of the main things that spurred the Negro men to fight so valiantly was
their constant memory of Fort Pillow. At that fort were stationed 292
Northern white soldiers and 262 Colored troops, all under the command
of Major L. F. Booth. On the twelfth of April 1864 that place was
surrounded by a much larger Confederate force under Generals Chalmers
and Forest and ordered to surrender. Upon the fort refusing to do so,
the Rebels closed in with their usual battle cry, “No Quarter”. And
then as they broke in the fort and overpowered the handful of Union
men, there began a scene of unmentioned butchering and slaughtering of
Northern white soldiers and Colored ex-slave men, women and children
that far surpassed in horribleness the massacre of Custer and his
faithful little band by the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull and his merciless
Indian warriors. So after that whenever Colored men entered battles
their answer to the Rebel’s “No Quarter” was a challenge “Remember Fort
Pillow,” and times too numerous to mention did Negro soldiers fully
avenge that awful massacre of their comrades on that April day in Fort
Pillow.
By reading the battlefield records of Gen. Thomas at Miliken’s Bend;
Gen. Morgan at Nashville; Gen. Blount at Henry Springs; Gen. Smith at
Petersburg; Generals S. C. Armstrong, B. F. Butler and O. O. Howard at
other vital places, as well as the fighting records made in Virginia
at Wilson Wharf, Deep Bottom, Fair Oaks, Hatchers Run and Farmville;
full proofs can be found regarding the Colored soldiers’ supreme brave
fights made for a twofold purpose--the saving of the Union and the
freedom of themselves.
In summing up this part of this very important topic, the writer
can think of no better way of strengthening the truth of foregoing
assertions relative to Negro battlefield valour and loyalty in the
Civil War than by quoting the following: “When the battle test came
these regiments justified the hopes entertained by their sanguine
friends.” This just and high tribute was paid to Colored Civil War
fighters by Comrade John McElroy, a white editor of Washington,
D.C., in the editorial correspondence of his National Tribune
published April 7, 1921. He had written about General Rufus Saxton of
Massachusetts taking military command of St. Helena Island, S. C. and
forming the thousands of idle Negro men into regiments during the early
stages of the Civil War.
On the Sea
In the month of June, 1861, the Union schooner, “S. J. Waring” was
captured by the Confederate privateer, “Jeff Davis”. All the crew of
the schooner, with the exception of a Colored man, William Tillman and
two white men, were taken from the ship and replaced by Rebel sailors.
At an opportune moment Tillman killed the Rebel captain and mate, drove
all the other Rebels at the point of a gun below deck and took full
charge of the ship. After ploughing through a terrific storm, during
which time the Rebel sailors were brought up and forced to help man the
wave-tossed ship, the Colored sailor safely guided the recaptured “S.
J. Waring” into the harbor of New York. For that nervy and patriotic
act he received from the Federal Government prize money amounting to
six thousand dollars.
It was through the cool-headedness, gamesness and shrewd planning
of Robert Small, a man of color, that the Confederate gunboat, “The
Planter” was stolen out of Charleston Harbor, running the gauntlet of
the Rebel’s watchful forts and barking cannons and safely delivered
into the hands of a Northern squadron. In payment for this naval
strategy Robert Small was made captain of the gunboat he captured and
during his service continued to show marked fearlessness as a fighting
sailor and unusual executive ability as a commanding officer.
When the Civil War was finally ended by General Ulysses S. Grant of
the Union Army compelling General Robert E. Lee of the Rebel Army to
surrender at Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 9, 1865, the Colored
soldiers and sailors laid aside their warfare weapons with proud and
thankful feelings that they had been given such great chances to help
fight for and secure their own freedom.
ON THE PLANTATIONS
BROAD-MINDEDNESS
From African jungles to American shores,
Negroes were brought to do all the chores;
Though bought and sold without due blame,
They now forgive this country’s shame.
--_Harrison_.
The slaves who went into the battles of the Civil War came up to all
the standards of loyalty and bravery that had been set for them as
fighting soldiers. But it was left to the millions of Colored men
who staid on the plantations during the war to come up to and go far
beyond the standards of moral self-control and human just treatment
set by their owners. The Colored men who were in the war were really
enjoying a temporary freedom while they were fighting for a permanent
freedom. But it was quite different with the shackled men who staid
on the plantations during the war. They were then slaves not only one
way but in three ways. First, they were still slaves to their owners
as they were yet under their control; secondly, they were slaves to
themselves inasmuch as they were their own bosses and overseers to
plant, cultivate and reap the crops in the absence of the white men;
thirdly and most important of all, they were slaves to the trust and
honor under which they had been left with the care and protection of
the white women and children on the plantations. And no records in
history have been found to show where those thousands of white wives,
daughters, mothers and sisters made complaints to their returned
husbands, sons, fathers and brothers about having forced upon them
insulting and raping attentions from those millions of slave men under
whose whole care those white women had been freely left and safely kept
during the Civil War.
If those Colored men had wanted to copy the spiteful, revengeful and
immoral actions of most of their white owners, they could easily have
mistreated or destroyed all of those helpless white women and children
in revenge for the two hundred and forty-four years of unspeakable
crimes committed against their Colored womanhood by the Southern
white slave owners and overseers. Or the slaves could have run away,
joined the Union Army in a mass and left alone those destitute
white women and children to starve on the untilled plantations. But
those men of the Negro race, not then three hundred years from the
underbrush of Africa, had under their dark skins too much inborn
manhood and brotherhood qualities to stoop down to such beastily
acts. They naturally grasped that grand and big opportunity to show
to the Southern white people and the rest of the watchful world (that
helplessly looked on in silence but with pitiful and admiring glances)
that they had in their characters and dispositions and knew when and
how to use them, the sterling principles of open-fairness, loyal
friendliness, tender feelings, human considerations, moral self-control
and Christlike mercy.
It is undeniably true that as early as 1860 there were in the United
States over five hundred eighty-eight thousand Mulattoes. (Ref.
Work’s Negro Year Book, page 432, 1918-1919 edition). Among that
large number many thousands were beautiful and innocent girls who
were either retained as their white owners’ immoral mistresses on
Southern plantations or sold hither and thither from the Potomac
River to the Gulf of Mexico to be forced into shameful and degraded
lives a thousand-fold more friendless, unhappy and unprotected than
Longfellow’s wandering Evangeline.
As the Civil War did not begin until 1861, it is readily seen that
those one half million and more Mulattoes were not the results of slave
men forcing immoral attentions upon the white women and girls left
under their personal cares during the four years of the Civil War. But
those half-Colored, half white people were the undeniable results of
the brutal rapings of white plantation owners and overseers upon their
helpless and unprotected black slave women for over two hundred years.
So is it strange that fair and pure minded white people throughout
the world, knowing and seeing all around them today the increased
results of those first beastily actions by immoral members of their own
race, listen without interest but with shame and impatience whenever,
through sheer politeness, they are compelled to remain as audiences
before certain classes of Southern men who for centuries (including
today) have been talking through mouth and press about keeping their
Southern white blood untainted and unstained? Colored boys and girls,
therefore, should not become down-hearted and discouraged when they
read in newspapers or hear from platforms such Southern white men
writing or making such “Jekel-Hyde” talks; because close-observing,
sound-reasoning and fair-judging white people in the South, in the
North and throughout the world fully understand the whole situation and
do not in the least take such Southern false utterances seriously. In
fact they usually cannot keep from laughing at the funny side of the
whole thing and say among themselves, “How absurd.”
No one but God knows the number of deceived Southern white married
women who during slavery days secretly worried themselves sick, slowly
pined away and silently died of broken hearts in their richly furnished
colonial mansions, because of the ever haunting, taunting and stinging
knowledge that their unfaithful, disloyal and immoral husbands as
well as being the fathers of their white wives’ children were also
the fathers of their slave mistresses’ Mulatto offsprings. So is it
surprising that clean-living, clean-thinking and justice-loving white
people always exchange knowing winks with their friends and hurriedly
put handkerchiefs up to their mouths in order to hide disgusted
features and weary yawns whenever they find themselves in places where
they have to listen to certain classes of Southern white men who for
centuries (including today) have been boasting from platform and press
about their unsurpassed and unexcelled fidelity and chivalry to their
Southern white womanhood? Instead of losing their ambitions and hopes
when hearing and reading such blaspheming words against their race and
progress, Colored boys and girls should take on new hope and redouble
their efforts in striving to become even more devout Christians,
higher learned students, better skilled industrial workers and fuller
law-abiding citizens. In reference to the inferiority of their colors,
Colored youths should remember that the prettiest thing in the world
(the rainbow) is Colored, and yet, no one is able to resist the
fascinations of its archful beauty or forget the consolations of its
floodless promise, just because Nature with splashing rain drops and
flashing sun rays oft ribbons the sky with rainbow hues.
No one but God knows the number of black slave women who moaned
their heart strings loose and died of broken spirits either in their
one-roomed log cabins or out in fence-cornered fields, because of the
ever torturing knowledge that the virtues and womanhoods of themselves
and the chaste maidenhoods of their immatured and innocent daughters
had been repeatedly and forcibly taken or sold by their white owners
and overseers. Yet, not one of those white rapists was lynched,
tortured and burned at the stake by Negroes, not even at the close of
the Civil War when there were thousands of ex-slave holders living
in some Southern districts where the Colored people outnumbered the
white people five to one. And surely, after gallantly fighting through
the thickest and hottest battles of the war, it was not fear nor
cowardice that held those Colored men from avenging the unprintable
immoral wrongs forcibly done for over two hundred years to their
unprotected and helpless Colored women. But, it was the living up to
and the carrying out of a certain high civic principle of their African
tribal laws that they had inherited and which prevented the ex-slaves
from striking such a revengeful blow upon the Southern whites. For
among savage tribes in Africa the universal punishment for raping was
certain death; different tribes having different methods of dealing
out that penalty. But that punishment was never dealt out by a mob.
Those tribes so respected and obeyed the laws under which they lived
and were governed that as savage as they appeared to be, they always
had enough self-control over their tempers and passions to leave the
captures, trials, convictions and executions of such offenders to be
carried out by their chiefs and their assistants who had been put
in their offices for such purposes. And since America had made laws
and appointed officers who should have caught, tried, convicted and
punished those Southern white men who raped enough black women to cause
the birth of over a half million Mulattoes, the ex-slave men felt
that even if those laws had not been enforced by people who had been
selected to do so, it was not their rights to take the laws into their
own hands by forming themselves into lynching mobs. They felt that just
as raping of either black or white women is a most damnable crime; so
is lynching either by black or white mobs a most hellish sin. In making
comparisons between the ancient laws of Nippur and the modern laws of
the United States, relative to slaves, the world-famed journalist,
Arthur Brisbane, in the June 22, 1920 issue of the New York American,
under the title, “Today”, wrote in part as follows:
“Five thousand years ago some laws were better than those of our day.
“For instance, in those ancient laws, if a slave woman had a child,
the father being her owner, the mother and the child were set free. In
magnificent America, in Lincoln’s day, thousands of slave children,
with slave owners for fathers, were sold in the public markets.”
Now, not for one moment do intelligent and law-abiding Colored citizens
uphold or make excuses for the brutish crimes committed by the
degenerate members (and there are many) of their own race. For they
fully realize that it means a faster and higher progress of all their
people to have Colored criminals punished to the fullest extent of the
law, after they have been given the same fair trials, convictions and
sentences that are handed out to the thousands of white criminals who
commit the same kind of crimes. And just as Colored degenerates are
disgusting and shameful to up-right living white people, so are white
degenerates disgusting and shameful to up-right living Colored people.
Thus the broad-minded and law-abiding Colored and white citizens now
mutually know that it is for the greater advancement of both races and
a closer brotherhood combining of all Americans for them to see to
it, as far as possible, that all criminals be rightly protected when
arrested, given fair trials, safely guarded after sentenced and fully
punished in a confinement where they cannot further morally lower
themselves nor longer dilute the purity of human society.
And in thus far carrying out their Christian duties for the elevation
of humanity, good Colored and white people are contented in knowing
that for those criminals of both races who are shrewd enough to escape
the detection and punishment of earthly laws, there is a Heavenly law
that never fails to punish them at the proper time. And even while on
their death beds those evil doers are twisting and turning in mental
and bodily sufferings, they will not on account of their torturing
pains be able to truthfully and peacefully chant such consoling lines
that are found in Tennyson’s poem “Crossing The Bar”, nor will their
names be written in that “Book of Gold” where it is said Abou Ben Adhem
had his name inscribed above all of those who loved the Lord, because
he (Abou Ben Adhem) loved all his fellowmen.
[Illustration]
FOLK-LORE SONGS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO
DIFFERENT EMOTIONS
Prayer
From lips of slaves with age bent low,
Wet prayers burst forth in deepest flow
To God above that some new light
Would slaves unborn save from such plight.
Work
Down they went the great long rows
Swinging scythes and chopping hoes
In time with cheerful labor songs
To ease the work and sting of thongs.
Song
“Camp Meetin” times were when their songs
Rang loose full pathos of slave wrongs,
And pent-up hearts with anguish fills
Were drained as springs on sloping hills.
Play
When work was done and nights were theirs,
They oft did have most jolly fairs
Quilting rags or shucking corn
With laughter, dance and fiddles worn.
--_Harrison._
“The only American music”. This is the terse, sincere and high comment
made quite a number of years ago by Edward Everett Hale, author of “A
Man Without a Country”, in relation to the rightful recognition and
value of the American Negro melodies sung on the Southern plantations
during slavery. Since then, well-read, well-bred and music loving
people of both races have come to fully recognize, acknowledge and
appreciate the truthfulness of the above compliment.
For many years after their freedom great number of ex-slaves harbored
bitter dislikes toward these songs because they so clearly and
painfully reminded them of their past ill-treatment and sufferings
during slave days. Most of their children caught this feeling direct
from their parents or indirectly through their own vivid imaginations
formed from what they had heard about slavery. But quick and deep
understanding people of both races soon found in these crude tuneful
words something far more interesting and touching than mere memories
of slavery sins and sufferings--they saw and felt in such weird and
original chants the most beautiful and truest life pictures of the
true soul that it is possible for human being to paint with colorful
and verbal expressions of tear moistened sorrows and smile dried
joys. Thus music lovers and masters began at once to value this music
as among the most precious finds to be added to their treasuries of
folk-lore songs.
World recognized Negro music transposers and composers are today taking
these rough, crude and half-savage chants and, without destroying their
originalities of construction or pureness of quality, lifting them from
the lowest depths of ignorant fun-making burlesquers to the highest
level of intelligent and serious-minded music admirers. And throughout
the musical world today celebrated chorus leaders, conductors, etc., of
both races in giving even operatic recitals indicate by their programs
rendered that they consider no first-class recital complete unless one
or more of its numbers are expressions of Negro folk-lore music as
Burleigh, Dett, Diton, Work and others have so classically elevated
them. These broad-minded and just manifestations are gradually causing
the general public to become more interested in, give more serious
thought to, and show more appreciation of the true dignity and value of
these melodies. They are also rapidly educating the American Colored
people as a mass not to hate and cast aside but to love and preserve
this music as a race pride heritage so costly purchased and handed down
by their fore-parents and as one of the most valuable and rare features
of American history.
Among the foremost composers, singers and lecturers in the Negro race
who are giving tremendous aid and are largely responsible for the
development of the above favorable sentiments are Cleveland G. Allen,
New York, N. Y., Harry Burleigh, New York, N. Y., R. Nathaniel Dett,
Hampton, Va., Carl Ditson, Phila., Pa., E. Azalia Hackley, Detroit,
Mich., Kathleen P. Howard, Birmingham, Ala., J. Wesley Jones, Chicago,
Ill., Jennie C. Lee, Tuskegee, Ala., Nellie M. Mundy, New York, N. Y.,
Jas. A. Mundy, Chicago, Ill., F. J. and J. W. Work.
THROUGH RECONSTRUCTION DAYS
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Oft in the past has his life been told,
And others again should it oft unfold
To learn of the greatness he did reap,
As orator, editor, statesman deep.
The following lines of marginal flight
Show a Negro’s rise from depth to height:
Fred Douglas unknown in slavery shame
Elevated his name to the Hall of Fame.
--_Harrison._
In taking a swift but careful glance back to that historical and
red-letter year of 1863, it will be noted that there was born at that
time into these United States a form of whole liberty that had been
fathered and nourished by the world-beloved Abraham Lincoln. Before
the above date this country had existed under only a one-sided liberty
that had been won from the English for the white Americans by the
illustrious George Washington. But it was left for Abraham Lincoln to
win for the United States a two-sided liberty by cutting the chains
of slavery from the wrists and ankles of the black Americans and also
refreeing the white Americans by unchaining from their souls the
slave-holding temptations they had become too weak-minded to resist and
too selfish to give up of their own accord.
As soon as the Colored people had passed out from the sufferings of
slavery, they were at once compelled as free, but ignorant, homeless
and penniless, people to begin their upward struggles and progress
through a reign of terror. This reign of terror was caused by the
brutal treatment and murdering of thousands of innocent Colored people
and the destruction of their properties by an uneducated, uncivilized
and unchristianized element of Southern white people who were known as
“Night Riders”, “Ku Klux Klan”, etc., of whom the best minded white
people even in the South were ashamed.
But the sturdy and hopeful Colored people came through that awful
ordeal as they had come through slavery, with increasing determination
and greater efforts to push forward and upward to the best and highest
things in life. However, it was only their unfaltering trust in God
that gave them enough hopeful vision in the future; it was only their
gratitude to and appreciation of their Northern and Southern white
aiding friends that retained them enough patience and faith in mankind;
it was only their keenness to see the funny side of life’s happenings
that enabled them to laugh and keep cheerful; it was only their ability
and willingness to do any and all kinds of hard work that enabled them
to sleep through the whole nights with peaceful minds; and it was only
their great big healthy (everlasting-non-fasting) appetites that gave
them enough vitality, stamina, physical strength and energy-plus to
pass through those years of body sufferings and spirit crushings and
safely reach their present stages of upward progress and onward success.
Thus the Negro race has proven that just as a red-blooded,
self-confident, self-reliant and resourceful individual cannot rest
with a peaceful and happy mind as long as staying in the easygoing,
smoothly-worn and narrow “rut” of a least-resistance, non-progressive
position, but fearlessly steps out with a determined mind, hopeful
heart and unbounded enthusiasm to face and overcome the ups-and-down of
this rough-and-ready world that finally yields up to that individual
his or her well-earned and genuine success; so will a race of people of
similar qualities and aspirations be restless until it wades and crawls
out of a miry and stagnant pool of ignorance and poverty and enters a
channel of freshly flowing active thoughts where it can freely swim
abreast in fair competition with other races in order to reach those
distant ports of Christian service, citizenship usefulness, financial
independence, self culture and human helpfulness.