I think that would have been true to a large extent. I saw instances of
abuse of blacks which I deeply resented, and to that extent I was in
favor of better treatment. An incident that I can
recall where my indignation was aroused occurred in the store of a man
named Walter Wise at Trenton. I was a clerk there before going to
college. And on one occasion the train from the north brought in, among
other passengers, a black man who was quite well dressed. There was a
connecting line between the train from the north, a smaller line which
ran from Aiken to Edgefield. So the northerners who were then making
Aiken their point for winter hunting and that kind of thing would bring
Negro servants with them, so I'm sure this man had come down in that
capacity. The Northerners had to bring their polo ponies, also. This
black man had to wait to catch the train to Aiken. There was some delay.
He came in from Columbia and had to wait for this small shuttle line
that went to Aiken. So he came over to the store and said he would like
to wash his hands. We kept a basin in the back of the store, and I got
him that basin and some soap and a towel. And about the time that he was
performing his ablutions, the owner of the store, Mr. Walter Wise, came
in, and went berserk, almost. He grabbed a buggy whip. There was a rack
of buggy whips for sale, so he grabbed one of those and shouted
something about a "goddam nigger using my washpan"
[Laughter] and ran the Negro out of the store. I recall
distinctly that the man hid behind the Presbyterian Church. Mr. Wise
came back and lectured me for a long time about race relations. Finally
when the shuttle train came in, going to Aiken, I saw this man creep out
and get on that train.
This Negro was probably better dressed than any citizen of Trenton, and
that probably was one reason for the hostility.
[Laughter] He had an air about him that
perhaps made you feel uncomfortable in the assumption that you were
superior. So this happened in my youth.
Then as a small boy I hunted and played with Negroes. That was more or
less the custom in the South at that time. I played with them without
the slightest self-consciousness on the part of any of us until I
reached, I presume, the age of puberty, when my sister called me aside
and told me that I must stop that kind of thing, that boys of my age
didn't run around with colored boys of that age. I know I resented that.
So these things merely mean that I had some feeling of resentment at the
way Negroes were treated. I daresay not a person in that community ever
thought of a Negro as being a citizen; it was always a
master-and-servant relationship, and a very comfortable one for the
master, as you may imagine.