“This question of social equality,” remarked Percy, “has probably been the cause of more misunderstanding between the North and the South than all other questions relating to the negro problem.  I have rarely, if ever, talked with a southern man who did not have it firmly fixed in his mind that the common idea of the northern people is that the negro race should be made the social equal of the white race.  This I have heard from southern lecturers; I have read it in southern newspapers; and I have found it in books written by southern authors; but, Mr. West, I have never yet heard that idea advanced by a man or woman of the North.

“Of course there have been visionary theorists or ‘cranks’ in all ages, and there must have been some basis for this almost universal erroneous opinion in the South that the people of the North advocated social equality or social intercourse between the white and colored races; and yet nothing could be farther from the truth.  In all my life in the North, I think I have never seen a colored person dining with a white man.  This does not prove that there are no such occurrences, but it certainly shows that they are extremely rare.  On the other hand, in traveling through the South I have seen a white woman bring her colored maid or nurse, to the dining car and sit at the same table with herself and husband.  Of course there is no suggestion of social equality or social intercourse in this, but there is a much closer relationship than is common or would be allowed in the North.”

“That may be true,” said Mr. West, “and there was in slave times a very intimate relationship between the negro nurses and the white children of the South.  Some of our people are ready to take offense at the suggestion that we talk negro dialect, and perhaps we would all prefer to say that the negroes have learned to talk as we talk; but the truth is that the negroes were brought to America chiefly as adults; and, as is usually the case when adult people learn a new language, they modified ours because their own African language did not contain all of the sounds of the English tongue.  Similarly we hear and recognize the other nationalities when they learn to speak English.  Thus we have the Irish brogue, the German brogue, and the French brogue, or dialect.

“The negro children learned to speak the dialect as spoken by their own parents; and as a very general rule the white children learned to talk as their negro nurses talked.  So far as there is a southern dialect it is due to the modification of our language by the negro.”

“You have mentioned several things,” said Percy, “that are much to the credit of the negro who has had a fair chance to be trained along right lines; and I think the modficaton of our language which his presence has brought about in the South is not without some credit.  It is generally agreed that the most pleasing English we hear is that of the Southern orator.

“Referring to social conditions, the most marked difference which I have noticed between the North and South, and really, it seems to me, the only difference of importance, is that the South has separate schools for white and colored, whereas in the North the school is not looked upon as a social institution.