A trip to California

It is worth very much to any man who is interested in agricultural operations to take a leisurely trip four hundred miles through North Carolina in an automobile. A party of us left Bricks July 11th and joined Rev. P. R. DeBerry in Raleigh. Taking his big Studebaker car, we were off the 12th for a two days trip among the colored farmers of the central and western part of the state.

We were not touring, nor sightseeing, nor joy riding. Our one purpose was to study the land, the people and the conditions under which our colored farmers were living. We wanted to see what conditions were compatible and what were not compatible. The trip took us through about eighteen counties.

We started our study in Edgecombe County. This is the county in which Brick School is located. This county should be the first in all of its operations because of its educational advantages and the inspiration it ought to receive from this institution.

There are in the county now about 25,000 Negroes. These Negroes own 4,000 farms and homes, numbering about 17,000 acres of land. Some individuals own as much as 500 acres. We are sorry to say that most of this land is not under the most improved condition. We have not been able to have in this county a full time farm demonstration agent. The Brick School and our farm meetings have given very much impulse to farm operations, but even this has not reached all the farmers in ways to stimulate them to their greatest efforts. We lack time, money and authority that ought to come directly from the state. It has been demonstrated in other counties that nothing is so valuable in stimulating the farmers as a real, live, wide-a-wake farm demonstration agent who lives and works among the farmers every day. A farm not half developed and not improved is not an asset to the state nor to the owner. It ought to come into the highest state of production, then only does it become wealth.

The school population of this county is about 7,000 children with an enrollment of about 5,000 children, whose average attendance is about 3,000 under the compulsory law. The county has a colored school supervisor who gives the work all of her time. Mrs. Carrie Battle has revolutionized the school work under her charge. She is insistent and tireless. Every one knows her and respects her. Her office is in the courthouse at Tarboro. The white county officials hold her in the highest esteem. The teachers and schoolhouses rank among the best in the state for colored people.

I do not know anything that affects public improvements and progress more than good roads. The farmers are generally slow to vote for good roads, but no class of people appreciate them more than the farmer when they are built. The area of the county is 515 square miles, and yet I have traveled over every part of the county and over some of the best roads in the state. The local papers tell us that a cement road leading across the county is now in process of construction. This road will eventually lead into Raleigh, some fifty miles away.

Halifax County has an area of 681 square miles, with a colored population of nearly 30,000 souls. They own 70,000 acres of land. Their school population is around 10,000, with an enrollment of about 7,000, and an average attendance of about 3,000 children. This county has a colored school supervisor who has done a very fine work among the colored people. The colored people meet every condition set by the state and county for the erection of colored schoolhouses. A few months ago they had raised their part for twelve Rosenwald schoolhouses, and had to wait on the county and state to recoupe their part. They will meet any condition set for them. The colored population is not congested in any one part of the county. They are located in every section of the county and about evenly distributed. Their homes, for the most part, are clean, and their houses are well constructed and show signs of thrift and happiness. Very few colored farmers have migrated from this section of the state. Those who have gone from Halifax County can hardly be missed. This in itself shows that the racial equilibrium is not much disturbed.

Nash County, which joins us on the west, is one of our best farming communities. The fifteen thousand Negroes in the county own more than 25,000 acres of land and more than 2,000 farms. They are a progressive lot of colored people. They have a number of independent schools aside from the public schools. They have excellent churches, and their homes are being built on modern lines. This county has twelve miles of cement road running from Rocky Mount to Nashville, the county seat. The contour of the county is rolling and red clay. The important towns are Nashville, Spring Hope, Middlesex, and let us say a part of Rocky Mount. There is a great deal of the land in this county uncultivated and developed. It waits only for the man who has the brain and the energy. The county has no county farm demonstration agent nor colored school supervisor. I do not know what can be more advantageous to the success of the colored farmer than the addition of a colored farm demonstration agent and a colored school supervisor. While the preachers are ministering to the spiritual needs of our folks and the teachers are directing their intellectual life, and the state and county health offices are looking after the health of the masses, the farm demonstration agents and the colored school supervisors are daily giving inspiration and purpose to rural life everywhere. The state and county are the direct beneficiaries of the work of these two agents. Having five children go to school every day from one family where formerly only three went means very much for the literacy of the state.

Teaching boys how to grow forty bushels of corn on the same acreage where their fathers could grow only ten is adding very much to the wealth of the state. The community which does not appreciate and recognize this truth is impervious to eternal values. Every farmers’ conference tells how much increase there has been in corn, peas, cotton, peanuts, oats, rye, tobacco, and other things under the direction of our farm demonstration agents.

We pass through Franklin County into Wake. Every one knows that Raleigh is in Wake County. As soon as you arrive in Wakefield or Zebulon, both small country hamlets, you know that you must be about fifteen miles from the capital city. Hard-surfaced roads present such a temptation to touch the accelerator just a little, and little, and again a little more, and again, if you do not happen to see any motorcycles lurking about. The colored population of this county is less than 30,000, and they own less than 6,000 farms. They own about 60,000 acres of land. Their school population is about 10,000, with an enrollment of about 7,000, and an average daily attendance of about 4,000 children. We ought to expect the school average to be higher, of course, being adjacent to the seat of state authority. Wake County has had for a number of years two colored agents, in the person of Miss Delany for the schools, and Professor Roberts for the farmers. They have gone in and out of the farm homes daily carrying inspiration and encouragement and inspiring hope. The daily contact with these personalities has been the leavening power in the county. We have seen for a number of years the finest products that could be produced on exhibition in our colored State Fair. In the city market in Raleigh every day in the year one will see these same fine farm products. They will do justice to any racial group. Here one will see what the agents are doing to help the farmers to conserve and preserve their products. The homes of the farmers show neatness and cleanliness. We have been greatly surprised to see how far some of our farmers have gone in beautifying their homes and premises. This is as it should be.

The excellent public schools of Raleigh, the fine institutions represented by St. Augustine School and Shaw University have given the colored rural population a great inspiration. The well ordered homes of some of their city cousins have also been an inspiration to the colored rural population.

There are so many opportunities, educational and inspirational, about the state capitol, that it is almost like living under the shadows of a great university. Then the main thoroughfares are so fine that those living in the most remote parts of the county ought to have no difficulty or count it no hardship to go to the city for lectures, recitals, conventions, conferences, and for general consultation with those under state authority. These opportunities are the best sort of unearned increment.

We pass from Wake County to Chatham County. There are no less than 8,000 colored people in Chatham County. They own about 2,000 farms and homes, and about 30,000 acres of land. The two small towns, Moncure and Haywood, have quite a settlement of colored people. At Haywood they seem rather isolated and some of the homes had a progressive appearance. The disadvantages under which we started, the social, industrial, business and educational status, in which we find ourselves should not be allowed to differentiate from other people who live in the same community and in the same environment.

If other racial groups living in the same community have their homes painted, flowers in their gardens and other ornaments that add to home life and beauty, it is perfectly right that we should catch the inspiration. If we cannot be leaders in these matters, we ought to be good followers. We have the labor, and a gallon of paint and a paint brush will work wonders in a few hours. If we cannot keep the yard fence looking decent and in repair let us move it. We must take personal pride in the community in which we live. It is the best sort of civic pride. In this community we ought to prove our best selves. Chatham County has disgraced itself recently with a lynching bee.

Crossing the river into Lee County we were very much impressed with the sign, “You are welcome to Lee County.” This large sign was in a most conspicuous place and we interpreted it to mean what it said, and that we were included in the invitation. We stopped to ponder and to contrast the difference. We have been in parts of our country where the overhead signs read, “Nigers and dogs not wanted.” We have seen in other parts where land was advertised for sale and the biggest asset in the advertisement was the absence of Negroes from the community.

There are less than 4,000 colored people in Lee County. They own about 700 farms and about 8,000 acres of land. The area of the county is very small, and the entire population less than 15,000.

I have been for several years on a local inter-racial committee. Since the world war it has been necessary to have such a committee in the South on inter-racial relations. I am also on the state inter-racial committee. That means that I am always looking out for the small things and the larger things, too, as we make our daily rounds, that count for good will and peace between the two racial groups. At Sanford we saw a large number of colored men at work as carpenters and bricklayers on some of the finest buildings going up in the city. I was shown others and advised that they were the work of colored carpenters, under colored contractors. A former Brick School boy was foreman on one of the jobs. These contractors and workmen were personal friends of mine, and later I had the pleasure of seeing some of their own homes and business. They were among the best in the community. Broadway, Cumnock, and Jonesboro are progressive communities in which the colored people are doing well. I was advised that only a few of the colored people had migrated from this part of the state. It means that they are happy and that they can buy homes in communities that are compatible. After all, we must have compatibility in our homes and in our neighborhood, in our community, in our relations with the outside world. I would not live a week in a community that was not compatible. To receive a gibe and a thrust every time one steps on the street, or into a corner grocery, or on the public highway, by other racial groups is contemptible, and especially so when one knows that there is absolutely no redress for that sort of contempt. One wonders what the preachers are preaching or what the schools are teaching. Patriotism, love of community, social and personal progress are of slow growth in such communities where there is so much incompatibility.

All the world has heard of Moore County. It is an area of 798 square miles. The main line of the Seaboard railroad crosses it from north to south. It is crossed and recrossed by Page’s railroad. Here is Southern Pines, Pinehurst, Jackson Springs, Carthage, and scores of other smaller towns. The names are common to the resorter and tourist. It has a population of less than 6,000 Negroes, who own about 16,000 acres of land. Excluding the villages and towns, twenty-five years ago I would not have paid the taxes for all the rest of the land. Twenty-five years ago I went all over the county, and one could scarcely get anywhere for the sand and roads were practically unknown. Sand, sand, sand—everywhere sand.

Moore County is now the veritable garden spot of the state. The local intersecting railroads have changed hands. Fine public highways have been built in every direction. The tourist and capitalist, making their annual visits to this section, have discovered in that vast land undiscovered possibilities of wealth. Thousands and thousands of acres of this waste have been converted into peach orchards. Peach packing stations have been built all along the track for the convenience of the peach shippers. I was told that several trains of peaches were shipped daily to the Northern market. Where the land was not already planted I saw the Fordson tractors getting it ready for fall planting. Most of this undeveloped land was what is called cut-over land. It is absolutely barren except for a lot of shrubby pines, shrubby oaks and some native tough grasses and wild composite flowers. Tupelle and poplar may be found in the swamps and lowlands.

I wondered as I passed along to get a bit of information here and there, if our colored people were learning to do by doing. I wondered if they were getting the inspiration. Sixteen thousand acres of land ought to be the nucleus of an industry. A hundred acres ought to make a good peach farm. What an opportunity for the colored man who has brain and industry and some little money and a great ambition. We have not the faintest idea of the wonderful opportunities in the millions of acres of the waste lands of our southern country. These lands are just begging the capitalist to come and invest in the undeveloped resources of its bosom. It is there, but it just needs the brain and some little money. The brawn is there, too; it just needs the intelligent direction. Compatible conditions will keep it there.

The land in Moore County will never again sell for one dollar an acre while peaches are selling for three dollars a bushel at the tree. Most of the trees bear from two to five bushels of peaches. They are planted about fifteen feet apart. It takes about 150 trees to the acre. Any one can figure the income at that rate. These peaches ought to begin bearing in three years. There is nothing so fabulous as the income per acre from such an investment. There is nothing so sure. Some of the rows as we viewed them seemed endless. Greensboro, sixty miles away, was sending trucks to the peach area daily for loads of peaches for the local market, in Greensboro. A little while back one of these peach orchards sold for $85,000.

The business of supervision has become so important that many of the growers combine and employ an expert from the State Department of Agriculture. They can pay more than the state can pay for such expert supervision. The work is as yet in its infancy. We are advising our Negro boys to go to our best agricultural schools and specialize in this department of fruit cultivation so that they can manage such enterprises as these large fruit farms. They do not seem to get the vision. As long as our folks are buying farms, and they are increasing their holdings every year, there are vast opportunities for their services as horticulturists. Ten Negro farmers in Moore County, North Carolina, ought to be able to get together and make peach-growing worth while to the group. Their traditions and the local environment have taken away their inspiration. They also lack knowledge. They have not been schooled in initiative of this sort. Coöperation with most of us has been a doubtful experiment. We must learn and grow more before we can take hold of the larger industries that require large coöperation. Experience and knowledge are vital to the success of any enterprise. The great enterprises of the North have been growing coöperatively since the country was discovered. The South has been giving its time to matters of social adjustments. The adjustment of its racial groups has been its nightmare by day as well as by night. Hatreds, jealousies, prejudices, have entered too much into our daily contact and relations to allow us to grow nationally. The conditions of all progress are in education, industry, compatibility.

I read somewhere that the conscious mind may not get a true perspective and may error. Still it is conscious. When I read in the papers every day and note all the deviltries perpetrated here and there all over the South, I wonder that we have all gotten along as well as we have, and especially do I wonder how the Negro has made such progress. Then I hear that the subconscious mind never errors. The conscious mind would have me riled and leaving the country, boot and baggage, when I read what is happening somewhere else outside of North Carolina. The subconscious mind comes in and says to me, when I am quiet and alone and perhaps when I am half asleep, “No, do not get discouraged.” The South is the garden spot of the world. It has the prettiest moons, the brightest days, its florescence on a thousand hills and in as many vales scatters its fragrance and beauty three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. Its cataracts, rills, and springs sparkle with diamonds of beauty and health. The woods and swamps are filled with every sort of game, her rivers and lakes abound with every known fish for the sportsmen, her climate is the most equitable in the world, the rainfall the most evenly distributed, the storms not so awfully destructive, the exotic population the least of that of any other similar area, with an adapted vegetation from the highest altitudes to the equator. The contour of the surface is high or low as one likes it. Smooth or rough. The Blue Ridge Mountains afford a retreat from the Northern winters as well as a retreat from the Southern sun. Her altitude, pine forest and splendid waters are an asset that no other country in the world can equal. In the next few years more than fifty millions of dollars will be spent in North Carolina alone for public roads. Steam roads and electric cars will soon intersect every nook and corner of the state. The most inaccessible parts of the state and the South will become the public highways. Automobiles and trucks will bring the most remote farms to the city markets daily. The telephone and radio are already available in our country homes.

In the next two years North Carolina will spend four millions of dollars for Negro health and education. This has already been passed by state Legislature. This amount of money put into health and education in any community will make a change. It shows an enlightenment of public sentiment and a change of attitude on the part of the citizens of the state. Progress cannot and will not be thwarted. Education, enlightenment, Christianity—this trio is the saving grace of any community. I do not know of any place better than North Carolina. This is my subconscious mind. It never errors.

We leave Moore County and cross into Montgomery County. This is what we call a hickory country. The land is rocky and red with hills almost precipitous. We could not visit many of the colored people because of the inaccessibility of most of the rural homes. The colored population is about 4,000, and they pay taxes on about 8,000 acres of land. They are engaged in general agriculture, corn, tobacco and cotton being their prevailing crops. They have a few cotton factories in the town of Troy and more in the county, and many lumber mills. The Pedee River and its tributaries furnish a large part of the power for the factory work. The county has a real gold mine which was profitably worked a few years ago. It was my pleasure to visit it some years ago when it was in operation. It has been abandoned, and the machinery and buildings show signs of a past prosperity.

The town of Troy has one of the two wooden courthouses left in the state. It was being replaced by a modern stone structure. It will cost when finished about $200,000. I am told that the stone in the construction of this building was taken from the site on which the building stands. It rather reminds one of our Northern centers in that it stands at the juncture of a number of the public roads leading into the town.

The Peabody School, under the auspices of the American Missionary Association of New York, is the only institution in all of that part of the country giving anything like a high school education to the colored people in all of that section of the country. The school is beautiful for its location just out of the city. It fronts a public road and is on high ground with splendid drainage. Several of their buildings are new and up-to-date for school purposes.

A hard-surfaced road is in construction from Charlotte to Raleigh. The distance is nearly two hundred miles. It will probably pass through nine counties. It will open up a country of immense possibilities. A cement bridge connecting up this road is already in construction across the Yadkin River. This bridge will be nearly or quite 2,000 feet long. It would ornament the approach to any Northern city.

From Troy we went to Biscoe, Star and Ashboro in Randolph County. This is also an oak and hickory county. The roads took us through a very fine section of the country. The country looks very undeveloped. The roads were very fine. The rural homes appeared rather small. Many of the women along the roads were seen bottoming chairs. Chair-making seemed to be one of the main industries in that section. The frames of the chairs were made at the factories and sent out to the country women to have the bottoms put in them. These bottoms were made of white oak splits. The absence of colored people engaged in this business seemed very noticeable.

The town of Ashboro had all the appearances of being a hustling town. More than a half dozen buildings were going up. We saw no colored carpenters or bricklayers on the job anywhere. We were advised that no colored men were allowed to work at their trade in the town. We saw several colored mechanics with their kit of tools packed, leaving the town. Some of them we knew to be the equal of any mechanics in any other group of workers. Still their mechanical efficiency counted nothing. It was their unfortunate tradition, and their black faces which counted them out. Here my conscious mind came up again. We did not have the feeling that we had when we left Lee County. A man ought to be passed on his merits and not on his color. They wanted mechanics, but not black mechanics. These men would do well to migrate. Wherever they went I know they were in the frame of mind to swear vengeance against any community that would tolerate that sort of condition. That is what makes socialists, bolsheviks, and Catholics out of us.

We soon find ourselves in Guilford County. We arrive in High Point and remain long enough to see friends and inquire about the conditions of our farmers.

I think it true that there are more manufacturers of furniture in this county than in any other county in the state. The Brick School has bought furniture in New York only to await shipment from High Point. Later we have gone to High Point and seen this furniture in the making. These two cities are in the oak and hickory section of the state. I have seen its street cars in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Washington, Asheville, Atlanta, Ga., Birmingham, Ala. Of course a business of this size will give work of one sort or another to a great many of our colored laborers. There are 15,000 of our people in Guilford County. They own 3,000 homes and farms. They are paying taxes on 17,000 acres of land. The Negroes in Guilford County have the inspiration of one of the best state colleges for Negroes to be found in the South. The college ought to be the center of all the best influence for farming in a hundred miles about it. If they are found to be using poor farming methods they ought to be fined. Alamance, Orange and Durham counties are rather small counties, but they have some of the best farms and form some of the best farming and industrial communities to be found in the state. Durham is really the emporium for Negro enterprise and thrift. Tobacco, cotton and corn, and some wheat are the leading farm products in this section of the state. Gibsonville, Burlington, Graham and Hillsboro are thriving towns. They are centers of cotton and furniture manufacturing interests.

This study took us through about fifteen counties. We were not investigating the town and city conditions, but the farming interests. In counties where they had rural supervisors there was a marked difference in the attitude and progress of the farmers. Their outward appearance was different from what we saw several years ago. The farmers were better clad; their work animals were in better condition; their teams were not all dilapidated; many of them are using improved machinery; their barns and houses were more orderly built and better maintained; the houses in which they live are a decided improvement over the old houses we usually see along the railroad. They are giving more care to their wells and pumps. They are learning to screen their windows. The ancestral waste barrel in many cases are being removed from their kitchen windows. They are using more paint not only to save their houses, but because it adds beauty to their premises. They are planting flowers. They are putting out fruit trees and investing in thoroughbred chickens, hogs and cows. These are all good signs. They are really coming. Some have had to come from so far down the road that it may appear that they have not made any progress. They are coming nevertheless. At no place where we stopped did we have to confine our diet to sweet potatoes and boiled eggs in order to preserve our health by the osmosis process.

We saw in many places attempts made to improve the soil. We found alfalfa, red clover and crimson clover in the red clay sections. Peas were grown generally. The farm demonstration agents and the farmers’ conferences have been an inspiration to the farmers to grow legumes to help the land to bring forth its fruit. They are learning that they cannot use up the fertility of the soil and still have it. They are learning that an investment in legumes is one of the best they can make for crop productions.

The papers have been saying that one man in four in the American army is uneducated. If that is true it is a sad comment on the conditions of this country. There is no power in the world to equal that of education. We cannot exaggerate its power and its importance. A trained mind, a trained hand and a trained heart are indomitable. An unlettered man lives in isolation. He cannot appreciate the creation of nature. There is no progress in isolation and a static mind atrophies. Whatever be the proportion of illiteracy, those of us who move about among the masses know that notwithstanding our private schools and public schools, ignorance and superstition are simply appalling. It is not only appalling, but it is dangerous to any environment. It is a menace to the state and government.