I have said that the formation of the new American race type will take
place slowly and obscurely for some time to come, after the manner of
all healthy changes in nature. I may go further and say that this
process has already been going on ever since the various races in the
Western world have been brought into juxtaposition. Slavery was a rich
soil for the production of a mixed race, and one need only read the
literature and laws of the past two generations to see how steadily,
albeit slowly and insidiously, the stream of dark blood has insinuated
itself into the veins of the dominant, or, as a Southern critic recently
described it in a paragraph that came under my eye, the "domineering"
race. The Creole stories of Mr. Cable and other writers were not mere
figments of the imagination; the beautiful octoroon was a corporeal
fact; it is more than likely that she had brothers of the same
complexion, though curiously enough the male octoroon has cut no figure
in fiction, except in the case of the melancholy Honoré Grandissime,
f.m.c; and that she and her brothers often crossed the invisible but
rigid color line was an historical fact that only an ostrich-like
prejudice could deny.
Grace King's "Story of New Orleans" makes the significant statement that
the quadroon women of that city preferred white fathers for their
children, in order that these latter might become white and thereby be
qualified to enter the world of opportunity. More than one of the best
families of Louisiana has a dark ancestral strain. A conspicuous
American family of Southwestern extraction, which recently contributed a
party to a brilliant international marriage, is known, by the
well-informed, to be just exactly five generations removed from a Negro
ancestor. One member of this family, a distinguished society leader, has
been known, upon occasion, when some question of the rights or
privileges of the colored race came up, to show a very noble sympathy
for her distant kinsmen. If American prejudice permitted her and others
to speak freely of her pedigree, what a tower of strength her name and
influence would be to a despised and struggling race!
A distinguished American man of letters, now resident in Europe, who
spent many years in North Carolina, has said to the writer that he had
noted, in the course of a long life, at least a thousand instances of
white persons known or suspected to possess a strain of Negro blood. An
amusing instance of this sort occurred a year or two ago. It was
announced through the newspapers, whose omniscience of course no one
would question, that a certain great merchant of Chicago was a mulatto.
This gentleman had a large dry goods trade in the South, notably in
Texas. Shortly after the publication of the item reflecting on the
immaculateness of the merchant's descent, there appeared in the Texas
newspapers, among the advertising matter, a statement from the Chicago
merchant characterizing the rumor as a malicious falsehood, concocted by
his rivals in business, and incidentally calling attention to the
excellent bargains offered to retailers and jobbers at his great
emporium. A counter-illustration is found in the case of a certain
bishop, recently elected, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who
is accused of being a white man. A colored editor who possesses the
saving grace of humor, along with other talents of a high order, gravely
observed, in discussing this rumor, that "the poor man could not help
it, even if he were white, and that a fact for which he was in no wise
responsible should not be allowed to stand in the way of his
advancement."
During a residence in North Carolina in my youth and early manhood I
noted many curious phases of the race problem. I have in mind a family
of three sisters so aggressively white that the old popular Southern
legend that they were the unacknowledged children of white parents was
current concerning them. There was absolutely not the slightest earmark
of the Negro about them. It may be stated here, as another race fallacy,
that the "telltale dark mark at the root of the nails," supposed to be
an infallible test of Negro blood, is a delusion and a snare, and of no
value whatever as a test of race. It belongs with the grewsome
superstition that a woman apparently white may give birth to a
coal-black child by a white father. Another instance that came under my
eye was that of a very beautiful girl with soft, wavy brown hair, who is
now living in a Far Western State as the wife of a white husband. A
typical case was that of a family in which the tradition of Negro origin
had persisted long after all trace of it had disappeared. The family
took its origin from a white ancestress, and had consequently been free
for several generations. The father of the first colored child, counting
the family in the female line--the only way it could be counted--was a
mulatto. A second infusion of white blood, this time on the paternal
side, resulted in offspring not distinguishable from pure white. One
child of this generation emigrated to what was then the Far West,
married a white woman and reared a large family, whose descendants, now
in the fourth or fifth remove from the Negro, are in all probability
wholly unaware of their origin. A sister of this pioneer emigrant
remained in the place of her birth and formed an irregular union with a
white man of means, with whom she lived for many years and for whom she
bore a large number of children, who became about evenly divided between
white and colored, fixing their status by the marriages they made. One
of the daughters, for instance, married a white man and reared in a
neighboring county a family of white children, who, in all probability,
were as active as any one else in the recent ferocious red-shirt
campaign to disfranchise the Negroes.
In this same town there was stationed once, before the war, at the
Federal arsenal there located, an officer who fell in love with a "white
Negro" girl, as our Southern friends impartially dub them. This officer
subsequently left the army, and carried away with him to the North the
whole family of his inamorata. He married the woman, and their
descendants, who live in a large Western city, are not known at all as
persons of color, and show no trace of their dark origin.
Two notable bishops of the Roman Catholic communion in the United States
are known to be the sons of a slave mother and a white father, who,
departing from the usual American rule, gave his sons freedom, education
and a chance in life, instead of sending them to the auction block.
Colonel T.W. Higginson, in his _Cheerful Yesterdays_, relates the story
of a white colored woman whom he assisted in her escape from slavery or
its consequences, who married a white man in the vicinity of Boston and
lost her identity with the colored race. How many others there must be
who know of similar instances! Grace King, in her "Story of New
Orleans," to which I have referred, in speaking of a Louisiana law which
required the public records, when dealing with persons of color, always
to specify the fact of color, in order, so far had the admixture of
races gone, to distinguish them from whites, says: "But the officers of
the law could be bribed, and the qualification once dropped acted,
inversely, as a patent of pure blood."
A certain well-known Shakspearean actress has a strain of Negro blood,
and a popular leading man under a well-known manager is similarly
gifted. It would be interesting to give their names, but would probably
only injure them. If they could themselves speak of their origin,
without any unpleasant consequences, it would be a handsome thing for
the colored race. That they do not is no reproach to them; they are
white to all intents and purposes, even by the curious laws of the
curious States from which they derived their origin, and are in all
conscience entitled to any advantage accompanying this status.
Anyone at all familiar with the hopes and aspirations of the colored
race, as expressed, for instance, in their prolific newspaper
literature, must have perceived the wonderful inspiration which they
have drawn from the career of a few distinguished Europeans of partial
Negro ancestry, who have felt no call, by way of social prejudice, to
deny or conceal their origin, or to refuse their sympathy to those who
need it so much. Pushkin, the Russian Shakspeare, had a black ancestor.
One of the chief editors of the London _Times_, who died a few years
ago, was a West Indian colored man, who had no interest in concealing
the fact. One of the generals of the British army is similarly favored,
although the fact is not often referred to. General Alfred Dodds, the
ranking general of the French army, now in command in China, is a
quadroon. The poet, Robert Browning, was of West Indian origin, and some
of his intimate personal friends maintained and proved to their own
satisfaction that he was partly of Negro descent. Mr. Browning always
said that he did not know; that there was no family tradition to that
effect; but if it could be demonstrated he would admit it freely enough,
if it would reflect any credit upon a race who needed it so badly.
The most conspicuous of the Eurafricans (to coin a word) were the Dumas
family, who were distinguished for three generations. The mulatto,
General Dumas, won distinction in the wars under the Revolution. His
son, the famous Alexandre Dumas _père_, has delighted several
generations with his novels, and founded a school of fiction. His son,
Alexandre _fils_, novelist and dramatist, was as supreme in his own line
as his father had been in his. Old Alexandre gives his pedigree in
detail in his memoirs; and the Negro origin of the family is set out in
every encyclopaedia. Nevertheless, in a literary magazine of recent
date, published in New York, it was gravely stated by a writer that
"there was a rumor, probably not well founded, that the author of
Monte-Cristo had a very distant strain of Negro blood." If this had been
written with reference to some living American of obscure origin, its
point might be appreciated; but such extreme delicacy in stating so
widely known a fact appeals to one's sense of humor.
These European gentlemen could be outspoken about their origin, because
it carried with it no social stigma or disability whatever. When such a
state of public opinion exists in the United States, there may be a
surprising revision of pedigrees!
A little incident that occurred not long ago near Boston will illustrate
the complexity of these race relations. Three light-colored men,
brothers, by the name, we will say, of Green, living in a Boston suburb,
married respectively a white, a brown and a black woman. The children
with the white mother became known as white, and associated with white
people. The others were frankly colored. By a not unlikely coincidence,
in the course of time the children of the three families found
themselves in the same public school. Curiously enough, one afternoon
the three sets of Green children--the white Greens, the brown Greens and
the black Greens--were detained after school, and were all directed to
report to a certain schoolroom, where they were assigned certain tasks
at the blackboards about the large room. Still more curiously, most of
the teachers of the school happened to have business in this particular
room on that particular afternoon, and all of them seemed greatly
interested in the Green children.
"Well, well, did you ever! Just think of it! And they are all first
cousins!" was remarked audibly.
The children were small, but they lived in Boston, and were, of course,
as became Boston children, preternaturally intelligent for their years.
They reported to their parents the incident and a number of remarks of a
similar tenor to the one above quoted. The result was a complaint to the
school authorities, and a reprimand to several teachers. A curious
feature of the affair lay in the source from which the complaint
emanated. One might suppose it to have come from the white Greens; but
no, they were willing that the incident should pass unnoticed and be
promptly forgotten; publicity would only advertise a fact which would
work to their social injury. The dark Greens rather enjoyed the affair;
they had nothing to lose; they had no objections to being known as the
cousins of the others, and experienced a certain not unnatural pleasure
in their discomfiture. The complaint came from the brown Greens. The
reader can figure out the psychology of it for himself.
A more certain proof of the fact that Negro blood is widely distributed
among the white people may be found in the laws and judicial decisions
of the various States. Laws, as a rule, are not made until demanded by a
sufficient number of specific cases to call for a general rule; and
judicial decisions of course are never announced except as the result of
litigation over contested facts. There is no better index of the
character and genius of a people than their laws.
In North Carolina, marriage between white persons and free persons of
color was lawful until 1830. By the Missouri code of 1855, the color
line was drawn at one-fourth of Negro blood, and persons of only
one-eighth were legally white. The same rule was laid down by the
Mississippi code of 1880. Under the old code noir of Louisiana, the
descendant of a white and a quadroon was white. Under these laws many
persons currently known as "colored," or, more recently as "Negro,"
would be legally white if they chose to claim and exercise the
privilege. In Ohio, before the Civil War, a person more than half-white
was legally entitled to all the rights of a white man. In South
Carolina, the line of cleavage was left somewhat indefinite; the color
line was drawn tentatively at one-fourth of Negro blood, but this was
not held conclusive.
"The term 'mulatto'," said the Supreme Court of that State in a reported
case, "is not invariably applicable to every admixture of African blood
with the European, nor is one having all the features of a white to be
ranked with the degraded class designated by the laws of the State as
persons of color, because of some remote taint of the Negro race.... The
question whether persons are colored or white, where color or feature is
doubtful, is for the jury to determine by reputation, by reception into
society, and by their exercises of the privileges of a white man, as
well as by admixture of blood."
It is well known that this liberality of view grew out of widespread
conditions in the State, which these decisions in their turn tended to
emphasize. They were probably due to the large preponderance of colored
people in the State, which rendered the whites the more willing to
augment their own number. There are many interesting color-line
decisions in the reports of the Southern courts, which space will not
permit the mention of.
In another article I shall consider certain conditions which retard the
development of the future American race type which I have suggested, as
well as certain other tendencies which are likely to promote it.
_Boston Evening Transcript_, August 25, 1900