C. R. WILSON

Black and White in the Southern States.  By Maurice S. Evans, C.M.G.—­Longmans, Green and Company, London, 1915.  Pp. 209.

This book cannot be considered an historical work.  Yet when the author makes a survey of the slavery and reconstruction periods with a view to estimating what the Negro has been, what has been done for him, and what he himself has accomplished it claims the attention of historians.  From this historic retrospect the author approaches such questions as the Negroes’ grievances, their political rights and wrongs, blood admixture, race hostility and grounds for hope and the like.

The author has had experiences in South Africa and traveled in the United States with a view to studying the condition of the descendants of the African race in this country.  His effort seems to be to write such a work as some of those of Sir H. H. Johnson or W. P. Livingstone.  He justifies the writing of this work on the grounds that “the partisan spirit, partial to one race or other, permeates most of the writings on this subject.”  Feeling that the issues involved are too great, he hoped to avoid this “that no preconceived ideas or partiality should be allowed to cloud clarity of view, or warp the judgment.”

Yet although the author speaks well of his good intentions it is apparent that he did not live up to this profession.  In the first place, the work is not scientific, facts are not “observed and noted with scrupulous care,” and conclusions are drawn without warranted data to support them.  On the whole then, one must say that this work fails to unravel some “knots in this tangled skein of human endeavor and error.”  When after a survey of the history of the Negro during the last fifty years an investigator concludes that the Negro has shown an incapacity for commerce and finance, and that he must not struggle to equip himself in the same way that the white man has, one must believe that the writer has not the situation thoroughly in hand.  The great difficulty of the author seems to be that he did not remain in the country long enough to know it, did not give sufficient time to the study of conditions, and based his conclusions largely on information obtained from persons who were either too prejudiced or had neither the scientific point of view nor adequate mental development to describe social conditions.

It is not surprising therefore that the author asserts that the record of the Negro during the last fifty years shows that they are chiefly valuable as laborers in drudgery, or weak in foresight and thrift, and unfit for city life.  Yet he believes that there is some hope for the blacks, since they can get work and buy land and thereby become economically independent.  He calls attention to such injustices as miscegenation, lynching, unfairness of the courts, and discrimination in traveling.

W. R. WARD