Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Immokalee's First Postmistress

Immokalee’s first postmistress, Mary Burrell, held the position from 1898 to 1919 before moving to Miami. She was interviewed by the Federal Writers’ Project in 1938, and a record of the interview is on-line here. She offered these opinions (paraphrased by the interviewer) on Reconstruction:
Slaves were encouraged to go away from the land on which they had lived. Many went away only to become vagrants and were guilty of misdemeanors in other localities. As conditions grew more desperate, so the problem of the Negro became more serious. The carpetbagger stirred them to lawlessness, and only the appearance of the Ku Klux Klan saved the women and children of the South, including the north Florida counties and the southern counties of Georgia, where the Burrell families and their connections had their properties.
Burrell claimed that:
Negroes were accustomed to whipping as a punishment, and knew when they deserved it…To put a Negro in solitary confinement only let him enjoy leisure.
If the Immokalee postmistress was praising the Klan for saving white womanhood, what does this tell us about the likely treatment being received by African-Americans in Florida at that time?

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