The
appearance, therefore, of the Negro criminal was a phenome-
non to be awaited; and while it causes anxiety, it should not
occasion surprise.
Here again the hope for the future depended peculiarly on
careful and delicate dealing with these criminals. Their of-
fences at first were those of laziness, carelessness, and im-
pulse, rather than of malignity or ungoverned viciousness.
Such misdemeanors needed discriminating treatment, firm but
reformatory, with no hint of injustice, and full proof of guilt.
For such dealing with criminals, white or black, the South
had no machinery, no adequate jails or reformatories; its
police system was arranged to deal with blacks alone, and
tacitly assumed that every white man was ipso facto a mem-
ber of that police. Thus grew up a double system of justice,
which erred on the white side by undue leniency and the
practical immunity of red-handed criminals, and erred on the
black side by undue severity, injustice, and lack of discrimi-
nation. For, as I have said, the police system of the South
was originally designed to keep track of all Negroes, not
simply of criminals; and when the Negroes were freed and
the whole South was convinced of the impossibility of free
Negro labor, the first and almost universal device was to
use the courts as a means of reenslaving the blacks.
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