Following the Color Line — In the Black Belt: The Negro Farmer - part 1

IN THE BLACK BELT: THE NEGRO FARMER

The cotton picking season was drawing to its close when I left for the black belt of Georgia.

So many friends in Atlanta had said: "The city Negro isn't the real Negro.

You must go out on the cotton plantations in the country; there you'll see the genuine black African in all his primitive glory."

It is quite true that the typical Negro is a farmer.

The great mass of the race in the South dwells in the country.

According to the last census, out of 8,000,000 Negroes in the Southern states 6,558,173, or 83 per cent.

, lived on the farms or in rural villages.

The crowded city life which I have already described represents not the common condition of the masses of the Negro race but the newer development which accompanies the growth of industrial and urban life.

In the city the races are forced more violently together, socially and economically, than in the country, producing acute crises, but it is in the old agricultural regions where the Negro is in such masses, where ideas change slowly, and old institutions persist, that the problem really presents the greatest difficulties.

There is no better time of year to see the South than November; for then it wears the smile of abundance.

The country I went through--rolling red hills, or black bottoms, pine-clad in places, with pleasant farm openings dotted with cabins, often dilapidated but picturesque, and the busy little towns--wore somehow an air of brisk comfort.

The fields were lively with Negro cotton pickers; I saw bursting loads of the new lint drawn by mules or oxen, trailing along the country roads; all the gins were puffing busily; at each station platform cotton bales by scores or hundreds stood ready for shipment and the towns were cheerful with farmers white and black, who now had money to spend.

The heat of the summer had gone, the air bore the tang of a brisk autumn coolness.

It was a good time of the year--and everybody seemed to feel it.

Many Negroes got on or off at every station with laughter and snouted good-byes.

_What Is the Black Belt?

_ [Illustration: THE BLACK BELT In the region shaded more than half of the inhabitants are Negroes.

] And so, just at evening, after a really interesting journey, I reached Hawkinsville, a thriving town of some 3,000 people just south of the centre of Georgia.

Pulaski County, of which Hawkinsville is the seat, with an ambitious new court-house, is a typical county of the black belt.

A

census map which is here reproduced well shows the region of largest proportionate Negro population, extending from South Carolina through central Georgia and Alabama to Mississippi.

More than half the inhabitants of all this broad belt, including also the Atlantic coastal counties and the lower Mississippi Valley (as shaded on the map), are Negroes, chiefly farm Negroes.

There the race question, though perhaps not so immediately difficult as in cities like Atlanta, is with both white and coloured people the imminent problem of daily existence.

Several times while in the black belt I was amused at the ardent response of people to whom I mentioned the fact that I had already seen something of conditions in Kentucky, Maryland, and Virginia: "Why, they haven't any Negro problem.

They're _North_."

In Maryland, Kentucky, and Texas the problem is a sharp irritant--as it is, for that matter, in Ohio, in Indianapolis, and on the west side of New York City--but it is not the life and death question that it is in the black belt or in the Yazoo delta.

All the country of Central Georgia has been long settled.

Pulaski County was laid out in 1808; and yet the population to-day may be considered sparse.

The entire county has only 8,000 white people, a large proportion of whom live in the towns of Hawkinsville and Cochran, and 12,000 Negroes, leaving not inconsiderable areas of forest and uncultivated land which will some day become immensely valuable.

_A Southern Country Gentleman_ At Hawkinsville I met J. Pope Brown, the leading citizen of the county.

In many ways he is an example of the best type of the new Southerner.

In every way open to him, and with energy, he is devoting himself to the improvement of his community.

For five years he was president of the State Agricultural Society; he has been a member of the legislature and chairman of the Georgia Railroad Commission, and he represents all that is best in the new progressive movement in the South.

One of the unpleasant features of the villages in the South are the poor hotels.

In accounting for this condition I heard a story illustrating the attitude of the old South toward public accommodations.

A number of years ago, before the death of Robert Toombs, who, as a member of Jefferson Davis's cabinet was called the "backbone of the confederacy," the spirit of progress reached the town where Toombs lived.

The thing most needed was a new hotel.

The business men got together and subscribed money with enthusiasm, counting upon Toombs, who was their richest man, for the largest subscription.

But when they finally went to him, he said: "What do we want of a hotel?

When a gentleman comes to town I will entertain him myself; those who are not gentlemen we don't want!"

That was the old spirit of aristocratic individualism; the town did not get its hotel.

One of the public enterprises of Mr. Brown at Hawkinsville is a good hotel; and what is rarer still, North and South, he has made his hotel building really worthy architecturally.

Mr. Brown took me out to his plantation--a drive of some eight miles.

In common with most of the larger plantation owners, as I found not only in Georgia, but in other Southern states which I afterward visited, Mr. Brown makes his home in the city.

After a while I came to feel a reasonable confidence in assuming that almost any prominent merchant, banker, lawyer, or politician whom I met in the towns owned a plantation in the country.

From a great many stories of the fortunes of families that I heard I concluded that the movement of white owners from the land to nearby towns was increasing every year.

High prices for cotton and consequent prosperity seem to have accelerated rather than retarded the movement.

White planters can now afford to live in town where they can have the comforts and conveniences, where the servant question is not impossibly difficult, and where there are good schools for the children.

Another potent reason for the movement is the growing fear of the whites, and especially the women and children, at living alone on great farms where white neighbours are distant.

Statistics show that less crime is committed in the black belt than in other parts of the South.

I found that the fear was not absent even among these people.

I have a letter from a white man, P. S.

George, of Greenwood, Mississippi, which expresses the country white point of view with singular earnestness: I live in a country of large plantations; if there are 40,000 people in that country, at least 30,000 are Negroes, and we never have any friction between the races.

I have been here as a man for twenty years and I never heard of but one case of attempted assault by a Negro on a white woman.

That Negro was taken out and hanged.

I said that we never had any trouble with Negroes, but it's because we never take our eyes off the gun.

You may wager that I never leave my wife and daughter at home without a man in the house after ten o'clock at night--because I am afraid.

As a result of these various influences a traveller in the black belt sees many plantation houses, even those built in recent years, standing vacant and forlorn or else occupied by white overseers, who are in many parts of the South almost as difficult to keep as the Negro tenants.

Thousands of small white farmers, both owners and renters, of course, remain, but when the leading planters leave the country, these men, too, grow discontented and get away at the first opportunity.

Going to town, they find ready employment for the whole family in the cotton mill or in other industries where they make more money and live with a degree of comfort that they never before imagined possible.

_Story of the Mill People_ Many cotton mills, indeed, employ agents whose business it is to go out through the country urging the white farmers to come to town and painting glowing pictures of the possibilities of life there.

I have visited a number of mill neighbourhoods and talked with the operatives.

I found the older men sometimes homesick for free life of the farm.

One lanky old fellow said rather pathetically: "When it comes to cotton picking time and I know that they are grinding cane and hunting possums, I jest naturally get lonesome for the country."

But nothing would persuade the women and children to go back to the old hard life.

Hawkinsville has a small cotton mill and just such a community of white workers around it.

Owing to the scarcity of labour, wages in the mills have been going up rapidly all over the South, during the last two or three years, furnishing a still more potent attraction for country people.

All these various tendencies are uniting to produce some very remarkable conditions in the South.

A natural segregation of the races is apparently taking place.

I saw it everywhere I went in the black belt.

The white people were gravitating toward the towns or into white neighbourhoods and leaving the land, even though still owned by white men, more and more to the exclusive occupation of Negroes.

Many black counties are growing blacker while not a few white counties are growing whiter.

[Illustration: WHERE WHITE MILL HANDS LIVE IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA] [Illustration: WHERE SOME OF THE POORER NEGROES LIVE IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA COMPANION PICTURES

to show that there is comparatively little difference in the material comfort of the two classes] Take, for example, Pulaski County, through which I drove that November morning with Mr. Brown.

In 1870 the coloured and white population were almost exactly equal--about 6,000 for each.

In 1880 the Negroes had increased to 8,225 while the whites showed a loss.

By 1890 the towns had begun to improve and the white population grew by about 700, but the Negroes increased nearly 2,000. And, finally, here are the figures for 1900: Negroes 11,029; Whites 7,460. I have not wished to darken our observations with too many statistics, but this tendency is so remarkable that I wish to set down for comparison the figures of a "white county" in northern Georgia--Polk County--which is growing whiter every year.

Negroes Whites 1880 4,147 7,805 1890 4,654 10,289 1900 4,916 12,940 _Driving out Negroes_ One of the most active causes of this movement is downright fear--or race repulsion expressing itself in fear.

White people dislike and fear to live in dense coloured neighbourhoods, while Negroes are often terrorised in white neighbourhoods--and not in the South only but in parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, as I shall show when I come to treat of Northern race conditions.

I have accumulated many instances showing how Negroes are expelled from white neighbourhoods.

There is a significant report from Little Rock, Arkansas: (_Special to the Georgian.

_) Little Rock, Ark.

, Jan.

1. --Practically every Negro in Evening Shade, Sharp County, in this state, has left town as the result of threats which have been made against the Negroes.

For several years a small colony of Negroes has lived just on the outskirts of the town.

A

short time ago notices were posted warning the Negroes to leave the town at once.

About the same time Joe Brooks, a Negro who lived with his family two miles north of town, was called to his door and fired upon by unknown persons.

A load of shot struck the house close by his side and some of the shot entered his arm.

Brooks and his family have left the country, and practically every member of the Negro colony has gone.

They have abandoned their property or disposed of it for whatever they could get.

From the New Orleans _Times Democrat_ of March 20, 1907, I cut the following dispatch showing one method pursued by the whites of Oklahoma: BLACKS ORDERED OUT

Lawton, Okla.

, March 20. --"Negroes, beware the cappers.

We, the Sixty Sons of Waurika, demand the Negroes to leave here at once.

We mean Go!

Leave in twenty-four hours, or after that your life is uncertain."

These were the words on placards which the eighty Negroes of the town of Waurika, forty miles south of Lawton, saw posted conspicuously in a number of public places this morning.

Dispatches from here to-night stated that the whites are in earnest, and that the Negroes will be killed if they do not leave town.

Not a few students of Southern conditions like John Temple Graves among the whites and Bishop Turner among the coloured people have argued that actual physical separation of the races (either by deportation of the Negroes to Africa or elsewhere, or by giving them certain reservation-like parts of the South to live in) is the only solution.

But here is, in actuality, a natural segregation going forward in certain parts of the South, though in a very different way from that recommended by Mr. Graves and Bishop Turner; for even in the blackest counties the white people own most of the land, occupy the towns, and dominate everywhere politically, socially, and industrially.

Mr. Brown's plantation contains about 5,000 acres, of which some 3,500 acres are in cultivation, a beautiful rolling country, well watered, with here and there clumps of pines, and dotted with the small homes of the tenantry.

As we drove along the country road we met or passed many Negroes who bowed with the greatest deference.

Some were walking, but many drove horses or mules and rode not infrequently in top buggies, looking most prosperous, as indeed, Mr. Brown informed me that they were.

He knew them all, and sometimes stopped to ask them how they were getting along.

The outward relationships between the races in the country seem to me to be smoother than it is in the city.

Cotton, as in all this country, is almost the exclusive crop.

In spite of the constant preaching of agricultural reformers, like Mr. Brown himself, hardly enough corn is raised to supply the people with food, and I was surprised here and elsewhere at seeing so few cattle and hogs.

Sheep are non-existent.

In Hawkinsville, though the country round about raises excellent grass, I saw in front of a supply store bales of hay which had been shipped in 400 miles--from Tennessee.

Enough sugar cane is raised, mostly in small patches, to supply syrup for domestic uses.

At the time of my visit the Negroes were in the cane-fields with their long knives, getting in the crop.

We saw several little one-horse grinding mills pressing the juice from the cane, while near at hand, sheltered by a shanty-like roof, was the great simmering syrup kettle, with an expert Negro at work stirring and skimming.

And always there were Negroes round about, all the boys and girls with jolly smeared faces--and the older ones peeling and sucking the fresh cane.

It was a great time of year!

How does the landlord--and a lord he is in a very true sense--manage his great estate?

The same system is in use with slight variations everywhere in the cotton country and a description of Mr. Brown's methods, with references here and there to what I have seen or heard elsewhere, will give an excellent idea of the common procedure.

_A Country of Great Plantations_ The black belt is a country of great plantations, some owners having as high as 30,000 acres, interspersed with smaller farms owned by the poorer white families or Negroes.

In one way the conditions are similar to those prevailing in Ireland; great landlords and a poor tenantry or peasantry, the tenants here being very largely black.

It requires about 100 families, or 600 people, to operate Mr. Brown's plantation.

Of these, 90 per cent.

are coloured and 10 per cent.

white.

I

was much interested in what Mr. Brown said about his Negro tenants, which varies somewhat from the impression I had in the city of the younger Negro generation.

"I would much rather have young Negroes for tenants," he said, "because they work better and seem more disposed to take care of their farms.

The old Negroes ordinarily will shirk--a habit of slavery."

Besides the residence of the overseer and the homes of the tenants there is on the plantation a supply store owned by Mr. Brown, a blacksmith shop and a Negro church, which is also used as a school-house.

This is, I found all through the black belt, a common equipment.

Three different methods are pursued by the landlord in getting his land cultivated.

First, the better class of tenants rent the land for cash, a "standing rent" of some an acre, though in many places in Mississippi it ranges as high as and an acre.

Second, a share-crop rental, in which the landlord and the tenant divide the cotton and corn produced.

Third, the ordinary wage system; that is, the landlord hires workers at so much a month and puts in his own crop.

All three of these methods are usually employed on the larger plantations.

Mr. Brown rents 2,500 acres for cash, 400 on shares, and farms 600 himself with wage workers.

All the methods of land measurement are very different here from what they are in the North.

The plantation is irregularly divided up into what are called one-mule or one-plough farms--just that amount of land which a family can cultivate with one mule--usually about thirty acres.

Some ambitious tenants will take a two-mule or even a four-mule farm.

_The Negro Tenant_ Most of the tenants, especially the Negroes, are very poor, and wholly dependent upon the landlord.

Many Negro families possess practically nothing of their own, save their ragged clothing, and a few dollars' worth of household furniture, cooking utensils and a gun.

The landlord must therefore supply them not only with enough to live on while they are making their crop, but with the entire farming outfit.

Let us say that a Negro comes in November to rent a one-mule farm from the landlord for the coming year.

"What have you got?"

asks the landlord.

"Noting', boss," he is quite likely to say.

The "boss" furnishes him with a cabin to live in--which goes with the land rented--a mule, a plough, possibly a one-horse waggon and a few tools.

He is often given a few dollars in cash near Christmas time which (ordinarily) he immediately spends--wastes.

He is then allowed to draw upon the plantation supply store a regular amount of corn to feed his mule, and meat, bread, and tobacco, and some clothing for his family.

The cost of the entire outfit and supplies for a year is in the neighbourhood of , upon which the tenant pays interest at from 10 to 30 per cent.

from the time of signing the contract in November, although most of the supplies are not taken out until the next summer.

Besides this interest the planter also makes a large profit on all the groceries and other necessaries furnished by his supply store.

Having made his contract the Negro goes to work with his whole family and keeps at it until the next fall when the cotton is all picked and ginned.

Then he comes in for his "settlement"--a great time of year.

The settlements were going forward while I was in the black belt.

The Negro is credited with the amount of cotton he brings in and he is charged with all the supplies he has had, and interest, together with the rent of his thirty acres of land.

If the season has been good and he has been industrious, he will often have a nice profit in cash, but sometimes he not only does not come out even, but closes his year of work actually in deeper debt to the landlord.

[Illustration: A "POOR WHITE" FAMILY "Among them is a spirit of pride and independence which, rightly directed, would uplift and make them prosperous, but which, misguided and blind, as it sometimes is, keeps them in poverty."

] [Illustration: A MODEL NEGRO SCHOOL Inspired by Tuskegee; different, indeed, from the ordinary country Negro school in the South] Some Negroes, nowadays usually of the poorer sort, work for wages.

They get from to a month (against to a few years ago) with a cabin to live in.

They are allowed a garden patch, where they can, if they are industrious and their families help, raise enough vegetables to feed them comfortably, or part of a bale of cotton, which is their own.

But it is sadly to be commented upon that few Negro tenants, or whites either, as far as I could see, do anything with their gardens save perhaps to raise a few collards, peanuts, and peppers--and possibly a few sweet potatoes.

This is due in part to indolence and lack of ambition, and in part to the steady work required by the planter.

The wife and children of an industrious wage-working Negro nearly always help in the fields, earning an additional income from chopping cotton in spring and picking the lint in the fall.

This is the system as it is in theory; but the interest for us lies not in the plan, but in the actual practice.

How does it all work out for good or for evil, for landlord and for tenant?

Tenantry in the South is a very different thing from what it is in the North.

In the North, a man who rents a farm is nearly as free to do as he pleases as if he were the owner.

But in the South, the present tenant system is much nearer the condition that prevailed in slavery times than it is to the present Northern tenant system.

This grows naturally out of slavery; the white man had learned to operate big plantations with ignorant help; and the Negro on his part had no training for any other system.

The white man was the natural master and the Negro the natural dependent and a mere Emancipation Proclamation did not at once change the _spirit_ of the relationship.

To-day a white overseer resides on every large plantation and he or the owner himself looks after and disciplines the tenants.

The tenant is in debt to him (in some cases reaching a veritable condition of debt slavery or peonage) and he _must_ see that the crop is made.

Hence he watches the work of every Negro (and indeed that of the white tenants as well) sees that the land is properly fertilised, and that the dikes (to prevent washing) are kept up, that the cotton is properly chopped (thinned) and regularly cultivated.

Some of the greater landowners employ assistant overseers or "riders" who are constantly travelling from farm to farm.

On one plantation I saw four such riders start out one day, each with a rifle on his saddle.

And on a South Carolina plantation I had a glimpse of one method of discipline.

A planter was telling me of his difficulties--how a spirit of unruliness sometimes swept abroad through a plantation, inspired by some "bigoty nigger."

"Do you know what I do with such cases?"

he said.

"Come with me, I'll show you."

He took me back through his house to the broad porch and reaching up to a shelf over the door he took down a hickory waggon spoke, as long as my arm.

"When there's trouble," he said, "I just go down with that and lay one or two of 'em out.

That ends the trouble.

We've got to do it; they're like children and once in a while they simply have to be punished.

It's far better for them to take it this way, from a white man who is their friend, than to be arrested and taken to court and sent to the chain-gang."