Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 18

15. Dunbar Rowland, A Mississippi View of Race Relations in the South. Read before the Alumni Association of the University of Mississippi, June 3rd, 1902 (Jackson, MS: Harmon Pub. Co., 1903). (21 p.)

Review of black suffrage during Reconstruction, concluding with the assertion that black participation in political affairs was a failure. According to the author, white Southerners accepted their defeat in the Civil War and attempted to afford the former slave their civil rights. Despite their generous acceptance of the state of affairs, black government was characterized by “the long continued rule of ignorance and vice,” after which “The struggle between white and black began.” Two “great ideas” emerged among white Southerners after the restoration of white supremacy. “The first is the necessity for the absolute social separation and isolation of the Negro. He never will be accepted as an equal no matter how great his future advancement. . . . The second settled conviction is that the negro will never again be allowed to control the public affairs of a single Southern state.” (This pamphlet is inscribed on the cover, “Compliments of Dunbar Rowland, Jackson, Miss, Oct. 22, 1904.”)