We Owe Negroes Reformatory, TB Sanatorium, First Class Teachers' Training School, Separate But Equal Railroad Cars, August 1920

From the front page of the Hickory Daily Record, Aug. 24, 1920

Sanitorium Is Urged for Negroes

By Max Abernethy

Governor Bickett last night sent his seventh special message to the general assembly, this one dealing with the negro problem and suggesting some remedies he would like to see the legislature make. The merssage follows:

Gentlemen of the General Assembly:

Last year I heard a negro bishop say in a public address that the negro had accepted the white man's God and kew no other. We owe it to that God and to his civilization we have building on His will to deal justly with a tribe of His children less fortunate than ourselves.

In North Carolina we have definitely decided that the happiness of both races requires that white government shall be supreme and unchallenged in our borders. Power is inseparably linked with responsibility, and when we deny to the negro any participation in the making of the laws, we saddle upon ourselves a peculiar obligation to protect the negro inhis life and property and to help and encourage him in the pursuit of happiness.

In the discharge of this obligation the state owes it to the negro just now to provide:

--For the establishment of a reformatory where delinquent negro boys may be sent and trained in the same way tha the white boys are trained at Stonewall Jackson Training School at Concord.

--For the establishment of a sanitorium for the treatment of tubercular negroes. The negro is peculiarly susceptable to the ravages of this disease. A consideration of our own welfare, as well as the negro, requires the establishmjent of such an institution where those afflicted with the disease may be treated and nay also learn how to kekep from giving the disease to others.

--For the establishment of a strictly first class teachers' training school that will compare favorably with the teachers' training school for the whites at Greenville, Most of the negroes who qualify themselves for high grade teachers go to schools outside the state. This is unjust to them and is a blunder from the white man's standpoint. If the negro teachers are educated in the north, they will absorb the ideals of the north, some of which have a tendency to unfit them for useful citizens of the south. If we teach them in our own schools,they will absorb southern ideals,and will transmit these ideals to the youth who come under their charge.

--For the amendment of our transportation laws that will secure to the negro safer and more sanitary accommodations when he rides on the trains. It is absolutely necessary to the peace and happiness of both races for whites and blacks to ride in separate cars. The question has been settled in the south and no amount of agitation is going to disturb it. Be we cannot get away from the simple justice that requires that when a negro pays the same money for his transportation that the white man pays, he is entitled to ride in a car just as safe and just as sanitary as the white man rides in.

To the end that these matters may be brought to the attention of the next general assembly in an intelligent way, I recommend that this general assembly appoint, or authorize the governor to appoint, a commission of five members, whose duty it shall be to make a careful investigation and study of the several propositions above outlined, and submit their conclusions to the next session of the general assembly.