Free A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond by Percival Everett, James Kincaid

faculty are there as attentive to their duties as ever they were; the students are coming in as they did before. It is true, sir, that there is a mixture of students now; that there are colored and white students of law and medicine sitting side by side; it is true, sir, that the prejudice of some of the professors was so strong that it drove them out of the institution; but the philanthropy and good sense of others were such that they remained; and thus we have still the institution going on, and because some students have left, it cannot be reasonably argued that the usefulness of the institution has been destroyed. The University of South Carolina has not been destroyed!”
    Now there is testimony by a colored man that South Carolina was not only on the road to solving, but had solved , its problems on its own terms and to the betterment of all. If only meddling outsiders…. But the analysis is yours to make. If I make it myself, then I might as well write the book. What are we paying you for, anyway?
    Meanwhile, consider the position of the Negro outside the South during this same period. We generally hear little about these people and the abominations visited upon them in the North and in the West. Why? Don’t make me laugh! Because the situation for Negroes outside the South was horrible, far worse than in any part of the South. The Northern press and Northern muckrakers needed to vilify the South, to invent problems there, and often (as with carpetbaggers) to actually create these problems in order to draw attention away from the plight of the Northern Negro. Put it this way: by inventing a myth of Southern brutality toward the Negro, by ignoring the truth evident in such states as South Carolina, and by sending down to the South ruffians and brutes to stir things up, the North allowed itself the luxury of exploiting black labor and sadistically torturing black people silently and invisibly.
    Item —an 1866 Illinois State Convention of Negroes noted that the “free” state of Illinois, being perfectly willing to enlist black soldiers, to slurp up the fruits of black labor, and to wallow in black tax dollars, still does not allow black equality in the courts and does not even allow black men to vote. Worse, and in direct contrast to South Carolina, the writers say, “The colored people of the State of Illinois are taxed for the support of the public schools, and denied, by the laws of the State, the right of sending their children to said schools.” At that time fewer than 100 Negro children, out of the tens of thousands (or more) Negro juveniles living under the blessings of Northern liberation, attended public school. This speaks for itself—or, rather, you should speak for it. So much for Northern protests against separate but equal schools. How about no schools at all?
    Item —an 1869 Convention of New York Negroes listed the following grievances:
    “[The Negroes of this state] are taxed without being represented; they are subject to trials by juries which are not their peers; they are murdered without having redress; they are taxed to support common schools while their children are denied the privilege of attending those in their respective wards; they are called upon for military service of their country without receiving proper protection from the country, and without any incentives whatever of being commissioned officers.
“ These grievances belie the Declaration of Independence by which the American people profess to be governed” [italics theirs].
    Item —an 1870 memorial from colored physicians, all graduates from medical school and with experience as surgeons in the Union army, addresses the American Congress with clear evidence of the refusal of the District of Columbia to admit to membership in the medical society any colored physicians and even white physicians who favored the fair treatment of colored physicians. As membership in the Society was necessary for licensing, and licensing for