Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 18

9. Carl Kelsey, The Negro Farmer: A Thesis Submitted to the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Ph. D. (Chicago: Jennings & Pye, 1903). (103 p.)

Doctoral dissertation by a sociology student who visited Mr. Stone’s plantation during his trips through the South to collect data. The dissertation is replete with statistics, and Mr. Stone has marked many passages, including this one in the next to last chapter, which is entitled “The Outlook.” “The trouble is that we at the North are unable to disabuse ourselves of the idea that he Negro is a dark skinned Yankee and we think, therefore, that if all is not as it should be that something is wrong, that somebody or some social condition is holding him back. We accuse slavery, attribute it to the hostility of the Southern white. Something is holding him back, but it is his inheritance of thousands of years in Africa, not slavery nor the Southern whites. It is my observation that the white of the black belt deal with the Negro more patiently and endure far more of shiftless methods than the average Northerner would tolerate for one day” (emphasis in original). The last twenty-four pages of the dissertation are taken up by maps of the Southern states. Each state is represented by a pair of maps, one displaying African Americans as a percentage of the population broken out by counties and superimposed on the chief geological districts for that state (e.g., alluvial, cane hills, pine hills, pine flats, etc.). The second map for each state displays the concentration of African Americans as indicated by the number per square mile, again broken out by county and superimposed on the chief geological districts for that state.