I have seen, in the Black Belt of Georgia, an ignorant, honest
Negro buy and pay for a farm in installments three separate
times, and then in the face of law and decency the enterpris-
ing American who sold it to him pocketed the money and
deed and left the black man landless, to labor on his own land
at thirty cents a day. I have seen a black farmer fall in debt to
a white storekeeper, and that storekeeper go to his farm and
strip it of every single marketable article,--mules, ploughs,
stored crops, tools, furniture, bedding, clocks, looking-glass,
--and all this without a sheriff or officer, in the face of the
law for homestead exemptions, and without rendering to a
single responsible person any account or reckoning. And such
proceedings can happen, and will happen, in any community
where a class of ignorant toilers are placed by custom and
race-prejudice beyond the pale of sympathy and race-
brotherhood. So long as the best elements of a community do
not feel in duty bound to protect and train and care for the
weaker members of their group, they leave them to be preyed
upon by these swindlers and rascals.
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