WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE NEGRO--A FEW CONCLUSIONS
The deeper one delves into the problem of race, the humbler he becomes
concerning his own views. Studying a black man, he discovers that he must
study human nature. The best he can do, then, is to present his latest and
clearest thought, knowing that newer light and deeper knowledge may modify
his conclusions. It is out of such expressions of individual thought (no
one man has or can have all the truth) and the kindly discussion which
follows it (and why shouldn't it be kindly?) that arises finally that
power of social action which we call public opinion. Together--not
otherwise--we may approach the truth.
The world to-day is just beginning to meet new phases of the problem of
race difference. Improved transportation and communication are yearly
making the earth smaller. As Americans we are being brought every year
into closer contact with black and yellow people. We are already disturbed
not only by a Negro race problem, but on our Pacific coast and in Hawaii
we have a Japanese and Chinese problem. In the Philippine Islands we have
a tangle of race problems in comparison with which our Southern situation
seems simple. Other nations are facing complexities equally various and
difficult. England's problems in both South Africa and India are largely
racial. The great issue in Australia, where Chinese labour has become a
political question, is expressed in the campaign slogan: "A white
Australia."
_What Is the Race Problem?_
Essentially, then, what is the race problem?
The race problem is the problem of living with human beings who are not
like us, whether they are, in our estimation, our "superiors" or
"inferiors," whether they have kinky hair or pigtails, whether they are
slant-eyed, hook-nosed, or thick-lipped. In its essence it is the same
problem, magnified, which besets every neighbourhood, even every family.
In our own country we have 10,000,000 Negroes distributed among 75,000,000
white people. They did not come here to invade us, or because they wanted
to come. We brought them by force, and at a fearful and cruel sacrifice of
life. We brought them, not to do them good, but selfishly, that they might
be compelled to do the hard work and let us live lazily, eat richly, sleep
softly. We treated them as beasts of burden. I say "we," for the North
owned slaves, too, at first, and emancipated them (by selling them to the
South) because it did not pay to keep them. Nor was the anti-slavery
sentiment peculiar to the North; voices were raised against the
institution of slavery by many Southern statesmen from Jefferson down--men
who knew by familiar observation of the evil of slavery, especially for
the white man.
_Differences Between Southern and Northern Attitudes Toward the Race
Problem_
But differences are apparent in the outlook of the South and North which
must be pointed out before we can arrive at any general conclusions. By
understanding the reasons for race feeling we shall be the better able to
judge of the remedies proposed.
In the first place, the South is still clouded with bitter memories of the
war, and especially of the Reconstruction period. The North cannot
understand how deep and real this feeling is, how it has been warped into
the souls of even the third generation. The North, victorious, forgot; but
the South, broken and defeated, remembered. Until I had been a good while
in the South and talked with many people I had no idea what a social
cataclysm like the Civil War really meant to those who are defeated, how
long it echoes in the hearts of men and women. The Negro has indeed
suffered--suffered on his way upward; but the white man, with his higher
cultivation, his keener sensibilities, his memories of a departed glory,
has suffered far more. I have tried, as I have listened to the stories of
struggle which only the South knows, to put myself in the place of these
Anglo-Saxon men and women, and I think I can understand a little at least
of what it must have meant to meet defeat, loss of relatives and friends,
grinding poverty, the chaos of reconstruction--and after all that to have,
always at elbow-touch, the unconscious cause of all their trouble, the
millions of inert, largely helpless Negroes who, imbued with a sharp sense
of their rights, are attaining only slowly a corresponding appreciation of
their duties and responsibilities.
The ruin of the war left the South poor, and it has provided itself slowly
with educational advantages. It is a long step behind the North in the
average of education among white people not less than coloured. But more
than all else, perhaps, the South is in the throes of vast economic
changes. It is in the transition stage between the old wasteful,
semi-feudal civilisation and the sharp new city and industrial life. It is
suffering the common pains of readjustment; and, being hurt, it is not
wholly conscious of the real reason.
For example, many of the troubles between the races attributed to the
perversity of the Negro are often only the common difficulties which arise
out of the relationship of employer and employee. In other words,
difficulties in the South are often attributed to the race problem which
in the North we know as the labour problem. For the South even yet has not
fully established itself on the wage system. Payment of Negroes in the
country is still often a matter of old clothes, baskets from the white
man's kitchen or store, with occasionally a little money, which is often
looked upon as an indulgence rather than a right. No race ever yet has
sprung directly from slavery into the freedom of a full-fledged wage
system, no matter what the laws were. It is not insignificant of progress
that the "basket habit" is coming to be looked upon as thievery, organised
charity in the cities is taking the place of indiscriminate personal
gifts, wages are more regularly paid and measure more accurately the value
of the service rendered.
But the relationships between the races still smack in no small degree,
especially in matters of social contact (which are always the last to
change), of the old feudal character; they are personal and sentimental.
They express themselves in the personal liking for the old "mammies," in
the personal contempt for the "smart Negro."
A large part of the South still believes that the Negro was created to
serve the white man, and for no other purpose. This is especially the
belief in the conservative country districts.
"If these Negroes become doctors and merchants or buy their own farms," a
Southern woman said to me as a clinching argument against Negro education,
"what shall we do for servants?"
Another reason for the feeling in the South against the Negro is that the
South has never had any other labouring class of people (to speak of) with
which to compare the Negro. All the employers have been white; most of the
workers have been black. The North, on the other hand, has had a constant
procession of ignorant working people of various sorts. The North is
familiar with the progress of alien people, wherein the workingman of
to-day becomes the employer of to-morrow--which has not happened in the
South.
_Confusion of Labour and Race Problems_
An illustration of the confusion between the race problem and the labour
problem is presented in certain Southern neighbourhoods by the influx of
European immigrants. Because the Italian does the work of the Negro, a
tendency exists to treat him like a Negro. In Louisiana on the sugar
plantations Italian white women sometimes work under Negro foremen and no
objection is made. A movement is actually under way in Mississippi to keep
the children of Italian immigrants out of the white schools. In not a few
instances white workmen have been held in peonage like Negroes; several
such cases are now pending in the courts. Here is a dispatch showing how
new Italian immigrants were treated in one part of Mississippi--only the
Italians, unlike the Negroes, have an active government behind them:
MOBILE, ALA., October 3.--The Italian Government has taken notice of
the situation at Sumrall, Miss., where the native whites are
endeavouring to keep Italian children out of the schools and where a
leader of the Italians was taken to the woods and whipped.
The Italian Consul at New Orleans, Count G. Morroni, reached Mobile
this afternoon and began an investigation of the situation. He to-day
heard the story of Frank Seaglioni, the leader of the Italian colony
at Sumrall, who was a few days ago decoyed from his home at night
with a bogus message from New Orleans and unmercifully whipped by a
mob of white men.
A decided tendency also exists to charge up to the Negro, because he is a
Negro, all the crimes which are commonly committed by any ignorant,
neglected, poverty-stricken people. Only last summer we had in New York
what the newspaper reporters called a "crime wave." The crime in that case
was what is designated in the South as the "usual crime" (offences against
women) for which Negroes are lynched. But in New York not a Negro was
implicated.
I was struck while in Philadelphia by a presentment of a grand jury in
Judge Kinsey's court upon the subject of a "crime wave" which read thus:
In closing our duties as jurymen, we wish to call to the attention of
this court the large proportion of cases presented to us for action
wherein the offences were charged to either persons of foreign birth
or those of the coloured race, and we feel that some measures should
be taken to the end that our city should be relieved of both the
burden of the undesirable alien and the irresponsible coloured
person.
Here, it will be seen, the "undesirable alien" and "irresponsible coloured
person" are classed together, although it is significant of the greater
prejudice against the coloured man that the newspaper report of the action
of the grand jury should be headed "Negro Crime Abnormal," without
referring to the alien at all. When I inquired at the prosecutor's office
about the presentiment, I was told:
"Oh, the dagoes are just as bad as the Negroes."
And both are bad, not because they are Negroes or Italians, but because
they are ignorant, neglected, poverty-stricken.
Thus in the dust and confusion of the vast readjustments now going on in
the South, the discomfort of which both races feel but neither quite
understands, we have the white man blindly blaming the Negro and the Negro
blindly hating the white. When they both understand that many of the
troubles they are having are only the common gall-spots of the new
industrial harness there will be a better living together.
I do not wish to imply, of course, that an industrial age or the wage
system furnishes an ideal condition for race relationships; for in the
North the Negro's struggle for survival in the competitive field is
accompanied, as I have shown elsewhere, by the severest suffering. The
condition of Negroes in Indianapolis, New York, and Philadelphia is in
some ways worse than it is anywhere in the South. But, say what we will,
the wage system is one step upward from the old feudalism. The Negro is
treated less like a slave and more like a man in the North. It is for this
reason that Negroes, no matter what their difficulties of making a living
in the North, rarely wish to go back to the South. And as the South
develops industrially it will approximate more nearly to Northern
conditions. In Southern cities to-day, because of industrial development,
the Negro is treated more like a man than he is in the country; and this
is one reason why Negroes crowd into the cities and can rarely be
persuaded to go back into the country--unless they can own their own land.
But the South is rapidly shaking off the remnants of the old feudalism.
Development of mines and forests, the extension of manufacturing, the
introduction of European immigrants, the inflow of white Northerners,
better schools, more railroads and telephones, are all helping to bring
the South up to the economic standard of the North. There will be a
further break-up of baronial tenant farming, the plantation store will
disappear, the ruinous credit system will be abolished, and there will be
a widespread appearance of independent farm-owners, both white and black.
This will all tend to remove the personal and sentimental attitude of the
old Southern life; the Negro will of necessity be judged more and more as
a man, not as a slave or dependent. In short, the country, South and
North, will become economically more homogeneous.
But even when the South reaches the industrial development of the North
the Negro problem will not be solved; it is certainly not solved in New
York or Philadelphia, where industrial development has reached its highest
form. The prejudice in those cities, as I have shown, has been growing
more intense as Negro population increased. What, then, will happen?
_Two Elements in Every Race Problem_
Two elements appear in every race problem: the first, race prejudice--the
repulsion of the unlike; second, economic or competitive jealousy. Both
operate, for example, in the case of the Irishman or Italian, but with the
Negro and Chinaman race prejudice is greater because the difference is
greater. The difficulty of the Negro in this country is the colour of his
skin, the symbol of his difference. In China the difficulty of the white
trader is his whiteness, his difference. Race lines, in short, are drawn
by white men, not because the other race is inferior (the Japanese and
Chinese are in many ways our superiors), nor because of criminality
(certain classes of foreigners are more criminal in our large cities than
the Negroes), nor because of laziness, but because of discernible physical
differences--black skin, almond eyes, pigtails, hook noses, a peculiar
bodily odour, or small stature. That dislike of a different people is more
or less instinctive in all men.
A tendency has existed on the part of Northern students who have no
first-hand knowledge of the masses of Negroes to underestimate the force
of race repulsion; on the other hand, the Southern student who is
confronted with the Negroes themselves is likely to overestimate racial
repulsion and underestimate economic competition as a cause of the
difficulty. The profoundest question, indeed, is to decide how much of the
so-called problem is due to race repulsion and how much to economic
competition.
This leads us to the most sinister phase of the race problem. As I have
shown, we have the two elements of conflict: instinctive race repulsion
and competitive jealousy. What is easier for the race in power, the white
race in this country (the yellow race in Asia) than to play upon race
instinct in order to serve selfish ends? How shrewdly the labour union,
whether in San Francisco or Atlanta, seizes upon that race hatred to keep
the black or yellow man out of the union and thereby control all the work
for its members! Race prejudice played upon becomes a tool in clinching
the power of the labour monopoly.
How the politician in the South excites race hatred in order that he may
be elected to office! Vardaman governed because he could make men hate one
another more bitterly than his opponent. The Rev. Thomas Dixon has
appealed in his books and plays to the same passion.
In several places in this country Negroes have been driven out by
mobs--not because they were criminal, or because they were bad citizens,
but because they were going into the grocery and drug business, they were
becoming doctors, dentists, and the like, and taking away the trade of
their white competitors. So the stores and restaurants of highly
efficient Japanese were wrecked in San Francisco.
What is easier or cruder to use as a weapon for crushing a rival than the
instinctive dislike of man for man? And that usage is not peculiar to the
white man. In Africa the black man wastes no time with the
different-looking white man; he kills him, if he dares, on the spot. And
how ably the Chinaman has employed the instinctive hatred of his
countrymen for "foreign devils" in order to fight American trade and
traders! We hate the Chinaman and drive him out, and he hates us and
drives us out.
_Chief Danger of Race Prejudice_
And this is one of the dangers of the race problem in this country--the
fostering of such an instinct to make money or to get political office.
Such a basis of personal prosperty is all the more dangerous because the
white man is in undisputed power in this country; the Negro has no great
navy behind him; he is like a child in the house of a harsh parent. All
that stands between him and destruction is the ethical sense of the white
man. Will the white man's sense of justice and virtue be robust enough to
cause him to withhold the hand of unlimited power? Will he see, as Booker
T. Washington says, that if he keeps the Negro in the gutter he must stay
there with him? The white man and his civilisation, not alone the Negro,
will rise or fall by that ethical test.
The Negro, on his part, as I have shown repeatedly in former chapters,
employs the same methods as the white man, for Negro nature is not
different from human nature. He argues: "The white man hates you; hate
him. Trade with Negro storekeepers; employ Negro doctors; don't go to
white dentists and lawyers."
Out of this condition proceed two tendencies. The first is the natural
result of mutual fear and suspicion, and that is, a rapid flying apart of
the races. All through my former chapters I have been showing how the
Negroes are being segregated. So are the Chinese segregated, and the
blacks in South Africa, and certain classes in India. Parts of the South
are growing blacker. Negroes crowd into "coloured quarters" in the
cities. More and more they are becoming a people wholly apart--separate in
their churches, separate in their schools, separate in cars, conveyances,
hotels, restaurants, with separate professional men. In short, we discover
tendencies in this country toward the development of a caste system.
Now, one of the most striking facts in our recent history is the progress
of the former slave. And this finds its world parallel in the progress of
people whom the vainglorious Anglo-Saxon once despised: the Japanese,
Chinese, and East Indians. In forty years the Negro has advanced a
distance that would have been surprising in almost any race. In the bare
accomplishments--area of land owned, crops raised, professional men
supported, business enterprises conducted, books and poetry written, music
composed, pictures painted--the slaves of forty years ago have made the
most astonishing progress. This leads to the second tendency, which
proceeds slowly out of the growing conviction that hatred and suspicion
and fear as motives in either national or individual progress will not
work; that there must be some other way for different people to work side
by side in peace and justice. And thus we discover a tendency toward a
friendly living together under the new relationship, in which the Negro is
not a slave or a dependent, but a man and a citizen. Booker T. Washington
preaches the gospel of this new life. And gradually as race prejudice
becomes inconvenient, threatens financial adversity, ruffles the smooth
current of comfortable daily existence, the impulse grows to set it aside.
Men don't keep on fighting when it is no longer profitable to fight.
And thus, side by side, these two impulses exist--the one pointing toward
the development of a hard caste system which would ultimately petrify our
civilisation as it has petrified that of India; and the other looking to a
reasonable, kindly, and honourable working together of the races.
_What Are the Remedies for the Evil Conditions?_
So much for conditions; what of remedies?
I have heard the most extraordinary remedies proposed. Serious men
actually talk of the deportation of the entire Negro population to
Africa, not stopping to inquire whether we have any right to deport them,
or calculating the economic revolution and bankruptcy which the
deportation of the entire labouring class would cause in the South,
without stopping to think that even if we could find a spot in the world
for 10,000,000 Negroes, and they all wanted to go, that all the ships
flying the American flag, if constantly employed, could probably not
transport the natural increase of the Negro population, let alone the
10,000,000 present inhabitants. I have heard talk of segregation in
reservations, like the Indians--segregation out of existence! I have even
heard unspeakable talk of the wholesale extinction of the race by
preventing the breeding of children! All quack remedies and based upon
hatred, not upon justice.
There is no sudden or cut-and-dried solution of the Negro problem, or of
any other problem. Men are forever demanding formulae which will enable
them to progress without effort. They seek to do quickly by medication
what can only be accomplished by deliberate hygiene. A problem that has
been growing for two hundred and fifty years in America, and for thousands
of years before that in Africa, warping the very lives of the people
concerned, changing their currents of thought as well as their conduct,
cannot be solved in forty years. Why expect it?
And yet there are definite things that can be done which, while working no
immediate miracles, will set our faces to the light and keep us trudging
toward the true goal.
Down at the bottom--it will seem trite, but it is eternally true--the
cause of the race "problem" and most other social problems is simply lack
of understanding and sympathy between man and man. And the remedy is
equally simple--a gradual substitution of understanding and sympathy for
blind repulsion and hatred.
Consider, for example, the Atlanta riot. Increasing misunderstanding and
hatred caused a dreadful explosion and bloodshed. What happened? Instantly
the wisest white men in Atlanta invited the wisest coloured men to meet
them. They got together: general explanations followed. They found that
there had been error on both sides; they found that there were reasonable
human beings on both sides. One of the leading white men said: "I did not
know there were any such broad-minded Negroes in the South." In other
words, they tried to understand and sympathise with one another. Over and
over again men will be found hating Negroes, or Chinamen, or "dagoes," and
yet liking some individual Negro, or Chinaman, or "dago." When they get
acquainted they see that the Negro or Chinaman is a human being like
themselves, full of faults, but not devoid of good qualities.
As a fundamental proposition, then, it will be found that the solution of
the Negro problem lies in treating the Negro more and more as a human
being like ourselves. Treating the Negro as a human being, we must judge
him, not by his colour, or by any other outward symbol, but upon his worth
as a man. Nothing that fails of that full honesty and fairness of judgment
in the smallest particular will suffice. We disgrace and injure ourselves
more than we do the Negro when we are not willing to admit virtue or
learning or power in another human being because his face happens to be
yellow or black.
Of the soundness of this fundamental standard of judgment there can be no
doubt; the difficulty lies in applying it practically to society as it is
to-day. In the suggestions which I offer here I am trying to do two
things: to outline the present programme, and to keep open a clear view to
the future goal.
_Shall the Negro Vote?_
Let us approach, then, without fear the first of the three groups of
problems--political, industrial, and social--which confront us.
Shall the Negro vote?
Thousands of Negroes in this country are fully as well equipped, fully as
patriotic, as the average white citizen. Moreover, they are as much
concerned in the real welfare of the country. The principle that our
forefathers fought for, "taxation only with representation," is as true
to-day as it ever was.
On the other hand, the vast majority of Negroes (and many foreigners and
"poor whites") are still densely ignorant, and have little or no
appreciation of the duties of citizenship. It seems right that they should
be required to wait before being allowed to vote until they are prepared.
A wise parent hedges his son about with restrictions; he does not
authorise his signature at the bank or allow him to run a locomotive; and
until he is twenty-one years old he is disfranchised and has no part in
the government. But the parent restricts his son because it seems the
wisest course for him, for the family, and for the state that he should
grow to manhood before he is burdened with grave responsibilities. So the
state limits suffrage; and rightly limits it, so long as it accompanies
that limitation with a determined policy of education. But the suffrage
law is so executed in the South to-day as to keep many capable Negroes
from the exercise of their rights, to prevent recognition of honest merit,
and it is executed unjustly as between white men and coloured. It is no
condonement of the Southern position to say that the North also
disfranchises a large part of the Negro vote by bribery, which it does; it
is only saying that the North is also wrong.
As for the agitation for the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment to the
Federal Constitution, which gives the right of suffrage to the coloured
man, it must be met by every lover of justice and democracy with a face of
adamant. If there were only one Negro in the country capable of
citizenship, the way for him must, at least, be kept open. No doubt full
suffrage was given to the mass of Negroes before they were prepared for
it, while yet they were slaves in everything except bodily shackles, and
the result during the Reconstruction period was disastrous. But the
principle of a free franchise--fortunately, as I believe, for this
country--has been forever established. If the white man is not willing to
meet the Negro in any contest whatsoever without plugging the dice, then
he is not the superior but the inferior of the Negro.
_What Shall Be the Industrial Relation of the Races?_
So much for the political relationships of the races. How about the
industrial relationships?
The same test of inherent worth must here also apply, and the question
will not be settled until it does apply. A carpenter must be asked, not
"What colour are you?" but "How cunningly and efficiently can you build a
house?" Of all absurdities, the judgment of the skill of a surgeon by the
kink of his hair will certainly one day be looked upon as the most absurd.
The same observation applies broadly to the attempt to confine a whole
people, regardless of their capabilities, to menial occupations because
they are dark-coloured. No, the place of the Negro is the place he can
fill most efficiently and the longer we attempt to draw artificial lines
the longer we shall delay the solution of the race problem. On the other
hand, the Negro must not clamour for places he cannot yet fill.
"The trouble with the Negro," says Booker T. Washington, "is that he is
all the time trying to get recognition, whereas what he should do is to
get something to recognise."
Negroes as a class are to-day far inferior in education, intelligence, and
efficiency to the white people as a class. Here and there an able Negro
will develop superior abilities; but the mass of Negroes for years to come
must find their activities mostly in physical and more or less menial
labour. Like any race, they must first prove themselves in these simple
lines of work before they can expect larger opportunities.
There must always be men like Dr. DuBois who agitate for rights; their
service is an important one, but at the present time it would seem that
the thing most needed was the teaching of such men as Dr. Washington,
emphasising duties and responsibilities, urging the Negro to prepare
himself for his rights.
_Social Contact_
We come now, having considered the political and industrial relationships
of the races, to the most difficult and perplexing of all the phases of
the Negro question--that of social contact. Political and industrial
relationships are more or less outward, but social contact turns upon the
delicate and deep questions of home life, personal inclinations, and of
privileges rather than rights. It is always in the relationships of oldest
developments, like those that cling around the home, that human nature is
slowest to change. Indeed, much of the complexity of the Negro problem
has arisen from a confusion in people's minds between rights and
privileges.
Everyone recalls the excitement caused--it became almost a national
issue--when President Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to luncheon
at the White House. Well, that feeling is deep in the South, as deep
almost as human nature. Many Northern people who go South to live come to
share it; indeed, it is the gravest question in ethics to decide at what
point natural instincts should be curbed.
Social contact is a privilege, not a right; it is not a subject for
legislation or for any other sort of force. "Social questions," as Colonel
Watterson of Kentucky says, "create their own laws and settle themselves.
They cannot be forced." All such relationships will work themselves out
gradually, naturally, quietly, in the long course of the years: and the
less they are talked about the better.
_Jim Crow Laws_
As for the Jim Crow laws in the South, many of them, at least, are at
present necessary to avoid the danger of clashes between the ignorant of
both race. They are the inevitable scaffolding of progress. As a matter of
fact, the Negro has profited in one way by such laws. For the white man
has thus driven the Negroes together, forced ability to find its outlet in
racial leadership, and by his severity produced a spirit of self-reliance
which would not otherwise have existed. Dr. Frissell of Hampton is always
talking to his students of the "advantages of disadvantages."
As for laws against the intermarriage of the races, they do not prevent
what they are designed to prevent: the mixing of white and coloured blood.
In many parts of the South, despite the existence of such laws,
miscegenation, though decreasing rapidly, still continues. On the other
hand, in the North, where Negroes and whites may marry, there is actually
very little marriage and practically no concubinage. The solution of this
question, too, lies far more in education than in law. As a matter of
fact, the more education both races receive, the less the amalgamation. In
the South, as in the North, the present tendency of the educated and
prosperous Negroes is to build up a society of their own, entirely apart
from and independent of white people. As I have shown in a former chapter,
a white woman in the North who marries a Negro is declassed--ostracised by
both races. The danger of amalgamation lies with ignorant and vicious
people, black or white, not with educated and sensitive people.
As in the case of the Jim Crow laws, separate schools in the South are
necessary, and in one way I believe them to be of great advantage to the
Negroes themselves. In Northern cities like Indianapolis and New York,
where there are no separation laws of any kind, separate schools have
appeared, naturally and quietly, in districts where the Negro population
is dense. That the pupils in each should be treated with exact justice in
the matter of expenditures by the state is axiomatic. And the Negro boy
should have the same unbounded opportunity for any sort of education he is
capable of using as the white boy; nothing less will suffice.
One influence at present growing rapidly will have its profound effect on
the separation laws. Though a tendency exists toward local segregation of
Negroes to which I have already referred, there is also a counter-tendency
toward a scattering of Negroes throughout the entire country. The white
population in the South, now 20,000,000 against 9,000,000 Negroes, is
increasing much more rapidly than the Negro population. The death-rate of
Negroes is exceedingly high; and the sharper the conditions of competition
with white workers, the greater will probably be the limitation of
increase of the more inefficient Negro population.
As for the predictions of "amalgamation," "a mongrel people," "black
domination," and other bogies of prophecy, we must not, as I see it, give
them any weight whatsoever. We cannot regulate our short lives by the fear
of something far in the future which will probably never happen at all.
All we can do is to be right at this moment and let the future take care
of itself; it will anyway. There is no other sane method of procedure.
Much as we may desire it, the future arrangement of this universe is not
in our hands. As to the matter of "superiority" or "inferiority," it is
not a subject of argument at all; nor can we keep or attain "superiority"
by laws or colour lines, or in any other way, except by being superior.
If we are right, absolutely right, in the eternal principles, we can rest
in peace that the matter of our superiority will take care of itself.
_The Real Solution of the Negro Problem_
I remember asking a wise Southern man I met what, in his opinion, was the
chief factor in the solution of the Negro problem.
"Time," he said, "and patience."
But time must be occupied with discipline and education--more and more
education, not less education, education that will teach first of all the
dignity of service not only for Negroes but for white men. The white man,
South and North, needs it quite as much as the coloured man. And this is
exactly the programme of the new Southern statesmanship of which I spoke
in a former chapter. These wise Southerners have resolved to forget the
discouragements and complexities of the Negro problem, forget even their
disagreements, and go to work on present problems: the development of
education and industry.
Whether we like it or not the whole nation (indeed, the whole world) is
tied by unbreakable bonds to its Negroes, its Chinamen, its slum-dwellers,
its thieves, its murderers, its prostitutes. We cannot elevate ourselves
by driving them back either with hatred or violence or neglect; but only
by bringing them forward: by service.
For good comes to men, not as they work alone, but as they work together
with that sympathy and understanding which is the only true Democracy. The
Great Teacher never preached the flat equality of men, social or
otherwise. He gave mankind a working principle by means of which, being so
different, some white, some black, some yellow, some old, some young, some
men, some women, some accomplished, some stupid--mankind could, after all,
live together in harmony and develop itself to the utmost possibility. And
that principle was the Golden Rule. It is the least sentimental, the most
profoundly practical teaching known to men.
INDEX
INDEX
A
Alcorn College, 248.
Alderman, President Edwin A., 259, 271, 273, 278.
Amalgamation of Races, 153, 164, 171.
Amos, Moses, 42.
Atlanta, colour line in, 27.
riot, 3.
Atlanta University, 40, 49, 54, 92, 170.
B
Barrow, Chancellor D. C., 271, 287.
Bassett, Professor John Spencer, 257.
Black Belt, 67.
Boston, race prejudice in, 118.
prosperous Negroes in, 119.
Bowie, Sydney J., 281.
Boycott by Negroes, 34.
Bradley, Rev. H. S., quoted, 56.
Brittain, M. L., quoted, 37.
Brown, J. Pope, 68.
Broyles, Judge, 18, 45.
Bulkley, William L., quoted, 131, 142.
"Bumptiousness," 125.
Buttrick, Dr. Wallace, 281.
C
Cable, George W., 141.
Cable, George W., the novelist, 257.
Carnegie, Andrew, 35, 287.
Chain-gang, 50, 96, 98, 290.
Chambers, Frank R., 281.
Charities, attitude toward Negroes, 35, 114, 138.
Churches, Negro, 89, 168.
Civil Service, Negroes in, 146.
"Clansman, The," 4.
Clark University, 12.
Clark, Walter, President Mississippi Cotton Association, quoted, 104.
Claxton, P. P., 271, 279.
Cocaine, use of by Negroes, 46, 89, 104.
Colour line, drawn by Negroes, 226.
Concubinage, a case of, 48.
Convicts, Negro, make profits for Georgia, 50.
Cooper, W. G., report on Atlanta riot, 15.
Cotton mill workers, 53, 70.
Courts and the Negro, 45, 96, 141, 185, 205.
Credit system, influence on Negro, 105.
Crime against women, 5, 128, 296.
as incentive to riot, 3, 4, 46, 183, 193, 204.
condoned to keep Negro on farms, 98.
juvenile, 51, 141.
"Crossing the Line," 161.
Cunningham, Acting Governor, 199.
Currie, J. H., District Attorney, quoted, 167.
D
Danville, Ill., lynching, 212.
Davis, Jefferson, way with Negroes, 103, 275.
Davis, Senator Jeff, 112, 238, 252.
Death rate among Negroes, 115.
Dickerman, Dr. G. S., 281.
Dillard, Professor James H., 273, 286.
Dixon, Rev. Thomas, 111, 266, 298.
DuBois, Dr. W. E. B., 100, 156, 158, 173, 222, 272, 304.
E
Edmonds, R. H., 275.
Education, 65, 139.
Booker T. Washington on, 221.
in South, 271, 273.
Negro, 282.
"New South" on Negro, 285.
F
Farmer, Negro, 6, 100.
in the North, 109, 170.
organization among, 93.
Fear of Negroes, 8.
prevalence of, in the South, 7.
Few, Dean William Preston, 259.
Fifteenth Amendment, 245, 246.
Fisk University, 170.
Fleming, Ex-Congressman William H., 264.
Fraternal Orders, 231.
"Free Persons of Colour" 156.
Free Speech, 257.
Fries, Henry E., 281.
Frissell, Dr. H. B., of Hampton, 228, 271, 281, 286.
Furniss, Dr. S. A., quoted, 114.
G
Gaines, Bishop, J. W., 8.
Galloway, Bishop C. B., 276.
Gammon Theological Seminary, 12, 13.
George, P. S., letter, 69.
Gilreath, Belton, 287.
Grady, Henry W., 275.
Grant, Bishop Abram, 287.
Graves, John Temple, 72.
H
Hampton Institute, 170, 283.
Hampton, General Wade, 235.
Hanna, H. H., 281.
Harrah, Charles J., President Midvale Steel Company, quoted, 137.
Harvard University, colour line at, 123.
Hill, Walter B., Chancellor, 258.
Hopkins, Charles T., 18, 32, 49.
Houston, President D. F., 271.
Howell, Clark, Editor Atlanta _Constitution_, 24.
Huntsville, Alabama, lynching, 191.
I
Immigrants in the South, 28, 268, 295.
take Negroes' places, 59.
Intermarriage of races, 164, 171, 305.
J
Jeanes Fund, 286.
"Jim Crow," laws, 30, 112, 130, 151, 219, 224, 251, 252, 262, 266, 305.
Johnson, Mayor Tom, 233.
Joyner, J. Y., 271, 278, 286.
K
Ku Klux Klan, 4, 235.
L
Labour problems in North, 130.
in South, 57, 78, 83, 249, 294.
Labour unions, attitude toward Negroes, 135, 143, 160.
Lamar, Senator J. Q., 263, 284.
Landrum, Rev. W. W., 24.
Lane, Charles P., letter, 241.
Lawlessness, as incentive to riot, 4, 183, 193, 204.
Leaders of Negro race, 216.
Legislation against Negroes, 249.
Lynching, 175.
M
McAneny, George, 287.
McIver, Charles D., 278.
Manley, Charles quoted, 160.
Manning, Joseph C., 264.
Medicines, patent and the Negro, 62, 116.
Mertins, George Frederick, quoted, 85.
Miller, Professor Kelley, quoted, 130.
Millsaps, Major R. W., 102.
Mims, Professor Edwin, 255.
Miscegenation, 165, 305.
Mitchell, Professor S. C., 253, 271, 280, 281.
Mob, psychology of, 10, 184.
Mob, rule results of, 13.
Money, United States Senator, H. D., 171.
Moton, R. R., 287.
Mulattoes, 149.
leaders of the race, 173.
Murphy, Edgar Gardner, 273.
N
Napier, J. C., 287.
Negroes, boycott by, 34.
domination of, 252.
driven out, 71.
in Government service, 29.
in Northern cities, 113.
in street cars, 30.
labour unions, 135.
land ownership among, 91.
private schools, 53.
racial consciousness among, 38.
what they talk about, 26.
why they go to cities, 101.
with white blood, 149.
worthless, 60. (_See_ Vagrants)
Negro business enterprises, 39.
business league, 229.
dramatic efforts, 157, 231.
in Boston, 119, 145.
story of Negro druggist, 42.
story of successful farmer, 90.
Newspapers, influence of sensational, 9, 25.
Negro, 225.
Niagara Movement, 223.
Northen, Ex-Governor W. J., 24, 25, 65.
O
"Ogden Movement," 281.
Ogden, Robert C., 281, 287.
Organised Labour and the Negro, 135.
Orphans, Negro, 51.
P
Page, Walter H., 281, 287.
Parties among Negroes, 216.
Peabody, George Foster, 281, 287.
Penn, Dr. W. F., 19, 33.
Peonage, 96.
Politics, Negro in, 98, 160, 233, 252, 262.
and lynching, 203, 224.
Populism in South, 255.
Porters, Pullman, 144.
Prejudice, race, in North, 111, 117, 125, 133, 138.
in churches, 121.
Negro, 226.
Prejudice, race, and economic necessity, 81.
cases of, 55, 82.
superficial manifestations, 26, 296.
Prohibition movement, 256.
Psychology of the South, 37;
mob, 184.
R
Race, world problems of, 292.
Rape, investigation of cases, 5.
trial of Negro for, 22.
a northern case, 128.
Reconstruction, 235.
Rice, Dr. J. A., quoted, 165.
Rice, Rev. Theron H., quoted, 54.
Richardson, Congressman William, quoted, 192.
Riot, Atlanta, 3.
Riots, effect on crime, 22;
in Northern cities, 124, 126;
Wilmington, 160;
lynching riot at Danville, 211;
at Huntsville, Ala., 191;
at Springfield, O., 201;
at Statesboro, Ga., 186.
S
Saloons, 10, 18, 21, 25, 36, 46, 49, 88, 98, 104, 127, 207, 266,
289, 290.
Schools, appropriations for, 248.
in Atlanta, 53.
in bad neighbourhoods, 169.
in North, 132, 139.
industrial, 140, 143.
North Carolina, 279.
private for Negroes, 53.
retrogression of Negro, 284.
separate, 306.
why Negroes are not in, 52.
Secret Societies among Negroes, 231.
Segregation of races, 300;
natural going on, 70.
Settlement work among Negroes, 122, 126, 138.
Shaw, Albert, 281.
Sickness among Negroes, 116.
Slade, Professor Andrew, 257.
Slavery, evils of, 234.
Smith, Governor Hoke, 11, 242, 245, 249, 250, 252, 256, 267.
Smith, R. D., 287.
Social contact of races, 304.
Solution of race problems, 300.
Soule, President A. M., 288.
"Souls of Black Folk, The," 158.
South Carolina, political struggles in, 235.
Southern Education Board, 281, 286.
Speake, Judge Paul, 195.
Speer, Judge Emory, 255.
Springfield, O., lynching, 191.
and riot, 201.
Statesboro, Ga., lynching, 177.
Stewart, Professor J. B., 288.
Strikes and Negroes, 134.
Swanson, Governor Claude A., 249, 252, 258, 280.
T
Taft, William H., 287.
Tatum, Stewart L., 209.
Tenant System, 74, 87, 100.
Thomas, Judge William H., 96.
Tillman, Senator B. R., 111, 236, 246, 250, 252, 259, 265.
Trades, Negroes in, 135, 145.
Trinity College, 258.
Troy, Alexander, letter, 247.
Tuberculosis among Negroes, 114.
Tuskegee, 60, 170, 221, 283.
U
University of Georgia, 288.
V
Vagrants among Negroes, 57, 60, 81, 178, 211.
Vardaman, Governor J. K., 111, 238, 246, 265, 267, 275, 298.
Vernon, W. T., Register of Treasury, 228.
Vice among Negroes, 165, 169.
Vote, shall the Negro? 202.
W
Washington, Booker T., 33, 56, 64, 99, 156, 173, 219, 250, 271, 274,
286, 299, 300, 304.
Watterson, Henry, 305.
Weather and mobs, 211.
White, Rev. John E., 24, 253, 276.
Whitlock, Hardy H., sheriff, 212.
Wilberforce College, 170.
Williams, "Pegleg," 80.
Williams, Talcott, 287.
Wilmer, Rev. C. B., 24, 276.
Women, Negro, arrested in Atlanta, 46.
clubs, 143, 168.
morals of, 140, 169.
Wright, President R. R., 92.
Wright, Professor R. R., Jr., quoted, 124, 137, 142, 145.
Footnotes:
[1] Since these notes were made, in 1907, the prohibition movement has
abolished all the saloons in Georgia.
[2] Since the closing of the saloons on January 1, 1908, the number of
arrests has largely decreased, but the observations here made still apply
to a large number of Southern cities.
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
Punctuation has been corrected without note.
The following misprints have been addressed:
"he" corrected to "be" (page 5)
"Thelogical" corrected to "Theological" (page 13)
"take" corrected to "takes" (page 33)
"Childern" corrected to "Children" (page 52)
"on" corrected to "no" (page 57)
"o-morrow" corrected to "to-morrow" (page 60)
"negroes" corrected to "Negroes" (page 67)
"whould" corrected to "would" (page 85)
"wont" corrected to "won't" (page 98)
missing "and" added (page 188)
"typsetters" corrected to "typesetters" (page 202)
"be" corrected to "he" (page 204)
"weeks" corrected to "week" (page 210)
"anothern" corrected to "another" (page 210)
"hightly" corrected to "highly" (page 275)
"declaractions" corrected to "declarations" (page 284)
"familar" corrected to "familiar" (page 295)
"is" corrected to "it" (page 300)
"Govenor" corrected to "Governor" (Index)
End of Project Gutenberg's Following the Color Line, by Ray Stannard Baker