But whereas negroes use the back of the car in Atlanta, they
use the front in Birmingham. It was attempted, at one time, to reverse
this order, for reasons having to do with draft and ventilation, but the
people of Birmingham had become accustomed to the existing arrangement
and objected to the change. "After all," one gentleman said to me, in
speaking of this matter, "it is not important which end of the car is
given to the nigger. The main point is that he must sit where he is
told."
The means by which the negro vote is eliminated in various Southern
States are generally similar, though Alabama has, perhaps, been more
thorough in the matter than some other States. The importance of this
issue to the southern white man is very great, for if all negroes were
allowed to vote the control of certain States would be in negro hands.
To the Southerner such an idea is intolerable, and it is my confident
belief that if the State of Alabama were resettled by men from
Massachusetts, and the same problems were presented to those men, they
would be just as quick as the white Alabamans of to-day to find means to
suppress the negro vote. With all my heart I wish that such an exchange
of citizens might temporarily be effected, for when the immigrants from
Massachusetts moved back to their native New England, after an
experience of the black belt, they would take with them an
understanding of certain aspects of the negro problem which they have
never understood; an understanding which, had they possessed it sixty or
seventy years ago, might have brought about the freeing of slaves by
government purchase--a course which Lincoln advocated and which would
probably have prevented the Civil War, and thereby saved millions upon
millions of money, to say nothing of countless lives.
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