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Negro Equalty and Negro Crime.I'rogrvMMVf* i’nrnn*rWe an* reminded just here of a rather notable statement recently made by Congressman Bankhead of Alabama, regarding the negro problem and the “new” negro crime, t he “new” crime being that against white wouum. It was, as he argues, almost unknown lefore the days of Reconstruction and “political equality” legislation. \s to this, the words of Major Robert Bingham. of our own Bingham School, may bequoted:“It was almost unheard of in slavery. The whole manhood of t lit* South left their women in the hands of the negroes and went to the front during the Civil War with the feeling that the women were safe in the hands of the slaves. And they weresafe, although on many plantations there were a hundred negro men and not a white man in a mile. No woman in the whole South was ever molest-ed by a negro during tin* Civil War nor for a number of years after wa r“The last clause quoted tends to corroborate the argument of Congressman Bankhead. The crime against white women, he asserts, did not begin until the negro’s mind had been tilled with unwholesome ideas of social and political equality, the result of the Reconstruction some years after the war.But all this has long b*vn known. The new claim put forth by the Alabama Congressman is that the “new” negro crime has greatly divrea.sed in his own State since the adoption of its new Constitution, and that not a case has been reported in Mississippi since that State disfranchised the blacks.We do not know to what extent the Bankhead doctrine is worthv of acceptance, but it is at least highly interesting. lt;Mir own opinion is that the non-existence of the crime More Reconstruction was due quit** as much to the self-control developed by the discipline of slavery as to any feeling of humility.
Newspaper Details
The Gold Leaf
Henderson, North Carolina, US
Thu, Aug 20, 1903
Page 4
Full Page
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USA 09 Aug 2022
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