SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE
"Aunt Dinah and Dilsey on
Civilizing White Folks"

Aunt Dinah and Dilsey on Civilizing White Folks.

"Aunt Dinah, do you reckon you can ever really and truly civilize
white folks? Sometimes I feel sorry for em, cause I believe they jes cant
help cuttin up. They're jes natcherly bad."

To empasize her opinion Dilsey set the dishes she had just brought from
the dining room on the table so hard that they rattled. Aunt Dinah was
shocked. She turned from the sink where she was washing some kitchen utensils,
wiped her hands and fixed Dilsey with her eye, as she put her arms akimbo.

"Don't you break them dishes, gal, with your foolishness. You sholy must
be crazy, talkin bout civilizin white folks like they was heathens. Whatcha
mean?"

"Aint you heard about the big fight two white Dickties had right here
in Washington the other day, Aunt Dinah? When I was waitin on the table I
heard Mr. and Mrs. Brewster and all the company talkin about it and it was
scandalous the way those white men carried on. They got mad at one another,
because one of em took money he hadn't oughto from some crazy folks in an
insane asylum and they pummeled each other like two rowdies fightin in
Bloodfield. And one of them was a sort of ruler here, They call him a Cummishner.
And I bet you wont believe me, Aunt Dinah, when I tell you who the
other man was. Well, he was a man that represents his State right here in
Congress. When one of the ladies said, 'He's from Mississippi, and he certainly
represents that State all right', everybody at the table nearly died
a laffin."

"You reckon those high-toned white men really fit each other, Dilsey,
like common alley cats?" Aunt Dinah was evidently dubious.

"Its in all the newspapers, Aunt Dinah, and everybody knows it. They say
the Cummishner put folks in the asylum that want crazy, then charged em a
gang of money for doing it. And some of those poor souls were soldiers, who
had fought in the World War. Do you know anything about the World War, Aunt
Dinah?" But Dilsey had scarcely finished the question, before the lady addressed
started toward her in a menacing attitude. You young folks just kill

2

me dead, she said. You think nobody dont know nothin but yourselves. Dont
you talk to me like I was ignorant. You hear? Certainly I know about the
World War. What did those white men do?"

"Well, " exlained Dilsey, "some kind of a Committee was looking into what
this Ruler of Washington had done, and one of the lawyers said somethin
which the Mississippi gemmen didn't like, when he up and hurled a great big
bottle full of ink at him and this lawyer slung a bottle of water at the
Mississippi man. The water didn't hurt nobody, but the bottle of ink struck
the lawyer on the head, raised a knot as big as an egg and ruined the nice
new spring suits of the of some of the men who were writing for the newspapers.
And those newspaper men show do dress up and look nifty and nice. Wasn't
that a sin Aunt Dinah?"

"I showly am glad that no colored man that had a big office ever cut
up and made a holy show of hisself like that. And if a single, solitary colored
man had ever shown his cloven foot like that while he had a big job,
white folks would never stop talkin about it. And if any other colored man
ever tried to get a good job, they would keep throwin up to him what that
bad brother of his had done and tell him they couldn't trust him/"

"But white folks think every thing they do is all right, Aunt Dinah,
even when its wrong, don't they?" "You got an old head on your young shoulders,
Dilsey. But even when white men throw ink all over each other and crack
each others heads, almost in the White House itself, it dont hurt no other
white man. But if one colored man makes a monkey of hisself like that, every
other colored man in this country gets a black eye. Cause white folks jedge
themselves by their very best, whilst they jedge us by the worst scalawags
in the race, though they know it aint right and just. I show hope no colored
man with a good job will disgrace hisself like the ink-throwing gemmen
from Mississippi, cause white folks would be throwin it up to us for the next
hundred years."

Mary Church Terrell-
1615 S St. N.W.
Washington D.C.

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Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.