"Spending part of the winter of 1880 in Tennessee, I began the study of the character of the people and their institutions. I soon learned that there existed an intense hatred on the part of the whites, toward the colored population. Looking at the past, this was easily accounted for. The older whites, brought up in the lap of luxury, educated to believe themselves superior to the race under them, self-willed, arrogant, determined, skilled in the use of side arms, wealthy--possessing the entire political control of the State--feeling themselves superior to the citizens of the free States,--this people was called upon to subjugate themselves to an ignorant, superstitious, and poverty-stricken race--a race without homes, or the means of obtaining them; to see the offices of the State filled by men from this servile set made these whites feel themselves deeply degraded in the eyes of the world. Their power was gone, but their pride still remained. They submitted in silence but 'bided their time,' and said 'Never mind ; we'll yet make you hell a hot one.'...
"Colored men went into the legislatures somewhat as children go the first time to Sabbath School. They sat and waited to see 'the show.' Many had been elected by constituencies, of which not more than ten in a hundred could read the ballots they deposited; and a large number of these Representatives could not write their own names....
"The restoring of the Rebels to power and the surrendering of the colored people to them, after using the latter in the war, and at the ballot box, creating an enmity between the races, is the most bare-faced ingratitude that history gives an account of.
"After all , the ten years of Negro legislation in the South challenges the profoundest study of mankind . History does not record a similar instance . Five millions of uneducated, degraded people, without any preparation whatever , set at liberty in a single day, without shedding a drop of blood, burning a cross, or insulting a single female. They reconstructed the State Governments that their masters had destroyed; became legislators, held state offices, and with all their blunders surpassed the whites that had preceded them. Future generations will marvel at the calm forbearance, good sense, and Christian zeal of the American Negro of the nineteenth century."
P.802-804, "My Southern Home," WILLIAM WELLS BROWN: CLOTEL & OTHER WRITINGS (2014)
Thursday, May 12, 2016
TENNESSEE 1880 William Wells Brown
"Spending part of the winter of 1880 in Tennessee, I began the study of the character of the people and their institutions. I soon learned that there existed an intense hatred on the part of the whites, toward the colored population. Looking at the past, this was easily accounted for. The older whites, brought up in the lap of luxury, educated to believe themselves superior to the race under them, self-willed, arrogant, determined, skilled in the use of side arms, wealthy--possessing the entire political control of the State--feeling themselves superior to the citizens of the free States,--this people was called upon to subjugate themselves to an ignorant, superstitious, and poverty-stricken race--a race without homes, or the means of obtaining them; to see the offices of the State filled by men from this servile set made these whites feel themselves deeply degraded in the eyes of the world. Their power was gone, but their pride still remained. They submitted in silence but 'bided their time,' and said 'Never mind ; we'll yet make you hell a hot one.'...
"Colored men went into the legislatures somewhat as children go the first time to Sabbath School. They sat and waited to see 'the show.' Many had been elected by constituencies, of which not more than ten in a hundred could read the ballots they deposited; and a large number of these Representatives could not write their own names....
"The restoring of the Rebels to power and the surrendering of the colored people to them, after using the latter in the war, and at the ballot box, creating an enmity between the races, is the most bare-faced ingratitude that history gives an account of.
"After all , the ten years of Negro legislation in the South challenges the profoundest study of mankind . History does not record a similar instance . Five millions of uneducated, degraded people, without any preparation whatever , set at liberty in a single day, without shedding a drop of blood, burning a cross, or insulting a single female. They reconstructed the State Governments that their masters had destroyed; became legislators, held state offices, and with all their blunders surpassed the whites that had preceded them. Future generations will marvel at the calm forbearance, good sense, and Christian zeal of the American Negro of the nineteenth century."
P.802-804, "My Southern Home," WILLIAM WELLS BROWN: CLOTEL & OTHER WRITINGS (2014)