration.

The mighty Mississippi rolls onward, bearing the spars and the sands of half the States of America to the sea. And after the massacre at Elaine, for some days, dead bodies of Negroes were washed up on other shores. Doleful messengers, these, on the river of Time.

XVI

AT VICKSBURG

I suppose not many make the pilgrimage of America; land in New England with the Puritans or sail up the James River with the Cavaliers, linger reflectively at Mt. Vernon, consider Boston Harbor and the tax on tea, pause at Bunker Hill, and so on—or visit Sumter, where the Stars and Stripes were hauled down by the South, and then make the tour of the war which followed. It would be worth while—to think a little at Gettysburg and think again in Georgia, walking perchance to the sea after General Sherman. No such pilgrimage would be complete without riding the great mother river of America, and it occurred to me that a fitting place in which to end a pilgrimage, as far as the South is concerned, might be Vicksburg, with its vast National Cemetery of the dead of the Civil War. It is one of the most remarkable war shrines in any land. But, more than that, it is a solemn reminder of all the brothers’ blood that can be shed out of pride and vainglory of heart, and an obstinate refusal on the part of one section of a nation to follow the guiding star of the whole.

Vicksburg is a beautiful city, built on a steep cliff, continually in sight of the broad, brown, passive streams of the Delta and the strips of forest which break up the waters. Above it all are the beautiful lawns and terraces of the National Cemetery rising from the Mississippi shore, and the dead lie in view, as it were, of the broad loveliness of the river. Sixteen thousand Americans hallow the soil. They are mostly of Grant’s army, but over and above there is another burying ground with many of his enemies. No vulgar notice warns you not to pick the flowers. Pick them if you will. But poems and prayers are scattered everywhere, and still as you go you pause and read, and pause and read again—

On Fame’s eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread, And glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead.

Tiny cubes of white marble give the soldiers’ numbers and names and regiments. It reminds one now somehow of the great cemeteries of France.

The mighty troop, the flashing blade, The bugle’s stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, The din, the shout, are past,

says the next notice board. And yet, are they past? Are they not always going on—as long as the cause for which the soldiers fought remains?

They fought for unity. They fought also for freedom. They had to do what fanatical old John Brown set out to do at Harper’s Ferry, try to release the land from that which was abominable in the sight of the Lord. They strove to do it by righteous force. They were martyrs on the altar of their country. And there is no doubt their country loved them for their devotion. No land honors more its heroic dead than does America. It is no mean thing to have died for America. The smoke still rises to heaven where her men were slain, and it will rise until their cause is completely vindicated.

Down below in the city, at the corner of Clay and Farmer Streets, last year they burned a Negro to death, suspending him from a tree over a slow fire. According to the evening paper, “The flesh on the body began to crinkle and blister. The face of the Negro became horribly distorted with pain. He assumed an attitude of prayer, raising his palms together.”

When the victim was dead the leader of the mob cried out: “Have you had enough fun, boys?” And they cut him down.

That Negro is with John Brown and the repentant thief and many another such, in Paradise. But those who did the deed are damned. The Negroes have been fleeing from Vicksburg ever since this terrible day. But the dead of the old war remain in these great cemeteries. Something has been effected: the children of the slaves are become free, but the children of those who used to be masters still take a Negro now and then and burn him to death.

I sat on a pyramid of lawn and looked down to the river. There was a din of sawmills. The Memphis train went howling past, and then with a petty rush on the road below an electric trolley car from Vicksburg. The world went on in seeming peace. A throng of Negro workmen holding on to one another came singing along the way. They were not slaves, anyway. They had life, the beginnings of new life. Though fraught with grave dangers, impeded by prejudice and hate and a thousand difficulties—nevertheless it was new life that they had. And those who died to give it them lie in these quiet graves while the river of life goes past. They did not mean that the gift of freedom should be tarnished. Most of them would be ready to die again to complete the gift they gave. And John Brown himself if he should reappear would not be sweetened by what he saw happening in the world. His soul goes marching on, but it is still the soul of vengeance and wrath.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Best men, 18-25 $1,200-$1,300 Fair men 950- 1,050 Boys 375- 950 Young women 800- 1,000 Girls, 5 ft. 750- 850 ” 4 ft. 9 ins. 700- 750 ” 4 ft. 350- 450 —“A Journey Through the Seaboard Slave States,” by F. L. Olmsted.

[2] “Two Years on a Georgian Plantation,” by Frances Kemble.

[3] “Sherman’s Memoirs.”

[4] Field Orders 119 and 120, abbreviated.

[5] “Negro Migration in 1916-17,” Government Printing Office, Washington, 1919.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Soul of John Brown, by Stephen Graham