University of Northern Iowa

Vindicating the Mississippi DeltaAuthor(s): Anne StokesSource: The North American Review, Vol. 219, No. 822 (May, 1924), pp. 718-720Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25113316 .

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718 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

time I spent in reading it. I had enjoyed his articles on The Literary Disci

pline, and other articles from his pen that I considered a distinct addition to

our study of literature; but as an expositor of our Prohibition Tangle, I would

consider him?a fine and brilliant teacher of English. Such statements as,

"If Prohibition were here, drinking would be on the decline," and, "If Pro

hibition were really here, there ought to be some law of the land which forbade

drinking hard liquor," would seem to show a very distinct leaning of the

learned professor toward the Wet side. The supposition would be from

reading the first quotation that drinking, instead of declining since the passage of the Prohibition law, has been rather increasing. All of the statistics avail

able show the contrary to be true. For the bootleggers to manufacture and

sell surreptitiously more than a very small part of the liquor that was produced in hundreds of big breweries and distilleries that were running openly day and

night would be a physical impossibility. As to the second statement, the

passage of such a law would be sumptuary legislation of an extreme kind. It

would be as applicable to the question as to say it is foolish to have pure food

laws unless we incorporate under that law a penalty for consuming food that

contains unhealthy ingredients. As I said at first, I regret having read this article, as I have lost something

that I cannot regain, and that is, my delight in the really fine literary articles

of Professor Erskine. I cannot have the faith in his judgment, taste and

high culture that I once had; unless I make myself think that this was written

in a vein of sarcasm and he really intended to declare himself in favour of

Prohibition instead of being its opponent. George A. Freeman.

Conway, Ark.

VINDICATING THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA Sir:

The article entitled Negro Migration and the Cotton Crop, by Howard

Snyder, has been read and discussed by our Study Club. The position that

your publication occupies among the reading, thinking people of the country

is such that any article printed by you is ordinarily accepted without question as to its accuracy or good faith. We have read and re-read Mr. Snyder's

account of the agricultural and social situation in this section of the South;

we have been unable to make his statements tally with conditions as we have

observed them, or with statistics which we have gathered, and we are con

vinced that the general tenor of the paper is utterly at variance with facts.

We quote a portion of the second paragraph:

"Recently I took an extended motor trip through that section of Mississippi

lying between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers and known as the Delta, and

almost never did I see a garden, a pasture, a haystack, a potato patch, a flock

of hens, an orchard, a dairy, an oat field, or anything else but tens of thousand

of squalid huts and acres and acres of cotton. In many instances I did not

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 719

even find pastures for the mules that worked the crops. Year in and year out they are kept in feed lots and fed on oats shipped from the North."

Greenville is situated in the heart of this Delta section. The plantations which Mr. Snyder claims to describe are the far-stretching fertile fields that we

see daily when we leave our little town. Cotton is unquestionably the leading crop of the Delta; but a Delta farmer who does not raise feed for his stock is

looked upon askance when he goes to his merchant or his banker. On this

point, let me quote from a letter recently received from Mr. R. S. Wilson, Director of Extension Work in Agriculture and Home Economics, State of

Mississippi :

"The statement in Mr. Snyder's article that he did not see a garden, pasture,

haystack, potato patch, orchard, or anything else but cotton, is absolutely not true, if he really inspected that territory intelligently. I find from the

records of the U. S. Bureau of Economics that during the year 1922 the four teen counties situated wholly or partly in the Delta produced 9,958,000 bushels of corn and 74,900 tons of hay. . . . We find from the records

of that same territory that it produced 854,370 bushels of sweet potatoes, and

since few people in the Delta are growing potatoes for sale, that quantity of

potatoes represents those grown in small patches for home use, mainly by tenants, and we all know it is impossible to get up a record of anything like

the amount grown, as the people use them from time to time before they are

gathered. Therefore, the territory must have grown considerably more than

that number of bushels. We have not the exact figures with regard to or

chards, but some of the best home orchards that I know of in the State of

Mississippi are located in the Delta."

Passing from Mr. Snyder's gloomy picture of the agricultural aspects of

the Delta, we turn to his far more serious and inaccurate account of the treat ment accorded the Negro race by the Southern whites. We note that these accusations are not confined to the Delta; but refer, presumably, to the South in general and to the State of Mississippi in particular. Following a para

graph relating to bad health conditions, we read :

"Add to all this the horrible lynchings, the burning at the stake of many

Negroes whose names never get to our larger papers, and also consider the

fact that the field Negro of the South is a primitive creature desperately afraid of the dreaded Ku Klux, and we have another reason for the vast migration of Negroes from the sunny South. Nowhere on earth among civilized nations are such atrocious outrages committed against human beings as are com

mitted in the South against the Negro. Almost any day we can read of some

benighted Negro peasant being hunted down with hounds, or shot by a posse of men, or burned at the stake amid the multitudinous cheers of a vast con course of people."

For a correction of these statements we do not have to go farther than The

Literary Digest of February 2, 1924. Tuskegee Institute there publishes its annual report of lynchings. Accompanying a detailed record of lynchings

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720 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

during the past five years, sent to us from the Department of Records and Research of Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., we have a letter from the director of this department, from which we quote:

"Occasionally I get reports of lynchings which are not published in the

newspapers. While there is probable (sic) some basis of truth in what Mr.

Snyder writes in The North American Review, it is probably an over

statement of fact."

The statistics given out by Tuskegee Institute itself are that in 1923 twenty

eight persons were lynched, two of whom were white men. Thus we see that in 365 days, throughout all the Southern States, 26 Negroes were lynched.

Yet Mr. Snyder states that "almost any day we can read of some benighted peasant being hunted with hounds, or shot by a posse of men, or burned at the

stake amid the multitudinous cheers of a vast concourse of people." There is no denying that unscrupulous white men, storekeepers and farm

overseers, have enriched themselves at the expense of the uneducated, improvi dent blacks. That such practices are condemned by all save those tricksters who capitalize the ignorance of the inferior race, is proved by the readiness

shown by representative Southerners to render the most practical kind of

assistance to the Negro?that is, to educate him. Mississippi gives to Negro schools between thirty-one and thirty-two per cent, of her total appropriation for schools?this in the face of the fact that the Negro taxpayers of the state

contribute only from five to six per cent, of the total taxes.

The Study Club,

Greenville, Miss. By Anne Stokes, Sec9y.

[A formal and detailed reply to Mr. Snyder's article, by Mr. H. B.

McKenzie, editor of Candid Opinion, of Prescott, Arkansas, was published in the April number of The North American Review.?Editor.]

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