FOLLOWING THE COLOUR LINE IN THE SOUTH
Before entering upon a discussion of the more serious aspects of the Negro
question in the South, it may prove illuminating if I set down, briefly,
some of the more superficial evidences of colour line distinctions in the
South as they impress the investigator. The present chapter consists of a
series of sketches from my note-books giving the earliest and freshest
impressions of my studies in the South.
When I first went South I expected to find people talking about the Negro,
but I was not at all prepared to find the subject occupying such an
overshadowing place in Southern affairs. In the North we have nothing at
all like it; no question which so touches every act of life, in which
everyone, white or black, is so profoundly interested. In the North we are
mildly concerned in many things; the South is overwhelmingly concerned in
this one thing.
And this is not surprising, for the Negro in the South is both the labour
problem and the servant question; he is preeminently the political issue,
and his place, socially, is of daily and hourly discussion. A Negro
minister I met told me a story of a boy who went as a sort of butler's
assistant in the home of a prominent family in Atlanta. His people were
naturally curious about what went on in the white man's house. One day
they asked him:
"What do they talk about when they're eating?"
The boy thought a moment; then he said:
"Mostly they discusses us culled folks."
_What Negroes Talk About_
The same consuming interest exists among the Negroes. A very large part of
their conversation deals with the race question. I had been at the
Piedmont Hotel only a day or two when my Negro waiter began to take
especially good care of me. He flecked off imaginary crumbs and gave me
unnecessary spoons. Finally, when no one was at hand, he leaned over and
said:
"I understand you're down here to study the Negro problem."
"Yes," I said, a good deal surprised. "How did you know it?"
"Well, sir," he replied, "we've got ways of knowing things."
He told me that the Negroes had been much disturbed ever since the riot
and that he knew many of them who wanted to go North. "The South," he
said, "is getting to be too dangerous for coloured people." His language
and pronunciation were surprisingly good. I found that he was a college
student, and that he expected to study for the ministry.
"Do you talk much about these things among yourselves?" I asked.
"We don't talk about much else," he said. "It's sort of life and death
with us."
Another curious thing happened not long afterward. I was lunching with
several fine Southern men, and they talked, as usual, with the greatest
freedom in the full hearing of the Negro waiters. Somehow, I could not
help watching to see if the Negroes took any notice of what was said. I
wondered if they were sensitive. Finally, I put the question to one of my
friends:
"Oh," he said, "we never mind them; they don't care."
One of the waiters instantly spoke up:
"No, don't mind me; I'm only a block of wood."
_First Views of the Negroes_
I set out from the hotel on the morning of my arrival to trace the colour
line as it appears, outwardly, in the life of such a town.
Atlanta is a singularly attractive place, as bright and new as any Western
city. Sherman left it in ashes at the close of the war; the old buildings
and narrow streets were swept away and a new city was built, which is now
growing in a manner not short of astonishing. It has 115,000 to 125,000
inhabitants, about a third of whom are Negroes, living in more or less
detached quarters in various parts of the city, and giving an
individuality to the life interesting enough to the unfamiliar Northerner.
A great many of them are always on the streets far better dressed and
better-appearing than I had expected to see--having in mind, perhaps, the
tattered country specimens of the penny postal cards. Crowds of Negroes
were at work mending the pavement, for the Italian and Slav have not yet
appeared in Atlanta, nor indeed to any extent anywhere in the South. I
stopped to watch a group of them. A good deal of conversation was going
on, here and there a Negro would laugh with great good humour, and several
times I heard a snatch of a song: much jollier workers than our grim
foreigners, but evidently not working so hard. A fire had been built to
heat some of the tools, and a black circle of Negroes were gathered around
it like flies around a drop of molasses and they were all talking while
they warmed their shins--evidently having plenty of leisure.
As I continued down the street, I found that all the drivers of waggons
and cabs were Negroes; I saw Negro newsboys, Negro porters, Negro barbers,
and it being a bright day, many of them were in the street--on the sunny
side.
I commented that evening to some Southern people I met, on the impression,
almost of jollity, given by the Negro workers I had seen. One of the older
ladies made what seemed to me a very significant remark.
"They don't sing as they used to," she said. "You should have known the
old darkeys of the plantation. Every year, it seems to me, they have been
losing more and more of their care-free good humour. I sometimes feel that
I don't know them any more. Since the riot they have grown so glum and
serious that I'm free to say I'm scared of them!"
One of my early errands that morning led me into several of the great new
office buildings, which bear testimony to the extraordinary progress of
the city. And here I found one of the first evidences of the colour line
for which I was looking. In both buildings, I found a separate elevator
for coloured people. In one building, signs were placed reading:
FOR WHITES ONLY
In another I copied this sign:
THIS CAR FOR COLOURED PASSENGERS,
FREIGHT, EXPRESS AND PACKAGES
Curiously enough, as giving an interesting point of view, an intelligent
Negro with whom I was talking a few days later asked me:
"Have you seen the elevator sign in the Century Building?"
I said I had.
"How would you like to be classed with 'freight, express and packages'?"
I found that no Negro ever went into an elevator devoted to white people,
but that white people often rode in cars set apart for coloured people. In
some cases the car for Negroes is operated by a white man, and in other
cases, all the elevators in a building are operated by coloured men. This
is one of the curious points of industrial contact in the South which
somewhat surprise the Northern visitor. In the North a white workman will
often refuse to work with a Negro; in the South, while the social
prejudice is strong, Negroes and whites work together side by side in many
kinds of employment.
I had an illustration in point not long afterward. Passing the post
office, I saw several mail-carriers coming out, some white, some black,
talking and laughing, with no evidence, at first, of the existence of any
colour line. Interested to see what the real condition was, I went in and
made inquiries. A most interesting and significant condition developed. I
found that the postmaster, who is a wise man, sent Negro carriers up
Peachtree and other fashionable streets, occupied by wealthy white people,
while white carriers were assigned to beats in the mill districts and
other parts of town inhabited by the poorer classes of white people.
"You see," said my informant, "the Peachtree people know how to treat
Negroes. They really prefer a Negro carrier to a white one; it's natural
for them to have a Negro doing such service. But if we sent Negro carriers
down into the mill district they might get their heads knocked off."
Then he made a philosophical observation:
"If we had only the best class of white folks down here and the
industrious Negroes, there wouldn't be any trouble."
_The Jim Crow Car_
One of the points in which I was especially interested was the "Jim Crow"
regulations, that is, the system of separation of the races in street cars
and railroad trains. Next to the question of Negro suffrage, I think the
people of the North have heard more of the Jim Crow legislation than of
anything else connected with the Negro problem. The street car is an
excellent place for observing the points of human contact between the
races, betraying as it does every shade of feeling upon the part of both.
In almost no other relationship do the races come together, physically, on
anything like a common footing. In their homes and in ordinary employment,
they meet as master and servant; but in the street cars they touch as free
citizens, each paying for the right to ride, the white not in a place of
command, the Negro without an obligation of servitude. Street-car
relationships are, therefore, symbolic of the new conditions. A few years
ago the Negro came and went in the street cars in most cities and sat
where he pleased, but gradually Jim Crow laws or local regulations were
passed, forcing him into certain seats at the back of the car.
While I was in Atlanta, the newspapers reported two significant new
developments in the policy of separation. In Savannah Jim Crow ordinances
have gone into effect for the first time, causing violent protestations on
the part of the Negroes and a refusal by many of them to use the cars at
all. Montgomery, Ala., about the same time, went one step further and
demanded, not separate seats in the same car, but entirely separate cars
for whites and blacks. There could be no better visible evidence of the
increasing separation of the races, and of the determination of the white
man to make the Negro "keep his place," than the evolution of the Jim Crow
regulations.
I was curious to see how the system worked out in Atlanta. Over the door
of each car, I found this sign:
WHITE PEOPLE WILL SEAT FROM FRONT OF CAR TOWARD
THE BACK AND COLORED PEOPLE FROM REAR TOWARD FRONT
Sure enough, I found the white people in front and the Negroes behind. As
the sign indicates, there is no definite line of division between the
white seats and the black seats, as in many other Southern cities. This
very absence of a clear demarcation is significant of many relationships
in the South. The colour line is drawn, but neither race knows just where
it is. Indeed, it can hardly be definitely drawn in many relationships,
because it is constantly changing. This uncertainty is a fertile source of
friction and bitterness. The very first time I was on a car in Atlanta, I
saw the conductor--all conductors are white--ask a Negro woman to get up
and take a seat farther back in order to make a place for a white man. I
have also seen white men requested to leave the Negro section of the car.
At one time, when I was on a car the conductor shouted: "Heh, you nigger,
get back there," which the Negro, who had taken a seat too far forward,
proceeded hastily to do.
No other one point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed
among the Negroes as the Jim Crow car. I don't know how many Negroes
replied to my question: "What is the chief cause of friction down here?"
with a complaint of their treatment on street cars and in railroad trains.
_Why the Negro Objects to the Jim Crow Car_
Fundamentally, of course they object to any separation which gives them
inferior accommodations. This point of view--and I am trying to set down
every point of view, both coloured and white, exactly as I find it, is
expressed in many ways.
"We pay first-class fare," said one of the leading Negroes in Atlanta,
"exactly as the white man does, but we don't get first-class service. I
say it isn't fair."
In answer to this complaint, the white man says: "The Negro is inferior,
he must be made to keep his place. Give him a chance and he assumes social
equality, and that will lead to an effort at intermarriage and
amalgamation of the races. The Anglo-Saxon will never stand for that."
One of the first complaints made by the Negroes after the riot, was of
rough and unfair treatment on the street cars.
The committee admitted that the Negroes were not always well treated on
the cars, and promised to improve conditions. Charles T. Hopkins, a leader
in the Civic League and one of the prominent lawyers of the city, told me
that he believed the Negroes should be given their definite seats in every
car; he said that he personally made it a practice to stand up rather than
to take any one of the four back seats, which he considered as belonging
to the Negroes. Two other leading men, on a different occasion, told me
the same thing.
One result of the friction over the Jim Crow regulations is that many
Negroes ride on the cars as little as possible. One prominent Negro I met
said he never entered a car, and that he had many friends who pursued the
same policy; he said that Negro street car excursions, familiar a few
years ago, had entirely ceased. It is significant of the feeling that one
of the features of the Atlanta riot was an attack on the street cars in
which all Negroes were driven out of their seats. One Negro woman was
pushed through an open window, and, after falling to the pavement, she was
dragged by the leg across the sidewalk and thrown through a shop window.
In another case when the mob stopped a car the motorman, instead of
protecting his passengers, went inside and beat down a Negro with his
brass control-lever.
_Story of an Encounter on a Street Car_
I heard innumerable stories from both white people and Negroes of
encounters in the street cars. Dr. W. F. Penn, one of the foremost Negro
physicians of the city, himself partly white, a graduate of Yale College,
told me of one occasion in which he entered a car and found there Mrs.
Crogman, wife of the coloured president of Clark University. Mrs. Crogman
is a mulatto so light of complexion as to be practically undistinguishable
from white people. Dr. Penn, who knew her well, sat down beside her and
began talking. A white man who occupied a seat in front with his wife
turned and said:
"Here, you nigger, get out of that seat. What do you mean by sitting down
with a white woman?"
Dr. Penn replied somewhat angrily:
"It's come to a pretty pass when a coloured man cannot sit with a woman of
his own race in his own part of the car."
The white man turned to his wife and said:
"Here, take these bundles. I'm going to thrash that nigger."
In half a minute the car was in an uproar, the two men struggling.
Fortunately the conductor and motorman were quickly at hand, and Dr. Penn
slipped off the car.
Conditions on the railroad trains, while not resulting so often in
personal encounters, are also the cause of constant irritation. When I
came South, I took particular pains to observe the arrangement on the
trains. In some cases Negroes are given entire cars at the front of the
train, at other times they occupy the rear end of a combination coach and
baggage car, which is used in the North as a smoking compartment. The
complaint here is that, while the Negro is required to pay first-class
fare, he is provided with second-class accommodations. Well-to-do Negroes
who can afford to travel, also complain that they are not permitted to
engage sleeping-car berths. Booker T. Washington usually takes a
compartment where he is entirely cut off from the white passengers. Some
other Negroes do the same thing, although they are often refused even this
expensive privilege. Railroad officials with whom I talked, and it is
important to hear what they say, said that it was not only a question of
public opinion--which was absolutely opposed to any intermingling of the
races in the cars--but that Negro travel in most places was small compared
with white travel, that the ordinary Negro was unclean and careless, and
that it was impractical to furnish them the same accommodations, even
though it did come hard on a few educated Negroes. They said that when
there was a delegation of Negroes, enough to fill an entire sleeping car,
they could always get accommodations. All of which gives a glimpse of the
enormous difficulties accompanying the separation of the races in the
South.
Another interesting point significant of tendencies came early to my
attention. They had recently finished at Atlanta one of the finest
railroad stations in this country. The ordinary depot in the South has two
waiting-rooms of about the same size, one for whites and one for Negroes.
But when this new station was built the whole front was given up to white
people, and the Negroes were assigned a side entrance, and a small
waiting-room. Prominent coloured men regarded it as a new evidence of the
crowding out of the Negro, the further attempt to give him unequal
accommodations, to handicap him in his struggle for survival. A delegation
was sent to the railroad people to protest, but to no purpose. Result:
further bitterness. There are in the station two lunch-rooms, one for
whites, one for Negroes.
A leading coloured man said to me:
"No Negro goes to the lunch-room in the station who can help it. We don't
like the way we have been treated."
_A Negro Boycott_
Of course this was an unusually intelligent coloured man, and he spoke for
his own sort; how far the same feeling of a race consciousness strong
enough to carry out such a boycott as this--and it is like the boycott of
a labour union--actuates the masses of ignorant Negroes is a question upon
which I hope to get more light as I proceed. I have already heard more
than one coloured leader complain that Negroes do not stand together. And
a white planter, whom I met in the hotel, said a significant thing along
this very line:
"If once the Negroes got together and saved their money, they'd soon own
the country, but they can't do it, and they never will."
After I had begun to trace the colour line I found evidences of it
everywhere--literally in every department of life. In the theatres,
Negroes never sit downstairs, but the galleries are black with them. Of
course, white hotels and restaurants are entirely barred to Negroes, with
the result that coloured people have their own eating and sleeping places,
many of them inexpressibly dilapidated and unclean. "Sleepers wanted" is a
familiar sign in Atlanta, giving notice of places where for a few cents a
Negro can find a bed or a mattress on the floor, often in a room where
there are many other sleepers, sometimes both men and women in the same
room crowded together in a manner both unsanitary and immoral. No good
public accommodations exist for the educated or well-to-do Negro in
Atlanta, although other cities are developing good Negro hotels. Indeed
one cannot long remain in the South without being impressed with extreme
difficulties which beset the exceptional coloured man.
[Illustration: COMPANION PICTURES
Showing how the colour line was drawn by the saloons at Atlanta, Georgia.
Many of the saloons for Negroes were kept by foreigners, usually Jews.]
In slavery time many Negroes attended white churches and Negro children
were often taught by white women. Now, a Negro is never (or very rarely)
seen in a white man's church. Once since I have been in the South, I saw a
very old Negro woman, some much-loved mammy, perhaps--sitting down in
front near the pulpit, but that is the only exception to the rule that has
come to my attention. Negroes are not wanted in white churches.
Consequently the coloured people have some sixty churches of their own in
Atlanta. Of course, the schools are separate, and have been ever since the
Civil War.
In one of the parks of Atlanta I saw this sign:
NO NEGROES ALLOWED IN THIS PARK
_Colour Line in the Public Library_
A story significant of the growing separation of the races is told about
the public library at Atlanta, which no Negro is permitted to enter.
Carnegie gave the money for building it, and when the question came up as
to the support of it by the city, the inevitable colour question arose.
Leading Negroes asserted that their people should be allowed admittance,
that they needed such an educational advantage even more than white
people, and that they were to be taxed their share--even though it was
small--for buying the books and maintaining the building. They did not win
their point of course, but Mr. Carnegie proposed a solution of the
difficulty by offering more money to build a Negro branch library,
provided the city would give the land and provide for its support. The
city said to the Negroes:
"You contribute the land and we will support the library."
Influential Negroes at once arranged for buying and contributing a site
for the library. Then the question of control arose. The Negroes thought
that inasmuch as they gave the land and the building was to be used
entirely for coloured people, they should have one or two members on the
board of control. This the city officials, who had charge of the matter,
would not hear of; result, the Negroes would not give the land, and the
branch library has never been built.
Right in this connection: while I was in Atlanta, the Art School, which in
the past has often used Negro models, decided to draw the colour line
there, too, and no longer employ them.
Formerly Negroes and white men went to the same saloons, and drank at the
same bars, as they do now, I am told, in some parts of the South. In a few
instances, in Atlanta, there were Negro saloon-keepers, and many Negro
bartenders. The first step toward separation was to divide the bar, the
upper end for white men, the lower for Negroes. After the riot, by a new
ordinance no saloon was permitted to serve both white and coloured men.
Consequently, going along Decatur Street, one sees the saloons designated
by conspicuous signs:[1]
"WHITES ONLY" "COLOURED ONLY"
And when the Negro suffers the ordinary consequences of a prolonged visit
to Decatur Street, and finds himself in the city prison, he is separated
there, too, from the whites. And afterward in court, if he comes to trial,
two Bibles are provided; he may take his oath on one; the other is for the
white man. When he dies he is buried in a separate cemetery.
One curious and enlightening example of the infinite ramifications of the
colour line was given me by Mr. Logan, secretary of the Atlanta Associated
Charities, which is supported by voluntary contributions. One day, after
the riot, a subscriber called Mr. Logan on the telephone and said: "Do you
help Negroes in your society?"
"Why, yes, occasionally," said Mr. Logan.
"What do you do that for?"
"A Negro gets hungry and cold like anybody else," answered Mr. Logan.
"Well, you can strike my name from your subscription list. I won't give
any of my money to a society that helps Negroes."
_Psychology of the South_
Now, this sounds rather brutal, but behind it lies the peculiar psychology
of the South. This very man who refused to contribute to the associated
charities, may have fed several Negroes from his kitchen and had a number
of Negro pensioners who came to him regularly for help. It was simply
amazing to me, considering the bitterness of racial feeling, to see how
lavish many white families are in giving food, clothing, and money to
individual Negroes whom they know. A Negro cook often supports her whole
family, including a lazy husband, on what she gets daily from the white
man's kitchen. In some old families the "basket habit" of the Negroes is
taken for granted; in the newer ones, it is, significantly, beginning to
be called stealing, showing that the old order is passing and that the
Negro is being held more and more strictly to account, not as a dependent
vassal, but as a moral being, who must rest upon his own responsibility.
And often a Negro of the old sort will literally bulldoze his hereditary
white protector into the loan of quarters and half dollars, which both
know will never be paid back.
Mr. Brittain, superintendent of schools in Fulton County, gave me an
incident in point. A big Negro with whom he was wholly unacquainted came
to his office one day, and demanded--he did not ask, but demanded--a job.
"What's your name?" asked the superintendent.
"Marion Luther Brittain," was the reply.
"That sounds familiar," said Mr. Brittain--it being, indeed, his own name.
"Yas, sah. Ah'm the son of yo' ol' mammy."
In short, Marion Luther had grown up on the old plantation; it was the
spirit of the hereditary vassal demanding the protection and support of
the hereditary baron, and he got it, of course.
The Negro who makes his appeal on the basis of this old relationship
finds no more indulgent or generous friend than the Southern white man,
indulgent to the point of excusing thievery and other petty offences, but
the moment he assumes or demands any other relationship or stands up as an
independent citizen, the white men--at least some white men--turn upon him
with the fiercest hostility. The incident of the associated charities may
now be understood. It was not necessarily cruelty to a cold or hungry
Negro that inspired the demand of the irate subscriber, but the feeling
that the associated charities helped Negroes and whites on the same basis,
as men; that, therefore, it encouraged "social equality," and that,
therefore, it was to be stopped.
Most of the examples so far given are along the line of social contact,
where, of course, the repulsion is intense. Negroes and whites can go to
different schools, churches, and saloons, and sit in different street
cars, and still live pretty comfortably. But the longer I remain in the
South, the more clearly I come to understand how wide and deep, in other,
less easily discernible ways, the chasm between the races is becoming.
_The New Racial Consciousness Among Negroes_
One of the natural and inevitable results of the effort of the white man
to set the Negro off, as a race, by himself, is to awaken in him a new
consciousness--a sort of racial consciousness. It drives the Negroes
together for defence and offence. Many able Negroes, some largely of white
blood, cut off from all opportunity of success in the greater life of the
white man, become of necessity leaders of their own people. And one of
their chief efforts consists in urging Negroes to work together and to
stand together. In this they are only developing the instinct of defence
against the white man which has always been latent in the race. This
instinct exhibits itself in the way in which the mass of Negroes sometimes
refuse to turn over a criminal of their colour to white justice; it is
like the instinctive clannishness of the Highland Scotch or the peasant
Irish. I don't know how many Southern people have told me in different
ways of how extremely difficult it is to get at the real feeling of a
Negro, to make him tell what goes on in his clubs and churches or in his
innumerable societies.
A Southern woman told me of a cook who had been in her service for
nineteen years. The whole family really loved the old servant: her
mistress made her a confidant, in the way of the old South, in the most
intimate private and family matters, the daughters told her their love
affairs; they all petted her and even submitted to many small tyrannies
upon her part.
"But do you know," said my hostess, "Susie never tells us a thing about
her life or her friends, and we couldn't, if we tried, make her tell what
goes on in the society she belongs to."
The Negro has long been defensively secretive. Slavery made him that. In
the past, the instinct was passive and defensive; but with growing
education and intelligent leadership it is rapidly becoming conscious,
self-directive and offensive. And right there, it seems to me, lies the
great cause of the increased strain in the South.
Let me illustrate. In the People's Tabernacle in Atlanta, where thousands
of Negroes meet every Sunday, I saw this sign in huge letters:
FOR PHOTOGRAPHS, GO TO AUBURN PHOTO
GALLERY OPERATED BY COLOURED MEN
The old-fashioned Negro preferred to go to the white man for everything;
he didn't trust his own people; the new Negro, with growing race
consciousness, and feeling that the white man is against him, urges his
friends to patronise Negro doctors and dentists, and to trade with Negro
storekeepers. The extent to which this movement has gone was one of the
most surprising things that I, as an unfamiliar Northerner, found in
Atlanta. In other words, the struggle of the races is becoming more and
more rapidly economic.
_Story of a Negro Shoe-store_
One day, walking in Broad Street, I passed a Negro shoe-store. I did not
know that there was such a thing in the country. I went in to make
inquiries. It was neat, well kept, and evidently prosperous. I found that
it was owned by a stock company, organised and controlled wholly by
Negroes; the manager was a brisk young mulatto named Harper, a graduate of
Atlanta University. I found him dictating to a Negro girl stenographer.
There were two reasons, he said, why the store had been opened; one was
because the promoters thought it a good business opportunity, and the
other was because many Negroes of the better class felt that they did not
get fair treatment at white stores. At some places--not all, he said--when
a Negro woman went to buy a pair of shoes, the clerk would hand them to
her without offering to help her try them on; and a Negro was always kept
waiting until all the white people in the store had been served. Since the
new business was opened, he said, it had attracted much of the Negro
trade; all the leaders advising their people to patronise him. I was much
interested to find out how this young man looked upon the race question.
His first answer struck me forcibly, for it was the universal and typical
answer of the business man the world over whether white, yellow, or black:
"All I want," he said, "is to be protected and let alone, so that I can
build up this business."
"What do you mean by protection?" I asked.
"Well, justice between the races. That doesn't mean social equality. We
have a society of our own, and that is all we want. If he can have justice
in the courts, and fair protection, we can learn to compete with the white
stores and get along all right."
Such an enterprise as this indicates the new, economic separation between
the races.
"Here is business," says the Negro, "which I am going to do."
Considering the fact that only a few years ago, the Negro did no business
at all, and had no professional men, it is really surprising to a
Northerner to see what progress he has made. One of the first lines he
took up was--not unnaturally--the undertaking business. Some of the most
prosperous Negroes in every Southern city are undertakers, doing work
exclusively, of course, for coloured people. Other early enterprises,
growing naturally out of a history of personal service, were barbering
and tailoring. Atlanta has many small Negro tailor and clothes-cleaning
shops.
_Wealthiest Negro in Atlanta_
The wealthiest Negro in Atlanta, A. F. Herndon, operates the largest
barber shop in the city; he is the president of a Negro insurance company
(of which there are four in the city) and he owns and rents some fifty
dwelling houses. He is said to be worth $80,000, all made, of course,
since slavery.
Another occupation developing naturally from the industrial training of
slavery was the business of the building contractor. Several such Negroes,
notably Alexander Hamilton, do a considerable business in Atlanta, and
have made money. They are employed by white men, and they hire for their
jobs both white and Negro workmen.
Small groceries and other stores are of later appearance; I saw at least a
score of them in various parts of Atlanta. For the most part they are very
small, many are exceedingly dirty and ill-kept; usually much poorer than
corresponding places kept by foreigners, indiscriminately called "Dagoes"
down here, who are in reality mostly Russian Jews and Greeks. But there
are a few Negro grocery stores in Atlanta which are highly creditable.
Other business enterprises include restaurants (for Negroes), printing
establishments, two newspapers, and several drug-stores. In other words,
the Negro is rapidly building up his own business enterprises, tending to
make himself independent as a race.
The appearance of Negro drug-stores was the natural result of the
increasing practice of Negro doctors and dentists. Time was when all
Negroes preferred to go to white practitioners, but since educated
coloured doctors became common, they have taken a very large
part--practically all, I am told--of the practice in Atlanta. Several of
them have had degrees from Northern universities, two from Yale; and one
of them, at least, has some little practice among white people. The
doctors are leaders among their people. Naturally they give prescriptions
to be filled by druggists of their own race; hence the growth of the drug
business among Negroes everywhere in the South. The first store to be
established in Atlanta occupies an old wooden building in Auburn Avenue.
It is operated by Moses Amos, a mulatto, and enjoys, I understand, a high
degree of prosperity. I visited it. A post-office occupies one corner of
the room; and it is a familiar gathering place for coloured men. Moses
Amos told me his story, and I found it so interesting, and so significant
of the way in which Negro business men have come up, that I am setting it
down briefly here.
_Rise of a Negro Druggist_
"I never shall forget," he said, "my first day in the drug business. It
was in 1876. I remember I was with a crowd of boys in Peachtree Street,
where Dr. Huss, a Southern white man, kept a drug-store. The old doctor
was sitting out in front smoking his pipe. He called one little Negro
after another, and finally chose me. He said:
"'I want you to live with me, work in the store, and look after my horse.'
"He sent me to his house and told me to tell his wife to give me some
breakfast, and I certainly delivered the first message correctly. His
wife, who was a noble lady, not only fed me, but made me take a bath in a
sure enough porcelain tub, the first I had ever seen. When I went back to
the store, I was so regenerated that the doctor had to adjust his
spectacles before he knew me. He said to me:
"'You can wash bottles, put up castor oil, salts and turpentine, sell
anything you _know_ and put the money in the drawer.'
"He showed me how to work the keys of the cash drawer. 'I am going to
trust you,' he said. 'Don't steal from me; if you want anything ask for
it, and you can have it. And don't lie; I hate a liar. A boy who will lie
will steal, too.'
"I remained with Dr. Huss thirteen years. He sent me to school and paid my
tuition out of his own pocket; he trusted me fully, often leaving me in
charge of his business for weeks at a time. When he died I formed a
partnership with Dr. Butler, Dr. Slater, and others, and bought the store.
Our business grew and prospered, so that within a few years we had a stock
worth $3,000, and cash of $800. That made us ambitious. We bought land,
built a new store, and went into debt to do it. We didn't know much about
business--that's the Negro's chief trouble--and we lost trade by changing
our location, so that in spite of all we could do, we failed and lost
everything, though we finally paid our creditors every cent. After many
trials we started again in 1896 in our present store; to-day we are doing
a good business; we can get all the credit we want from wholesale houses,
we employ six clerks, and pay good interest on the capital invested."
_Greatest Difficulties Met by Negro Business Men_
I asked him what was the greatest difficulty he had to meet. He said it
was the credit system; the fact that many Negroes have not learned
financial responsibility. Once, he said, he nearly stopped business on
this account.
"I remember," he said, "the last time we got into trouble. We needed $400
to pay our bills. I picked out some of our best customers and gave them a
heart-to-heart talk and told them what trouble we were in. They all
promised to pay; but on the day set for payment, out of $1,680 which they
owed us we collected just $8.25. After that experience we came down to a
cash basis. We trust no one, and since then we have been doing well."
He said he thought the best opportunity for Negro development was in the
South where he had his whole race behind him. He said he had once been
tempted to go North looking for an opening.
"How did you make out?" I asked.
"Well, I'll tell you," he said, "when I got there I wanted a shave; I
walked the streets two hours visiting barber shops, and they all turned me
away with some excuse. I finally had to buy a razor and shave myself! That
was just a sample. I came home disgusted and decided to fight it out down
here where I understood conditions."
Of course only a comparatively few Negroes are able to get ahead in
business. They must depend almost exclusively on the trade of their own
race, and they must meet the highly organised competition of white men.
But it is certainly significant that even a few are able to make progress
along these unfamiliar lines. Many Southern men I met had little or no
idea of the remarkable extent of this advancement among the better class
of Negroes. Here is a strange thing. I don't know how many Southern men
have prefaced their talks with me with words something like this:
"You can't expect to know the Negro after a short visit. You must live
down here like we do. Now, I know the Negroes like a book. I was brought
up with them. I know what they'll do and what they won't do. I have had
Negroes in my house all my life."
But curiously enough I found that these men rarely knew anything about the
better class of Negroes--those who were in business, or in independent
occupations, those who owned their own homes. They _did_ come into contact
with the servant Negro, the field hand, the common labourer, who make up,
of course, the great mass of the race. On the other hand, the best class
of Negroes did not know the higher class of white people, and based their
suspicion and hatred upon the acts of the poorer sort of whites with whom
they naturally came into contact. The best elements of the two races are
as far apart as though they lived in different continents; and that is one
of the chief causes of the growing danger of the Southern situation. It is
a striking fact that one of the first--almost instinctive--efforts at
reconstruction after the Atlanta riot was to bring the best elements of
both races together, so that they might, by becoming acquainted and
gaining confidence in each other, allay suspicion and bring influence to
bear upon the lawless elements of both white people and coloured.
Many Southerners look back wistfully to the faithful, simple, ignorant,
obedient, cheerful, old plantation Negro and deplore his disappearance.
They want the New South, but the old Negro. That Negro is disappearing
forever along with the old feudalism and the old-time exclusively
agricultural life.
A new Negro is not less inevitable than a new white man and a new South.
And the new Negro, as my clever friend says, doesn't laugh as much as the
old one. It is grim business he is in, this being free, this new, fierce
struggle in the open competitive field for the daily loaf. Many go down to
vagrancy and crime in that struggle; a few will rise. The more rapid the
progress (with the trained white man setting the pace), the more frightful
the mortality.