Joseph Maille to Woodrow Wilson

Title

Joseph Maille to Woodrow Wilson

Creator

Maille, Joseph

Identifier

CS23

Date

1914 November 13

Description

Letter giving justifications for segregation and saying that African Americans have caused the "degeneration of the White Southern race."

Source

Library of Congress
Wilson Papers, Series 4, 152A Reel 231, Manuscript Division

Publisher

Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum

Subject

African-Americans--segregation

Contributor

Althea Cupo
Maria Matlock

Language

English

Provenance

Digital copy acquired from federal archives by previous WWPL Archivist, Heidi Hackford.

Text

To His Excellency,
Woodrow Wilson
President of the United States
Kindly permit me to enclose what a New Orleans paper edited about the TROTTER incident. Now then let me tell you something about the Boston negro. Some years ago I was in Boston as well as in Washington; and the most insanely insolent negroes I ever struck up against in any front of the United States was the Boston negroe. While the Washington negro like the New Orleans negro feels, the former as if he has a mortgage on the White House, while the other ___________ his most _____ to be on the U.S. customhouse in N.O. After an experience of near fifty years with the Negros and inevitable contact with him and a close analysis of his skin I have found him Rotten and infectious and immoral and indecent to the core. No matter how White his Soul may be. His magnetism is worse than the vipers or blood maker and the demon like glare that shoots from his eyes when in search of prey or desire to injure is enough to scare an angel off its perch. Trotter has exactly stated what the Negro is: Indecent - Inferior, Infectious" and the sooner such bodies are kept away from White bodies the better for both and the greater progress will the white race will make free from the negroe beggar who lives on charity more than on industry. Nothing has degenerated the White southern race as Negroe cooks - and the unseen filth that goes through their mouth hands breasts and abdominal and ______ of their bodies as "bad smells" into the food eaten by white folks. In India the "castes" select the highest, the most educated, the cleanest and Healthiest person as cooks when needed and as these consider it their duty to impart health and vigor into those that have none -- such cooks do not consider themselves degraded - they are considered the Head, and not the FEET that wallow in the mire. Try it for a month or more. Eat exclusively that which is cooked by a white man - not a white woman and your stomach will make you feel plainly that it is much better. Then try again the cooking of the Negroe and you then will understand why one may have fits of nausea and then you will give up the Negroe as a bad job and one who like all others is to seek his own salvation by his own efforts - as have all the great souls of the past, and not by rants laziness and charity and leaning and depending on the white man to pull him up. The Negroe race body is a dying race and the sooner it dies the better for the whole of humanity and itself - for nature and for nature's God who seeks men not scalawags to manifest through. It took me but two minutes in Boston to call down a big _____ _____________ Negroe in a restaurant who attempted to sit next me, and though he nagged the waiters he sat "a mile away" from me.

With my sincere sympathy in the loss of your very estimable wife, Mrs. Wilson; and with my hearty desire for your safe guard, good health and prosperity, allow me to subscribe myself
Yours Very Truly
Joseph Maille
PO Box 246
Pass Christian Miss.

Original Format

Letter

To

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CS23.pdf

Citation

Maille, Joseph, “Joseph Maille to Woodrow Wilson,” 1914 November 13, CS23, Race and Segregation Collection, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.