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CHAPTER IX
Of the Sons of
Master and Man
Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart
To keep a dream or grave apart.
MRS. BROWNING
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The world-old phenomenon of the contact of diverse races of men is to have
new exemplification during the new century. Indeed, the characteristic of our
age is the contact of European civilization with the world's undeveloped peo-
ples. Whatever we may say of the results of such contact in the past, it certainly
forms a chapter in human action not pleasant to look back upon. War, murder,
slavery, extermination, and debauchery,-this has again and again been the
esult of ca
ying civilization and the blessed gospel to the isles of the sea and
the heathen without the law. Nor does it altogether satisfy the conscience of the
modem world to be told complacently that all this has been right and proper,
the fated triumph of strength over weakness, of righteousness over evil, of
superiors over inferiors. It would certainly be soothing if one could readily
elieve all this; and yet there are too many ugly facts for everything to be thus
easily explained away. We feel and know that there are many delicate differ-
ences in race psychology, numberless changes that our crude social measure-
ments are not yet able to follow minutely, which explain much of history and
social development. At the same time, too, we know that these considerations
78
Du, Bois, W. E. B.. The Souls of Black Folk : The Oxford W. E. B. du Bois, edited by Henry Louis, Jr. Gates, Oxford University
XXXXXXXXXXPress, Incorporated, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http:
ebookcentral.proquest.com/li
erkeley-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3056110.
Created from berkeley-ebooks on XXXXXXXXXX:59:04.
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Of the Sons of Master and Man • 79
have never adequately explained or excused the triumph of
ute force and
cunning over weakness and innocence.
It is, then, the strife of all honorable men of the twentieth century to see that
in the future competition of races the survival of the fittest shall mean the tri-
umph of the good, the beautiful, and the true; that we may be able to preserve
for future civilization all that is really fine and noble and strong, and not con-
tinue to put a premium on greed and impudence and cruelty. To
ing this hope
to fruition, we are compelled daily to tum more and more to a conscientious
study of the phenomena of race-contact,-to a study frank and fair, and not fal-
sified and colored by our wishes or our fears. And we have in the South as fine
a field for such a study as the world affords,-a field, to be sure, which the aver-
age American scientist deems somewhat beneath his dignity, and which the
average man who is not a scientist knows all about, but nevertheless a line of
study which by reason of the enormous race complications with which God
seems about to punish this nation must increasingly claim our sober attention,
study, and thought, we must ask, what are the actual relations of whites and
lacks in the South? and we must be answered, not by apology or fault-finding,
ut by a plain, unvarnished tale.
In the civilized life of to-day the contact of men and their relations to each other
fall in a few main lines of action and communication: there is, first, the physical
proximity of homes and dwelling-places, the way in which neighborhoods group
themselves, and the contiguity of neighborhoods. Secondly, and in our age
chiefest, there are the economic relations,-the methods by which individuals
cooperate for earning a living, for the mutual satisfaction of wants, for the pro-
duction of wealth. Next, there are the political relations, the cooperation in social
control, in group government, in laying and paying the burden of taxation. In the
fourth place, there are the less tangible but highly important forms of intellectual
contact and commerce, the interchange of ideas through conversation and con-
ference, through periodicals and li
aries; and, above all, the gradual formation
for each community of that curious tertium quid which we call public opinion.
Closely allied with this come the various forms of social contact in everyday life,
in travel, in theatres, in house gatherings, in ma
ying and giving in ma
iage.
Finally, there are the varying forms of religious enterprise, of moral teaching and
enevolent endeavor. These are the principal ways in which men living in the
same communities are
ought into contact with each other. It is my present task,
therefore, to indicate, from my point of view, how the black race in the South meet
and mingle with the whites in these matters of everyday life.
First, as to physical dwelling. It is usually possible to draw in nearly every
Southern community a physical color-line on the map, on the one side of which
whites dwell and on the other Negroes. The winding and intricacy of the geo-
graphical color line varies, of course, in different communities. I know some
towns where a straight line drawn through the middle of the main street sepa-
ates nine-tenths of the whites from nine-tenths of the blacks. In other towns the
older settlement of whites has been encircled by a
oad band of blacks; in still
other cases little settlements or nuclei of blacks have sprung up amid sur-
ounding whites. Usually in cities each street has its distinctive color, and only
Du, Bois, W. E. B.. The Souls of Black Folk : The Oxford W. E. B. du Bois, edited by Henry Louis, Jr. Gates, Oxford University
XXXXXXXXXXPress, Incorporated, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, http:
ebookcentral.proquest.com/li
erkeley-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3056110.
Created from berkeley-ebooks on XXXXXXXXXX:59:04.
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80 + THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK
now and then do the colors meet in close proximity. Even in the country some-
thing of this segregation is manifest in the smaller areas, and of course in the
larger phenomena of the Black Belt.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering
y social grades common to all communities. A Negro slum may be in danger-
ous proximity to a white residence quarter, while it is quite common to find a
white slum planted in the heart of a respectable Negro district. One thing, how-
ever, seldom occurs: the best of the whites and the best of the Negroes almost
never live in anything like close proximity. It thus happens that in nearly every
Southern town and city, both whites and blacks see commonly the worst of each
other. This is a vast change from the situation in the past, when, through the
close contact of master and house-servant in the patriarchal big house, one
found the best of both races in close contact and sympathy, while at the same
time the squalor and dull round of toil among the field-hands was removed
from the sight and hearing of the family. One can easily see how a person who
saw slavery thus from his father's parlors, and sees freedom on the streets of a
great city, fails to grasp or comprehend the whole of the new picture. On the
other hand, the settled belief of the mass of the Negroes that the Southern white
people do not have the black man's best interests at heart has been intensified
in later years by this continual daily contact of the better class of blacks with the
worst representatives of the white race.
Coming now to the economic relations of the races, we are on ground made
familiar by study, much discussion, and no little philanthropic effort. And yet
with all this there are many essential elements in the cooperation of Negroes
and whites for work and wealth that are too readily overlooked or not thor-
oughly understood. The average American can easily conceive of a rich land
awaiting development and filled with black laborers. To him the Southern prob-
lem is simply that of making efficient workingmen out of this material, by giv-
ing them the requisite technical skill and the help of invested capital. The
problem, however, is by no means as simple as this, from the obvious fact that
these workingmen have been trained for centuries as slaves. They exhibit,
therefore, all the advantages and defects of such training; they are willing and
good-natured, but not self-reliant, provident, or careful. H now the economic
development of the South is to be pushed to the verge of exploitation, as seems
probable, then we have a mass of workingmen thrown into relentless competi-
tion with the workingmen of the world, but handicapped by a training the very
opposite to that of the modern self-reliant democratic laborer. What the black
laborer needs is careful personal guidance, group leadership of men with hearts
in their bosoms, to train them to foresight, carefulness, and honesty. Nor does it
equire any fine-spun theories of racial differences to prove the necessity of
such group training after the
ains of the race have been knocked out by two
hundred and fifty years of assiduous education in submission, carelessness,
and stealing. After Emancipation, it was the plain duty of some one to assume
this group leadership and training of the Negro laborer. I will not stop here to
inquire whose duty it was,-whether that of the white ex-master who had prof-
ited by unpaid toil, or the Northern philanthropist whose persistence
ought
Du, Bois, W