144 Negro Migration 



over 21 on their places gone. * * * And we go about 

 our affairs as usual — our police raid pool rooms for "loaf- 

 ing Negroes," bring in 12, keep them in the barracks all 

 night, and next morning find that 10 of them have steady 

 jobs and were there merely to spend an hour in the only 

 indoor recreation they have; our county officers hear of a 

 disturbance at a Negro resort and bring in fifty-odd men, 

 women, boys and girls to spend the night in jail, to make 

 a bond at 10 per cent, to hire lawyers, to mortgage half 

 of two months' pay to get back to their jobs Monday morn- 

 ing, although but half a dozen of them could have been 

 guilty of disorderly conduct." 



Another Mississippi daily adds the following: 



"We allow petty officers of the law to harass and oppress 

 our Negro labor, mulcting them of their wages, assessing 

 stiff fines on trivial charges, and often they are convicted 

 on charges, which if preferred against a white man would 

 result in prompt acquittal." 14 



Whether this tendency is due to a mistaken sense of duty 

 or to the operation of the system which provides a payment 

 of a fixed sum per arrest to officers is immaterial. Re- 

 gardless of its cause, it has a very disquieting effect even 

 among the law-abiding Negroes. 



Aside from matters involving arrest, the Negro feels 

 that in civil cases he does not always have an absolutely 

 impartial verdict when he is involved in a dispute with a 

 white man. No data are available on this point. But the 

 main point of« interest in the study of migration is that 

 regardless of the extent to which Negroes are right or 

 wrong in their complaint against the administration of 

 criminal and civil justice, it is a real factor in their dis- 

 content, and as it is discussed more and more, it becomes a 

 more important factor. As such it demands a much more 

 thorough investigation at the hands of those who love 

 justice and who desire to weaken the forces which contrib- 

 ute to migration. 



"These two quotations are requoted from Negro Migration 

 in 1916-17, opp. cite, p. 106. 



