Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/186

164 than the illiterates, which is true of no other element of our population. I am advised that the minimum illiteracy among the negroes is found in New England, where it is 21.7 per cent. The maximum was found in the " black belt " — Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina — where it is 65.7 per cent. And yet the negro in New England is four and one-half times more criminal, hundred for hundred, than he is in the " black belt." In the South, Mississippi particularly, I know he is growing worse every year. " * You can scarcely pick up a newspaper whose pages are not blackened with the account of an un- mentionable crime committed by a negro brute, and this crime, I want to impress upon you, is but the manifestation of the negro's aspiration for social equal- ity, encouraged largely by the character of free edu- cation in vogue, which the state is levying tribute upon the white people to maintain. " * The better class of negroes are not responsible for this terrible condition, nor for the criminal tendency of their race. Nor do I wish to be understood as censur- ing them for it. I am not censuring anybody, nor am I inspired by ill-will for the negro, but I am simply calling attention to a most unfortunate and unen- durable condition of affairs. What shall be done about it? " ' My own idea is that the character of the educa- tion for the negro ought to be changed. If, after years of earnest effort and the expenditure of fabulous sums of money to educate his head, we have only suc- ceeded in making a criminal out of him and imperiling his usefulness and efficiency as a laborer, wisdom would suggest that we make another experiment and