The second Southern Sociological Congress came to a close on the
night of April 29. Its four days were given over to solid criticism
and constructive suggestion. Eight hundred delegates gathered
together from all over the Southland to learn from the ninety-six
specialists the congress brought to Atlanta. Most of the ninety-six
were men and women of the South.
One fact the Congress made plain enough, and that was that the South
knew its problems and was busy about their solution. Those present
seemed to realize that they were the empire builders of a new South.
While the questions coming before the several conferences were the
same as those that confront the North and West, they were treated
from the standpoint of the peculiar needs of the South. But this
was done without the slightest sectional consciousness. The South
was taking counsel of itself that the entire nation might profit by
its advance. Although the field of the congress was sectional, its
outlook was national.
The plan of organization followed was much the same as that of
the National Conference of Charities and Correction. There were
seven special conferences gathered under the name of the Southern
Sociological Congress. Each was separately organized and met with
the other divisions only in the general night session. The seven
divisions were: organized charities, courts and prisons, public
health, child welfare, travelers’ aid, race problems and the church
and social service.
The latter was an innovation with the Southern Sociological Congress.
It served to emphasize the fact that “the church is the fellowship of
those who love in the service of those who suffer.” The discussions
in this conference all served to bring out in sharp relief the new
spirit beginning to dominate the old church. It was agreed that the
social worker who can satisfy only the bare material needs of life is
poorly equipped for his task, that religion must lend its strength to
every effort towards individual or social reconstruction, and that
the call of the church is a call to service.
The individual conference that enjoyed the greatest popularity
was the one on race problems. Throughout its four days of almost
continuous session there were in attendance about 400 persons, half
white and half colored. Some of the Negro delegates, fearing an
unjust discrimination against those of their race in the conference
sessions, had prepared, while on the way to Atlanta, resolutions of
protest. These were never tendered. No reason was intruded for their
presentation. One of the Negro delegates expressed the situation most
aptly. He said:
“The old order of whites understood the old black man. But it has
remained for this Congress to demonstrate the possibility of the
young white men of the new order sympathizing in and appreciating
the hopes and aspirations of the Negro of today.”
Too great a significance can not be attached to this simple statement
of fact. Its optimism is the culture-soil out of which we may expect
to see develop that happy adaptation of the two races, which after
all is the solution of the race problem.
This incident, and what it goes to show, would alone justify the
existence of a southern congress separate and distinct from the
National Conference of Charities and Correction. The peculiar
problems that faced the conference on courts and prisons make this
separate treatment even more desirable. In the South there are not
many of those great central, highly organized penal institutions
known as penitentiaries. For the most part we have county chain-gang
camps engaged in road work. A distinct contribution was made to
southern penology by Hooper Alexander, of Georgia, when he showed the
absolute identity of the convict lease in Georgia with the system
once known as the institution of slavery.
The conference discussion made clear the fact that the county convict
road camp, prosecuted without a scintilla of effort at training or
character building, is not less immoral than the old lease system;
that the wrong of public exploitation is as great as exploitation at
the hands of a private lessee.
The congress made a tremendous impression on Atlanta and the whole
state of Georgia. Its influence will spread over the entire South. It
served to quicken the civic consciousness of our people and to make
them better acquainted with their common problems. It took the mask
off sociology and unfrocked it of scholastic appearance. In pointing
out our needs, the congress unified our aims and at the same time
broadened our vision.