Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1907 — The Negro and the New South. [ARTICLE]

The Negro and the New South.

Ray Stannard Baker, in the second of his series of articles for the American Magazine, dealing with the negro problem, condenses his observations into this phrase: “They want the new South, but the old darkey,” He said he had the experience of being told that no northerner can understand the negro as well as those who have lived with them all their lives, and then of finding “that these men rarely knew anything about the better class of negroes, those who were in business or in independent occupations, and who owned their own homes.” On the other hand, the best negroes did not know the higher class of the white people in the South, and based their suspicion and hatred upon the acts of the “poor white trash.” To this he attributes the danger of the present situation.