3 10 300 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Student Name Megan Brooks Summary The Planet praises “The Negro is a Man” as a book that utilizes biblical context to support the “Negro is of Adamic offspring” and “therefore has a soul”. Item Type Article Image No URL https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=RP19040305&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- Topic Social Change Times Repeated Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound We have received “ The Negro is a Man,” a cloth bound volume of 552 pages. Rev. W. S Armistead, white, of Tifton, Georgia, is the author and we have no hesitation in saying that it is the most remarkable work of the kind that we have ever read. It is a reply to Prof, Charles Carroll’s book entitled, “The Negro is a Beast.”     It makes some startling declarations and the most radical citizen of color in this country will be doubly pleased when he notes some of the truly surprising assertions of this author, who gives history, both biblical and profane in support of his astounding contentions.     That he resides in Georgia, emphasizes the fact that “some good can come out of NAzareth.”     Rev.Armistad declares that Adam and Eve were not white persons, but were red ones. He announces that the serpent spoken of in the Scriptures was similar in appearance to the crocodile of the to-day.     “Adam was a red man; Adam was a species man; the antediluvians were ‘a colored’, ‘red people’, there being no other kind of people on the earth in the ages before the Deluge, save Japheth and Ham, Noah’s white and black sons; that neither of Noah’s sons had off-spring till after the Flood; that therefore there were no Negroes-Ham's descendants-on earth till after the cataclysm; hence Negroes were Hamitic in origin, and postdiluvian in time; such being the undoubted teaching of the Mosaic Record,  teaching confirmed  by the sacred records of the Egyptians, the Chaldeans and the Chinese, which date back to postdiluvian age as the period in the world’s history when there began to be more races than one on the earth, those records speaking ‘of races’  on earth for the first time i that age.”     The author concludes: “Part I taken as a whole is our first argument in proof that the Negro is of Adamic offspring, Noahic origin, Hamitic descent, a blood relation of whites,reds,browns,yellow and copper colors-a human being and therefore has a soul.”     This work is published by Amistad and Vickers, Tifton, Georgia. It will be valuable addition to every colored man’s library. Location Upper Left Quadrant Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context A Remarkable Work Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <i>Richmond Planet</i> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1904-03-05 Title A name given to the resource A Remarkable Work Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Student Name Benton Camper Summary The writer contrasts how talking about black people is “a prominent” topic in the South but is not in the North. Item Type Article Image No URL https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=RP19070511.1.1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- Topic Social Change Times Repeated Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound A Resume of Southern Conditions Following The Color=Line. I arrived in Atlanta, Georgia, on the first day of last November. The riot, which had taken place about six weeks before, and the city was still in the throes of self-examination and reconstruction. Public attention had been peculiarly riveted upon the facts of race relationships not only in Atlanta but throughout the South, and all manner of remedies and solutions were under sharp discussion. If I had traveled the country over. I could not have found a more favorable time or place to begin following the color line. I had naturally expected to find people talking about the Negro, but I was not at all prepared to find the subject occupying such an overshadowing place in Southern affairs. In the North we have nothing at all like it; no question which so touching every act of life, in which every one, white or black, is so profoundly interested. In the North we are mildly concerned in many things; the South is overwhelmingly concerned in this one thing. And this is not surprising, for the Negro in the South is both the labor problem and the servant question; he is pre-eminently the political issue, and his place, socially, is of daily and hourly discussion. A Negro minister I met told me a story of a boy who went as a sort of butler’s assistant in the home of a prominent family in Atlanta. His people were naturally curious about what went on in the white man’s house. One day they asked him: “What do they talk about when they’s eating?” The boy thought a moment; then he said: “Mostly they discuss us culled folks.” What Negroes Talk About The same consuming interest exists among the Negroes. A very large part of their conversation deals with the race question. I had been at the Piedmont Hotel only a day or two when my Negro waiter began to take especially good care of me. He flecked off imaginary crumbs and gave me unnecessary spoons. Finally, when no one was at hand, he leaned over and said: “I understand you’re down here to study the Negro problem.” “Yes,” I said, a good deal surprised. “How did you know it?” “Well, sir.” he replied. “We’ve got ways of knowing things.” He told me that the Negroes had been much disturbed ever since the riot and that he knew many of them who wanted to go North. “The South,” he said, “is getting to be too dangerous for colored people.” His language and pronunciation were surprisingly good. I found that he was a college student, and that he expected to study for the ministry. “Do you talk much about these things among yourselves?” I asked. “We don’t talk about much else,” he said. “It’s sort of life and death with us.” Another curious thing happened not long afterwards. I was lunching with several fine Southern men, and they talked as usual with the greatest freedom in the full hearing of the Negro waiters. Somehow, I could not help watching to see if the Negroes took any notice of what was said. I wondered if they were sensitive. Finally I put the question to tone of my friends: “Oh,” he said, “we never mind them; they don’t care.” One of the waiters instantly spoke up: “No, don’t mind me; I’m only a block of wood.” The Jim Crow Car One of the points in which I was especially interested was the “Jim Crow” regulation, that is, the system of separation of the races in street cars and railroad trains. Next to the question of Negro suffrage, I think the people of the North have heard more of the Jim Crow legislation than of anything else connected with the Negro problem. I have seen, so far, no better place than the streetcar for observing the points of human contact between the races, betraying as it does every shade of feeling upon the part of both. In almost no other relationship do the races come together, physically on anything like a common footing. In their homes and in ordinary employment, they meet as master and servant; but in the street cars they touch as free citizens each paying for the right to ride, the white not in a place of command, the Negro without an obligation of servitude. Street-car relationships are, therefore, symbolic of the new conditions. A few years ago, the Negro came and went in the street cars in most cities and sat where he pleased, but gradually the Jim Crow laws or local regulations were passed forcing him into certain seats at the back of the car. Since I have been here in Atlanta, the newspapers report two significant new developments in the policy of separation. In Savannah, Jim Crow ordinances have gone into effect for the first time, causing violent protestations on the part of the Negroes and a refusal by many of them to use the cars at all. Location Upper Left Quadrant Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 19070511-A Resume of Southern Conditions-Camper Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <i>Richmond Planet</i> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1907-05-11 Title A name given to the resource A Resume of Southern Conditions https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/files/original/b0d6e7ce2068a6da299713465106d157.png dfdb96c22ead00555b7dfb2f8707ca3b Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Student Name Emma Alvarez Summary African American author, Lucinda Young, writes about her callings from God and the visions she believes are bound to come true. Item Type Advertisement Image Yes URL https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=RP19080314&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- Topic Social Change Times Repeated Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Lucinda Young, who in the year of 1890 laid on her bed twenty-four days and saw dreams and visions, was commanded by God to write the wonders she saw into a book. This book also tells about a seven years famine that is to come. It is sold at $1.00. Terms in advance. Address all communications to Mrs. Lucinda Young, Lambertville, N.J. Location Upper Right Quadrant Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Mar7-A Revelation (image/ad) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <i>Richmond Planet</i> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1908-03-14 Title A name given to the resource A Revelation: The Book of Seven Seals Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Student Name Alan Banuchi Summary A boxing match between the current heavyweight champion against a “negro” boxer, who clearly dominates the fight against the white fighter. Item Type Article Image No URL https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=RP19090102&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- Topic Social Change Times Repeated 4 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Sydney, N.S.W., Dec. 26 – Jack Johnson, the American Negro won the heavyweight championship of the world here this morning in the 14th round he had Tommy burns of Canada, the title holder in such a condition that the police ordered the fight stopped whereupon referee Hugh D McIntosh awarded his decision to Johnson amid a wild scene. Johnson outclassed Burns in practically every respect. He was faster in attack and defense delivered the more accurate and powerful blows, and gradually why the white man down. Burns was the aggressor at the outset and indulged in harsh rushing, the idea being to land a knockout blow in a rough mix up. The Negro was so shifty on his feet that it was difficult matter for Burns to reach a vital spot. So that he soon discovered that he was up against in most puzzling proposition. Location Upper Left Quadrant Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context May - 1909 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <i>Richmond Planet</i> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1909-01-02 Title A name given to the resource A Southern Negro Is Heavy Weight Champion Of The World Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Student Name Emma Alvarez Summary The Republican National Committee assures that in their decision-making, they must “protect and defend the rights of all men, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Item Type Article Image No URL https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=RP19080627&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- Topic Social Change Times Repeated Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound The Republican National Convention made no mistake in incorporating in its platform a guarantee that it will protect and defend the rights of all men, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The plank concerning the American Negro is the strongest declaration of principles that has appeared in the platform of that party in forty years. There is no mistaking its meaning. It has met the issue squarely and we cannot help believing that the antagonistic forces that for a week or more kept up a ceaseless agitation upon this question were responsible for its adoption. It will enable the colored leader to go up to their people with a plea upon which to appeal to them for support. As the matter stood before Hon. Charles W. Anderson, Hon. William T. Vernon, Hon. Cyrus Fields Adams, Hon. John C. Daney, Hon. Ralph W. Tyler and a host of other prominent leader were hopelessly handicapped by the attitude of the Republican leaders, who endorses the “lily white” movement and who had made no secret of their hostility to the Negro and all movements essential to his welfare. So far as the colored people are concerned, Hon. William H. Taft is the weakest candidate the Republican could have nominated, with the possible exception of the distinguished President Theodore Roosevelt. But this plank is a revelation so far as it discloses the revival of the interest in the Negro. Whether Mr. Taft will stand squarely upon the platform, his letter of acceptance will disclose. If he follows in the footsteps of his predecessor, he will stand on those planks that suit him and rip up others that meet his displeasure and put others in their places. Still, “we shall see what we shall see.” We are much pleased with this plank and the colored man,who cannot see in it evidences of returning sanity on the part of the great Republican organization so far as it relates to its attitude toward the “brother in black” is blind indeed. Here is the plank: “The Republican party has been for more than fifty years the consistent friend of the American Negro. It gave him freedom and citizenship. It wrote into the organic law the declarations that proclaim his civil and political rights, and it believes today that his noteworthy progress in intelligence, industry, and good citizenship has earned the respect and encouragement of the nation. We demand equal justice for all men, without regard to race or color: we declare, once more, and without reservation, for the enforcement in letter and spirit of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to the constitution, which were designed for the protection and advancement of the Negro, and we condemn all devices that have for their real aim his disfranchisement for reason of color alone, as unfair, un-American and repugnant to the supreme law of the land…” Location Upper Left Quadrant Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context June12 1908 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <i>Richmond Planet</i> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1908-06-27 Title A name given to the resource A Strong Plank Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Student Name Brian Schrott Summary A letter to John Mitchell Jr. from a distinguished white business man complements Mitchell on his contributions to the progress of the race and as a “shaper of opinions.” Item Type Letter to the Editor Image No URL https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=RP18970424.1.1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- Topic Social Change Times Repeated Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound We receive the following letter from a prominent white business gentleman of this city and it will explain itself: Richmond, Va., April 1st, 1897. John Mitchell Jr, Editor of Planet, It has lately been our privilege and pleasure of attending your Sunday Schools, funerals and other church services as well as our daily contract with your people and note with pride and pleasure the progress they have made and are making for good and take this means of thanking and congratulating you for the active part you have played and are playing in the good work of raising the colored people of the south of a higher level of usefulness and good citizenship and may God bless you in the grand and good work. Christian education is the sure problem of race issue. This means good citizen. Does Not Linger on the Dark Side I am no one of those to look too much on the dark side of the picture, but like to look into the future. I think the world is growing better as it grows older and when charity, “the greatest of all” says Holy writ, the master wheel when used and worked by the Golden Rule shall govern men’s thoughts and action. Therefore, let us have charity. Enslave the Anglo Saxon or any other race as long as yours and time alone will efface the evil effects of slavery. I say this for your encouragement. I read the Planet as I do the “Dispatch,” “Times” and other newspapers and say may God bless the Press– leaders of thought and shapers of opinions. Therefore, be mindful of your responsibility in the premises and mind what you write. A Tender Spot for Colored People I have a soft place in my heart for the colored people who were the friends of my earliest life and the same of today. I look back with pleasant memory to the fun, frolics and fights on the dear old farm of long ago. To every well-bred southern white and colored man is as you so well describe in your paper the true bond of union. We live in the most favored land under the fairest skies with mutual objects and aims, let us therefore be co-laborers in the great battle of life having a common God and country and end. Fearing some of my croaking friends seeing this may misinterpret and say I have an “ax to grind” I beg a little personal. I am a democrat (we largely inherit our religious, political and other ideas) and ever expect to be one, having been blessed to live within the shadows of three score, playing around the sixties and thank God, I never had or expected to have even a desire for any office within the gift of the people, civil, religious, military or political, but simply desire the good of our common country. Location Upper Left Quadrant Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 18970427-A Strong Plea Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <i>Richmond Planet</i> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1897-04-24 Title A name given to the resource A Strong Plea Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Student Name Elias Sturim Summary A Baptist missionary school declares minorities a threat to the community, especially due to their alcohol consumption. Item Type Article Image No URL https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=RP18990722.1.2&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- Topic Social Change Times Repeated Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound These field notes were made by workers in the Baptist missionary training school in a part of Chicago where Poles, Russians, Bohemians and Syrians form a large part of the population. Such large aggregations of foreigners are found in our most populous American cities, and are constantly fed by fresh arrivals from Europe. Educating these centers is like making butter with a stream of fresh cream flowing into the churn, or like sweeping a floor over which a stream of mud is crawling. I here group the cases and make general statements borne out of facts. 1. Public school teachers find the afternoon sessions marked by an increase of stupidity and tardiness. Investigation proves this is largely due to beer drinking at dinner (i:e., the noon meal) or going to the saloon to get beer for parents. 2. The love of beer is encouraged in children that they may be more willing to go for it. 3. Wherever beer is commonly drunk, tobacco and the cigarette abound, and it is difficult to discriminate in the results of these, and impossible to suppress one and allow the others. 4. Drunkenness among the boys under 16 years of age is so common as to startle the most phlegmatic citizen. 5. Many, indeed most of the cases of dwarfed and stunted growth which we see among the very poor are directly traceable to doses of liquor given in infancy or to “mistakes” made by a drunken physician. One pitiable case comes to mind—that of a young man 21 years old, but as helpless as a babe of three months. Life was not taken, but who will acquit that drunken doctor of the charge of manslaughter? This division of responsibility is a delicate question, and confronts us everywhere. Take this case: a young man came home intoxicated; his mother spoke reproachfully, a quick blow followed. The next day the son “came to himself.” Who killed the mother whose body was robed for the grave? Was it the son who had given himself to the devil yesterday? Were not those who had aided him in this transaction partners in that murder? 6. The Saturday industrial schools have each week, instances of children whose cloaks, hoods, shoes or mittens have gone to the pawnshop, not for break, not for coal or rent, but for liquor. In many, many abodes (I cannot say homes) more is spent each week for beer than for bread, more each month than for clothing. 7. The women in these neighborhoods, as a rule, drink beer as an accepted rule of life. It should be remembered most of them come from countries where beer and wine aren’t classified as intoxicants, and their eyes have never been opened in this country to the relation of beer drinking and drunkenness. Some cases were found where women, despairing in their hopeless poverty, took to heavy drinking as a sort of blameless suicide, while the husband went on with his accustomed daily dram. One case is now a matter of deep anxiety and prayer. A husband whose drunkenness had dragged his family through poverty, homelessness and shame, reformed, but the wife who had struggled and prayed for years to woo him back to sobriety—in an hour of aberration, I am sure—got drunk, and is to-day a confirmed inebriate. Location Upper Left Quadrant Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context A Study of Cases Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <i>Richmond Planet</i> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1899-07-22 Title A name given to the resource A Study of Cases Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Student Name Ryan Shah Summary A sarcastic attack on white injustice points out that black families are buying their own land and homes, stating that “material advancement of the colored man is a much greater menace to the ease and comfort of the aforesaid brother than all of the political offices the colored man as ever aspired to.” Item Type Letter to the Editor Image No URL https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=RP19050121.1.1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txI Topic Social Change Times Repeated Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Editor Planet: Dear Sir:--Since I wrote you for your advertising terms I have sold all three of the little farms I intended to advertise. My Christmas sales to colored people have been better than usual. I note in the paper sent me that your Buffalo correspondent thinks that the colored man should give up all effort for political office leaving all the fat political positions for his ‘po’ white brothers. Would it not be as well for the Negro to give up buying lang and the idea of his having a home for himself so as to be sure of remaining a “hewer of wood and drawer of water” for him? I am very certain that the material advancement of the colored man is a much greater menace to the ease and comfort of the aforesaid brother than all of the political offices the colored man as ever aspired to. In my section of Virginia, the Richmond tax land grabber is nowhere compared with the colored land-grabber. He wants a home. He is bound to have it. He has saved the money to start to pay for it and if he starts and is given a fair chance, it is his home certain. I speak from an extensive experience having sold about one hundred little homes and farms to Negroes and every man of them has paid his debt and got his land. I can show you sections here where the colored man owns fully one-half of the land and these sections will compare very favorably with the sections where the white man is farming under his system. The white owner complains bitterly that his former tenants who used to drive a little bull yearling to a rickety cart in going to town to sell his little part of the crop now drives to town with a good horse and top buggy and sells his whole crop to suit himself, while the land her formerly rented is growing up to scrub pines. What has become of the laborer? Where has he gone? Why did he go? When the landowner and farmer has given these three questions careful, conscientious consideration, he will stop sending to the legislature men who will seek to add to the burdens of the colored men, men who fully believe that the more the laborer is deprived of his ambition and his comforts the better laborer he is and the lower he is in the scale of intelligence the better, but he must be a moral person as the same time. Nature doesn’t work that way, and the unjust laws made by them have cost the farmers of the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in the depreciation of the value of their lands from lack of labor to work them, and the colored man is fast taking advantage of that condition to buy him a home. Now is time for him to do it. I am taking too much of your time out I feel deeply on this matter. Respectfully yours, S. S. Baker Location Upper Right Quadrant Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context A White Gentleman Speaks Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <i>Richmond Planet</i> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1905-01-21 Title A name given to the resource A White Gentleman Speaks Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Student Name Cali Hughes Summary A White woman writes a letter to the Planet in which she agrees that the treatment of African Americans in America is atrocious. Item Type Article Image No URL https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=RP18980723&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- Topic Social Change Times Repeated 1 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound The utterances of three Afro-American leaders. Barbarous treatment. The administration and the race question—The convict lease system and lynching. The Cuban horrors and practices in this Country—Nauseating facts cited. The exposure of the cruelties—Mrs. Keeler makes a strong plea for the sufferers. Mr. Mitchell, Dear Sir: —In looking over the last number of the Planet I was much interested in what I read on one of its pages. The extracts from the Cleveland Gazette express my opinion exactly. “The closer the north and south get as a result of the war the harder it will be for the Afro-American.” I have watched the progress of the war very carefully and have not failed to see that “union of the two sections will be at the expense of the colored brother.” I have shuddered when I thought of what the end would be. But then, God reigns. Mr. Fortune’s remarkable assertion. I wish I could feel that Mr. Fortune was wrong when he said that President McKinley had established “a dead line beyond which an Afro-American cannot go into the volunteer army, but it is just as I expected. How could it be otherwise when the President’s right hand man and confidential advisor was so long accustomed to looking upon colored men in shackles confined in his chain-gang? Mr. Platt and the convicts. Perhaps it is not generally understood that this man and Thomas C. Platt of New York, both leading Republicans, were for years lessees of men. Papers stated that they made $100,000 a year from the labor of the convicts in Tennessee. They paid the state $101,000 for their labor. The death rate among these convicts was simply appalling; and their sufferings have been described by abler pens than mine. I leave these things all with Him before whom not a sparrow falls without His notice. “The Negro must be kept down,” is heard in the camp, and especially is it heard and the principle carried out in our courts of justice. Bishop Turner’s utterance. In another column, you quote what Bishop Turner says. (God bless Bishop Turner for his boldness.) “Enough men have been lynched to death to reach a mile high if laid one upon the other, and enough women and children to form the head and foot slab, if they could be arranged to stand upon the head of each other.” Alas! Alas! Would to God that this could tell the whole story. But it is only in comparison as a drop of water to the bucketful, when compared to the great multitude that have dragged out a wretched existence in jails and convict camps, and whose bodies fill unknown graves or, as is done in Georgia, taken to the dissecting table. An outrageous system. Nothing but the “middle passage” has ever proved such destruction to the colored race this side of the African coast, as the convict-lease system in the Southern States. A pen picture of its horrors would rival that given of the Spaniards in Cuba, or the Turks in Turkey, or the Russians in Siberia. Let us look at Mississippi where Negro convicts have been flogged to death. In three years three hundred and sixty-seven convicts died out of an average number of a little over seven hundred—over one-half. Nearly everyone was colored. A fearful death-rate. The death rate among the colored convicts was more than double that of the whites, which showed worse treatment. I will give a few instances to show how some of them died. “They whipped one man who was in a dying condition with a barrel stave. He was carried back to the cage and there died in fifteen minutes.” Another sick man was flogged who sat down and fell forward dead. Some went barefooted in winter and frosted their feet. “One died of a sore leg with maggots in it.” Thirty-one “disappeared.” The number of deaths given in official reports do not include the large number who went out to die—either were pardoned out because they were sick and unable to work, escaped or were discharged. During two years, thirty-one convicts mysteriously disappeared, or were not accounted for. They were not reported as having died, escaped, or among the living. One might hope they were translated as Enoch was. This class of convicts is termed state convicts. Then there is another class terms misdemeanor or county convicts. The condition of the latter is pitiable in the extreme. That other system. A few years ago the state adopted another system for her state convicts; but I cannot help thinking the man was right who wrote to me concerning it. “Don’t be fooled, it is the same old system practically, only under another name.” Before, the profits of convict labor were divided between the lessees and the state; now the state receives the largest share of the profits. It is said that there is “considerably more criminality among the Negroes than among the whites,” and that “freedom has not done the Negro much good.” When we look at the large number serving long sentences in the southern chain-gangs, it would seem as if such assertions might have some shadow of truth. Mostly colored folks punished. In Georgia where the white population exceeds that of the colored, the latter furnish nine-tenths of the criminals. Official reports show that Georgia alone has nearly four thousand, two hundred criminals, nearly all of whom are young, able-bodied, colored men, including one hundred and forty boys sixteen years old and younger. The labor of all these convicts is hired out to the highest bidders, who care nothing more for them than the money that can be coined out of their flesh and blood. Those human leeches. It is not my purpose in this short article to show what the treatment of Georgia’s convicts is now, and has been ever since they fell into the hands of these human leeches, the lessees, who have not only worked and starved many to death, but they or their guards have flogged men until death relieved them of their sufferings. Scarcely a year had passed since one Frank McRay, an old Negro, guilty only of a misdemeanor, was flogged to death by an inhuman white guard named Bob Cannon. The same guard who compelled female convicts confined in that same camp to strip naked in the presence of male convicts and flogged. The innocent with the guilty. After many years of careful investigation, I have found that many of these convicts both in the penitentiary chain gangs and the misdemeanor, or what is termed country chain-gangs, are innocent. I will give an instance to show something of how a confession has been sometimes extorted, and which was related by a responsible party. A poor penniless Negro was arrested on suspicion of having committed a murder. After being kept in jail a long time a confession was extorted from him ‘by blood-hounds, and in the presence of a grave and a coffin, prepared by those who were peculiarly interested in his conviction.’ Cruel punishment for trivial of fences. Although innocent, as was known by some, that man was “sentenced to this horrible chain-gang for life.” This same committee was composed of some of Georgia’s best citizens, declared that “poor colored convicts were serving life sentences for stealing one mackerel and similar offenses.” During the official investigation in 1896 it was found that many colored men were “sent to the penitentiary for practically their live for having a fight or difficulty.” A white minister of Georgia told me there were hundreds of innocent men in the chain-gangs there. Words inadequate. I might say much, very much more, but words are inadequate to express indignation. Neither tongue nor pen can give a true picture of a southern chain-gang as it exists in some of the states. In the still hours of the night I life up my heart to God and ask Him to enable me to present these horrid truths in such a way that they will burn into the hearts of the people, people who are saying “the Negro criminal cannot be reformed.” Who made him a criminal? Who place him in one of these “schools of crime” where he by his training becomes ten times more the child of hell than he possibly could be out of it? The women’s condition. We talk about the old-time slavery that existed before the war, when a woman with one drop of Negro blood in her veins could not possess he own child to whom she had given birth—no, nor even her own body. Neither he beauty and refinement not her ignorance and helplessness saved her from the auction block. But bad as slavery then, there is a worse slavery to-day. Spaniards not so cruel. Our hearts are melted with pity for the poor reconcentrados but I have never read of anything quite so cruel of Spaniards as the barbarities practiced on the Negro convicts in Arkansas. I have never read of three score reconcentrados having been murdered and then buried in a mud-hole. I believe the present war to be just but could not the Spaniards say to this nation with consistency, “Physician heal thyself!” Clarissa Olds Keeler, July 15, 1898, Washington, D.C. Location Upper Left Quadrant Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context A White Lady Speaks Boldly Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <i>Richmond Planet</i> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1898-07-23 Title A name given to the resource A White Lady Speaks Boldly Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Student Name Elias Sturim Summary A white woman writes to tell how the most horrid part of the slave trade was the transportation, and says, "never can so much misery be found." Item Type Letter to the Editor Image No URL https://virginiachronicle.com/cgi-bin/virginia?a=d&d=RP18991125&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- Topic Social Change Times Repeated Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound She Tells of the Horrors of the Slave Trade. A Touching Plea A Race’s Brutality- Horrible Cruelty- God’s Wrath and the Future. Editor Planet: As I looked over your paper this morning I was particularly interested in the letter of Mrs E. V. Harrod. My eyes filled with tears as I read it for my heart was filled with sorrow and shame for what my race has done and is still doing to oppress and degrade a harmless race, a race that never did us harm. Yes, Mr. Editor, “the time has come for an honest statement of facts from the Negro’s side of the question.” Let us look at some of the facts. Moet gladly would I draw a veil over the past while I hide my face in shame, but I dare not. Historical writers tell us that forty millions of the inhabitants of Africa have been torn from their native land and made slaves on American soil. They also tell us that these forty millions which remained alive and were sold into slavery were but three-tenths of the original number seized or destroyed. The seven-tenths perished. NOTHING MORE HORRIBLE The mind can hardly conceive of anything more horrible than the means used to capture the Negroes to supply the slave trade. Property was taken, men, women and children were butched, towns destroyed, and every species of violence resorted to for the attainment of the object. In one instance twenty thousand were killed for sixteen thousand carried away. Sometimes as many as sixty thousand were killed in one “skirmish” for slaves. One well informed writer tells of a whole tribe of agricultural trading people of most inoffensive character having been annihilated in a single night. “Every adult was murdered, every hut fired, the boys and girls alone being reserved for the slave trader. He says, “Similar events took place perhaps every month in the year.” Many slaves perished on their way to the coast. They were heavily ironed- the irons something wearing to the bone, causing sores which never healed. “The females were almost universally the victims of the drivers.” Sometimes half of the number of slaves perished before reaching the coast. On their arrival all those unfit for shipping were killed or turned loose to perish from hunger. The Most Wretched Part Mr. Wilberforce said in the House of Commons, “The transportation of slaves is the most wretched part of the business. Never can so much misery be found in so small a space as in a slave-ship during the middle passage.” Commander Andrew H. Foote of the U.S. Navy said in his book entitled ‘Africa and the American Flag.’ “If ever there were anything on earth which for revolting, filthy, heartless cruelty might make the devil wonder and hell recognize its okay likeness then it was on the decks of an old slaver.” He represented the scene as one of “unparalleled wretchedness.” In 1807 Congress passed a law prohibiting the fitting out of any vessel for the slave trade and forbid the importation of any slaves. The slave traffic continued and in 1820 Congress declared that every person found guilty should suffer death. Not until Lincoln came into power was the law carried out, and, despite all protestations against it, a slave trader was hung in the Tombs in New York. Until then our government permitted slave trading vessels to be secretly fitted out in our ports and to carry our flag and then by prohibiting other nations interfering with them, really protracted the traffic so that some of our citizens engaged in it with greater eagerness than before, and furnished slave ships for other countries as well as our own. Location Upper Left Quadrant Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context A White Lady Writes Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <i>Richmond Planet</i> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1899-11-25 Title A name given to the resource A White Lady Writes