e
South as lynchings, for, whereas lynchings were more or less sporadic,
persecutions and mistreatment by representatives of the law were
trials which all negroes had continually to bear and from which they
were anxious to escape.[28]

Many of these causes then have their origin on the one hand in the
attitude which the South assumes toward the negro as expressed in law
and public opinion, and on the other hand in the feeling of the negro
toward the South because of the treatment given him. A negro educator
of Mississippi sought to explain the situation, saying:

Many white men of high intellectual ability and keen
discernment have mistaken the negroes' silence for
contentment, his facial expression for satisfaction at
prevailing conditions, and his songs and jovial air for
happiness.[29] But this is not always so. These are his
methods of bearing trouble and keeping his soul sweet under
seeming wrongs. In the absence of a spokesman or means of
communication with the whites over imagined grievances, he has
brightened his countenance, smiled and sung to ease his mind.
In the midst of it all he is unable to harmonize with the
practices of daily life the teachings of the Bible which the
white Christian placed in his hands. He finds it difficult to
harmonize the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man,
and his faith is put to the test in the _Providence_ which
enslaved his ancestors, corrupted his blood and placed upon
him stigmas more damaging than to be a leper or convict by
making his color a badge of infamy and his preordained social
position at the bottom of human society. So firmly has his
status been fixed by this _Providence_ that neither moral
worth, fidelity to trust, love of home, loyalty to country, or
faith in God can raise him to human recognition.

When he remembers that he has been the beast of burden of
southern civilization and the foundation of its luxuriant
ease, when he rehearses to his children that he was the
South's sole dependence when his master was away repelling
hostile armies, and how he worked by day and guarded his
unprotected mistress and her children at night, or accompanied
his master to the swamps of Virginia and the Carolinas and
bound up his wounds or brought his maimed or dead body home on
his shoulders, these children can not understand the attitude
of