CHAPTER I_Following the color line

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FOLLOWING THE COLOR LINE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

OUR NEW PROSPERITY

SEEN IN GERMANY

BOYS' BOOK OF INVENTIONS

SECOND BOYS' BOOK OF INVENTIONS

AND MANY STORIES

[Illustration: AN OLD BLACK "MAMMY" WITH WHITE CHILD]

Following the Color Line

AN ACCOUNT OF NEGRO CITIZENSHIP

IN THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

By RAY STANNARD BAKER

_ILLUSTRATED_

New York

Doubleday, Page & Company

1908

INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

PUBLISHED, OCTOBER, 1908

"I AM OBLIGED TO CONFESS THAT I DO NOT REGARD THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY AS

A MEANS OF PUTTING OFF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE TWO RACES IN THE SOUTHERN

STATES."

--_De Tocqueville, "Democracy in America"_ (1835)

PREFACE

My purpose in writing this book has been to make a clear statement of the

exact present conditions and relationships of the Negro in American life.

I am not vain enough to imagine that I have seen all the truth, nor that I

have always placed the proper emphasis upon the facts that I here present.

Every investigator necessarily has his personal equation or point of view.

The best he can do is to set down the truth as he sees it, without bating

a jot or adding a tittle, and this I have done.

I have endeavoured to see every problem, not as a Northerner, nor as a

Southerner, but as an American. And I have looked at the Negro, not merely

as a menial, as he is commonly regarded in the South, nor as a curiosity,

as he is often seen in the North, but as a plain human being, animated

with his own hopes, depressed by his own fears, meeting his own problems

with failure or success.

I have accepted no statement of fact, however generally made, until I was

fully persuaded from my own personal investigation that what I heard was

really a fact and not a rumour.

Wherever I have ventured upon conclusions, I claim for them neither

infallibility nor originality. They are offered frankly as my own latest

and clearest thoughts upon the various subjects discussed. If any man can

give me better evidence for the error of my conclusions than I have for

the truth of them I am prepared to go with him, and gladly, as far as he

can prove his way. And I have offered my conclusions, not in a spirit of

controversy, nor in behalf of any party or section of the country, but in

the hope that, by inspiring a broader outlook, they may lead, finally, to

other conclusions more nearly approximating the truth than mine.

While these chapters were being published in the _American Magazine_ (one

chapter, that on lynching, in _McClure's Magazine_) I received many

hundreds of letters from all parts of the country. I acknowledge them

gratefully. Many of them contained friendly criticisms, suggestions, and

corrections, which I have profited by in the revision of the chapters for

book publication. Especially have the letters from the South, describing

local conditions and expressing local points of view, been valuable to me.

I wish here, also, to thank the many men and women, South and North, white

and coloured, who have given me personal assistance in my inquiries.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PREFACE vii

PART I

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH

I. A Race Riot and After 3

II. Following the Colour Line in the South: A

Superficial View of Conditions 26

III. The Southern City Negro 45

IV. In the Black Belt: The Negro Farmer 66

V. Race Relationships in the Country Districts 87

PART II

THE NEGRO IN THE NORTH

VI. Following the Colour Line in the North 109

VII. The Negroes' Struggle for Survival in Northern

Cities 130

PART III

THE NEGRO IN THE NATION

VIII. The Mulatto: The Problem of Race Mixture 151

IX. Lynching, South and North 175

X. An Ostracised Race in Ferment: The Conflict of

Negro Parties and Negro Leaders over Methods

of Dealing with Their Own Problem 216

XI. The Negro in Politics 233

XII. The Black Man's Silent Power 252

XIII. The New Southern Statesmanship 271

XIV. What to Do About the Negro--A Few Conclusions 292

Index 311

ILLUSTRATIONS

An Old Black "Mammy" with White Child _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

Fac-similes of Certain Atlanta Newspapers of

September 22, 1906 7

James H. Wallace 10

R. R. Wright 10

H. O. Tanner 10

Rev. H. H. Proctor 10

Dr. W. F. Penn 10

George W. Cable 10

Showing how the Colour Line Was Drawn by the Saloons

at Atlanta, Georgia 35

Interior of a Negro Working-man's Home, Atlanta,

Georgia 46

Interior of a Negro Home of the Poorest Sort in

Indianapolis 46

Map Showing the Black Belt 66

Where White Mill Hands Live in Atlanta, Georgia 71

Where some of the Poorer Negroes Live in Atlanta,

Georgia 71

A "Poor White" Family 74

A Model Negro School 74

Old and New Cabins for Negro Tenants on the Brown

Plantation 85

Cane Syrup Kettle 92

Chain-gang Workers on the Roads 92

A Type of the Country Chain-gang Negro 99

A Negro Cabin with Evidences of Abundance 110

Off for the Cotton Fields 110

Ward in a Negro Hospital at Philadelphia 135

Studio of a Negro Sculptress 135

A Negro Magazine Editor's Office in Philadelphia 138

A "Broom Squad" of Negro Boys 138

A Type of Negro Girl Typesetter in Atlanta 164

Mulatto Girl Student 164

Miss Cecelia Johnson 164

Mrs. Booker T. Washington 173

Mrs. Robert H. Terrell 173

Negroes Lynched by Being Burned Alive at Statesboro,

Georgia 179

Negroes of the Criminal Type 179

Court House and Bank in the Public Square at

Huntsville, Alabama 190

Charles W. Chesnutt 215

Dr. Booker T. Washington 218

Dr. W. E. B. DuBois 225

Colonel James Lewis 240

W. T. Vernon 240

Ralph W. Tyler 240

J. Pope Brown 252

James K. Vardaman 252

Senator Jeff Davis 252

Governor Hoke Smith 252

Senator B. R. Tillman 252

Ex-Governor W. J. Northen 252

James H. Dillard 275

Edwin A. Alderman 275

A. M. Soule 275

D. F. Houston 275

George Foster Peabody 275

P. P. Claxton 275

S. C. Mitchell 286

Judge Emory Speer 286

Edgar Gardner Murphy 286

Dr. H. B. Frissell 286

R. C. Ogden 286

J. Y. Joyner 286

_PART ONE_

THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH

CHAPTER I

A RACE RIOT, AND AFTER

Upon the ocean, of antagonism between the white and Negro races in this

country, there arises occasionally a wave, stormy in its appearance, but

soon subsiding into quietude. Such a wave was the Atlanta riot. Its

ominous size, greater by far than the ordinary race disturbances which

express themselves in lynchings, alarmed the entire country and awakened

in the South a new sense of the dangers which threatened it. A description

of that spectacular though superficial disturbance, the disaster incident

to its fury, and the remarkable efforts at reconstruction will lead the

way naturally--as human nature is best interpreted in moments of

passion--to a clearer understanding, in future chapters, of the deep and

complex race feeling which exists in this country.

On the twenty-second day of September, 1906, Atlanta had become a

veritable social tinder-box. For months the relation of the races had been

growing more strained. The entire South had been sharply annoyed by a

shortage of labour accompanied by high wages and, paradoxically, by an

increasing number of idle Negroes. In Atlanta the lower class--the

"worthless Negro"--had been increasing in numbers: it showed itself too

evidently among the swarming saloons, dives, and "clubs" which a

complaisant city administration allowed to exist in the very heart of the

city. Crime had increased to an alarming extent; an insufficient and

ineffective police force seemed unable to cope with it. With a population

of 115,000 Atlanta had over 17,000 arrests in 1905; in 1906 the number

increased to 21,602. Atlanta had many more arrests than New Orleans with

nearly three times the population and twice as many Negroes; and almost

four times as many as Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a city nearly three times as

large. Race feeling had been sharpened through a long and bitter

political campaign, Negro disfranchisement being one of the chief issues

under discussion. An inflammatory play called "The Clansman," though

forbidden by public sentiment in many Southern cities, had been given in

Atlanta and other places with the effect of increasing the prejudice of

both races. Certain newspapers in Atlanta, taking advantage of popular

feeling, kept the race issue constantly agitated, emphasising Negro crimes

with startling headlines. One newspaper even recommended the formation of

organisations of citizens in imitation of the Ku Klux movement of

reconstruction days. In the clamour of this growing agitation, the voice

of the right-minded white people and industrious, self-respecting Negroes

was almost unheard. A few ministers of both races saw the impending storm

and sounded a warning--to no effect; and within the week before the riot

the citizens, the city administration and the courts all woke up together.

There were calls for mass-meetings, the police began to investigate the

conditions of the low saloons and dives, the country constabulary was

increased in numbers, the grand jury was called to meet in special session

on Monday the 24th.

_Prosperity and Lawlessness_

But the awakening of moral sentiment in the city, unfortunately, came too

late. Crime, made more lurid by agitation, had so kindled the fires of

hatred that they could not be extinguished by ordinary methods. The best

people of Atlanta were like the citizens of prosperous Northern cities,

too busy with money-making to pay attention to public affairs. For Atlanta

is growing rapidly. Its bank clearings jumped from ninety millions in 1900

to two hundred and twenty-two millions in 1906, its streets are well paved

and well lighted, its street-car service is good, its sky-scrapers are

comparable with the best in the North. In other words, it was

progressive--few cities I know of more so--but it had forgotten its public

duties.

Within a few months before the riot there had been a number of crimes of

worthless Negroes against white women. Leading Negroes, while not one of

them with whom I talked wished to protect any Negro who was really

guilty, asserted that the number of these crimes had been greatly

exaggerated and that in special instances the details had been

over-emphasised because the criminal was black; that they had been used to

further inflame race hatred. I had a personal investigation made of every

crime against a white woman committed in the few months before and after

the riot. Three, charged to white men, attracted comparatively little

attention in the newspapers, although one, the offence of a white man

named Turnadge, was shocking in its details. Of twelve such charges

against Negroes in the six months preceding the riot two were cases of

rape, horrible in their details, three were aggravated attempts at rape,

three may have been attempts, three were pure cases of fright on the part

of the white woman, and in one the white woman, first asserting that a

Negro had assaulted her, finally confessed attempted suicide.

The facts of two of these cases I will narrate--and without excuse for the

horror of the details. If we are to understand the true conditions in the

South, these things _must_ be told.

_Story of One Negro's Crime_

One of the cases was that of Mrs. Knowles Etheleen Kimmel, twenty-five

years old, wife of a farmer living near Atlanta. A mile beyond the end of

the street-car line stands a small green bungalow-like house in a lonely

spot near the edge of the pine woods. The Kimmels who lived there were not

Southerners by birth but of Pennsylvania Dutch stock. They had been in the

South four or five years, renting their lonesome farm, raising cotton and

corn and hopefully getting a little ahead. On the day before the riot a

strange rough-looking Negro called at the back door of the Kimmel home. He

wore a soldier's cast-off khaki uniform. He asked a foolish question and

went away. Mrs. Kimmel was worried and told her husband. He, too, was

worried--the fear of this crime is everywhere present in the South--and

when he went away in the afternoon he asked his nearest neighbour to look

out for the strange Negro. When he came back a few hours later, he found

fifty white men in his yard. He knew what had happened without being told:

his wife was under medical attendance in the house. She had been able to

give a clear description of the Negro: bloodhounds were brought, but the

pursuing white men had so obliterated the criminal's tracks that he could

not be traced. Through information given by a Negro a suspect was arrested

and nearly lynched before he could be brought to Mrs. Kimmel for

identification; when she saw him she said: "He is not the man." The real

criminal was never apprehended.

One day, weeks afterward, I found the husband working alone in his field;

his wife, to whom the surroundings had become unbearable, had gone away to

visit friends. He told me the story hesitatingly. His prospects, he said,

were ruined: his neighbours had been sympathetic but he could not continue

to live there with the feeling that they all knew. He was preparing to

give up his home and lose himself where people did not know his story. I

asked him if he favoured lynching, and his answer surprised me.

"I've thought about that," he said. "You see, I'm a Christian man, or I

try to be. My wife is a Christian woman. We've talked about it. What good

would it do? We should make criminals of ourselves, shouldn't we? No, let

the law take its course. When I came here, I tried to help the Negroes as

much as I could. But many of them won't work even when the wages are high:

they won't come when they agree to and when they get a few dollars ahead

they go down to the saloons in Atlanta. Everyone is troubled about getting

labour and everyone is afraid of prowling idle Negroes. Now, the thing has

come to me, and it's just about ruined my life."

When I came away the poor lonesome fellow followed me half-way up the

hill, asking: "Now, what would you do?"

One more case. One of the prominent florists in Atlanta is W. C. Lawrence.

He is an Englishman, whose home is in the outskirts of the city. On the

morning of August 20th his daughter Mabel, fourteen years old, and his

sister Ethel, twenty-five years old, a trained nurse who had recently come

from England, went out into the nearby woods to pick ferns. Being in broad

daylight and within sight of houses, they had no fear. Returning along an

old Confederate breastworks, they were met by a brutal-looking Negro with

a club in one hand and a stone in the other. He first knocked the little

girl down, then her aunt. When the child "came to" she found herself

partially bound with a rope. "Honey," said the Negro, "I want you to come

with me." With remarkable presence of mind the child said: "I can't, my

leg is broken," and she let it swing limp from the knee. Deceived, the

Negro went back to bind the aunt. Mabel, instantly untying the rope,

jumped up and ran for help. When he saw the child escaping the Negro ran

off.

[Illustration: FAC-SIMILES OF CERTAIN ATLANTA NEWSPAPERS OF SEPTEMBER 22,

1906

Showing the sensational news headings]

"When I got there," said Mr. Lawrence, "my sister was lying against the

bank, face down. The back of her head had been beaten bloody. The bridge

of her nose was cut open, one eye had been gouged out of its socket. My

daughter had three bad cuts on her head--thank God, nothing worse to

either. But my sister, who was just beginning her life, will be totally

blind in one eye, probably in both. Her life is ruined."

About a month later, through the information of a Negro, the criminal was

caught, identified by the Misses Lawrence, and sent to the penitentiary

for forty years (two cases), the limit of punishment for attempted

criminal assault.

In both of these cases arrests were made on the information of Negroes.

_Terror of Both White and Coloured People_

The effect of a few such crimes as these may be more easily imagined than

described. They produced a feeling of alarm which no one who has not lived

in such a community can in any wise appreciate. I was astonished in

travelling in the South to discover how widely prevalent this dread has

become. Many white women in Atlanta dare not leave their homes alone after

dark; many white men carry arms to protect themselves and their families.

And even these precautions do not always prevent attacks.

But this is not the whole story. Everywhere I went in Atlanta I heard of

the fear of the white people, but not much was said of the terror which

the Negroes also felt. And yet every Negro I met voiced in some way that

fear. It is difficult here in the North for us to understand what such a

condition means: a whole community namelessly afraid!

The better-class Negroes have two sources of fear: one of the criminals of

their own race--such attacks are rarely given much space in the

newspapers--and the other the fear of the white people. My very first

impression of what this fear of the Negroes might be came, curiously

enough, not from Negroes but from a fine white woman on whom I called

shortly after going South. She told this story:

"I had a really terrible experience one evening a few days ago. I was

walking along ---- Street when I saw a rather good-looking young Negro

come out of a hallway to the sidewalk. He was in a great hurry, and, in

turning suddenly, as a person sometimes will do, he accidentally brushed

my shoulder with his arm. He had not seen me before. When he turned and

found it was a white woman he had touched, such a look of abject terror

and fear came into his face as I hope never again to see on a human

countenance. He knew what it meant if I was frightened, called for help,

and accused him of insulting or attacking me. He stood still a moment,

then turned and ran down the street, dodging into the first alley he came

to. It shows, doesn't it, how little it might take to bring punishment

upon an innocent man!"

The next view I got was through the eyes of one of the able Negroes of the

South, Bishop Gaines of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He is now

an old man, but of imposing presence. Of wide attainments, he has

travelled in Europe, he owns much property, and rents houses to white

tenants. He told me of services he had held some time before in south

Georgia. Approaching the church one day through the trees, he suddenly

encountered a white woman carrying water from a spring. She dropped her

pail instantly, screamed, and ran up the path toward her house.

"If I had been some Negroes," said Bishop Gaines, "I should have turned

and fled in terror; the alarm would have been given, and it is not

unlikely that I should have had a posse of white men with bloodhounds on

my trail. If I had been caught what would my life have been worth? The

woman would have identified me--and what could I have said? But I did not

run. I stepped out in the path, held up one hand and said:

"'Don't worry, madam, I am Bishop Gaines, and I am holding services here

in this church.' So she stopped running and I apologised for having

startled her."

The Negro knows he has little chance to explain, if by accident or

ignorance he insults a white woman or offends a white man. An educated

Negro, one of the ablest of his race, telling me of how a friend of his

who by merest chance had provoked a number of half-drunken white men, had

been set upon and frightfully beaten, remarked: "It might have been me!"

Now, I am telling these things just as they look to the Negro; it is quite

as important, as a problem in human nature, to know how the Negro feels

and what he says, as it is to know how the white man feels.

_How the Newspapers Fomented the Riot_

On the afternoon of the riot the newspapers in flaming headlines

chronicled four assaults by Negroes on white women. I had a personal

investigation made of each of those cases. Two of them may have been

attempts at assaults, but two palpably were nothing more than fright on

the part of both the white woman and the Negro. As an instance, in one

case an elderly woman, Mrs. Martha Holcombe, going to close her blinds in

the evening, saw a Negro on the sidewalk. In a terrible fright she

screamed. The news was telephoned to the police station, but before the

officials could respond, Mrs. Holcombe telephoned them not to come out.

And yet this was one of the "assaults" chronicled in letters five inches

high in a newspaper extra.

And finally on this hot Saturday half-holiday, when the country people had

come in by hundreds, when everyone was out of doors, when the streets were

crowded, when the saloons had been filled since early morning with white

men and Negroes, both drinking--certain newspapers in Atlanta began to

print extras with big headings announcing new assaults on white women by

Negroes. The Atlanta News published five such extras, and newsboys cried

them through the city:

"Third assault."

"Fourth assault."

The whole city, already deeply agitated, was thrown into a veritable

state of panic. The news in the extras was taken as truthful; for the city

was not in a mood then for cool investigation. Calls began to come in from

every direction for police protection. A loafing Negro in a backyard, who

in ordinary times would not have been noticed, became an object of real

terror. The police force, too small at best, was thus distracted and

separated.

In Atlanta the proportion of men who go armed continually is very large;

the pawnshops of Decatur and Peters Streets, with windows like arsenals,

furnish the low class of Negroes and whites with cheap revolvers and

knives. Every possible element was here, then, for a murderous outbreak.

The good citizens, white and black, were far away in their homes; the bad

men had been drinking in the dives permitted to exist by the respectable

people of Atlanta; and here they were gathered, by night, in the heart of

the city.

_The Mob Gathers_

And, finally, a trivial incident fired the tinder. Fear and vengeance

generated it: it was marked at first by a sort of rough, half-drunken

horseplay, but when once blood was shed, the brute, which is none too well

controlled in the best city, came out and gorged itself. Once permit the

shackles of law and order to be cast off, and men, white or black,

Christian or pagan, revert to primordial savagery. There is no such thing

as an orderly mob.

Crime had been committed by Negroes, but this mob made no attempt to find

the criminals: it expressed its blind, unreasoning, uncontrolled race

hatred by attacking every man, woman, or boy it saw who had a black face.

A lame boot-black, an inoffensive, industrious Negro boy, at that moment

actually at work shining a man's shoes, was dragged out and cuffed, kicked

and beaten to death in the street. Another young Negro was chased and

stabbed to death with jack-knives in the most unspeakably horrible manner.

The mob entered barber shops where respectable Negro men were at work

shaving white customers, pulled them away from their chairs and beat them.

Cars were stopped and inoffensive Negroes were thrown through the windows

or dragged out and beaten. They did not stop with killing and maiming;

they broke into hardware stores and armed themselves, they demolished not

only Negro barber shops and restaurants, but they robbed stores kept by

white men.

[Illustration: JAMES H. WALLACE

"The asphalt workers are nearly all coloured. In New York ... the chosen

representative who sits with the Central Federated Union of the city is

James H. Wallace, a coloured man."]

[Illustration: R. R. WRIGHT

Organiser of the Negro State Fair in Georgia. Of full-blooded African

descent, his grandmother, who reared him, being an African Negro of the

Mandingo tribe.]

[Illustration: H. O. TANNER

One of whose pictures hangs in the Luxembourg; winner N. W. Harris prize

for the best American painting at Chicago.]

[Illustration: REV. H. H. PROCTOR

Pastor of the First Congregational Church (coloured), to which belong many

of the best coloured families of Atlanta.]

[Illustration: DR. W. F. PENN

This prosperous Negro physician's home in Atlanta was visited by the mob.]

[Illustration: GEORGE W. CABLE

Chairman of the coloured probation officers of the Juvenile Court,

Indianapolis.

Photograph by Sexton & Maxwell]

Of course the Mayor came out, and the police force and the fire

department, and finally the Governor ordered out the militia--to apply

that pound of cure which should have been an ounce of prevention.

It is highly significant of Southern conditions--which the North does not

understand--that the first instinct of thousands of Negroes in Atlanta,

when the riot broke out, was not to run away from the white people but to

run to them. The white man who takes the most radical position in

opposition to the Negro race will often be found loaning money to

individual Negroes, feeding them and their families from his kitchen, or

defending "his Negroes" in court or elsewhere. All of the more prominent

white citizens of Atlanta, during the riot, protected and fed many

coloured families who ran to them in their terror. Even Hoke Smith,

Governor-elect of Georgia, who is more distrusted by the Negroes as a race

probably than any other white man in Georgia, protected many Negroes in

his house during the disturbance. In many cases white friends armed

Negroes and told them to protect themselves. One widow I know of who had a

single black servant, placed a shot-gun in his hands and told him to fire

on any mob that tried to get him. She trusted him absolutely. Southern

people possess a real liking, wholly unknown in the North, for individual

Negroes whom they know.

So much for Saturday night. Sunday was quiescent but nervous--the

atmosphere full of the electricity of apprehension. Monday night, after a

day of alarm and of prowling crowds of men, which might at any moment

develop into mobs, the riot broke forth again--in a suburb of Atlanta

called Brownsville.

_Story of the Mob's Work in a Southern Negro Town_

When I went out to Brownsville, knowing of its bloody part in the riot, I

expected to find a typical Negro slum. I looked for squalour, ignorance,

vice. And I was surprised to find a large settlement of Negroes

practically every one of whom owned his own home, some of the houses being

as attractive without and as well furnished within as the ordinary homes

of middle-class white people. Near at hand, surrounded by beautiful

grounds, were two Negro colleges--Clark University and Gammon Theological

Seminary. The post-office was kept by a Negro. There were several stores

owned by Negroes. The school-house, though supplied with teachers by the

county, was built wholly with money personally contributed by the Negroes

of the neighbourhood, in order that there might be adequate educational

facilities for their children. They had three churches and not a saloon.

The residents were all of the industrious, property-owning sort, bearing

the best reputation among white people who knew them.

Think, then, of the situation in Brownsville during the riot in Atlanta.

All sorts of exaggerated rumours came from the city. _The Negroes of

Atlanta were being slaughtered wholesale._ A condition of panic fear

developed. Many of the people of the little town sought refuge in Gammon

Theological Seminary, where, packed together, they sat up all one night

praying. President Bowen did not have his clothes off for days, expecting

the mob every moment. He telephoned for police protection on Sunday, but

none was provided. Terror also existed among the families which remained

in Brownsville; most of the men were armed, and they had decided, should

the mob appear, to make a stand in defence of their homes.

At last, on Monday evening, just at dark, a squad of the county police,

led by Officer Poole, marched into the settlement at Brownsville. Here,

although there had been not the slightest sign of disturbance, they began

arresting Negroes for being armed. Several armed white citizens, who were

not officers, joined them.

Finally, looking up a little street they saw dimly in the next block a

group of Negro men. Part of the officers were left with the prisoners and

part went up the street. As they approached the group of Negroes, the

officers began firing: the Negroes responded. Officer Heard was shot dead;

another officer was wounded, and several Negroes were killed or injured.

The police went back to town with their prisoners. On the way two of the

Negroes in their charge were shot. A white man's wife, who saw the

outrage, being with child, dropped dead of fright.

The Negroes (all of this is now a matter of court record) declared that

they were expecting the mob; that the police--not mounted as usual, not

armed as usual, and accompanied by citizens--looked to them in the

darkness like a mob. In their fright the firing began.

The wildest reports, of course, were circulated. One sent broadcast was

that five hundred students of Clark University, all armed, had decoyed the

police in order to shoot them down. As a matter of fact, the university

did not open its fall session until October 3d, over a week later--and on

this night there were just two students on the grounds. The next morning

the police and the troops appeared and arrested a very large proportion of

the male inhabitants of the town. Police officers accompanied by white

citizens, entered one Negro home, where lay a man named Lewis, badly

wounded the night before. He was in bed; they opened his shirt, placed

their revolvers at his breast, and in cold blood shot him through the body

several times in the presence of his relatives. They left him for dead,

but he has since recovered.

President Bowen, of Gammon Theological Seminary, one of the able Negroes

in Atlanta, who had nothing whatever to do with the riot, was beaten over

the head by one of the police with his rifle-butt. The Negroes were all

disarmed, and about sixty of them were finally taken to Atlanta and locked

up charged with the murder of Officer Heard.

In the Brownsville riot four Negroes were killed. One was a decent,

industrious, though loud-talking, citizen named Fambro, who kept a small

grocery store and owned two houses besides, which he rented. He had a

comfortable home, a wife and one child. Another was an inoffensive Negro

named Wilder, seventy years old, a pensioner as a soldier of the Civil

War, who was well spoken of by all who knew him. He was found--not shot,

but murdered by a knife-cut in the abdomen--lying in a woodshed back of

Fambro's store. McGruder, a brick mason, who earned $4 a day at his trade,

and who had laid aside enough to earn his own home, was killed while under

arrest by the police; and Robinson, an industrious Negro carpenter, was

shot to death on his way to work Tuesday morning after the riot.

_Results of the Riot_

And after the riot in Brownsville, what? Here was a self-respecting

community of hard-working Negroes, disturbing no one, getting an honest

living. How did the riot affect them? Well, it demoralised them, set them

back for years. Not only were four men killed and several wounded, but

sixty of their citizens were in jail. Nearly every family had to go to the

lawyers, who would not take their cases without money in hand. Hence the

little homes had to be sold or mortgaged, or money borrowed in some other

way to defend those arrested, doctors' bills were to be paid, the

undertaker must be settled with. A riot is not over when the shooting

stops! And when the cases finally came up in court and all the evidence

was brought out every Negro went free; but two of the county policemen who

had taken part in the shooting, were punished. George Muse, one of the

foremost merchants of Atlanta, who was foreman of the jury which tried the

Brownsville Negroes, said:

"We think the Negroes were gathered just as white people were in other

parts of the town, for the purpose of defending their homes. We were

shocked by the conduct which the evidence showed some of the county police

had been guilty of."

After the riot was over many Negro families, terrified and feeling

themselves unprotected, sold out for what they could get--I heard a good

many pitiful stories of such sudden and costly sacrifices--and left the

country, some going to California, some to Northern cities. The best and

most enterprising are those who go: the worst remain. Not only did the

Negroes leave Brownsville, but they left the city itself in considerable

numbers. Labour was thus still scarcer and wages higher in Atlanta because

of the riot.

_Report of a White Committee on the Riot_

It is significant that not one of the Negroes killed and wounded in the

riot was of the criminal class. Every one was industrious, respectable

and law-abiding. A white committee, composed of W. G. Cooper, Secretary of

the Chamber of Commerce, and George Muse, a prominent merchant, backed by

the sober citizenship of the town, made an honest investigation and issued

a brave and truthful report. Here are a few of its conclusions:

1. Among the victims of the mob there was not a single vagrant.

2. They were earning wages in useful work up to the time of the riot.

3. They were supporting themselves and their families or dependent

relatives.

4. Most of the dead left small children and widows, mothers or

sisters with practically no means and very small earning capacity.

5. The wounded lost from one to eight weeks' time, at 50 cents to $4

a day each.

6. About seventy persons were wounded, and among these there was an

immense amount of suffering. In some cases it was prolonged and

excruciating pain.

7. Many of the wounded are disfigured, and several are permanently

disabled.

8. Most of them were in humble circumstances, but they were honest,

industrious and law-abiding citizens and useful members of society.

9. These statements are true of both white and coloured.

10. Of the wounded, ten are white and sixty are coloured. Of the

dead, two are white and ten are coloured; two female, and ten male.

This includes three killed at Brownsville.

11. Wild rumours of a larger number killed have no foundation that we

can discover. As the city was paying the funeral expenses of victims

and relief was given their families, they had every motive to make

known their loss. In one case relatives of a man killed in a broil

made fruitless efforts to secure relief.

12. Two persons reported as victims of the riot had no connection

with it. One, a Negro man, was killed in a broil over a crap game;

and another, a Negro woman, was killed by her paramour. Both

homicides occurred at some distance from the scene of the riot.

The men who made this brave report did not mince matters. They called

murder, murder; and robbery, robbery. Read this:

13. As twelve persons were killed and seventy were murderously

assaulted, and as, by all accounts, a number took part in each

assault, it is clear that several hundred murderers or would-be

murderers are at large in this community.

At first, after the riot, there was an inclination in some quarters to

say:

"Well, at any rate, the riot cleared the atmosphere. The Negroes have had

their lesson. There won't be any more trouble soon."

But read the sober conclusions in the Committee's report. The riot did not

prevent further crime.

14. Although less than three months have passed since the riot,

events have already demonstrated that the slaughter of the innocent

does not deter the criminal class from committing more crimes. Rapes

and robbery have been committed in the city during that time.

15. The slaughter of the innocent does drive away good citizens. From

one small neighbourhood twenty-five families have gone. A great many

of them were buying homes on the instalment plan.

16. The crimes of the mob include robbery as well as murder. In a

number of cases the property of innocent and unoffending people was

taken. Furniture was destroyed, small shops were looted, windows were

smashed, trunks were burst open, money was taken from the small

hoard, and articles of value were appropriated. In the commission of

these crimes the victims, both men and women, were treated with

unspeakable brutality.

17. As a result of four days of lawlessness there are in this glad

Christmas-time widows of both races mourning their husbands, and

husbands of both races mourning for their wives; there are orphan

children of both races who cry out in vain for faces they will see no

more; there are grown men of both races disabled for life, and all

this sorrow has come to people who are absolutely innocent of any

wrong-doing.

In trying to find out exactly the point of view and the feeling of the

Negroes--which is most important in any honest consideration of

conditions--I was handed the following letter, written by a young coloured

man, a former resident in Atlanta now a student in the North. He is

writing frankly to a friend. It is valuable as showing a _real_ point of

view--the bitterness, the hopelessness, the distrust.

"... It is possible that you have formed at least a good idea of how we

feel as the result of the horrible eruption in Georgia. I have not spoken

to a Caucasian on the subject since then. But, listen: How would you feel,

if with our history, there came a time when, after speeches and papers and

teachings you acquired property and were educated, and were a fairly good

man, it were impossible for you to walk the street (for whose maintenance

you were taxed) with your sister without being in mortal fear of death if

you resented any insult offered to her? How would you feel if you saw a

governor, a mayor, a sheriff, whom you could not oppose at the polls,

encourage by deed or word or both, a mob of 'best' and worst citizens to

slaughter your people in the streets and in their own homes and in their

places of business? Do you think that you could resist the same wrath that

caused God to slay the Philistines and the Russians to throw bombs? I can

resist it, but with each new outrage I am less able to resist it. And yet

if I gave way to my feelings I should become just like other men ... of

the mob! But I do not ... not quite, and I must hurry through the only

life I shall live on earth, tortured by these experiences and these

horrible impulses, with no hope of ever getting away from them. They are

ever present, like the just God, the devil, and my conscience.

"If there were no such thing as Christianity we should be hopeless."

Besides this effect on the Negroes the riot for a week or more practically

paralysed the city of Atlanta. Factories were closed, railroad cars were

left unloaded in the yards, the street-car system was crippled, and there

was no cab-service (cab-drivers being Negroes), hundreds of servants

deserted their places, the bank clearings slumped by hundreds of thousands

of dollars, the state fair, then just opening, was a failure. It was,

indeed, weeks before confidence was fully restored and the city returned

to its normal condition.

_Who Made Up the Mob?_

One more point I wish to make before taking up the extraordinary

reconstructive work which followed the riot. I have not spoken of the men

who made up the mob. We know the dangerous Negro class--after all a very

small proportion of the entire Negro population. There is a corresponding

low class of whites quite as illiterate as the Negroes.

The poor white hates the Negro, and the Negro dislikes the poor white. It

is in these lower strata of society, where the races rub together in

unclean streets, that the fire is generated. Decatur and Peters streets,

with their swarming saloons and dives, furnish the point of contact. I

talked with many people who saw the mobs at different times, and the

universal testimony was that it was made up largely of boys and young men,

and of the low criminal and semi-criminal class. The ignorant Negro and

the uneducated white; there lies the trouble!

This idea that 115,000 people of Atlanta--respectable, law-abiding, good

citizens, white and black--should be disgraced before the world by a few

hundred criminals was what aroused the strong, honest citizenship of

Atlanta to vigorous action.

The riot brought out all that was worst in human nature; the

reconstruction brought out all that was best and finest.

Almost the first act of the authorities was to close every saloon in the

city, afterward revoking all the licences--and for two weeks no liquor was

sold in the city. The police, at first accused of not having done their

best in dealing with the mob, arrested a good many white rioters, and

Judge Broyles, to show that the authorities had no sympathy with such

disturbers of the peace, sent every man brought before him, twenty-four in

all, to the chain gang for the largest possible sentence, without the

alternative of a fine. The grand jury met and boldly denounced the mob;

its report said in part:

"That the sensationalism of the afternoon papers in the presentation of

the criminal news to the public prior to the riots of Saturday night,

especially in the case of the Atlanta _News_, deserves our severest

condemnation."

But the most important and far-reaching effect of the riot was in arousing

the strong men of the city. It struck at the pride of those men of the

South, it struck at their sense of law and order, it struck at their

business interests. On Sunday following the first riot a number of

prominent men gathered at the Piedmont Hotel, and had a brief discussion;

but it was not until Tuesday afternoon, when the worst of the news from

Brownsville had come in, that they gathered in the court-house with the

serious intent of stopping the riot at all costs. Most of the prominent

men of Atlanta were present. Sam D. Jones, president of the Chamber of

Commerce, presided. One of the first speeches was made by Charles T.

Hopkins, who had been the leading spirit in the meetings on Sunday and

Monday. He expressed with eloquence the humiliation which Atlanta felt.

"Saturday evening at eight o'clock," he said, "the credit of Atlanta was

good for any number of millions of dollars in New York or Boston or any

financial centre; to-day we couldn't borrow fifty cents. The reputation we

have been building up so arduously for years has been swept away in two

short hours. Not by men who have made and make Atlanta, not by men who

represent the character and strength of our city, but by hoodlums,

understrappers and white criminals. Innocent Negro men have been struck

down for no crime whatever, while peacefully enjoying the life and liberty

guaranteed to every American citizen. The Negro race is a child race. We

are a strong race, their guardians. We have boasted of our superiority and

we have now sunk to this level--we have shed the blood of our helpless

wards. Christianity and humanity demand that we treat the Negro fairly. He

is here, and here to stay. He only knows how to do those things we teach

him to do; it is our Christian duty to protect him. I for one, and I

believe I voice the best sentiment of this city, am willing to lay down my

life rather than to have the scenes of the last few days repeated."

_The Plea of a Negro Physician_

In the midst of the meeting a coloured man arose rather doubtfully. He

was, however, promptly recognized as Dr. W. F. Penn, one of the foremost

coloured physicians of Atlanta, a graduate of Yale College--a man of much

influence among his people. He said that he had come to ask the protection

of the white men of Atlanta. He said that on the day before a mob had come

to his home; that ten white men, some of whose families he knew and had

treated professionally, had been sent into his house to look for concealed

arms; that his little girl had run to them, one after another, and begged

them not to shoot her father; that his life and the lives of his family

had afterward been threatened, so that he had had to leave his home; that

he had been saved from a gathering mob by a white man in an automobile.

"What shall we do?" he asked the meeting--and those who heard his speech

said that the silence was profound. "We have been disarmed: how shall we

protect our lives and property? If living a sober, industrious, upright

life, accumulating property and educating his children as best he knows

how, is not the standard by which a coloured man can live and be protected

in the South, what is to become of him? If the kind of life I have lived

isn't the kind you want, shall I leave and go North?

"When we aspire to be decent and industrious we are told that we are bad

examples to other coloured men. Tell us what your standards are for

coloured men. What are the requirements under which we may live and be

protected? What shall we do?"

When he had finished, Colonel A. J. McBride, a real estate owner and a

Confederate veteran, arose and said with much feeling that he knew Dr.

Penn and that he was a good man, and that Atlanta meant to protect such

men.

"If necessary," said Colonel McBride, "I will go out and sit on his porch

with a rifle."

Such was the spirit of this remarkable meeting. Mr. Hopkins proposed that

the white people of the city express their deep regret for the riot and

show their sympathy for the Negroes who had suffered at the hands of the

mob by raising a fund of money for their assistance. Then and there $4,423

was subscribed, to which the city afterward added $1,000.

But this was not all. These men, once thoroughly aroused, began looking to

the future, to find some new way of preventing the recurrence of such

disturbances.

A committee of ten, appointed to work with the public officials in

restoring order and confidence, consisted of some of the foremost citizens

of Atlanta:

Charles T. Hopkins, Sam D. Jones, President of the Chamber of Commerce; L.

Z. Rosser, president of the Board of Education; J. W. English, president

of the Fourth National Bank; Forrest Adair, a leading real estate owner;

Captain W. D. Ellis, a prominent lawyer; A. B. Steele, a wealthy lumber

merchant; M. L. Collier, a railroad man; John E. Murphy, capitalist; and

H. Y. McCord, president of a wholesale grocery house.

One of the first and most unexpected things that this committee did was to

send for several of the leading Negro citizens of Atlanta: the Rev. H. H.

Proctor, B. J. Davis, editor of the _Independent_, a Negro journal, the

Rev. E. P. Johnson, the Rev. E. R. Carter, the Rev. J. A. Rush, and Bishop

Holsey.

_Committees of the Two Races Meet_

This was the first important occasion in the South upon which an attempt

was made to get the two races together for any serious consideration of

their differences.

They held a meeting. The white men asked the Negroes, "What shall we do to

relieve the irritation?" The Negroes said that they thought that coloured

men were treated with unnecessary roughness on the street-cars and by the

police. The white members of the committee admitted that this was so and

promised to take the matter up immediately with the street-car company and

the police department, which was done. The discussion was harmonious.

After the meeting Mr. Hopkins said:

"I believe those Negroes understood the situation better than we did. I

was astonished at their intelligence and diplomacy. They never referred to

the riot: they were looking to the future. I didn't know that there were

such Negroes in Atlanta."

Out of this beginning grew the Atlanta Civic League. Knowing that race

prejudice was strong, Mr. Hopkins sent out 2,000 cards, inviting the most

prominent men in the city to become members. To his surprise 1,500

immediately accepted, only two refused, and those anonymously; 500 men not

formally invited were also taken as members. The league thus had the great

body of the best citizens of Atlanta behind it. At the same time Mr.

Proctor and his committee of Negroes had organised a Coloured Co-operative

Civic League, which secured a membership of 1,500 of the best coloured men

in the city. A small committee of Negroes met a small committee of the

white league.

Fear was expressed that there would be another riotous outbreak during the

Christmas holidays, and the league proceeded with vigour to prevent it.

New policemen were put on, and the committee worked with Judge Broyles and

Judge Roan in issuing statements warning the people against lawlessness.

They secured an agreement among the newspapers not to publish sensational

news; the sheriff agreed, if necessary, to swear in some of the best men

in town as extra deputies; they asked that saloons be closed at four

o'clock on Christmas Eve; and through the Negro committee, they brought

influence to bear to keep all coloured people off the streets. When two

county police got drunk at Brownsville and threatened Mrs. Fambro, the

wife of one of the Negroes killed in the riot, a member of the committee,

Mr. Seeley, publisher of the _Georgian_, informed the sheriff and sent

his automobile to Brownsville, where the policemen were arrested and

afterward discharged from the force. As a result, it was the quietest

Christmas Atlanta had had in years.

But the most important of all the work done, because of the spectacular

interest it aroused, was the defence of a Negro charged with an assault

upon a white woman. It is an extraordinary and dramatic story.

_Does a Riot Prevent Further Crime?_

Although many people said that the riot would prevent any more Negro

crime, several attacks on white women occurred within a few weeks

afterward. On November 13th Mrs. J. D. Camp, living in the suburbs of

Atlanta, was attacked in broad daylight in her home and brutally assaulted

by a Negro, who afterward robbed the house and escaped. Though the crime

was treated with great moderation by the newspapers, public feeling was

intense. A Negro was arrested, charged with the crime. Mr. Hopkins and his

associates believed that the best way to secure justice and prevent

lynchings was to have a prompt trial. Accordingly, they held a conference

with Judge Roan, as a result of which three lawyers in the city, Mr.

Hopkins, L. Z. Rosser, and J. E. McClelland, were appointed to defend the

accused Negro, serving without pay. A trial-jury, composed of twelve

citizens, among the most prominent in Atlanta, was called--one of the

ablest juries ever drawn in Georgia. There was a determination to have

immediate and complete justice.

The Negro arrested, one Joe Glenn, had been completely identified by Mrs.

Camp as her assailant. Although having no doubt of his guilt, the

attorneys went at the case thoroughly. The first thing they did was to

call in two members of the Negro committee, Mr. Davis and Mr. Carter.

These men went to the jail and talked with Glenn, and afterward they all

visited the scene of the crime. They found that Glenn, who was a man fifty

years old with grandchildren, bore an excellent reputation. He rented a

small farm about two miles from Mrs. Camp's home and had some property; he

was sober and industrious. After making a thorough examination and

getting all the evidence they could, they came back to Atlanta, persuaded,

in spite of the fact that the Negro had been positively identified by Mrs.

Camp--which in these cases is usually considered conclusive--that Glenn

was not guilty. It was a most dramatic trial; at first, when Mrs. Camp was

placed on the stand she failed to identify Glenn; afterward, reversing

herself she broke forth into a passionate denunciation of him. But after

the evidence was all in, the jury retired, and reported two minutes later

with a verdict "Not guilty." Remarkably enough, just before the trial was

over the police informed the court that another Negro, named Will Johnson,

answering Mrs. Camp's description, had been arrested, charged with the

crime. He was subsequently identified by Mrs. Camp.

Without this energetic defence, an innocent, industrious Negro would

certainly have been hanged--or if the mob had been ahead of the police, as

it usually is, he would have been lynched.

But what of Glenn afterward?

When the jury left the box Mr. Hopkins turned to Glenn and said:

"Well, Joe, what do you think of the case?"

He replied: "Boss I 'spec's they will hang me, for that lady said I was

the man, but they won't hang me, will they, 'fore I sees my wife and

chilluns again?"

He was kept in the tower that night and the following day for protection

against a possible lynching. Plans were made by his attorneys to send him

secretly out of the city to the home of a farmer in Alabama, whom they

could trust with the story. Glenn's wife was brought to visit the jail and

Glenn was told of the plans for his safety, and instructed to change his

name and keep quiet until the feeling of the community could be

ascertained.

A ticket was purchased by his attorneys, with a new suit of clothes, hat,

and shoes. He was taken out of jail about midnight under a strong guard,

and safely placed on the train. From that day to this he has never been

heard of. He did not go to Alabama. The poor creature, with the instinct

of a hunted animal, did not dare after all to trust the white men who had

befriended him. He is a fugitive, away from his family, not daring,

though innocent, to return to his home.

_Other Reconstruction Movements_

Another strong movement also sprung into existence. Its inspiration was

religious. Ministers wrote a series of letters to the Atlanta

_Constitution_. Clark Howell, its editor, responded with an editorial

entitled "Shall We Blaze the Trail?" W. J. Northen, Ex-Governor of

Georgia, and one of the most highly respected men in the state, took up

the work, asking himself, as he says:

"What am I to do, who have to pray every night?"

He answered that question by calling a meeting at the Coloured Y. M. C. A.

building, where some twenty white men met an equal number of Negroes,

mostly preachers, and held a prayer meeting.

The South still looks to its ministers for leadership--and they really

lead. The sermons of men like the Rev. John E. White, the Rev. C. B.

Wilmer, the Rev. W. W. Landrum, who have spoken with power and ability

against lawlessness and injustice to the Negro, have had a large influence

in the reconstruction movement.

Ex-Governor Northen travelled through the state of Georgia, made a notable

series of speeches, urged the establishment of law and order

organisations, and met support wherever he went. He talked against mob-law

and lynching in plain language. Here are some of the things he said:

"We shall never settle this until we give absolute justice to the Negro.

We are not now doing justice to the Negro in Georgia.

"Get into contact with the best Negroes; there are plenty of good Negroes

in Georgia. What we must do is to get the good white folks to leaven the

bad white folks and the good Negroes to leaven the bad Negroes."

"There must be no aristocracy of crime: a white fiend is as much to be

dreaded as a black brute."

These movements did not cover specifically, it will be observed, the

enormously difficult problems of politics, and the political relationships

of the races, nor the subject of Negro education, nor the most

exasperating of all the provocatives--those problems which arise from

human contact in street cars, railroad trains, and in life generally.

That they had to meet the greatest difficulties in their work is shown by

such an editorial as the following, published December 12th by the Atlanta

_Evening News_:

No law of God or man can hold back the vengeance of our white men

upon such a criminal [the Negro who attacks a white woman]. If

necessary, we will double and treble and quadruple the law of Moses,

and hang off-hand the criminal, or failing to find that a remedy, we

will hang two, three, or four of the Negroes nearest to the crime,

until the crime is no longer done or feared in all this Southern land

that we inhabit and love.

On January 31, 1907, the newspaper which published this editorial went

into the hands of a receiver--its failure being due largely to the strong

public sentiment against its course before and during the riot.

After the excitement of the riot and the evil results which followed it

began to disappear it was natural that the reconstruction movements should

quiet down. Ex-Governor Northen continued his work for many months and is

indeed, still continuing it: and there is no doubt that his campaigns have

had a wide influence. The feeling that the saloons and dives of Atlanta

were partly responsible for the riot was a powerful factor in the

anti-saloon campaign which took place in 1907 and resulted in closing

every saloon in the state of Georgia on January 1, 1908. And the riot and

the revulsion which followed it will combine to make a recurrence of such

a disturbance next to impossible.