RACE ASSOCIATION
In the preceding chapters the effort has been made to analyze and describe
the white race and the negro race, each as though it lived by itself, and
could work out its own destiny without reference to the other. The white
race is faced with the necessity of elevating its lower fourth; the negro
race should be equally absorbed in advancing its lower three fourths. In
both races there is progress and there is hope; if either one were living
by itself it might be predicted that in a generation or two the problems
would cease to be specially Southern and would come down to those which
besiege all civilized communities. But neither race lives alone, neither
can live alone. The commercial prosperity of the Whites largely depends on
negro labor; high standards for the negro race depend on white aid and
white example; neither race is free, neither race is independent. They are
the positive and negative poles of a dynamo, and terrific is the spark
that sometimes leaps from one to the other.
In one sense, the Southern Whites are the South, inasmuch as they have
complete control of the state and local governments, of the military, of
public education, of business on a large scale, and of society; but the
Negroes are one third of the population, furnish much more than half the
laborers for hire, have schools, property, and aspirations; hence
whatever term is used, "Southern Problem," "Race Problem," or "Negro
Problem," it refers to the antagonism between those two races. How keen is
the Southern consciousness of this peculiar condition may be learned from
some of the Southern critics:
Thomas Nelson Page thus states it: "A race with an historic and a glorious
past, in a high state of civilization, stands confronted by a race of
their former slaves, invested with every civil and political right which
they themselves possess, and supported by an outside public sentiment,
which if not inimical to the dominant race is at least unsympathetic. The
two races ... are suspicious of each other; their interests are in some
essential particulars conflicting, and in others may easily be made so;
... the former dominant race is unalterably assertive of the imperative
necessity that it shall govern the inferior race and not be governed by
it." Less drastic is the statement of Judge William H. Thomas: "The white
man and the negro together make up the citizenship of our Southern
country, and any effort to deal with either ignoring the other will
diminish the chances of ultimate success. That religion and sentiment, the
fixed ideals and prejudices, if you please, of the South are _substantial
facts_ that cannot be ignored and must always be reckoned with." Murphy
speaks of the "problem presented by the undeveloped forces of the stronger
race. These must largely constitute the determining factor, even in the
problem presented by the negro; for the negro question is not primarily a
question of the negro among negroes, but a question of the negro
surrounded by another and a stronger people."
To all these attempts to state the case the Northerner is tempted to reply
that the South has no monopoly of race problems; that he too has
prejudices and repulsions and race jealousies resembling those of the
South; and that since he sees them melting away around him, those of his
Southern brethren will also disappear of themselves. That is all true, yet
much less than all the truth. In the South every white man is determined
that there shall be two races forever. Nobody ever stated the Southern
point of view on this subject better than the late Henry Grady: "This
problem is to carry on within her body politic two separate races, equal
in civil and political rights, and nearly equal in numbers. She must carry
these races in peace; for discord means ruin. She must carry them
separately; for assimilation means debasement. She must carry them in
equal justice; for to this she is pledged in honor and in gratitude. She
must carry them even unto the end; for in human probability she will never
be quit of either."
"The South" in Grady's mouth really means the white South, for it is not
in the purpose of any Southern man or woman of influence to permit the
Negro to take part in deciding race issues. Furthermore, to the settlement
of these difficult problems the South along with a genuine humanity, a
desire to act in all things within justice and Christianity, brings habits
of mind which have been discussed in an earlier chapter, and which make
especially difficult moderate public statements on the race question. As
in slavery times the simple assertion that there is a race question seems
to some people an offensive attempt to bring ruin on the South: there is
still something of the feeling candidly set forth by the old war-time
Southern school geography: "The Yankees are an intelligent people upon all
subjects except slavery. On that question they are mad."
Especially delicate and hazardous is any investigation of the most
intimate race relation which in the nature of things is better understood
in the South than in the North. The sexual relation between Whites and
Negroes is in such contradiction to much of the indictment against the
negro race, and is so abhorrent even to that section of the white race
that practices it, that there is no easy or pleasant way of alluding to
it. Actual race mixture is proven by the presence in the South of two
million mulattoes; it is no new thing, for it has been going on steadily
ever since the African appeared in the United States, though there are
people who insist that there was little or no amalgamation until Northern
soldiers came down during the war and remained in garrison during
Reconstruction. Every intelligent traveler in the ante-bellum period,
every candid observer, is a witness to the contrary. Since the earliest
settlements there have continuously been, and still exist, two different
forms of illicit relations between the races--concubinage and general
irregularity. Whence came the hundreds of thousands of mulattoes in
slavery days? Of course the child of a mulatto will be normally light, and
of the two million mulattoes now in the country, very likely three fourths
are the children of mulattoes. But what are the other five hundred
thousand? To that fateful question a reply can be made only on the
testimony of Southern Whites now living down there, and not likely to
paint the picture blacker than it is. Here are some striking instances of
negro concubinage; and the judgment of competent men is that hundreds of
like incidents could be collected:
CASE I.--A white business man in a small city of State A has lived twenty
years with a mulatto woman. They have eight children, two of whom are
successful business men, one of them a banker. The white man says that the
woman has always been faithful to him, and though under the laws of the
state he cannot marry her, he looks upon her as his wife and does what he
can for the children.
CASE II.--A judge of State B has recently sentenced two different white
men for cohabitation, though many Whites remonstrated and told him that
there was no use in singling out for punishment a few cases among so many.
CASE III.--In State C a retiring judge suggests that cohabitation be made
a hanging offense for the White, as the only way of stopping it.
CASE IV.--In State D one of the leading citizens of a town is known by all
his friends to be living with a black mistress.
As to irregular relations, in one state a judge renowned for his
uprightness proposes that a blacklist be kept and published containing the
names of men known by their neighbors to visit negro women. A recent
governor of Georgia says that "Bad white men are destroying the homes of
Negroes and becoming the fathers of a mongrel people whom nobody will
own." A newspaper editor says that he knows Negroes of property and
character who want to move out of the South so as to get their daughters
away from danger. There is no Southern city in which there are not negro
places of the worst resort frequented by white men. Heads of negro schools
report that the girls are constantly subject to solicitation by the clerks
of stores where they go to buy goods. The presumption in the mind of an
average respectable Southern man when he sees a light-colored child is
that some white man in the neighborhood is responsible.
Whether the evil is decreasing is a question on which Southerners are
divided. The number of white prostitutes has much increased since slavery
days, when there were very few of them; and the general improvement of
the community, the spread of religious and secular instruction, ought to
have an effect. But the real difficulty is that, although it is thought
disgraceful for a white man to live with a colored mistress, it does not
seem to destroy his practice of a profession, or his career as a business
man. There seems to be lack of efficient public sentiment.
If these statements of fact are true, and every one of them goes back to a
responsible Southern source, there is something in the white race which in
kind, if not in degree, corresponds to the negro immorality which is the
most serious defect of his character. It is not an answer to say that the
cities and even some of the open country in the North are honeycombed with
sexual corruption. That is true, and some Southerner might do a service by
revealing the real condition of a part of Northern society. Perhaps to
live with a colored mistress to the end of one's life is, from a moral
standpoint, less profligate than for a Pittsburg business man of wealth
and responsibility to drive his good and faithful wife out of the house
because she is almost as old as he is, and marry a pretty young actress.
The mere ceremony of marriage no more obliterates the offense than would
in the minds of the Southerner the marriage of the white man with his
concubine; and everybody who associates with such a man thereby condones
the offense.
The point is, however, not only that miscegenation in the South is evil,
but that it is the most glaring contradiction of the supposed infallible
principles of race separation and social inequality. There are two million
deplorable reasons in the South for believing that there is no divinely
implanted race instinct against miscegenation; that while a Southern
author is writing that "the idea of the race is far more sacred than that
of the family. It is, in fact, _the most sacred thing_ on earth," his
neighbors, and possibly his acquaintances, by their acts are disproving
the argument. The North is often accused of putting into the heads of
Southern Negroes misleading and dangerous notions of social equality, but
what influence can be so potent in that direction as the well-founded
conviction of negro women that they are desired to be the nearest of
companions to white men?
There is, of course, a universal prohibition in the South against marriage
of the two races, and these statutes express the wish of the community;
they put such practices to the ban; they make possible the rare cases of
prosecution, which commonly break down for lack of testimony. Nevertheless
the law does not persuade the negro women that there can be any great
moral wrong in what so many of the white race practice. The active members
of the negro race are in general too busy about other things to discuss
the question of amalgamation which there is no prospect of legalizing; but
it lies deep in the heart of the race that the prohibition of marriage is
for the restraint of the Whites rather than of the Negroes; that it does
not make colored families any safer; and that if there were no legal
prohibition many of these irregular unions would become marriages.
One of the curious by-currents of this discussion is the preposterous
conviction of many Southern writers that, inasmuch as these relations are
between white men and negro women, there is no "pollution of the
Anglo-Saxon blood;" thus Thomas Dixon, Jr., insists that the present
racial mixture "has no social significance ... the racial integrity
remains intact. The right to choose one's mate is the foundation of racial
life and civilization. The South must guard with flaming sword every
avenue of approach to this holy of holies."
On the other hand, and just as powerful, is the absolute determination of
the Whites never to admit the mulattoes within their own circle. The usual
legal phrase "person of color" includes commonly everybody who has as much
as an eighth of negro blood, and in two states anyone who has a visible
trace. But social usage goes far beyond this limit, and no person supposed
to have the slightest admixture of negro blood would be admitted to any
social function in any Southern city. In 1905 there was a dramatic trial
in North Carolina brought about by the exclusion from a public school of
six girls, descendants from one Jeffrey Graham, who lived a hundred years
ago and was suspected of having negro blood. The Graham family alleged
that they had a Portuguese ancestor, and brought into court a dark-skinned
Portuguese to show how the mistake might have arisen; and eventually the
court declared them members of the superior race.
The reason for the intense Southern feeling on race equality is to a large
extent the belief that friendly intercourse with the Negro on anything but
well-understood terms of the superior talking to the inferior is likely to
lead to an amalgamation, which may involve a large part of the white race.
The evils of the present system are manifest. The most reckless and
low-minded Whites are preying on what ought to be one of the best parts of
the negro race. Thousands of children come into the world with an
ineffaceable mark of bastardy; the greater part of such children are
absolutely neglected by their fathers; the decent negro men feel furious
at the danger to their families or the frailness of their sisters. Both
races have their own moral blemishes, and it is a double and treble
misfortune that there should be inter-racial mixtures on such degrading
terms.
As for a remedy, nobody seems able to suggest anything that has so far
worked. A recent writer soberly suggests that a way out is to make a
pariah of the mulatto, including that part of the mulattoes who are born
of mulatto or negro parents; they are to be shut from the schools,
excluded from all missionary efforts, made a race apart; and that action
he thinks would be a moral lesson to the full-blooded Africans! Another
method is that of the anti-miscegenation league of Vicksburg, Miss., which
aims to make public the names of offenders and to prosecute them. A better
remedy would be the systematic application of the existing laws of the
state, with at least as much zeal as is given to the enforcement of the
Jim Crow laws. In the last resort there is no remedy except such an
awakening of public sentiment as will drive out of the ranks of
respectable men and women those who practice these vices. Such a sentiment
exists in the churches, the philanthropic societies, and an army of
straightforward sensible men and women. The evil is probably somewhat
abating; but till it is far reduced how can anybody in the South argue
that education and material improvement of the Negro are what most
powerfully tends to social equality? Just so far as the negro man and the
negro woman are, by a better station in life, by aroused self-respect and
race pride, led to protect themselves, so far will this evil be
diminished.
The subject cannot be left without taking ground upon the underlying
issue. All the faults of the Southern men who are practical amalgamators
add weight to the bottom contention of the South that a mixture of the
races, now or in the future, would be calamitous. That belief rests upon
the conviction that the negro race, on the average, is below the white
race; that it can never be expected to contribute anything like its
proportion of the strength of the community; and hence to fuse the races
means slight or no elevation for the Negro, and a great decline for the
white race. With that belief the writer coincides. The union of the two
races means a decline in the rate of civilization; and the fact that so
much of it is going on is not a reason for legalizing it, but for sternly
suppressing it. If amalgamation is dangerous and would pull down the
standard of that higher part of the community which must always be
dominant, then such steps must be taken in all justice, in all humanity,
with all effort to raise both races, as are necessary to prevent
amalgamation.
While thus in one way fully recognized as a human being and of like blood
with the Whites, upon the other side the Negro is set aside by a race
prejudice which in many respects is fiercer and more unyielding than in
the days of slavery. One of the few compensations for slavery was the not
infrequent personal friendship between the master and the slave; they were
sometimes nursed at the same tawny breast; and played together as
children; Jonas Field, of Lady's Island, to this day remembers with pride
how after the war, when he became free, his old master, whose body servant
he had been, took him to his house, presented him to his daughters, and
bade them always remember that Jonas Field had been one of the family, and
was to be treated with the respect of a father. The influence of the white
mistress on those few slaves who were near to her is one of the brightest
things in slavery. She visited the negro cabins, counseled the mothers,
cared for the sick, and by life and conversation tried to build up their
character. It is almost the universal testimony that such relations are
disappearing; rare is the white foot that steps within the Negro's cabin.
John Sharp Williams, of Mississippi, says: "More and more every year the
negro's life--moral, intellectual, and industrial--is isolated from the
white man's life, and therefore from his influence. There was a kindlier
and more confidential relationship ... when I was a boy than between my
children and the present generation of negroes."
It is a singular fact that the feeling of race antagonism has sprung up
comparatively recently; to this day there are remnants of the old clan
idea of the great plantations. Thousands of Negroes choose some White as a
friend and sponsor, and in case of difficulty ask him for advice, for a
voucher of character, or for money, and are seldom disappointed. The lower
stratum of the Whites, which is thrown into close juxtaposition with
Negroes, finds no difficulty in a kind of rude companionship, provided it
is not too much noticed. The sentimental and sometimes artificial love for
the old colored "mammy" is a disappearing bond between the races, for
though the white children are cared for almost everywhere by negro girls,
there seems little affection between the nurse and her charge.
Some Southern authorities assert that race hatred was fomented toward the
end of Reconstruction. Says "Nicholas Worth": "Men whose faithful servants
were negroes, negroes who had shined their shoes in the morning and cooked
their breakfasts and dressed their children and groomed their horses and
driven them to their offices, negroes who were the faithful servants and
constant attendants on their families,--such men spent the day declaring
the imminent danger of negro 'equality' and 'domination.'" The same genial
writer goes on to describe the gloom at the supposed flood of African
despotism; they said: "Our liberties were in peril; our very blood would
be polluted; dark night would close over us,--us, degenerate sons of
glorious sires,--if we did not rise in righteous might and stem the
barbaric flood." Though in all the states the Negroes were swept out of
political power by 1876, to this day they are popularly supposed to be
planning some kind of domination over the Whites. This made-up race issue
is not yet extinct. Nobody knows the inner spirit of a certain section of
the South better than Thomas E. Watson, of Georgia, who has recently said:
"The politicians keep the negro question alive in the South to perpetuate
their hold on public office. The negro question is the joy of their lives.
It is their very existence. They fatten on it. With one shout of 'nigger!'
they can run the native Democrats into their holes at any hour of the
day."
How does this feeling strike the Negro? Let an intelligent man, Johnson,
in his "Light Ahead for the Negro," speak for himself. He complains that
the newspapers use inflammatory headlines and urge lynchings--"a wholesale
assassination of Negro character"; that it is made a social crime to
employ Negroes as clerks in a white store; that the cultured Southern
people spread abroad the imputation that the Negro as a race is worthless;
that the news agents are prejudiced against the Negro and give misleading
accounts of difficulties with the Whites; that people thought to be
friendly are hounded out of their positions; that there is a desire to
expatriate the negroes from the country of their fathers. Kelly Miller, a
professor in Howard University, Washington, objects to using physical
dissimilarity as a mark of inferiority, and thinks "that the feeling
against the negro is of the nature of inspirited animosity rather than
natural antipathy"; and that "the dominant South is determined to foster
artificial hatred between the races."
Race prejudice has always existed since the races have lived together;
but, whether because taught to the boys of the Reconstruction epoch, or
whether because the Negroes have made slower progress than was hoped, it
is sharper now than in the whole history of the question. Is it founded on
an innate race repulsion? Does the white man necessarily fear and dislike
the Negro? The white child does not, nor the lowest stratum of Whites, who
are nearest the Negro intellectually and morally. John Sharp Williams
says: "If I were to call our race feeling anything etymologically, I would
call it a 'post-judice' and not a 'pre-judice.' I notice that nobody has
our race feeling or any race feeling indeed until after knowledge. It is a
conviction born of experience."
Right here the champions of the Negro discern a joint in the armor; thus,
DuBois: "Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the
natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance,
purity against crime, the 'higher' against the 'lower' races. To which the
Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as
is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and
progress, he humbly bows down and meekly does obeisance." Is not this the
crux of the whole matter? Is it prejudice against a low race, or a black
race? To say that the white Southerner looks down upon and despises every
black Southerner would not be fair, for there is still much personal
liking between members of the two races, and the South is right in
claiming that it has a warmer feeling for individual Negroes than Northern
people. Said a Southern judge once: "If my old black mammy comes into the
house, she hugs and kisses my little girl. But if she should sit down in
the parlor, I should have to knock her down." That is, he liked the mammy,
but the nigger must be taught to keep her place.
The phrase commonly used to describe this feeling is, "The danger of
social equality." Here is one of the mysteries of the subject which the
Northern mind cannot penetrate. Southern society, so proud, so exclusive,
so efficient in protecting itself from the undesired, is in terror lest it
should be found admitting the fearful curse of social equality; and there
are plenty of Southern writers who insist that the Negro shall be deprived
of the use of public conveniences, of education, of a livelihood, lest he,
the weak, the despised, force social equality upon the white race. What is
social equality if not a mutual feeling in a community that each member is
welcome to the social intercourse of the other? How is the Negro to attain
social equality so long as the white man refuses to invite him or to be
invited with him? It sounds like a joke!
The point of view of the South was revealed in 1903 when President
Roosevelt invited Booker Washington to his table. The South rang from end
to end with invective and alarm; the governor of a Southern state publicly
insulted the President and his family; a boy in Washington wrote a
scurrilous denunciation on the school blackboard; the _Charleston News and
Courier_ rolled the incident under its tongue like a sweet morsel; a
Georgia judge said: "The invitation is a blow aimed not only at the
South, but at the whole white race, and should be resented, and the
President should be regarded and treated on the same plane with negroes,"
and from that day to this the invitation has been received as an affront
and an injury to the Whites in the South. We are told of the terrible
consequences; how a black boy refused any longer to call the
sixteen-year-old son of his employer "Mister"; how the Negro from that
time on has felt himself a person of consequence. It does not appear that
the President's example was followed by any Southern governor; or that any
Negro invited himself to dinner with a white person. To the Northern mind
the incident was simply a recognition, by the acknowledged leader of all
Americans, of the acknowledged leader of black Americans. The Southern
mind somehow cannot distinguish between sitting at the same table with a
man and making him your children's guardian. The whole argument comes down
to the level of the phrase used so constantly when the question of setting
the slaves free was before the country: "Do you want your daughter to
marry a nigger?"
What the phrase "social equality" really means is that if anything is done
to raise the negro race it will demand to be raised all the way. But
demand is a long way short of reality. Northerners have their social
prejudices and preferences; yet they are not afraid that an Arab or a
Syrian immigrant is going to burst their doors and compel them at the
muzzle of the rifle to like him, invite him, make him their intimate;
nobody can establish social equality by law or public sentiment. Everybody
should sympathize with the desire of the South to keep unimpaired the
standards of civilization; but the friendliest Northerner cannot
understand why a Southern business man feels such a danger that he writes
of social equality: "Right or wrong, the Southern people will never
tolerate it, and will go through the horrors of another reconstruction
before they will permit it to be. Before they will submit to it, they will
kill every negro in the Southern states."
This ceaseless dwelling on a danger which no thoughtful man thinks
impending leads to attacks of popular hysteria in the South. A few months
ago in the town of Madison, Ga., it was reported: "Last night great
excitement prevailed in Madison caused by the appearance on the
electric-light poles in the city of a yellow flag about two feet long,
with the word 'Surrender' printed in large letters in the center of it.
Women became hysterical and thought it was the sign of a negro uprising.
Extra police was installed and it was thought of calling out the military
company. At the height of the excitement, it was learned that the signs
had been posted as an advertisement by a firm here. Cases have been made
against the members of the firm."
The real point with regard to social equality is not that the Negro is
inferior, but that his inferiority must be made evident at every turn. You
may ride beside a negro driver on the front seat of a carriage, because
any passerby sees that he is doing your bidding; but you must not sit on
the back seat with a Negro who might be a fellow-passenger; you may stop
at a Negro's house, if there is absolutely no other place to stay, sit at
his table, eat of his food, but he must stand while you sit; else, as one
of the richest Negroes in the South said, "the neighbors would burn our
house over our heads." The whole South is full of evidence, not so much
that the Whites think the Negroes inferior, as that they think it
necessary to fix upon him some public evidence of inferiority, lest
mistakes be made. It was against such confusion of the character and the
color that Governor Andrew protested when he said: "I have never despised
a man because he was poor, or because he was ignorant, or because he was
black."