that channel in 1861, it has never been allowed, like other races
therein, to use either a rapid-lunging and noisy over-head double-arm
stroke or a swift-gliding and noiseless under-water crawl-stroke;
but, has been compelled to paddle along using a one-arm bull-frog
stroke, having one leg and arm tied together with strings of race
discriminations, the entire racing course clogged with floating
debris of public decayed sentiments and a plaited cord of race
jealousy-envy-spite tied to the big toe of the free leg that has
been roughly and constantly yanked back throughout the swim. With all
that prejudiced and unsportsmanlike handicap, the American Colored
people have increased their ownership of homes from twelve thousand
in 1866 to six hundred thousand in 1919; they owned in 1910 over two
hundred thousand farms that with other real estate holdings comprised
twenty-one million acres of land; in 1866 they ran a little over
two thousand business enterprises and in 1919 they had increased
that number to fifty thousand business concerns doing a volume of
business amounting to about one billion two hundred million dollars;
in 1919 there were annually being spent for their education fifteen
million dollars; starting out in 1866 with seven hundred churches they
kept on building and buying Houses of God until in 1919 they owned
forty-three thousand such buildings valued at more than eighty-four
million dollars; and while the American Colored people in 1866 were
worth twenty million dollars, they continued to earn and save money
until in 1919 they had accumulated a wealth of one billion one hundred
million dollars. (above figures extracted from Work’s Negro Year Book,
1918-1919 edition, pgs. 1-2-345.)
There are located in over 25 States throughout the Union nearly a
hundred towns and villages that are inhabited and governed wholly by
Colored people. The largest of these settlements is described below.
BOLEY, OKLAHOMA
Boley, Oklahoma, was founded on September 22, 1904 by two Colored men,
T. M. Haynes and James Barnett, and since then has enjoyed the greatest
growth of any exclusive Negro community in the United States. There is
a population of 2,500 in the city and 1,200 in the adjoining district.
There are no white people living in the city and all of the farms
within a distance of 8 to 10 miles are owned, with but few exceptions,
by Colored farmers who possess as much as 900 acres individually.
Farming is the chief industry of the community and about 90 per cent of
the population own modern homes, many of them costing $5,000 and more.
All of the city offices, telephone exchange, telegraph office, depot
agency, Post Office (only Third Class one in the world totally
run by Negroes) are conducted by Colored people. All the business
establishments and industries, that are of nearly every kind including
several cotton gins are owned and carried on by Negro business men and
women, one merchant being worth $100,000.00. The city has its own paved
streets, electric light plant, ice plant, water system, and modern city
High School costing $20,000, two private newspapers and a private Bank.
Some of the important buildings and institutions in the city are the
State School of the C. M. E. Church that has a modern three-story
$20,000 building; the Masonic three-story Temple; The Widow and Orphan
Home of the U. B. F. Grand Lodge; the $150,000 State Tubercular
Sanitarium for Negroes; and seven churches with creditable buildings.
Prospects are so promising that the community is expecting to have oil
wells within the next two or three years.
This is not a bad record for such a handicapped life swimmer as the
Negro Race is compelled to be in the United States and certainly proves
that, when it comes to keeping a lead-weighted body above the water
surface and at the same time make progress up a rough stream against a
strong down-flowing prejudiced current, the Negro, if he really is a
fifth cousin to the foolish, noisy, frolicsome and “Call Of The Wild”
goose family, he is also a first cousin to the sensible, industrious,
frugal, quiet, dignified and home-loving swan family.
IN CONGRESS
It is a most remarkable fact that only seven years after the
emancipation of his race, Hiram R. Revels, a Colored man, entered
the United States Congress as a senator from Mississippi. But it
becomes a two-fold remarkable and interesting fact when one learns
that the Congressional seat taken by Revels was the chair made vacant
by Jefferson Davis who left Congress and the Union side to join the
Confederacy where he later became its president and leader to keep
Negroes in slavery. That explains the question so many people have
asked why Revels only served one year (1870-1871) in the Senate. He
was elected to serve the last year that Jeff Davis had left unfinished
in his term when he went over to the Rebel forces. B. K. Bruce, also
from Mississippi, served a full term of six years in the Senate. So far
those two have been the only Colored men to be seated and serve in the
U. S. Senate. In 1872, P. B. S. Pinchback, a Colored man, was elected
to the U. S. Senate, but the right of the Legislature to legally elect
a senator was challenged. The contention was urged that the Legislature
itself was not legally elected. The contest lasted four years and ended
with seven Republican Senators voting with the Democrats to deny him
the seat. He was later given four years salary as a senator. During the
period of Reconstruction right after the Civil War this same Colored
man was elected and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Louisiana and once
while the Governor, W. P. Kellogg was absent from the State for a brief
period, Lt. Gov. P. B. S. Pinchback acted as Governor of Louisiana.
J. R. Lynch was elected from Mississippi to the U. S. House of
Representatives. Other Colored men who have been members in the House
were as follows: Louisiana sent J. H. Menard and C. E. Nash; Georgia
sent J. T. Long; Alabama sent B. S. Turner, J. T. Rapier, and J.
Harlson; Virginia sent J. M. Langston; Florida sent J. T. Walls; South
Carolina took the lead in numbers by sending R. B. Elliott, R. C.
DeLarge, R. H. Cain, A. J. Ransier, Robert Small, T. E. Miller, G. W.
Murray, and J. H. Rainey who by being elected five times exceeded any
other Negro in length of service (ten years) in the House. But it was
left for North Carolina to “Tar Heel” in the rear of that Congressional
noble march by sending the latest Colored member to Congress in the
person of the late George H. White, who as a Representative had
been proceeded from that same state in the same branch of the U. S.
Legislature by J. Hyman, J. E. O’Harra and H. P. Cheatham. (extracts
from Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pg. 207.)
In The U. S. Diplomatic Service
While a U. S. Senator or Representative acts in the Legislature at
Washington, D.C. as spokesman for a few thousand people living in a
certain section of the state that elects him; a Minister or Consul to
foreign countries acts as a spokesman for all the millions of American
citizens living in all the United States of America. Thus, while the
Colored Congressman held a very honorable and influential federal
position; the Colored man who had served either as a minister or consul
to foreign lands was the one who really shouldered the highest and most
responsible Government position ever accorded to an American Colored
person.
Some of those of the Race who have served in this last named branch
of the Government are: A. H. Grimke, Minister to San Domingo, E. D.
Bassett, Frederick Douglas, J. S. Durham, S. A. Furness, and L. W.
Livingston, Ministers and Consuls to Haiti; T. M. Chester, Dr. J. R.
Grossland, J. L. Johnson and E. W. Lyons, Consul and Ministers to
Liberia; Jas. Weldon Johnson, Consul to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela,
to Corinto, Nicaragua and to the Azores; J. C. Carter, and M. Wistar
Gibbs, Consuls to Madagascar; Wm. H. Hunt and W. A. Jackson, Consuls
to France; R. T. Greener, Consul to Vladivostok; W. J. Yerb, Consul
to Dakar, West Africa. (some of above extracts from Work’s Negro Year
Book, 1918-1919 edition, pg. 208).
Others of the Race who have in the past or are at present holding
important Federal positions are Chas. W. Anderson, Collector of
Internal Revenue, New York City; E. T. Attwell, Director of Negro
Industries during the World War; Dr. Bozerman, Postmaster of
Charleston, S. C.; R. W. Bundy, Secretary to Legation in Liberia;
Phil H. Brown, Commissioner of Conciliation in the U. S. Labor Dept.;
J. E. Bush, Receiver of Public Money, Kansas; B. K. Bruce, Register
of Treasury, Washington, D.C.; J. A. Cobb, Ass’t U. S. District
Attorney, Washington, D.C.; C. S. Cottrell, Collector of Internal
Revenue, Honolulu; W. S. Cohen, Land Office Commissioner, La.; Wm.
Crum, Collector of Customs, Charleston, S. C.; J. C. Dancy, Recorder
of Deeds, Washington, D.C.; J. H. Deveaux, Collector of Customs,
Savannah, Ga.; Frederick Douglas, Recorder of Deeds and U. S. Marshall
of the District of Columbia; Miss Helen Erwin, Director of Colored
Industrial Housing, during World War; H. O. Flipper, Special Ass’t to
the Alaska R. R. Commissioner; Geo. E. Haynes, U. S. Director of Negro
Economies, during the World War; Perry W. Howard, Special Ass’t U. S.
Attorney General; E. H. Hewlett, Judge, Municipal Court, Washington,
D.C.; Henry Lincoln Johnson, Recorder of Deeds and Republican National
Committeeman, Washington, D.C.; J. E. Lee, Collector Internal Revenue,
Florida; Wm. H. Lewis, Ass’t U. S. Attorney General, Boston, Mass.;
Jas Lewis, Collector of Port, La.; Judson W. Lyons, Register of U.
S. Treasury, Washington, D.C.; Wm. Matthews, Ass’t U. S. District
Attorney, Boston, Mass.; Whitfield McKinley, Collector of Port,
Georgetown, D.C.; J. C. Napier, Register of U. S. Treasury, Washington,
D.C.; J. B. Peterson, Chief Deputy Collector, Internal Revenue, Porto
Rico; ex-Lieut. Gov. P. B. S. Pinchback, Special Agent Internal
Revenue, New York; Dr. C. V. Roman, Field Secretary in Venereal Medical
Division of U. S. Army, during World War; H. E. Rucker, Collector
Internal Revenue, Ga.; Emmett J. Scott, Special Commissioner to
Liberia, and Special Ass’t Secretary to Secretary of War, during World
War; Robert Small, Collector of Port, Beaufort, S. C.; R. L. Smith,
Deputy U.S. Marshall, Texas; Robert H. Terrell, Judge, Municipal
Court, Washington, D.C.; Ralph W. Tyler, Auditor of Navy, and Foreign
War Correspondent, during World War; W. T. Vernon, Register of U. S.
Treasury, Washington, D.C.; and S. Laing Williams, Ass’t U. S. District
Attorney, Chicago, Ill.
In State Legislatures
Upon being elected in 1866 to the Massachusetts House of
Representatives, C. L. Mitchell and E. G. Walker, became the first
Colored men to serve in any state legislature in America. Since that
time up to the present day nearly a thousand men of the Race have
served as Representatives in different state legislatures. Some of
those having been elected within the past few years as members of state
congressional bodies are as follows:
W. G. Alexander, New Jersey; J. C. Asbury, H. W. Bass and A. F.
Stevens, Pennsylvania; J. A. Brown, H. E. Davis and H. C. Smith, Ohio;
J. C. Coleman, H. J. Copehart, J. M. Ellis, E. H. Harper, T. G. Nutter,
C. Payne and H. H. Railey, West Virginia; W. R. Douglass, A. H. Roberts
and S. B. Turner, and Robt. R. Jackson, Illinois; J. C. Hawkins, New
York; E. A. Johnson, N. Y.; W. M. Moore, Missouri; F. M. Roberts,
California and J. M. Ryan, District of Columbia.
In City Government
The following names are those of a few of the many Colored politicians
scattered throughout the country who are earnestly and intelligently
helping their city governments to direct old and make new laws for the
welfare of all races in their represented districts:
Councilman J. A. Adams, Annapolis, Md.; Alderman L. B. Anderson,
Chicago, Ill.; Councilman J. Brown, Urbana, Ohio; Councilman V.
Chambliss, Mounds, Ill.; Councilman R. A. Cooper, Philadelphia;
ex-Alderman Oscar De Priest, Chicago, Ill.; Councilmen T. W. Fleming,
Cleveland, Ohio, S. A. Furniss, Indianapolis, Ind., W. M. Fitzgerald,
Baltimore, Md.; Alderman, G. W. Harris, and Assemblyman J. C. Hawkins,
New York City, N. Y.; Alderman J. H. Hopkins, Wilmington, Del.;
Alderman H. R. Jackson, Chicago, Ill.; Councilman Robt. R. Jackson,
Chicago, Ill.; Assemblyman E. A. Johnson, New York City, N. Y.;
Councilman W. T. McQuinn, Baltimore, Md.; C. Scott, Worcester, Mass,
and H. St. Clair, Cambridge, Md.; Alderman T. E. Stevens, Cleveland,
Tenn.; Councilmen H. Ward, Nicholasville, Ky. and F. F. Wright, Boston,
Mass.; Committeeman E. H. Wright, Chicago, Ill. (some of the above
names are extracts from Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, page
54.) Milton White and Amos Scott are very prominent in Phila., Pa.
politics as well as unusually successful businessmen.
IN THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR
Whenever Colored people hear mentioned the Spanish-American War,
their first thoughts naturally dig up proud memories of the 9th and
10th Colored Cavalries, the 24th and 25th Colored Regiments, The
8th Illinois, Ohio Battalion and others bravely facing raining shot
and shell pouring down from the hill tops of El Caney and San Juan.
And ever will it go down in history that they were members of the
celebrated 10th Colored Cavalry who while fighting on San Juan Hill
sprang to the timely rescue of the late Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and
his famous Rough Riders and saved them from certain and horrible deaths
at the hands of the merciless Spaniards.
But why here go further into details regarding the conduct of Colored
men in that war when the official reports of such capable warriors
and experienced military judges as Major-Generals W. R. Shafter, J.
F. Kent, H. W. Lawton, Joseph Wheeler, Colonel (now General) Leonard
Wood and other high commanding officers give rightful credit and praise
to the Colored soldiers who displayed such remarkable patriotism and
heroism in that short and fierce “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old
Town To-night” war? (This quotation is the title of a very popular tune
sung during this war by the American soldiers and civilians.)
When Hobson made his dare-devil and world-famed sea trip through a
gauntlet of Spanish frowning guns, there were more than twenty-five
Colored sailors with him who then shared all of his dangers and later
a little of his fame. Another most important naval action centered
around a Colored sailor, John C. Jordan, Chief Gunner’s Mate, who on
May 1, 1898 during the battle of Manilla fired the first shot from the
crusier, “Olympia,” flag ship of the late Admiral Dewey. That was the
shot that opened the first decisive battle of the Spanish-American
War as well as starting the destruction of the modern Spanish Armada.
It is surely in place to mention here that Jordan entered the Navy as
a third-class apprentice and was honorably retired as a Chief Petty
Officer after spending thirty of his best years in the Navy working and
waiting for “Uncle Sammy” to give him his just recognition and “Aunt
Liberty” to give him a fuller caress of citizenship privileges.
In the Massacre at Carrizal
Another backyard quarrel and fight occured 1916 between the United
States and Mexico. The famous 10th Colored Cavalry, 24th and 25th
Colored Infantries were sent with Chicago National Guards to help watch
the American border. On the morning of June 21, 1916, two divisions of
the 10th Cavalry, Companies C and K, wished to pass through Carrizal to
reach Villa Alunado. They were invited to come nearer for a friendly
parley with the Mexicans. As the American soldiers drew closer to the
place many of the Mexicans slyly, slowly and seemingly unconcerned
quietly fell back, spread out and in Indian style rapidly formed a
circle around the little band of unsuspecting Americans before they
had really noticed what had been done. At an unseen given signal the
Colored troops were suddenly attacked. They were outnumbered eight to
one and in the engagement lost fifteen killed, had nine wounded and
twenty-three captured, who received much inhuman treatment from the
hands of their captors. Among the many brave acts of heroism during the
day’s fighting was the one of Peter Bagstaff, a trooper of the 10th
Cavalry, who in the very face of the Mexicans’ hailing shots staid
by the side of his mortally wounded Lieut. H. F. Adair, giving that
officer physical aid until death ended his sufferings.
IN THE WORLD WAR
(1914-1918)
JAMES REESE EUROPE
All sing the praise of Europe’s Band
That took such cheer to “No Man’s Land”
His were the tunes that led in line
The Colored bands of famed jazz time.
When life got “blue” to soldier lads,
And thots of home made hearts so sad,
Clownish slurs on “Jim’s” freak slides (trombones)
Made big loud smiles in camps abide.
To kings and queens of “Over There”,
He always played his jazziest air;
And generals often sent for him
To come and please their music whim.
From depths to heights he upward grew:
Then sudden death shut out of view
That Negro Sousa’s hidden chords
A world has lost from Bandrom boards.
--Harrison.
Regardless of their two hundred and ninety-eight years of unstained and
unquestioned loyalty and patriotism in America, Colored people at the
time the United States was about to enter the World War, were made to
feel that they were not needed nor wanted in the conflict. And on many
occasions they were even told that the World War was not their affair
but was a “white man’s war.” Here is again shown where an inherited
African instinct--that of usually being able to sense some big future
happening--enabled the American Colored people to see far enough into
the distance to fully realize that white people who made such remarks
were sadly mistaken. Colored people then knew as all other people later
found out that they were as much concerned and needed in that world
conflict as any and all other races of people who took part in it.
But not until America was fearfully startled and sensibly awakened by
the rapid and persistent progress of the Germans into France did this
country reluctantly consent to give the Colored soldiers a half-fair
chance and part in the war. And even then their acceptances had more
the resemblances of the probationary trials of total strangers rather
than the glad welcomings of life-long and never-failing friends. In
other words, figuratively speaking, it was in the highly tempered
crucibles of the World War’s whitehot furnaces of universal conflict
that Negro Americanism was put through a retesting process, in order to
determine the actual purity of its material and abstract composition.
As to the outcome of that unnecessary and unjust retesting process,
let the reader (like a minutely trained chemist) sum up in accurate
notations the final results, but only after carefully weighing and
reweighing the following analysis in the ever-balanced scales of
impartiality.
Henry Johnson, Albany, N. Y. and Needham Roberts, of Trenton, N. J.
were the first two Americans soldiers, Colored or white, who were
honored by the French Government with the much coveted Croix de
Guerre. These men were privates in the 369th Infantry, formerly the
distinguished Fifteenth New York National Guard Regiment, that had been
brigaded with French troops. It was during the loneliest and latest
hours of a night in May, 1918 while Johnson and Roberts were on guard
duty at an outpost on the Front near the German lines that they were
suddenly surrounded and attacked by a raiding party of a score of
German soldiers. Although the two colored boys used their firearms with
quickness and deadly aim to keep the enemy off, the superior number
of Germans, wounding Johnson three times and Roberts twice, closed in
on them in a hand-to-hand death struggle. They soon had Roberts on
the ground helpless, one German at his head and another at his feet.
Johnson noticing the sad plight of his loyal friend, leaped forward
like a wild cat at bay and with one mighty downward blow of his bolo
knife split wide open the head of the enemy who was strangling Roberts.
Then with a crouching pantherlike spring Johnson made a terrific
sweep with his trusty knife that completely opened the stomach of the
German at Roberts’ feet. Although on the ground covered with blood
and gore, Roberts upon thus being released immediately began to hurl
hand grenades among the enemy with telling effect. As the foe, with
whose stomach Johnson’s bolo knife had made such a deep and lasting
acquaintance, was the leader of the raiding party, the then thoroughly
frightened Germans suddenly lost their nerve, dropped their weapons,
picked up their helpless ones and made a hasty retreat. Some of the
Germans had been killed and many of the party received such wounds and
indelible marks that throughout their future lives they will always be
reminded that American Colored is a guaranteed fast dye (slow die) that
does not run.
Among the three hundred thousand and more Colored soldiers who served
in the United States Army during the World War, twenty thousand were
already prepared and in fighting trim when America declared war
against Germany. Those twenty thousand men were divided into the First
Separate Battalion of the District of Columbia; Company G, Tennessee
National Guards; First Separate Companies of Maryland and Connecticut;
Company L, National Guards of Massachusetts; Ninth Battalion of Ohio;
15th New York National Guard; Eighth Illinois Regiment; 9th and 10th
Cavalries; 24th and 25th Infantries. After spending the necessary time
in undergoing the proper government training, 639 Colored men took and
satisfactorily passed the required military examination, and on October
15, 1917 were commissioned at Fort Dodge as officers in the United
States Army. They were divided into 106 Captains, 329 First Lieutenants
and 204 Second Lieutenants.
During and at the close of the great war, leading white newspapers vied
with each other in filling their columns about the unsurpassed bravery
and patriotism of Colonel “Bill” Hayward, the clear-headed and nervy
white commander and his seasoned Colored 15th Regiment of New York. It
was the first Colored combat regiment to go overseas and was brigaded
with the French fighting forces as the 369th Regiment. To his admiring
Colored soldiers, “Fighting Bill” Hayward was known as “The Hell Man”
and to the surprised Germans the Colored fighters of the old 15th
Regiment were frightfully known as the “Bloodthirsty Black Tigers.”
A few years before that time William Hayward had been elected the
youngest judge in Nebraska and was known in that state as her
“Handsomest Man”. But with all of that previous civic and social
honor and fame, “Fighting Bill” never forgot to be a real “white man”
and gentleman as well as a strict and just commander at all times
to his Colored troops. When resting in camp he regarded and treated
them as human beings and full American citizens, and when in the
thickest of battles he did not ask them to go where he dared not to
venture, (if there ever was such a place). In battlefield action he
always led his men--he never followed them. This explains why he and
his “Black Tigers” won undying fame and glory by holding a certain
sector of trenches at Bois d’Hause Champagne for ninety-one days and
then charging in great victory over the top of Belleau Woods and the
bodies of falling Germans. It was during a very dangerous charge
that a French commander seeing Hayward and his Colored men about to
plunge into what seemed to be a sure death trap, ordered the American
fighters back. Big Bill Hayward was already in motion and shouted over
his shoulder, “My men don’t come back! They will go through hell, but
they won’t come back.” And with that parting farewell, the “Hell Man”
and his impatiently waiting “Black Tigers” plunged forward and were
soon busy serving to the open-mouthed enemy such a smoking hot dish
of scrambled shots, shells, and bayonets that in swallowing them down
those war-hungry Germans at once and for all times became completely
filled and lost their appetites for everything. On their return after
so quickly and efficiently serving such a well prepared menu, Hayward
and his fighters were decorated with the Croix de Guerre.