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Footnotes 1357
used to illustrate the consolidation of white thinking on race relations after Reconstruc-
tion. He talked touchingly of the relations that “did exist in the days of slavery”:
. . how the negro stood in slavery days, open-hearted and sympathetic, full of gossip
and comradeship, the companion of the hunt, frolic, furrow and home, contented in
the kindly dependence that has been a habit of his blood, and never lifting his eyes
beyond the narrow horizon that shut him in with his neighbors and friends. But this
relation did exist in the days of slavery. It was the rule of that regime. It has survived
war, and strife, and political campaigns in which the drum-beat inspired and Federal
bayonets fortified. It will never die until the last slaveholder and slave have been gathered
to rest. It is the glory of our past in the South. It is the answer to abuse and slander.
It is the hope of our future.” (O^. pp. 1 52-1 53; compare Page, of. cit.^ pp. 80,
164 fassim.)
^®“For those still living in the county there is, it would appear, one unfailing rule
of life. If they would get along with least difficulty, they should get for themselves a
protecting white family. We have mighty good white folks friends, and ef you have
white folks for your friends, dey can’t do you no harm.’ ” (Charles S. Johnson,
Shadow of the Plantation [l934]> p. 27.)
Woofter remarks:
“The liberality with which these colored beggars are treated is often more of a
liability than an asset to racial adjustment, because such emotional but unscientific giving
often leaves the givers with a paternalistic feeling toward the whole race and a belief that
by giving small alms they have discharged their full civic duty toward their colored
neighbors.” (0/>. cit.^ p. 199.)
Dollard, of. cit., pp. 389-432.
It was part of Washington’s tactics to exaggerate this point. An interesting com-
parison can be made between his first book, published in 1899, and his later writings.
In the former. The Future of the American NegrOy he painted the cruelties of slavery
in glaring terms; in the latter he rather elaborated on the lighter sides of the institu-
tion. This was part of his attempt to gain the assistance or at least the tolerance of the
Southern whites, and he had found out that this appealed to the Northern philanthropist
also. In his last book. The Story of the Negro (1909), he wrote, for instance, in explain-
ing why “a mob in the South . . . does not seek to visit its punishment upon the innocent
as well as upon the guilty”:
“In the South every Negro, no matter how worthless he may be as an individual,
knows one white man in the town whose friendship and protection he can always count
upon; perhaps he has gained the friendship of this white man by reason of the fact that
some member of the white man’s family owned him or some of his relatives, or it may
be that he has lived upon this white man’s plantation, or that some member of his family
works for him, or that he has performed some act of kindness for this white man which
has brought them into sympathetic relations with each other. It is generally true, as 1
have said before, that in the South every white man, no matter how bitter he may seem
to be toward the Negro as a race, knows some one Negro in whom he has complete con-
fidence, whom he will trust with all that he has. It is the individual touch which holds
the two races together in the South, and it is this individual touch between the races
which is lacking, in a large degree, in the North.” (Vol. I, p. 189.)
This was a gross overstatement even when Washington wrote, and is still less accurate
today. (See Chapter 27, Section 2.)
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