EBB AND FLOW
Thus, in broadest outline, have the two races at the South been faring
on their way. And now in recent years, under their separate development
and with their close intermingling, have come new complications and
difficulties. The tendency has been in some ways to a wider separation.
The old relations between the household servants and their employers,
often most kindly, and long continuing to link the two races at
numberless points, have passed away with the old generation. Once the
inmates of mansion and cabin knew well each other's ways. Now they are
almost unacquainted. The aristocracy and its dependents had their mutual
relations of protection and loyalty, and gracious and helpful they often
were. Now comes democracy,--vigorous, jostling, self-assertive,--its
true social ideal of brotherly comradeship being yet far from
realization. The negro is in a doubly hard position; under democratic
competition the weaker is thrust to the wall, yet he has not even the
equality which democracy asserts, but is held in the lower place by
caste. And so there is a new or a newly apparent aggression upon the
weaker race.
Its most obvious form is the legal limitation of suffrage. The irregular
and indirect suppression of the negro vote which had prevailed since the
close of the Reconstruction period, was not thorough and sure enough to
satisfy the white politicians. And the lawless habit which it fostered,
and whose effects could by no means be confined to one race, alarmed the
better classes. So from two directions there was a pressure toward some
restriction of the negro vote which should be both legal and effective.
The movement became active about the year 1895, and accomplished its end
in the States of Virginia, the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi, and
Louisiana, by constitutional amendments. The qualifications thus
prescribed are so various and so variously combined that a full
statement here is forbidden by limits of space, but their general
characteristics are these: The requirement (in Virginia, South Carolina,
Alabama, Louisiana) of $300 worth of property; the payment of a poll tax
(in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana); the
ability to read and write (in North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana); the
ability, if not to read, to understand and explain any section of the
Constitution (in Virginia, Mississippi); regular employment in some
lawful occupation, good character, and an understanding of the citizen's
duties and obligations (Alabama).[2]
These restrictions apply in theory alike to both races. But exemption
from them is allowed, and the suffrage is given, to certain classes: To
all who served in the Civil War (Virginia, Alabama); to all who were
entitled to vote on January 1, 1867, also to the sons (or descendants)
of these two classes (Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana).
In these States, if these requirements are impartially enforced, the
effect is to impose on the negroes a moderate property or intelligence
qualification, or the two combined; and to give practically universal
suffrage to the whites. This last feature, while essentially unfair, is
a practical grievance to the negroes so long and only so long as the two
races stand as directly opposed forces in politics. Otherwise it is
questionable whether the class who are called on to earn the suffrage by
intelligence or productive industry are not really as well off as the
class to whom it is given regardless of merit.
But in its practical operation the system is so elastic--and
unquestionably was so designed--that it can be easily applied for the
exclusion of a great part of those who nominally are admitted to the
suffrage. The "character" and "understanding" tests leave virtually full
power with the registration officers. There can be no reasonable doubt
that in these six States the suffrage is virtually denied to negroes to
an extent utterly beyond any fair construction of the law. Mr. Charles
W. Chestnutt, in his paper on _Disfranchisement_, cites the case of
Alabama, where the census of 1900 gave the negro males of voting age as
181,471, while in 1903 less than 3000 were registered as voters. And
even in States like Georgia, where suffrage is by law universal, ways of
practical nullification are often applied,--as for example by exclusion
from the nominating primaries, in which the results are principally
determined.
Without the need of legal forms, there is a practically universal
exclusion of all negroes from public offices, filled by local election
or appointment, throughout most of the South. Their appointment to
Federal offices in that region, though very rare, is always made the
occasion of vehement protest.
The theory generally avowed among Southern whites, that the two races
must be carefully kept separate, is apt to mean in practice that the
black man must everywhere take the lower place. At various points that
disposition encounters the natural and cultivated sentiments of
justice, benevolence, and the common good, and now one and now the
other prevails. Thus, there have been efforts to restrict the common
school education of the blacks. It has been proposed, and by prominent
politicians, to spend for this purpose only the amount raised by
taxation of the blacks themselves. There has appeared a disposition to
confine their education to the rudimentary branches and to a narrow type
of industrialism. Strong opposition has developed to the opening either
by public or private aid of what is known as "liberal education" in the
college or university sense. A flagrant instance of injustice is the
enactment in Kentucky of a law prohibiting all co-education of the
races--a law especially designed to cripple the admirable work of Berea
College.
But the most serious obstacle to the black man, the country over, is the
threatened narrowing of his industrial opportunities. Here has been his
vantage-ground at the South, because his productive power was so
great--by numbers and by his inherited and traditional skill,--that
there was no choice but to employ him. At the North, where he is in so
small a minority as to be unimportant, he has been crowded into an ever
narrowing circle of employments. Precisely the same sentiment, though
not so ingeniously formulated, which makes the white gentleman refuse to
receive the black gentleman in his drawing-room, inclines the white
carpenter or mason to refuse to work alongside of his negro
fellow-laborer. Yet against this we have the accomplished fact, in the
South, of black and white laborers actually working together,
harmoniously and successfully, in most industries. We see the divided
and wavering attitude of the trade-unions; some branches taking whites
and blacks into the same society; others allying white societies and
black societies on an equal footing; others refusing all affiliation;
the earlier declarations of the national leaders for the broadest human
fellowship challenged and often giving way before the imperious
assertions of the caste spirit.
A race closely intermixed with another superior to it in numbers,
wealth, and intelligence,--a self-conscious and self-assertive
race,--suffers at many points. There are abuses tolerated by law;
infractions and evasions of law; semi-slavery under the name of peonage;
impositions by the landlord and the creditor. There are unpunished
outrages,--let one typical case suffice: a negro farmer and produce
dealer, respected and esteemed by all, in place of a rude shanty puts up
a good building for his wares; the word goes round among the roughs,
"that nigger is getting too biggity," and his store is burned,--nobody
surprised and nobody punished. Then there is the chapter of lynchings:
First, the gross crime of some human brute, then a sudden passionate
vengeance by the community; the custom spreads; it runs into hideous
torture and public exultation in it; it extends to other crimes; it
knows no geographical boundaries but spreads like an evil infection over
the country--but most of its victims are of the despised race.
Against the worst outrages the best men of all sections are arrayed in
condemnation and resistance. But of its own essential and final social
superiority the white South brooks no question. It expects its social
code to be observed by the nation's representatives. It forgets that the
nation's representatives are cognizant of the general code of the
civilized world,--that breeding, manners, and intelligence, constitute
the gentleman. So when President Roosevelt entertains as his guest the
foremost man of the negro race,--easily one of the foremost half-dozen
men in the country,--the white South indulges in a mood which to the
rest of the world can only appear as prolonged hysteria.
Before this whole wide range of the unjust treatment of the black race
in America, the observer is sometimes moved to profound discouragement.
"Was it all for nothing?" he asks, "have all the struggle and sacrifice,
the army of heroes and martyrs, brought us to nothing better than this?"
But such discouragement overlooks the background of history, and the
vital undergrowth of to-day. We see the present evils, but we forget the
worse evils that preceded. Turn back sixty years,--read, not _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_ if you distrust fiction, but Fanny Kemble's _Life on a
Georgia Plantation_, or Frederick Law Olmsted's volumes of travels.
Glean from the shelves of history a few such grim facts, and let
imagination reconstruct the nether world of the cotton and sugar
plantations, the slave market, and the calaboose; the degradation of
women; the hopeless lot to which "'peared like there warn't no
to-morrow",--and see how far our world has moved into the light since
those days. A race is not developed in an hour or a decade or a
generation.
In the present are facts of solid reassurance, in that the best spirit
of the South is facing the besetting ills, is combating them, and being
thus aroused must eventually master and expel the evil spirit. The South
has a burden to carry which the North does not easily realize. There the
negro is not a remote problem of philanthropy; he is not represented by
a few stray individuals; it is a great mass, everywhere present, in its
surface manifestations often futile, childish, exasperating; shading off
into sodden degradation; as a whole, a century or several centuries
behind its white neighbors. To get on with it peaceably, to rightly
apportion with it the opportunities and the burdens of the community, to
keep the common movement directed upward,--this demands measureless
patience, forbearance, wisdom, and persistence. Against the more
flagrant abuses, the leaders of Southern society are making strong
head. Governor Vardaman of Mississippi, though a reactionary as to negro
education, has struck terror to the hearts of the lynchers. The attitude
of the official class in certain peonage cases is thus described by Carl
Schurz: "These crimes were disclosed by Southern officers of the law,
the indictments were found by Southern grand juries, verdicts of guilty
were pronounced by Southern petty juries, and sentence was passed by a
Southern judge in language the dignity and moral feeling of which could
hardly have been more elevated." As to disfranchisement on grounds of
race, representative Southerners are anxious to demonstrate that the
only real disqualification is for ignorance and unfitness; and we must
look to them to give practical effect to their professions, which can be
done if the existing statutes are applied in a spirit of justice. It is
especially as to education that the better sentiment and purpose of the
South is apparent. The heavy cost of maintaining public schools for the
blacks has been steadily met. It is estimated by the United States
Commission of Education that for this purpose since the beginning
$132,000,000 has been spent. The reactionaries in education, like
Governor Vardaman, seem to be overborne by the progressives like
Governor Aycock of North Carolina. There is a notable growth of the
higher order of industrial schools, mainly as yet by private support,
but with a general outreaching of educational leaders toward more
practical and efficient training for the common body at the common
expense. In the general discussion of race matters, in periodicals and
books, the old passionate advocacy is in a degree giving place to
broader and saner views. Such writers are coming to the front as John S.
Wise, with his frank criticism of the political Bourbons and his forward
look; and Edgar Gardner Murphy, whose book _The Present South_ is full
of the modern spirit. There are others, especially among educators, not
less pronounced and serviceable in the forward movement. It is in these
quarters, and not among politicians or party newspapers, that we must
look for the brightening day.
But it is to be recognized that a right solution of the South's
difficulties will not be reached without a sharp and prolonged
antagonism between the good and the evil tendencies. Mr. Schurz states
the case none too strongly: "Here is the crucial point: There will be a
movement either in the direction of reducing the negroes to a permanent
condition of serfdom--the condition of the mere plantation hand,
'alongside of the mule,' practically without any rights of
citizenship--or a movement in the direction of recognizing him as a
citizen in the true sense of the term. One or the other will prevail."
And he adds, "No doubt the most essential work will have to be done in
and by the South itself. And it can be."
When President Hayes withdrew the Federal troops from the South, it
marked the formal restoration of that local self-government which is a
vital principle of the American Union. Of slower, deeper growth, has
been the spirit of mutual good-will and confidence, with the free
concession to each member of its individual life. Numberless delicate
cords have been reuniting the severed sections. Railways, commerce,
literature, the tides of business and pleasure travel, the pressure of
common problems, the glory of common achievements, the comradeship of
the blue and the gray on Cuban battlefields, the expositions of
industry, the throb of human feeling as the telegraph tells its daily
story of heroism or tragedy--all have done their part. It is by their
nobler interests that the sections are most closely united. Beyond the
squabbles of politicians is the power of such conferences as those of
the Southern Education Commission where meet the best brains and
consciences, the gifts of the liberal, the plans of the wise, and the
energy of the stout-hearted.
The education of a slave into a man, the harmonizing of two races, the
common achievement of a great national life,--it is a long work, but it
moves on.
"Say not, The struggle naught availeth,
The labor and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
"For while the tired waves vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
"And not through eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: In Maryland, an amendment prescribing a series of elaborate
and vexing inquiries, investing the registration officers with judicial
powers, and avowedly aiming at the elimination of the negro vote, was
passed by the Legislature, at the instigation of Senator Gorman and
against the opposition of a Democratic governor, and decisively rejected
by the popular vote in November, 1905.]