"Although it wrenches my soul to confront it, there are reasons why the South has so often been wracked by racial rioting—by outpourings of the rage of the downtrodden against an unjust civilization. However much the states of the old Confederacy may seek to deny it, they cannot. People do not take to the streets, burn their homes and cities, unless pressed beyond forbearance by the cruelty of the oppressor’s iron fist.https://fredoneverything.org/a-southerner-repents/Thus these eruptions of racial desperation have occurred all across Dixie: in Detroit, Ferguson, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Washington DC, Watts, St. Louis, Cincinnati. Yes. Though I am a son of the Southland, I will not lie. The truth is the truth. I bow my head in shame.
And I am further forced to own that, while the black population of the North prospers, and mingles easily with its white brethren in casual but sincere amity, in the South the Negro huddles in the slums, denied schooling, and living on the meager charity of whites. Should you doubt this, look to Newark, Trenton, Camden, Detroit, Chicago, Flint, Gary. The flowering of blacks in the North a century and a half after the end of the Civil War, the rise in scholarly achievement, the frequent and accepted intermarriage of the races—here we have irrefutable proof of the superior moral culture of the North."
I have a nephew (Baton Rouge native) married to a black girl. The weekly paper that served my home town had front-page coverage of a recent family reunion of a very old Creole plantation lineage. The reunion coverage and the accompanying photos included both the white AND "free people of color" cousins.