The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919. Various
as before stated, was about the same.
One cause of complaint alleged as a reason for this exodus of the colored people from the South was their mistreatment in the courts of justice. Directing our attention to this the committee have ascertained that in many of the districts of the South the courts were under entire Republican control—judges, prosecuting attorneys, sheriffs, &c., and that there were generally as many complaints from districts thus controlled as there were from districts which were under the control of the Democratic officials; and that the whole of the complaints taken together might be said to be such as are generally made by the ignorant who fail to receive in courts what they think is justice.
Your committee found no State or county in the South, into which this investigation extended, where colored men were excluded from juries either in theory or in practice; they found no county or district in the South where they were excluded, either in theory or practice, from their share in the management of county affairs and of the control of county government. On the contrary, whenever their votes were in a majority we found that the officers were most generally divided among the black people, or among white people of their choice. Frequently we found the schools to be controlled by them, especially that portion of the school fund which was allotted to their race, and the complaints which had been so often made of excessive punishment of the blacks by the courts as compared with the whites upon investigation in nearly all cases, proved to be either unfounded in fact or that if there was an apparent excess of punishment of a black man the cause was ascertained to be in the nature of the crime with which he was charged, or the attendant circumstances.
The educational advantages in the South, the committee regret to say, were found to be insufficient, and far inferior to those of most of the States of the North, but such as they were we found in every case that the blacks had precisely the same advantages that the whites enjoyed; that the school fund was divided among them according to numbers; that their teachers were quite as good, and chosen with as much care; that their schools existed as many months in the year; in short, the same facilities were afforded to the blacks as were to the whites in this respect; and that these schools were generally supported by the voluntary taxation imposed by the legislatures composed of white men, levied upon their own property for the common benefit.
With regard to political outrages which have formed the staple of complaint for many years against the people of the South, your committee diligently inquired, and have to report that they found nothing or almost nothing new. Many old stories were revived and dwelt upon by zealous witnesses, but very few indeed ventured to say that any considerable violence or outrage had been exhibited toward the colored people of the South within the last few years, and still fewer of all those who testified upon this subject, and who were evidently anxious to make the most of it, testified to anything as within their own knowledge. It was all hearsay, and nothing but hearsay, with rare exceptions.
Many of the witnesses before us were colored politicians, men who make their living by politics, and whose business it was to stir up feeling between the whites and blacks; keep alive the embers of political hatred; and were men of considerable intelligence, so that what they failed to set forth of outrages perpetrated against their race may be safely assumed not to exist. Many, on the contrary, were intelligent, sober, industrious, and respectable men, who testified to their own condition, the amount of property that they had accumulated since their emancipation, the comfort in which they lived, the respect with which they were regarded by their white neighbors. These universally expressed the opinion that all colored men who would practice equal industry and sobriety could have fared equally well; and in fact their own condition was ample proof of the treatment of the colored people by the whites of the South, and of their opportunities to thrive, if they were so determined. Some of these men owned so much as a thousand acres of real estate in the best portions of the South; many of them had tenants of their own, white men, occupying their premises and paying them rent; and your committee naturally arrived at the conclusion that if one black man could attain to this degree of prosperity and respectable citizenship, others could, having the same capacity for business and practicing the same sobriety and industry.
Your committee also directed their attention to the complaints frequently made with regard to the laws passed in various States of the South relating to landlord and tenant, and to the system adopted by many planters for furnishing their tenants and laborers with supplies. We found, upon investigation of these laws, and of the witnesses in relation to their operation, that as a general rule they were urgently called for by the circumstances in which the South found itself after the war. The universal adoption of homestead and personal property exemption laws deprived poor men of credit, and the landlord class, for its own protection, procured the passage of these laws giving them a lien upon the crop made by the tenant until his rents and his supplies furnished for the subsistence of the tenant and his family had been paid and discharged; and while upon the surface these laws appeared to be hard and in favor of the landlord, they were, as was actually testified by many intelligent witnesses, quite as much or more in favor of the tenant, as it enabled him to obtain credit, to subsist himself and his family, and to make a crop without any means whatsoever but his own labor. It was alleged also that in many instances landlords, or if not landlords then merchants, would establish country stores for furnishing supplies to laborers and tenants, and the laborer, having no money to go elsewhere or take the natural advantages of competition, was forced to buy at these stores at exorbitant prices.
Your committee regret to say that they found it to be frequently the case that designing men, or bad and dishonest men, would take advantage of the ignorance or necessity of the Negroes to obtain these exorbitant prices; but at the same time your committee is not aware of a spot on earth where the cunning and unscrupulous do not take advantage of the ignorant; and cannot regard it as a sufficient cause for these black people leaving their homes and going into distant States and among strangers unless they had a proper assurance that the State to which they were going contained no dishonest men, or men who would take such advantage of them. Your committee feel bound to say, however, in justice to the planters of the South, that this abuse is not at all general nor frequent; and that as a general rule while exorbitant prices are exacted sometimes from men in the situation of the blacks, yet the excuse for it is the risk which planter and merchant run. Should a bad crop year come, should the Army worm devour the cotton, or any other calamity come upon the crop, the landlord is without his rent, the storekeeper is without his pay, and worse than all the laborer is without a means of subsistence for the next year. It is hoped and believed that when the heretofore disturbed condition of the people of the South settles down into regularity and order, the natural laws of trade and competition will assert themselves and this evil will be to a great extent remedied, whilst the diffusion of education among the colored people will enable them to keep their own accounts and hold a check upon those who would act dishonestly towards them.
On the whole, your committee express the positive opinion that the condition of the colored people of the South is not only as good as could have been reasonably expected, but is better than if large communities were transferred to a colder and more inhospitable climate, thrust into competition with a different system of labor, among strangers who are not accustomed to them, their ways, habits of thought and action, their idiosyncrasies, and their feelings. While a gradual migration, such as circumstances dictate among the white races, might benefit the individual black man and his family as it does those of the white race, we cannot but regard this wholesale attempt to transfer a people without means and without intelligence, from the homes of their nativity in this manner, as injurious to the people of the South, injurious to the people and the labor system of the State where they go, and, more than all, injurious to the last degree to the black people themselves. That there is much in their condition to be deplored in the South no one will deny; that that condition is gradually and steadily improving in every respect is equally true. That there have been clashings of the races in the South, socially and politically, is never to be denied nor to be wondered at; but when we come to consider the method in which the people were freed, as the result of a bitter and desolating civil war; and that for purposes of party politics these incompetent, ignorant, landless, homeless people, without any qualifications of citizenship, without any of the ties of property or the obligations of education, were suddenly thrown into political power, and the effort was made not only to place them upon an equality with their late masters, but to absolutely place them in front and hold them there by