North we have nothing at all like it; no question which so touches every act of life, in which everyone, 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 labour problem and the servant question; he is preëminently 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’re eating?”

The boy thought a moment; then he said:

“Mostly they discusses 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[Pg 27] 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:

[Pg 27]

“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 coloured 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.”

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