There's a lot of counties in Georgia where the blacks are equal in number to the whites, and two or three counties where the blacks number over the whites by two to one.
It was fur a little town in one of the latter that we pinted ourselves, Doctor Kirby and me and Sam--right into the blackest part of the black belt.
That country is full of big-sized plantations, where they raise cotton, cotton, cotton, and then MORE cotton. Some of 'em raises fruit, too, and other things, of course; but cotton is the main stand-by, and it looks like it always will be.
Some places there shows that things can't be so awful much changed since slavery days, and most of the niggers are sure enough country niggers yet. Some rents their land right out from the owners, and some of 'em crops it on the shares, and very many of 'em jest works as hands. A lot of 'em don't do nigh so well now as they did when their bosses was their masters, they tell me; and then agin, some has done right well on their own hook.
They intrusted me, because I never had been use to looking at so many niggers. Every way you turn there they is niggers and then more niggers.
Them that thinks they is awful easy to handle out of a natcheral respect fur white folks has got another guess coming. They ain't so bad to get along with if you keep it most pintedly shoved into their heads they IS niggers. You got to do that especial in the black belt, jest because they IS so many of 'em. They is children all their lives, mebby, till some one minute of craziness may strike one of them, and then he is a devil temporary.
Mebby, when the crazy fit has passed, some white woman is worse off than if she was dead, or mebby she IS dead, or mebby a loonatic fur life, and that nigger is a candidate fur a lynching bee and ginerally elected by an anonymous majority.
Not that ALL niggers is that-a-way, nor HALF of 'em, nor very MANY of 'em, even--but you can never tell WHICH nigger is going to be. So in the black belt the white folks is mighty pertic'ler who comes along fooling with their niggers. Fur you can never tell what turn a nigger's thoughts will take, once anything at all stirs 'em up.
We didn't know them things then, Doctor Kirby and me didn't. We didn't know we was moving light-hearted right into the middle of the biggest question that has ever been ast. Which I disre-member exactly how that nigger question is worded, but they is always asting it in the South, and an-swering of it different ways. We hadn't no idea how suspicious the white people in them awful black spots on the map can get over any one that comes along talking to their niggers. We didn't know anything about niggers much, being both from the North, except what Doctor Kirby had counted on when he made his medicine, and THAThe knowed second-handed from other people. We didn't take 'em very serious, nor all the talk we hearn about 'em down South.
But even at that we mightn't of got into any trouble if it hadn't of been fur old Bishop Warren.
But that is getting ahead of the story.
We got into that little town--I might jest as well call it Cottonville--jest about supper time.
Cottonville is a little place of not more'n six hundred people. I guess four hundred of 'em must be niggers.
After supper we got acquainted with purty nigh all the prominent citizens in town. They was friendly with us, and we was friendly with them.
Georgia had jest went fur prohibition a few months before that, and they hadn't opened up these here near-beer bar-rooms in the little towns yet, like they had in Atlanta and the big towns. Georgia had went prohibition so the niggers couldn't get whiskey, some said; but others said they didn't know WHAT its excuse was. Them prominent citizens was loafing around the hotel and every now and then inviting each other very mysterious into a back room that use to be a pool parlour.
They had been several jugs come to town by express that day. We went back several times ourselves, and soon began to get along purty well with them prominent citizens.
Talking about this and that they finally edges around to the one thing everybody is sure to get to talking about sooner or later in the South--niggers. And then they gets to telling us about this here Bishop Warren I has mentioned.
He was a nigger bishop, Bishop Warren was, and had a good deal of white blood into him, they say. An ashy-coloured nigger, with bumps on his face, fat as a possum, and as cunning as a fox.
He had plenty of brains into his head, too; but his brains had turned sour in his head the last few years, and the bishop had crazy streaks running through his sense now, like fat and lean mixed in a slab of bacon. He used to be friends with a lot of big white folks, and the whites depended on him at one time to preach orderliness and obedience and agriculture and being in their place to the niggers.
Fur years they thought he preached that-a-way.
He always DID preach that-a-way when any whites was around, and he set on platforms sometimes with white preachers, and he got good donations fur schemes of different kinds. But gradual the suspicion got around that when he was alone with a lot of niggers his nigger blood would get the best of him, and what he preached wasn't white su-premacy at all, but hopefulness of being equal.
So the whites had fell away from him, and then his graft was gone, and then his brains turned sour in his head and got to working and fermenting in it like cider getting hard, and he made a few bad breaks by not being careful what he said before white people. But the niggers liked him all the better fur that.
