Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

of prosecuting attorney. Two-thirds of the cases concerned Negroes, and one-third concerned whites. He says:

"In the amount of fine and length of sentence the advantage appears to be altogether with the Negro. The average fine of the white convict is $18.05; of the Negro $14.55, a difference of $3.50 in favor of the Negro. The average term of imprisonment of the white convict is 86.04 days, of the Negro 79.37 days, a difference of 6.67 days in favor of the Negro. The white man convicted of gambling is fined about twice as much as the Negro, and, if imprisoned, his sentence is considerably longer. The fine of the white person convicted of violating the liquor laws is nearly twice that of the Negro convicted of the same kind of offense.

...

"It appears that, upon the whole, 49.3 per cent of whites and 46.7 per cent of Negroes are fined, which is a difference of 2.6 per cent in favor of the white, if it be leniency in the court to fine rather than imprison. . . . It is common knowledge that a much larger percentage of Negroes than whites have to be sentenced for non-payment of fine or costs. When a deduction for this is made, the percentage of Negroes sentenced to terms of imprisonment will be found to be not much, if any, more than the percentage of whites sentenced."

In the matter of crimes against property, the white people who are the victims are generally very charitable towards the Negroes, and in thousands of instances make no complaint of the crime. I have known many cases where Negro servants have stolen clothing, jewelry, and other valuable household property and no effort was made to prosecute them. The white people try to recover the property which has been stolen, and, if they do recover it, the servant is often retained in the same household; if the property is not, and cannot be recovered, the white people feel that they have nothing to gain by prosecuting the servant, and often, out of sympathy for him or her, or appreciation of his or her good traits, would regret to see the guilty one prosecuted. Furthermore, cases are very common in which white people who have been the victims of Negro crime have spent time and money to prevent the Negro culprit from being arrested or punished. For instance, while I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, a Negro girl about sixteen years old, employed by us as a house maid, forged my sister's name to a check, and was caught in the act of trying to cash it at the bank. The teller of the bank called in a policeman and had the girl put in jail. The girl was well educated for her age; she had been regularly to school, and was

very bright and capable as a servant. We all liked her, and were shocked and grieved to find her in jail. We looked upon this girl's crime as a youthful indiscretion and we all busied ourselves with the solicitor and the judge to secure her discharge.

Most white people in the South have known some Negroes for a long time and feel a deep attachment to them in spite of any and all of their faults, and when any one of them gets into the court their white friends frequently intercede to get them out. Only last summer, I was told by my brother-in-law, Judge W. F. Harding of North Carolina, how he and his cousin, a lawyer, had been working strenuously, and of course without pay, to save from punishment a Negro woman who had attacked with an axe a police officer holding a search-warrant. Judge Harding happened to be a friend of a family for whom the Negro woman had once worked, and they were devoted to her and did not want her punished. I could fill a book with similar instances in which the white people have befriended the Negro in the courts.

A Northern man who was in the South studying the Negro problem said,

"One of the things that I couldn't at first understand in some of the courts I visited was the presence of so many white men to stand sponsor for the Negroes who had committed various offenses."

In civil litigation in the South, strange to say, the Negro in many cases has the advantage over the white man. If a white man cheats or takes advantage of a Negro the jurymen generally have such a contempt for the white offender that they are inclined to give him all that the law allows; whereas, if a Negro cheats or gets the better of a white man, the jurymen generally take the view that any white man who lets a Negro get the better of him is deserving of little consideration, and are inclined to favor the Negro or let him off lightly. In all civil matters I think that the Negro fares as well in the courts as the whites. The following case, reported in the Statesville, North Carolina, Landmark, is an illustration:

"The jury's verdict in the Ross will case in Union county is one of many similar instances in which the gratifying fact stands out that white juries can and do disregard race prejudice. Maggie Ross, a white woman possessed of large estate, lived in retirement and it is alleged that she permitted her negro servants unusual privileges • Baker, Following the Color Line, p. 96.

in her home. At her death it was found that she had willed the bulk of her estate to three negroes. Various bequests were made to churches, missions and charities (the orphanage at Barium Springs, $2,000) and small amounts were given to various white persons, but the bulk of the estate of 1,500 acres of valuable farming lands and about $35,000 in cash was left to a negro man and his daughter and granddaughter. The white woman had no near kin, but as soon as her will was made public second and third cousins and others farther removed, to the number of 109, entered suit to set aside the will on the ground that Maggie Ross was not mentally competent to make a will and that she was unduly influenced by the negroes who were the beneficiaries. Many witnesses expressed the opinion that she was not mentally competent to make a will, and when pinned down admitted that the opinion was based on the fact that she left her property to the negroes.

"That was a natural thought, and that with the natural race feeling and the feeling that it was not best all 'round for so much valuable property to pass from the white race by gift into the hands of negroes, made a strong case to break the will. True, the white beneficiaries employed counsel and gave their aid and influence against the effort to set aside the will, but most of these beneficiaries are outside of Union county. Their local influence would be small, while a jury of white Union county citizens would not be expected to look with favor on 1,500 acres of valuable Union county land passing into the hands of negroes, their heirs and assigns, for all time.

"But after a hard-fought contest of 15 days it took that Union county jury just 45 minutes to agree that Maggie Ross knew what she was doing when she made her will; that she wanted the negroes to have the property and she was entirely within her rights when she gave it to them.

"That is by no means an unusual verdict, either, from the point of race relationship. Not so many years ago a white jury, in Iredell Superior court, took the word of an old colored man against that of two white men-men of property and standing as men of affairs in their community-in a matter involving the ownership of land. There are cases, of course, where passions are aroused, when race feeling sways judgment. But when the facts are set out in an atmosphere free from passion, in the clear light of justice, the negro will get his rights before the average Southern jury."

H. B. Adams, a brother-in-law of the author of this book, drew the will which the kin of Maggie Ross sought to break, and his son informs the author that the Negro beneficiaries of the will received "in round numbers one hundred thousand dollars."

CHAPTER 20

THE NEGRO AS A CONVICT

Various Systems of Employing the Convicts-the Lease or Contract System

The State Farm System-The Chain-gang-Advantages and Drawbacks of the Several Systems-Progress of the South in Solving the Problem of Convict Labor

AS

S from one-half to two-thirds of the inmates of the penal institutions in the South are Negroes, it would seem to be in order to give some account of these institutions.

First, there are state penitentiaries, consisting of one large building where men are confined who have committed serious crimes. During the past forty years these institutions have gradually declined in the number of inmates, due to the increasing practice of employing convicts outside of prison walls. In some states the penitentiaries have come to be used only for the criminal insane, and a small number of long-term offenders who are not capable of arduous manual labor. The maintenance of a large number of convicts within prison walls has been found by experience to be burdensome to the state because of the difficulty of putting them to any kind of work which would yield a profit.

Second, as a means of relieving the state of the necessity of appropriating money for the annual deficit incurred by the state penitentiaries, the policy was adopted of hiring out convicts under contract or lease to private individuals or corporations for work of various kinds in and outside of the penitentiary walls. By the terms of the contract the state received so much per capita for the labor of each convict, and sometimes furnished an overseer. Convicts so contracted for have been used in North Carolina to build railroads, in South Carolina to work in a cotton factory or on private farms, in Virginia to work in a shoe factory, in Alabama to work in mines and sawmills, in Georgia to work in lumber camps and brickyards, and in Florida to work in the phosphate beds and in turpentine stills.

This lease system has been very profitable to the states, but has never been anything but an evil from the viewpoint of the welfare

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »