THE NEGRO IN THE NEW AGE
1. _Character of the Period_
The decade 1910-1920, momentous in the history of the world, in the
history of the Negro race in America must finally be regarded as the
period of a great spiritual uprising against the proscription, the
defamation, and the violence of the preceding twenty years. As never
before the Negro began to realize that the ultimate burden of his
salvation rested upon himself, and he learned to respect and to depend
upon himself accordingly.
The decade naturally divides into two parts, that before and that after
the beginning of the Great War in Europe. Even in the earlier years,
however, the tendencies that later were dominant were beginning to be
manifest. The greater part of the ten years was consumed by the two
administrations of President Woodrow Wilson; and not only did the
National Government in the course of these administrations discriminate
openly against persons of Negro descent in the Federal service and fail
to protect those who happened to live in the capital, but its policy
also gave encouragement to outrage in places technically said to be
beyond its jurisdiction. A great war was to give new occasion and
new opportunity for discrimination, defamatory propaganda was to be
circulated on a scale undreamed of before, and the close of the war was
to witness attempts for a new reign of terror in the South. Even beyond
the bounds of continental America the race was now to suffer by reason
of the national policy, and the little republic of Hayti to lift its
bleeding hands to the calm judgment of the world.
Both a cause and a result of the struggle through which the race was now
to pass was its astonishing progress. The fiftieth anniversary of the
Emancipation Proclamation--January 1, 1913--called to mind as did
nothing else the proscription and the mistakes, but also the successes
and the hopes of the Negro people in America. Throughout the South
disfranchisement seemed almost complete; and yet, after many attempts,
the movement finally failed in Maryland in 1911 and in Arkansas in 1912.
In 1915, moreover, the disfranchising act of Oklahoma was declared
unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, and henceforth the
Negro could feel that the highest legal authority was no longer on the
side of those who sought to deprive him of all political voice. Eleven
years before, the Court had taken refuge in technicalities. The year
1911 was also marked by the appointment of the first Negro policeman in
New York, by the election of the first Negro legislator in Pennsylvania,
and by the appointment of a man of the race, William H. Lewis, as
Assistant Attorney General of the United States; and several civil
rights suits were won in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. Banks,
insurance companies, and commercial and industrial enterprises were
constantly being capitalized; churches erected more and more stately
edifices; and fraternal organizations constantly increased in membership
and wealth. By 1913 the Odd Fellows numbered very nearly half a million
members and owned property worth two and a half million dollars; in
1920 the Dunbar Amusement Corporation of Philadelphia erected a theater
costing $400,000; and the foremost business woman of the race in the
decade, Mme. C.J. Walker, on the simple business of toilet articles and
hair preparations built up an enterprise of national scope and conducted
in accordance with the principles regularly governing great American
commercial organizations. Fifty years after emancipation, moreover, very
nearly one-fourth of all the Negroes in the Southern states were living
in homes that they themselves owned; thus 430,449 of 1,917,391 houses
occupied in these states were reported in 1910 as owned, and 314,340
were free of all encumbrance. The percentage of illiteracy decreased
from 70 in 1880 to 30.4 in 1910, and movements were under way for the
still more rapid spread of elementary knowledge. Excellent high schools,
such as those in St. Louis, Washington, Kansas City (both cities of this
name), Louisville, Baltimore, and other cities and towns in the border
states and sometimes as far away as Texas, were setting a standard such
as was in accord with the best in the country; and in one year, 1917,
455 young people of the race received the degree of bachelor of arts,
while throughout the decade different ones received honors and took the
highest graduate degrees at the foremost institutions of learning in the
country. Early in the decade the General Education Board began actively
to assist in the work of the higher educational institutions, and an
outstanding gift was that of half a million dollars to Fisk University
in 1920. Meanwhile, through the National Urban League and hundreds of
local clubs and welfare organizations, social betterment went forward,
much impetus being given to the work by the National Association of
Colored Women's Clubs organized in 1896.
Along with its progress, throughout the decade the race had to meet
increasing bitterness and opposition, and this was intensified by the
motion picture, "The Birth of a Nation," built on lines similar to those
of _The Clansman_. Negro men standing high on civil service lists were
sometimes set aside; in 1913 the white railway mail clerks of the
South began an open campaign against Negroes in the service in direct
violation of the rules; and a little later in the same year segregation
in the different departments became notorious. In 1911 the American Bar
Association raised the question of the color-line; and efforts for the
restriction of Negroes to certain neighborhoods in different prominent
cities sometimes resulted in violence, as in the dynamiting of the homes
of Negroes in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1911. When the Progressive party
was organized in 1912 the Negro was given to understand that his support
was not sought, and in 1911 a strike of firemen on the Queen and
Crescent Railroad was in its main outlines similar to the trouble on
the Georgia Railroad two years before. Meanwhile in the South the race
received only 18 per cent of the total expenditures for education,
although it constituted more than 30 per cent of the population.
Worse than anything else, however, was the matter of lynching. In each
year the total number of victims of illegal execution continued to
number three- or fourscore; but no one could ever be sure that every
instance had been recorded. Between the opening of the decade and the
time of the entrance of the United States into the war, five cases were
attended by such unusual circumstances that the public could not soon
forget them. At Coatesville, Pennsylvania, not far from Philadelphia, on
August 12, 1911, a Negro laborer, Zach Walker, while drunk, fatally shot
a night watchman. He was pursued and attempted suicide. Wounded, he was
brought to town and placed in the hospital. From this place he was taken
chained to his cot, dragged for some miles, and then tortured and burned
to death in the presence of a great crowd of people, including many
women, and his bones and the links of the chain which bound him
distributed as souvenirs. At Monticello, Georgia, in January, 1915, when
a Negro family resisted an officer who was making an arrest, the father,
Dan Barbour, his young son, and his two daughters were all hanged to a
tree and their bodies riddled with bullets. Before the close of the year
there was serious trouble in the southwestern portion of the state, and
behind this lay all the evils of the system of peonage in the black
belt. Driven to desperation by the mistreatment accorded them in the
raising of cotton, the Negroes at last killed an overseer who had
whipped a Negro boy. A reign of terror was then instituted; churches,
society halls, and homes were burnt, and several individuals shot. On
December 30 there was a wholesale lynching of six Negroes in Early
County. Less than three weeks afterwards a sheriff who attempted to
arrest some more Negroes and who was accompanied by a mob was killed.
Then (January 20, 1916) five Negroes who had been taken from the jail in
Worth County were rushed in automobiles into Lee County adjoining, and
hanged and shot. On May 15, 1916, at Waco, Texas, Jesse Washington, a
sullen and overgrown boy of seventeen, who worked for a white farmer
named Fryar at the town of Robinson, six miles away, and who one week
before had criminally assaulted and killed Mrs. Fryar, after unspeakable
mutilation was burned in the heart of the town. A part of the torture
consisted in stabbing with knives and the cutting off of the boy's
fingers as he grabbed the chain by which he was bound. Finally, on
October 21, 1916, Anthony Crawford, a Negro farmer of Abbeville, South
Carolina, who owned four hundred and twenty-seven acres of the best
cotton land in his county and who was reported to be worth $20,000, was
lynched. He had come to town to the store of W.D. Barksdale to sell a
load of cotton-seed, and the two men had quarreled about the price,
although no blow was struck on either side. A little later, however,
Crawford was arrested by a local policeman and a crowd of idlers from
the public square rushed to give him a whipping for his "impudence." He
promptly knocked down the ringleader with a hammer. The mob then set
upon him, nearly killed him, and at length threw him into the jail. A
few hours later, fearing that the sheriff would secretly remove the
prisoner, it returned, dragged the wounded man forth, and then hanged
and shot him, after which proceedings warning was sent to his family to
leave the county by the middle of the next month.
It will be observed that in these five noteworthy occurrences, in only
one case was there any question of criminal assault. On the other hand,
in one case two young women were included among the victims; another was
really a series of lynchings emphasizing the lot of some Negroes under
a vicious economic system; and the last simply grew out of the jealousy
and hatred aroused by a Negro of independent means who knew how to stand
up for his rights.
Such was the progress, such also the violence that the Negro witnessed
during the decade. Along with his problems at home he now began to have
a new interest in those of his kin across the sea, and this feeling was
intensified by the world war. It raises questions of such far-reaching
importance, however, that it must receive separate and distinct
treatment.
2. _Migration; East St. Louis_
Very soon after the beginning of the Great War in Europe there began
what will ultimately be known as the most remarkable migratory movement
in the history of the Negro in America. Migration had indeed at no time
ceased since the great movement of 1879, but for the most part it had
been merely personal and not in response to any great emergency. The
sudden ceasing of the stream of immigration from Europe, however,
created an unprecedented demand for labor in the great industrial
centers of the North, and business men were not long in realizing
the possibilities of a source that had as yet been used in only the
slightest degree. Special agents undoubtedly worked in some measure; but
the outstanding feature of the new migration was that it was primarily a
mass movement and not one organized or encouraged by any special group
of leaders. Labor was needed in railroad construction, in the steel
mills, in the tobacco farms of Connecticut, and in the packing-houses,
foundries, and automobile plants. In 1915 the New England tobacco
growers hastily got together in New York two hundred girls; but these
proved to be unsatisfactory, and it was realized that the labor supply
would have to be more carefully supervised. In January, 1916, the
management of the Continental Tobacco Corporation definitely decided on
the policy of importing workers from the South, and within the next year
not less than three thousand Negroes came to Hartford, several hundred
being students from the schools and colleges who went North to work for
the summer. In the same summer came also train-loads of Negroes from
Jacksonville and other points to work for the Erie and Pennsylvania
Railroads.
Those who left their homes in the South to find new ones in the North
thus worked first of all in response to a new economic demand.
Prominent in their thought to urge them on, however, were the generally
unsatisfactory conditions in the South from which they had so long
suffered and from which all too often there had seemed to be no escape.
As it was, they were sometimes greatly embarrassed in leaving. In
Jacksonville the city council passed an ordinance requiring that agents
who wished to recruit labor to be sent out of the state should pay
$1,000 for a license or suffer a fine of $600 and spend sixty days in
jail. Macon, Ga., raised the license fee to $25,000. In Savannah the
excitement was intense. When two trains did not move as it was expected
that they would, three hundred Negroes paid their own fares and went
North. Later, when the leaders of the movement could not be found, the
police arrested one hundred of the Negroes and sent them to the police
barracks, charging them with loitering. Similar scenes were enacted
elsewhere, the South being then as ever unwilling to be deprived of its
labor supply. Meanwhile wages for some men in such an industrial center
as Birmingham leaped to $9 and $10 a day. All told, hardly less than
three-fourths of a million Negroes went North within the four years
1915-1918.
Naturally such a great shifting of population did not take place without
some inconvenience and hardship. Among the thousands who changed their
place of residence were many ignorant and improvident persons; but
sometimes it was the most skilled artisans and the most substantial
owners of homes in different communities who sold their property
and moved away. In the North they at once met congestion in housing
facilities. In Philadelphia and Pittsburgh this condition became so bad
as to demand immediate attention. In more than one place there were
outbreaks in which lives were lost. In East St. Louis, Ill., all of the
social problems raised by the movement were seen in their baldest guise.
The original population of this city had come for the most part from
Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee. It had long been an
important industrial center. It was also a very rough place, the scene
of prize-fights and cock-fights and a haven for escaped prisoners; and
there was very close connection between the saloons and politics. For
years the managers of the industrial plants had recruited their labor
supply from Ellis Island. When this failed they turned to the Negroes of
the South; and difficulties were aggravated by a series of strikes on
the part of the white workers. By the spring of 1917 not less than ten
thousand Negroes had recently arrived in the city, and the housing
situation was so acute that these people were more and more being forced
into the white localities. Sometimes Negroes who had recently arrived
wandered aimlessly about the streets, where they met the rougher
elements of the city; there were frequent fights and also much trouble
on the street cars. The Negroes interested themselves in politics and
even succeeded in placing in office several men of their choice. In
February, 1917, there was a strike of the white workers at the Aluminum
Ore Works. This was adjusted at the time, but the settlement was not
permanent, and meanwhile there were almost daily arrivals from the
South, and the East St. Louis _Journal_ was demanding: "Make East St.
Louis a Lily White Town." There were preliminary riots on May 27-30. On
the night of July I men in automobiles rode through the Negro section
and began firing promiscuously. The next day the massacre broke forth in
all its fury, and before it was over hundreds of thousands of dollars in
property had been destroyed, six thousand Negroes had been driven from
their homes, and about one hundred and fifty shot, burned, hanged, or
maimed for life. Officers of the law failed to do their duty, and the
testimony of victims as to the torture inflicted upon them was such as
to send a thrill of horror through the heart of the American people.
Later there was a congressional investigation, but from this nothing
very material resulted. In the last week of this same month, July, 1917,
there were also serious outbreaks in both Chester and Philadelphia,
Penn., the fundamental issues being the same as in East St. Louis.
Meanwhile welfare organizations earnestly labored to adjust the Negro in
his new environment. In Chicago the different state clubs helped nobly.
Greater than any other one agency, however, was the National Urban
League, whose work now witnessed an unprecedented expansion.
Representative was the work of the Detroit branch, which was not content
merely with finding vacant positions, but approached manufacturers of
all kinds through distribution of literature and by personal visits,
and within twelve months was successful in placing not less than one
thousand Negroes in employment other than unskilled labor. It also
established a bureau of investigation and information regarding housing
conditions, and generally aimed at the proper moral and social care of
those who needed its service. The whole problem of the Negro was of such
commanding importance after the United States entered the war as to lead
to the creation of a special Division of Negro Economics in the office
of the Secretary of Labor, to the directorship of which Dr. George E.
Haynes was called.
In January, 1918, a Conference of Migration was called in New York under
the auspices of the National Urban League, and this placed before the
American Federation of Labor resolutions asking that Negro labor be
considered on the same basis as white. The Federation had long been
debating the whole question of the Negro, and it had not seemed to be
able to arrive at a clearcut policy though its general attitude was
unfavorable. In 1919, however, it voted to take steps to recognize and
admit Negro unions. At last it seemed to realize the necessity of making
allies of Negro workers, and of course any such change of front on the
part of white workmen would menace some of the foundations of racial
strife in the South and indeed in the country at large. Just how
effective the new decision was to be in actual practice remained to be
seen, especially as the whole labor movement was thrown on the defensive
by the end of 1920. However, special interest attached to the events
in Bogalusa, La., in November, 1919. Here were the headquarters of the
Great Southern Lumber Company, whose sawmill in the place was said to be
the largest in the world. For some time it had made use of unorganized
Negro labor as against the white labor unions. The forces of labor,
however, began to organize the Negroes in the employ of the Company,
which held political as well as capitalistic control in the community.
The Company then began to have Negroes arrested on charges of vagrancy,
taking them before the city court and having them fined and turned over
to the Company to work out the fines under the guard of gunmen. In the
troubles that came to a head on November 22, three white men were shot
and killed, one of them being the district president of the American
Federation of Labor, who was helping to give protection to a colored
organizer. The full significance of this incident remained also to be
seen; but it is quite possible that in the final history of the Negro
problem the skirmish at Bogalusa will mark the beginning of the end of
the exploiting of Negro labor and the first recognition of the identity
of interest between white and black workmen in the South.
3. _The Great War_
Just on the eve of America's entrance into the war in Europe occurred
an incident that from the standpoint of the Negro at least must finally
appear simply as the prelude to the great contest to come. Once more,
at an unexpected moment, ten years after Brownsville, the loyalty
and heroism of the Negro soldier impressed the American people. The
expedition of the American forces into Mexico in 1916, with the
political events attending this, is a long story. The outstanding
incident, however, was that in which two troops of the Tenth Cavalry
engaged. About eighty men had been sent a long distance from the main
line of the American army, their errand being supposedly the pursuit of
a deserter. At or near the town of Carrizal the Americans seem to have
chosen to go through the town rather than around it, and the result was
a clash in which Captain Boyd, who commanded the detachment, and some
twenty of his men were killed, twenty-two others being captured by the
Mexicans. Under the circumstances the whole venture was rather imprudent
in the first place. As to the engagement itself, the Mexicans said that
the American troops made the attack, while the latter said that the
Mexicans themselves first opened fire. However this may have been,
all other phases of the Mexican problem seemed for the moment to be
forgotten at Washington in the demand for the release of the twenty-two
men who had been taken. There was no reason for holding them, and they
were brought up to El Paso within a few days and sent across the line.
Thus, though "some one had blundered," these Negro soldiers did their
duty; "theirs not to make reply; theirs but to do and die." So in the
face of odds they fought like heroes and twenty died beneath the Mexican
stars.
When the United States entered the war in Europe in April, 1917, the
question of overwhelming importance to the Negro people was naturally
that of their relation to the great conflict in which their country
had become engaged. Their response to the draft call set a noteworthy
example of loyalty to all other elements in the country. At the very
outset the race faced a terrible dilemma: If there were to be special
training camps for officers, and if the National Government would make
no provision otherwise, did it wish to have a special camp for Negroes,
such as would give formal approval to a policy of segregation, or did it
wish to have no camp at all on such terms and thus lose the opportunity
to have any men of the race specially trained as officers? The camp was
secured--Camp Dodge, near Des Moines, Iowa; and throughout the summer
of 1917 the work of training went forward, the heart of a harassed and
burdened people responding more and more with pride to the work of their
men. On October 15, 625 became commissioned officers, and all told 1200
received commissions. To the fighting forces of the United States the
race furnished altogether very nearly 400,000 men, of whom just a little
more than half actually saw service in Europe.
Negro men served in all branches of the military establishment and also
as surveyors and draftsmen. For the handling of many of the questions
relating to them Emmett J. Scott was on October 1, 1917, appointed
Special Assistant to the Secretary of War. Mr. Scott had for a number
of years assisted Dr. Booker T. Washington as secretary at Tuskegee
Institute, and in 1909 he was one of the three members of the special
commission appointed by President Taft for the investigation of Liberian
affairs. Negro nurses were authorized by the War Department for service
in base hospitals at six army camps, and women served also as canteen
workers in France and in charge of hostess houses in the United States.
Sixty Negro men served as chaplains; 350 as Y.M.C.A. secretaries; and
others in special capacities. Service of exceptional value was rendered
by Negro women in industry, and very largely also they maintained and
promoted the food supply through agriculture at the same time that they
released men for service at the front. Meanwhile the race invested
millions of dollars in Liberty Bonds and War Savings stamps and
contributed generously to the Red Cross, Y.M.C.A., and other relief
agencies. In the summer of 1918 interest naturally centered upon
the actual performance of Negro soldiers in France and upon the
establishment of units of the Students' Army Training Corps in twenty
leading educational institutions. When these units were demobilized in
December, 1918, provision was made in a number of the schools for the
formation of units of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps.
The remarkable record made by the Negro in the previous wars of the
country was fully equaled by that in the Great War. Negro soldiers
fought with special distinction in the Argonne Forest, at
Château-Thierry, in Belleau Wood, in the St. Mihiel district, in the
Champagne sector, at Vosges and Metz, winning often very high praise
from their commanders. Entire regiments of Negro troops were cited for
exceptional valor and decorated with the Croix de Guerre--the 369th, the
371st, and the 372nd; while groups of officers and men of the 365th, the
366th, the 368th, the 370th, and the first battalion of the 367th were
also decorated. At the close of the war the highest Negro officers in
the army were Lieutenant Colonel Otis B. Duncan, commander of the third
battalion of the 370th, formerly the Eighth Illinois, and the highest
ranking Negro officer in the American Expeditionary Forces; Colonel
Charles Young (retired), on special duty at Camp Grant, Ill.; Colonel
Franklin A. Dennison, of the 370th Infantry, and Lieutenant Colonel
Benjamin O. Davis, of the Ninth Cavalry. The 370th was the first
American regiment stationed in the St. Mihiel sector; it was one of the
three that occupied a sector at Verdun when a penetration there would
have been disastrous to the Allied cause; and it went direct from the
training camp to the firing-line. Noteworthy also was the record of
the 369th infantry, formerly the Fifteenth Regiment, New York National
Guard. This organization was under shellfire for 191 days, and it held
one trench for 91 days without relief. It was the first unit of Allied
fighters to reach the Rhine, going down as an advance guard of the
French army of occupation. A prominent hero in this regiment was
Sergeant Henry Johnson, who returned with the Croix de Guerre with one
star and one palm. He is credited with routing a party of Germans at
Bois-Hanzey in the Argonne on May 5, 1918, with singularly heavy losses
to the enemy. Many other men acted with similar bravery. Hardly less
heroic was the service of the stevedore regiments, or the thousands of
men in the army who did not go to France but who did their duty as they
were commanded at home. General Vincenden said of the men of the 370th:
"Fired by a noble ardor, they go at times even beyond the objectives
given them by the higher command; they have always wished to be in the
front line"; and General Coybet said of the 371st and 372nd: "The most
powerful defenses, the most strongly organized machine gun nests, the
heaviest artillery barrages--nothing could stop them. These crack
regiments overcame every obstacle with a most complete contempt for
danger.... They have shown us the way to victory."
In spite of his noble record--perhaps in some measure because of it--and
in the face of his loyal response to the call to duty, the Negro
unhappily became in the course of the war the victim of proscription and
propaganda probably without parallel in the history of the country. No
effort seems to have been spared to discredit him both as a man and as
a soldier. In both France and America the apparent object of the forces
working against him was the intention to prevent any feeling that the
war would make any change in the condition of the race at home. In the
South Negroes were sometimes forced into peonage and restrained in their
efforts to go North; and generally they had no representation on local
boards, the draft was frequently operated so as to be unfair to them,
and every man who registered found special provision for the indication
of his race in the corner of his card. Accordingly in many localities
Negroes contributed more than their quota, this being the result
of favoritism shown to white draftees. The first report of the
Provost-Marshal General showed that of every 100 Negroes called 36 were
certified for service, while of every 100 white men called only 25 were
certified. Of those summoned in Class I Negroes contributed 51.65 per
cent of their registrants as against 32.53 per cent of the white. In
France the work of defamation was manifest and flagrant. Slanders about
the Negro soldiers were deliberately circulated among the French people,
sometimes on very high authority, much of this propaganda growing out of
a jealous fear of any acquaintance whatsoever of the Negro men with the
French women. Especially insolent and sometimes brutal were the men
of the military police, who at times shot and killed on the slightest
provocation. Proprietors who sold to Negro soldiers were sometimes
boycotted, and offenses were magnified which in the case of white men
never saw publication. Negro officers were discriminated against in
hotel and traveling accommodations, while upon the ordinary men in
the service fell unduly any specially unpleasant duty such as that
of re-burying the dead. White women engaged in "Y" work, especially
Southern women, showed a disposition not to serve Negroes, though the
Red Cross and Salvation Army organizations were much better in this
respect; and finally the Negro soldier was not given any place in the
great victory parade in Paris. About the close of the war moreover a
great picture, or series of pictures, the "Pantheon de la Guerre," that
was on a mammoth scale and that attracted extraordinary attention, was
noteworthy as giving representation to all of the forces and divisions
of the Allied armies except the Negroes in the forces from the United
States.[1] Not unnaturally the Germans endeavored--though without
success--to capitalize the situation by circulating among the Negroes
insidious literature that sometimes made very strong points. All of
these things are to be considered by those people in the United States
who think that the Negro suffers unduly from a grievance.
[Footnote 1: On the whole subject of the actual life of the Negro
soldier unusual interest attaches to the forthcoming and authoritative
"Sidelights on Negro Soldiers," by Charles H. Williams, who as a special
and official investigator had unequaled opportunity to study the Negro
in camp and on the battle-line both in the United States and in France.]
While the Negro soldier abroad was thus facing unusual pressure in
addition to the ordinary hardships of war, at home occurred an incident
that was doubly depressing coming as it did just a few weeks after
the massacre at East St. Louis. In August, 1917, a battalion of the
Twenty-fourth Infantry, stationed at Houston, Texas, to assist in the
work of concentrating soldiers for the war in Europe, encountered the
ill-will of the town, and between the city police and the Negro military
police there was constant friction. At last when one of the Negroes had
been beaten, word was circulated among his comrades that he had been
shot, and a number of them set out for revenge. In the riot that
followed (August 23) two of the Negroes and seventeen white people of
the town were killed, the latter number including five policemen. As
a result of this encounter sixty-three members of the battalion were
court-martialed at Fort Sam Houston. Thirteen were hanged on December
11, 1917, five more were executed on September 13, 1918, fifty-one were
sentenced to life imprisonment and five to briefer terms; and the Negro
people of the country felt very keenly the fact that the condemned
men were hanged like common criminals rather than given the death of
soldiers. Thus for one reason or another the whole matter of the war and
the incidents connected therewith simply made the Negro question more
bitterly than ever the real disposition toward him of the government
under which he lived and which he had striven so long to serve.
4. _High Tension: Washington, Chicago, Elaine_
Such incidents abroad and such feeling at home as we have recorded not
only agitated the Negro people, but gave thousands of other citizens
concern, and when the armistice suddenly came on November 11, 1918, not
only in the South but in localities elsewhere in the country racial
feeling had been raised to the highest point. About the same time there
began to be spread abroad sinister rumors that the old KuKlux were
riding again; and within a few months parades at night in representative
cities in Alabama and Georgia left no doubt that the rumors were well
founded. The Negro people fully realized the significance of the new
movement, and they felt full well the pressure being brought to bear
upon them in view of the shortage of domestic servants in the South.
Still more did they sense the situation that would face their sons and
brothers when they returned from France. But they were not afraid; and
in all of the riots of the period the noteworthy fact stands out that
in some of the cities in which the situation was most tense--notably
Atlanta and Birmingham--no great race trouble was permitted to start.
In general, however, the violence that had characterized the year 1917
continued through 1918 and 1919. In the one state of Tennessee, within
less than a year and on separate occasions, three Negroes were burned at
the stake. On May 22, 1917, near Memphis, Ell T. Person, nearly fifty
years of age, was burned for the alleged assault and murder of a young
woman; and in this case the word "alleged" is used advisedly, for the
whole matter of the fixing of the blame for the crime and the fact that
the man was denied a legal trial left grave doubt as to the extent of
his guilt. On Sunday, December 2, 1917, at Dyersburg, immediately after
the adjournment of services in the churches of the town, Lation Scott,
guilty of criminal assault, was burned; his eyes were put out with
red-hot irons, a hot poker was rammed down his throat, and he was
mutilated in unmentionable ways. Two months later, on February 12, 1918,
at Estill Springs, Jim McIlheron, who had shot and killed two young
white men, was also burned at the stake. In Estill Springs it had for
some time been the sport of young white men in the community to throw
rocks at single Negroes and make them run. Late one afternoon McIlheron
went into a store to buy some candy. As he passed out, a remark was made
by one of three young men about his eating his candy. The rest of the
story is obvious.
As horrible as these burnings were, it is certain that they did not
grind the iron into the Negro's soul any more surely than the three
stories that follow. Hampton Smith was known as one of the harshest
employers of Negro labor in Brooks County, Ga. As it was difficult for
him to get help otherwise, he would go into the courts and whenever a
Negro was convicted and was unable to pay his fine or was sentenced to
a term on the chain-gang, he would pay the fine and secure the man for
work on his plantation. He thus secured the services of Sidney Johnson,
fined thirty dollars for gambling. After Johnson had more than worked
out the thirty dollars he asked pay for the additional time he served.
Smith refused to give this and a quarrel resulted. A few mornings later,
when Johnson, sick, did not come to work, Smith found him in his cabin
and beat him. A few evenings later, while Smith was sitting in his home,
he was shot through a window and killed instantly, and his wife was
wounded. As a result of this occurrence the Negroes of both Brooks and
Lowndes counties were terrorized for the week May 17-24, 1918, and not
less than eleven of them lynched. Into the bodies of two men lynched
together not less than seven hundred bullets are said to have been
fired. Johnson himself had been shot dead when he was found; but his
body was mutilated, dragged through the streets of Valdosta, and burned.
Mary Turner, the wife of one of the victims, said that her husband had
been unjustly treated and that if she knew who had killed him she would
have warrants sworn out against them. For saying this she too was
lynched, although she was in an advanced state of pregnancy. Her ankles
were tied together and she was hung to a tree, head downward. Gasoline
and oil from the automobiles near were thrown on her clothing and a
match applied. While she was yet alive her abdomen was cut open with a
large knife and her unborn babe fell to the ground. It gave two feeble
cries and then its head was crushed by a member of the mob with his
heel. Hundreds of bullets were then fired into the woman's body. As
a result of these events not less than five hundred Negroes left the
immediate vicinity of Valdosta immediately, and hundreds of others
prepared to leave as soon as they could dispose of their land, and
this they proceeded to do in the face of the threat that any Negro who
attempted to leave would be regarded as implicated in the murder of
Smith and dealt with accordingly. At the end of this same year--on
December 20, 1918--four young Negroes--Major Clark, aged twenty; Andrew
Clark, aged fifteen; Maggie Howze, aged twenty, and Alma Howze, aged
sixteen--were taken from the little jail at Shubuta, Mississippi, and
lynched on a bridge near the town. They were accused of the murder of
E.L. Johnston, a white dentist, though all protested their innocence.
The situation that preceded the lynching was significant. Major Clark
was in love with Maggie Howze and planned to marry her. This thought
enraged Johnston, who was soon to become the father of a child by the
young woman, and who told Clark to leave her alone. As the two sisters
were about to be killed, Maggie screamed and fought, crying, "I ain't
guilty of killing the doctor and you oughtn't to kill me"; and to
silence her cries one member of the mob struck her in the mouth with
a monkey wrench, knocking her teeth out. On May 24, 1919, at Milan,
Telfair County, Georgia, two young white men, Jim Dowdy and Lewis Evans,
went drunk late at night to the Negro section of the town and to the
home of a widow who had two daughters. They were refused admittance and
then fired into the house. The girls, frightened, ran to another home.
They were pursued, and Berry Washington, a respectable Negro seventy-two
years of age, seized a shotgun, intending to give them protection; and
in the course of the shooting that followed Dowdy was killed. The next
night, Saturday the 25th, Washington was taken to the place where Dowdy
was killed and his body shot to pieces.
It remained for the capital of the nation, however, largely to show the
real situation of the race in the aftermath of a great war conducted
by a Democratic administration. Heretofore the Federal Government had
declared itself powerless to act in the case of lawlessness in an
individual state; but it was now to have an opportunity to deal with
violence in Washington itself. On July 19, 1919, a series of lurid and
exaggerated stories in the daily papers of attempted assaults of Negroes
on white women resulted in an outbreak that was intended to terrorize
the popular Northwest section, in which lived a large proportion of
the Negroes in the District of Columbia. For three days the violence
continued intermittently, and as the constituted police authority did
practically nothing for the defense of the Negro citizens, the loss of
life might have been infinitely greater than it was if the colored men
of the city had not assumed their own defense. As it was they saved the
capital and earned the gratitude of the race and the nation. It appeared
that Negroes--educated, law-abiding Negroes--would not now run when
their lives and their homes were at stake, and before such determination
the mob retreated ingloriously.
Just a week afterwards--before the country had really caught its breath
after the events in Washington--there burst into flame in Chicago a race
war of the greatest bitterness and fierceness. For a number of years the
Western metropolis had been known as that city offering to the Negro
the best industrial and political opportunity in the country. When the
migration caused by the war was at its height, tens of thousands of
Negroes from the South passed through the city going elsewhere, but
thousands also remained to work in the stockyards or other places. With
all of the coming and going, the Negroes in the city must at any time in
1918 or 1919 have numbered not less than 150,000; and banks, coöperative
societies, and race newspapers flourished. There were also abundant
social problems awakened by the saloons and gambling dens, and by the
seamy side of politics. Those who had been longest in the city, however,
rallied to the needs of the newcomers, and in their homes, their
churches, and their places of work endeavored to get them adjusted in
their environment. The housing situation, in spite of all such effort,
became more and more acute, and when some Negroes were forced beyond the
bounds of the old "black belt" there were attempts to dynamite their new
residences. Meanwhile hundreds of young men who had gone to France or to
cantonments--1850 from the district of one draft board at State and 35th
Streets--returned to find again a place in the life of Chicago; and
daily from Washington or from the South came the great waves of social
unrest. Said Arnold Hill, secretary of the Chicago branch of the
National Urban League: "Every time a lynching takes place in a community
down South you can depend on it that colored people from that community
will arrive in Chicago inside of two weeks; we have seen it happen so
often that whenever we read newspaper dispatches of a public hanging
or burning in a Texas or a Mississippi town, we get ready to extend
greetings to the people from the immediate vicinity of the lynching."
Before the armistice was signed the League was each month finding work
for 1700 or 1800 men and women; in the following April the number fell
to 500, but with the coming of summer it rapidly rose again. Unskilled
work was plentiful, and jobs in foundries and steel mills, in building
and construction work, and in light factories and packing-houses kept up
a steady demand for laborers. Meanwhile trouble was brewing, and on the
streets there were occasional encounters.
Such was the situation when on a Sunday at the end of July a Negro boy
at a bathing beach near Twenty-sixth Street swam across an imaginary
segregation line. White boys threw rocks at him, knocked him off a raft,
and he was drowned. Colored people rushed to a policeman and asked him
to arrest the boys who threw the stones. He refused to do so, and as the
dead body of the Negro boy was being handled, more rocks were thrown
on both sides. The trouble thus engendered spread through the Negro
district on the South Side, and for a week it was impossible or
dangerous for people to go to work. Some employed at the stockyards
could not get to their work for some days further. At the end of three
days twenty Negroes were reported as dead, fourteen white men were dead,
scores of people were injured, and a number of houses of Negroes burned.
In the face of this disaster the great soul of Chicago rose above its
materialism. There were many conferences between representative people;
out of all the effort grew the determination to work for a nobler city;
and the sincerity was such as to give one hope not only for Chicago but
also for a new and better America.
The riots in Washington and Chicago were followed within a few weeks by
outbreaks in Knoxville and Omaha. In the latter place the fundamental
cause of the trouble was social and political corruption, and because he
strongly opposed the lynching of William Brown, the Negro, the mayor of
the city, Edward P. Smith, very nearly lost his life. As it was, the
county court house was burned, one man more was killed, and perhaps
as many as forty injured. More important even than this, however--and
indeed one of the two or three most far-reaching instances of racial
trouble in the history of the Negro in America--was the reign of terror
in and near Elaine, Phillips County, Arkansas, in the first week of
October, 1919. The causes of this were fundamental and reached the very
heart of the race problem and of the daily life of tens of thousands of
Negroes.
Many Negro tenants in eastern Arkansas, as in other states, were still
living under a share system by which the owner furnished the land
and the Negro the labor, and by which at the end of the year the two
supposedly got equal parts of the crop. Meanwhile throughout the
year the tenant would get his food, clothing, and other supplies at
exorbitant prices from a "commissary" operated by the planter or his
agent; and in actual practice the landowner and the tenant did not go
together to a city to dispose of the crop when it was gathered, as was
sometimes done elsewhere, but the landowner alone sold the crop and
settled with the tenant whenever and however he pleased; nor at the time
of settlement was any itemized statement of supplies given, only the
total amount owed being stated. Obviously the planter could regularly
pad his accounts, keep the Negro in debt, and be assured of his labor
supply from year to year.
In 1918 the price of cotton was constantly rising and at length reached
forty cents a pound. Even with the cheating to which the Negroes were
subjected, it became difficult to keep them in debt, and they became
more and more insistent in their demands for itemized statements.
Nevertheless some of those whose cotton was sold in October, 1918, did
not get any statement of any sort before July of the next year.
Seeing no other way out of their difficulty, sixty-eight of the Negroes
got together and decided to hire a lawyer who would help them to get
statements of their accounts and settlement at the right figures.
Feeling that the life of any Negro lawyer who took such a case would be
endangered, they employed the firm of Bratton and Bratton, of Little
Rock. They made contracts with this firm to handle the sixty-eight cases
at fifty dollars each in cash and a percentage of the moneys collected
from the white planters. Some of the Negroes also planned to go before
the Federal Grand Jury and charge certain planters with peonage. They
had secret meetings from time to time in order to collect the money to
be paid in advance and to collect the evidence which would enable them
successfully to prosecute their cases. Some Negro cotton-pickers about
the same time organized a union; and at Elaine many Negroes who worked
in the sawmills and who desired to protect their wives and daughters
from insult, refused to allow them to pick cotton or to work for a white
man at any price.
Such was the sentiment out of which developed the Progressive Farmers
and Household Union of America, which was an effort by legal means to
secure protection from unscrupulous landlords, but which did use the
form of a fraternal order with passwords and grips and insignia so as
the more forcefully to appeal to some of its members. About the first of
October the report was spread abroad in Phillips County that the Negroes
were plotting an insurrection and that they were rapidly preparing to
massacre the white people on a great scale. When the situation had
become tense, one Sunday John Clem, a white man from Helena, drunk, came
to Elaine and proceeded to terrorize the Negro population by gun play.
The colored people kept off the streets in order to avoid trouble and
telephoned the sheriff at Helena. This man failed to act. The next day
Clem was abroad again, but the Negroes still avoided trouble, thinking
that his acts were simply designed to start a race riot. On Tuesday
evening, October 1, however, W.D. Adkins, a special agent of the
Missouri Pacific Railroad, in company with Charles Pratt, a deputy
sheriff, was riding past a Negro church near Hoop Spur, a small
community just a few miles from Elaine. According to Pratt, persons in
the church fired without cause on the party, killing Adkins and wounding
himself. According to the Negroes, Adkins and Pratt fired into the
church, evidently to frighten the people there assembled. At any rate
word spread through the county that the massacre had started, and for
days there was murder and rioting, in the course of which not less
than five white men and twenty-five Negroes were killed, though some
estimates placed the number of fatalities a great deal higher. Negroes
were arrested and disarmed; some were shot on the highways; homes were
fired into; and at one time hundreds of men and women were in a stockade
under heavy guard and under the most unwholesome conditions, while
hundreds of white men, armed to the teeth, rushed to the vicinity from
neighboring cities and towns. Governor Charles H. Brough telegraphed to
Camp Pike for Federal troops, and five hundred were mobilized at once
"to repel the attack of the black army." Worse than any other feature
was the wanton slaying of the four Johnston brothers, whose father had
been a prominent Presbyterian minister and whose mother was formerly a
school-teacher. Dr. D.A.E. Johnston was a successful dentist and owned a
three-story building in Helena. Dr. Louis Johnston was a physician who
lived in Oklahoma and who had come home on a visit. A third brother had
served in France and been wounded and gassed at Château-Thierry.
Altogether one thousand Negroes were arrested and one hundred and
twenty-two indicted. A special committee of seven gathered evidence and
is charged with having used electric connections on the witness chair
in order to frighten the Negroes. Twelve men were sentenced to death
(though up to the end of 1920 execution had been stayed), and fifty-four
to penitentiary terms. The trials lasted from five to ten minutes each.
No witnesses for the defense were called; no Negroes were on the juries;
no change of venue was given. Meanwhile lawyers at Helena were preparing
to reap further harvest from Negroes who would be indicted and against
whom there was no evidence, but who had saved money and Liberty Bonds.
Governor Brough in a statement to the press blamed the _Crisis_ and the
Chicago _Defender_ for the trouble. He had served for a number of years
as a professor of economics before becoming governor and had even
identified himself with the forward-looking University Commission on
Southern Race Questions; and it is true that he postponed the executions
in order to allow appeals to be filed in behalf of the condemned men.
That he should thus attempt to shift the burden of blame and overlook
the facts when in a position of grave responsibility was a keen
disappointment to the lovers of progress.
Reference to the monthly periodical and the weekly paper just mentioned,
however, brings us to still another matter--the feeling on the part of
the Negro that, in addition to the outrages visited on the race, the
Government was now, under the cloak of wartime legislation, formally to
attempt to curtail its freedom of speech. For some days the issue of
the _Crisis_ for May, 1919, was held up in the mail; a South Carolina
representative in Congress quoted by way of denunciation from the
editorial "Returning Soldiers" in the same number of the periodical;
and a little later in the year the Department of Justice devoted
twenty-seven pages of the report of the investigation against "Persons
Advising Anarchy, Sedition, and the Forcible Overthrow of the
Government" to a report on "Radicalism and Sedition among the Negroes
as Reflected in Their Publications." Among other periodicals and papers
mentioned were the _Messenger_ and the _Negro World_ of New York; and by
the _Messenger_ indeed, frankly radical in its attitude not only on the
race question but also on fundamental economic principles, even the
_Crisis_ was regarded as conservative in tone. There could be no doubt
that a great spiritual change had come over the Negro people of the
United States. At the very time that their sons and brothers were making
the supreme sacrifice in France they were witnessing such events as
those at East St. Louis or Houston, or reading of three burnings within
a year in Tennessee. A new determination closely akin to consecration
possessed them. Fully to understand the new spirit one would read not
only such publications as those that have been mentioned, but also those
issued in the heart of the South. "Good-by, Black Mammy," said the
_Southwestern Christian Advocate_, taking as its theme the story of four
Southern white men who acted as honorary pallbearers at an old Negro
woman's funeral, but who under no circumstances would thus have served
for a thrifty, intelligent, well-educated man of the race. Said the
Houston _Informer_, voicing the feeling of thousands, "The black man
fought to make the world safe for democracy; he now demands that America
be made and maintained safe for black Americans." With hypocrisy in
the practice of the Christian religion there ceased to be any patience
whatsoever, as was shown by the treatment accorded a Y.M.C.A. "Call on
behalf of the young men and boys of the two great sister Anglo-Saxon
nations." "Read! Read! Read!" said the _Challenge Magazine_, "then
when the mob comes, whether with torch or with gun, let us stand at
Armageddon and battle for the Lord." "Protect your home," said the
gentle _Christian Recorder_, "protect your wife and children, with your
life if necessary. If a man crosses your threshold after you and your
family, the law allows you to protect your home even if you have to kill
the intruder." Perhaps nothing, however, better summed up the new spirit
than the following sonnet by Claude McKay:
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us, though dead!
Oh, kinsman! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us still be brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack
Pressed to the wall, dying, but--fighting back!
5. _The Widening Problem_
In view of the world war and the important part taken in it by French
colonial troops, especially those from Senegal, it is not surprising
that the heart of the Negro people in the United States broadened in a
new sympathy with the problems of their brothers the world over. Even
early in the decade that we are now considering, however, there was some
indication of this tendency, and the First Universal Races Congress in
London in 1911 attracted wide attention. In February, 1919, largely
through the personal effort of Dr. DuBois, a Pan-African Congress was
held in Paris, the chief aims of which were the hearing of statements
on the condition of Negroes throughout the world, the obtaining of
authoritative statements of policy toward the Negro race from the Great
Powers, the making of strong representations to the Peace Conference
then sitting in Paris in behalf of the Negroes throughout the world, and
the laying down of principles on which the future development of the
race must take place. Meanwhile the cession of the Virgin Islands had
fixed attention upon an interesting colored population at the very door
of the United States; and the American occupation of Hayti culminating
in the killing of many of the people in the course of President Wilson's
second administration gave a new feeling of kinship for the land of
Toussaint L'Ouverture. Among other things the evidence showed that on
June 12, 1918, under military pressure a new constitution was forced on
the Haytian people, one favoring the white man and the foreigner;
that by force and brutality innocent men and women, including native
preachers and members of their churches, had been taken, roped together,
and marched as slave-gangs to prison; and that in large numbers Haytians
had been taken from their homes and farms and made to work on new roads
for twenty cents a week, without being properly furnished with food--all
of this being done under the pretense of improving the social and
political condition of the country. The whole world now realized that
the Negro problem was no longer local in the United States or South
Africa, or the West Indies, but international in its scope and
possibilities.
Very early in the course of the conflict in Europe it was pointed out
that Africa was the real prize of the war, and it is now simply a
commonplace to say that the bases of the struggle were economic. Nothing
did Germany regret more than the forcible seizure of her African
possessions. One can not fail to observe, moreover, a tendency of
discussion of problems resultant from the war to shift the consideration
from that of pure politics to that of racial relations, and early in the
conflict students of society the world over realized that it was nothing
less than suicide on the part of the white race. After the close of the
war many books dealing with the issues at stake were written, and in the
year 1920 alone several of these appeared in the United States. Of all
of these publications, because of their different points of view, four
might call for special consideration--_The Republic of Liberia_, by
R.C.F. Maugham; _The Rising Tide of Color_, by Lothrop Stoddard;
_Darkwater_, by W.E. Burghardt DuBois, and _Empire and Commerce in
Africa: A Study in Economic Imperialism_, by Leonard Woolf. The position
of each of these books is clear and all bear directly upon the central
theme.
The _Republic of Liberia_ was written by one who some years ago was the
English consul at Monrovia and who afterwards was appointed to Dakar.
The supplementary preface also gives the information that the book was
really written two years before it appeared, publication being delayed
on account of the difficulties of printing at the time. Even up to 1918,
however, the account is incomplete, and the failure to touch upon recent
developments becomes serious; but it is of course impossible to record
the history of Liberia from 1847 to the present and reflect credit upon
England. There are some pages of value in the book, especially those in
which the author speaks of the labor situation in the little African
republic; but these are obviously intended primarily for consumption by
business men in London. "Liberians," we are informed, "tell you that,
whatever may be said to the contrary, the republic's most uncomfortable
neighbor has always been France." This is hardly true. France has
indeed on more than one occasion tried to equal her great rival in
aggrandizement, but she has never quite succeeded in so doing. As we
have already shown in connection with Liberia in the present work, from
the very first the shadow of Great Britain fell across the country. In
more recent years, by loans that were no more than clever plans for
thievery, by the forceful occupation of large tracts of land, and by
interference in the internal affairs of the country, England has again
and again proved herself the arch-enemy of the republic. The book so
recently written in the last analysis appears to be little more than the
basis of effort toward still further exploitation.
The very merit of _The Rising Tide of Color_ depends on its bias, and it
is significant that the book closes with a quotation from Kipling's "The
Heritage." To Dr. Stoddard the most disquieting feature of the recent
situation was not the war but the peace. Says he, "The white world's
inability to frame a constructive settlement, the perpetuation of
intestine hatreds and the menace of fresh civil wars complicated by the
specter of social revolution, evoke the dread thought that the late
war may be merely the first stage in a cycle of ruin." As for the war
itself, "As colored men realized the significance of it all, they looked
into each other's eyes and there saw the light of undreamed-of hopes.
The white world was tearing itself to pieces. White solidarity was
riven and shattered. And--fear of white power and respect for white
civilization together dropped away like garments outworn. Through the
bazaars of Asia ran the sibilant whisper: 'The East will see the West
to bed.'" At last comes the inevitable conclusion pleading for a better
understanding between England and Germany and for everything else that
would make for racial solidarity. The pitiful thing about this book
is that it is so thoroughly representative of the thing for which it
pleads. It is the very essence of jingoism; civilization does not exist
in and of itself, it is "white"; and the conclusions are directly at
variance with the ideals that have been supposed to guide England
and America. Incidentally the work speaks of the Negro and negroid
population of Africa as "estimated at about 120,000,000." This low
estimate has proved a common pitfall for writers. If we remember that
Africa is three and a half times as large as the United States, and that
while there are no cities as large as New York and Chicago, there are
many centers of very dense population; if we omit entirely from the
consideration the Desert of Sahara and make due allowance for some
heavily wooded tracts in which live no people at all; and if we then
take some fairly well-known region like Nigeria or Sierra Leone as the
basis of estimate, we shall arrive at some such figure as 450,000,000.
In order to satisfy any other points that might possibly be made, let us
reduce this by as much as a third, and we shall still have 300,000,000,
which figure we feel justified in advancing as the lowest possible
estimate for the population of Africa; and yet most books tell us that
there are only 140,000,000 people on the whole continent.
_Darkwater_ may be regarded as the reply to such a position as that
taken by Dr. Stoddard. If the white world conceives it to be its destiny
to exploit the darker races of mankind, then it simply remains for the
darker races to gird their loins for the contest. "What of the darker
world that watches? Most men belong to this world. With Negro and
Negroid, East Indian, Chinese, and Japanese they form two-thirds of the
population of the world. A belief in humanity is a belief in colored
men. If the uplift of mankind must be done by men, then the destinies of
this world will rest ultimately in the hands of darker nations. What,
then, is this dark world thinking? It is thinking that as wild and awful
as this shameful war was, it is nothing to compare with that fight for
freedom which black and brown and yellow men must and will make unless
their oppression and humiliation and insult at the hands of the White
World cease. The Dark World is going to submit to its present treatment
just as long as it must and not one moment longer."
Both of these books are strong, and both are materialistic; and
materialism, it must be granted, is a very important factor in the world
just now. Somewhat different in outlook, however, is the book that
labors under an economic subject, _Empire and Commerce in Africa_. In
general the inquiry is concerned with the question, What do we desire
to attain, particularly economically, in Africa, and how far is it
attainable through policy? The discussion is mainly confined to the
three powers: England, France, and Germany; and special merit attaches
to the chapter on Abyssinia, probably the best brief account of this
country ever written. Mr. Woolf announces such fundamental principles as
that the land in Africa should be reserved for the natives; that there
should be systematic education of the natives with a view to training
them to take part in, and eventually control, the government of the
country; that there should be a gradual expatriation of all Europeans
and their capitalistic enterprises; that all revenue raised in Africa
should be applied to the development of the country and the education
and health of the inhabitants; that alcohol should be absolutely
prohibited; and that Africa should be completely neutralized, that is,
in no case should any military operations between European states be
allowed. The difficulties of the enforcement of such a program are of
course apparent to the author; but with other such volumes as this to
guide and mold opinion, the time may indeed come at no distant date when
Africa will cease to exist solely for exploitation and no longer be the
rebuke of Christendom.
These four books then express fairly well the different opinions and
hopes with which Africa and the world problem that the continent raises
have recently been regarded. It remains simply to mention a conception
that after the close of the war found many adherents in the United
States and elsewhere, and whose operation was on a scale that forced
recognition. This was the idea of the Provisional Republic of Africa,
the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities
League of the World, the Black Star Line of steamships, and the Negro
Factories Corporation, all of which activities were centered in New
York, had as their organ the _Negro World_, and as their president and
leading spirit Marcus Garvey, who was originally from Jamaica. The
central thought that appealed to great crowds of people and won their
support was that of freedom for the race in every sense of the word.
Such freedom, it was declared, transcended the mere demand for the
enforcement of certain political and social rights and could finally be
realised only under a vast super-government guiding the destinies of the
race in Africa, the United States, the West Indies, and everywhere else
in the world. This was to control its people "just as the Pope and the
Catholic Church control its millions in every land." The related ideas
and activities were sometimes termed grandiose and they awakened
much opposition on the part of the old leaders, the clergy, while
conservative business stood aloof. At the same time the conception is
one that deserves to be considered on its merits.
It is quite possible that if promoted on a scale vast enough such a
Negro super-government as that proposed could be realized. It is true
that England and France seem to-day to have a firm grip on the continent
of Africa, but the experience of Germany has shown that even the mailèd
fist may lose its strength overnight. With England beset with problems
in Ireland and the West Indies, in India and Egypt, it is easy for the
millions in equatorial Africa to be made to know that even this great
power is not invincible and in time might rest with Nineveh and Tyre.
There are things in Africa that will forever baffle all Europeans, and
no foreign governor will ever know all that is at the back of the black
man's mind. Even now, without the aid of modern science, information
travels in a few hours throughout the length and breadth of the
continent; and those that slept are beginning to be awake and restless.
Let this restlessness increase, let intelligence also increase, let the
natives be aided by their fever, and all the armies of Europe could be
lost in Africa and this ancient mother still rise bloody but unbowed.
The realization of the vision, however, would call for capital on a
scale as vast as that of a modern war or an international industrial
enterprise. At the very outset it would engage England in nothing less
than a death-grapple, especially as regards the shipping on the West
Coast. If ships can not go from Liverpool to Seccondee and Lagos, then
England herself is doomed. The possible contest appalls the imagination.
At the same time the exploiting that now goes on in the world can not go
on forever.