be made into ties for railroads. When he came here from the
South he worked as a trucker in the Quartermaster's Department
of the army until the department closed. After loafing half a
month, he got his present job trucking at a box factory. Unions
would be all right, in his opinion, if they let all of the
men in who would do right, but when they don't, they do more
harm than good. He used to belong to the Butchers' Union at
the Stock Yards and "got along fine," but he quit butchering.
He intends to get back in a union if possible. Strikes are
too hard on the man that "ain't in the union; strike out here
recently and now we can't make overtime and we hardly make
enough in regular time to live on. Unions are secret--I can't
remember all the bunk about them now, but you pay dues and go
to meetings, something like a lodge I guess. If anything goes
wrong on your job you tell it in meeting, and your branch of
the union takes it up with the people. You don't have any of
that worry on yourself. They are all right if you are on the
inside, but mighty hard if you ain't."
J---- McN----, forty-two years old, had been a farmer in the
South all of his life until he came to Chicago in January,
1920, and went to work in the Yards as a meat trimmer. He has
been asked to join the unions but hasn't done it as yet--he
isn't quite sure they mean a square deal by the colored man,
although he can't see why they would ask him to join if they
didn't. Don't know much about the "workings of 'em" but they
pull together, sort of "lodge like." He thinks everybody who
belongs is mighty "close mouthed" about what they do at the
meetings. He knows that they pay dues and have assessments, that
they look after sick members and have some sort of initiation.
J---- L----, fifty-two years old, is foreman over the truckers
in a box factory. He said: "Unions ain't no good for a colored
man, I've seen too much of what they don't do for him. I
wouldn't join for nothing--wanted me to join one at the Yards
but I wouldn't; no protection; if they had been, the colored
men who belonged might have worked while the riot was going on;
only thing allowed out there then was foreigners. If a thing
can't help you when you need help, why have it? That's the way
I feel about unions. I tell you they don't mean nothing for me."
H---- S----, twenty-four years old, had lived in Chicago only
two months. He said: "Well I don't know, you see these other
folks been here longer than me; they ain't joined, and I reckon
they know more about it than me. No, they didn't have no unions
where I comed from--ain't nothing there anyway but farmers.
I reckon, though, if I had a chance I might join. They can't
do much harm here to a fellow."
J---- H----, thirty-eight years old, came up from Alabama
in 1916 with about thirty other men during the big rush from
the South. They went to work almost immediately at the Stock
Yards, where he worked as a laborer, stripping bacon. After
he quit this he was out of work for nearly a month. He heard
about the wool mills. They put him on the very first day and
he has been there ever since.
He does not belong to a union. He "would join one if I had a
chance and it meant anything to me materially." He does not
understand them, "can't understand why they strike and keep
men out of work."
M---- L----, forty-two years old, came to Chicago from Tennessee
in 1894. He said: "I tried every job under the sun since I
came. My first job was porter in the Palmer House; made good
tips here but not very much salary. Changed to bellboy; was
finally made head bellboy; stayed there four years; boss made
me mad and I quit. Along about this time I met my wife. I
wanted to make her think I was a regular man, so got a job as
a laborer in a foundry. Since then I've gone from one foundry
to the other. Work got so hard I quit one time; went on the
road; stayed there for about four years, then went back to the
foundry work; worked for Illinois Malleable for three years
first time; had trouble with straw boss; he fired me; went
to McCormick's but they didn't pay so well, so I got back on
my old job. Yes, unions are the best thing in the world for
a working man. If I'd been in a union my boss couldn't have
fired me that time. I wish it was so you could join a union
regardless of your color. We need protection on our jobs as
well as the white man. I guess though that time is coming. I
don't know much about the workings of a union, but I do know
it's a protection to the man who belongs."
F---- D----, twenty-eight years old, does not belong to a
union because there are no unions in the car shops where he
works. He says unions are the best things in the world if the
right kind of people are at the head, and if all the fellows
will join, but when half of them won't join, unionism won't
do because it just means loss of your job.
R---- R----, thirty-four years old, has been working in Chicago
three months at his regular trade as a stove joiner. He learned
to join stoves at a mill in Helena. He has never had a chance
to join a union, but all the white men in the mill at Helena
belonged, and they fared lots better than the Negro men. He
wants to join one here the very first chance he gets. He is
a skilled laborer, knows he can put out as much work as any
man doing his line of work, feels he should be paid as much
as anyone else, and knows the only way this can happen to him
is to get in a union where he has some protection and backers.
There is a union where he is, but he hasn't been asked to join
it yet. He says he has found out that the colored man, if he
wants the same thing as a white man gets, has to get in things
with them.
Mrs. N---- M---- found work as a maid in a Chicago hospital
after she was deserted by her husband. She wants to save money
enough to run her while she takes "nurse training." She did
not know anything about unions until she went to the hospital.
The nurses there had a union, and she saw just how much they
can mean to people. "They usually make the employers do the
right thing by the people; unless the nurses asked too much
they got what they wanted." That was what made her decide she
wanted to be a nurse; she saw how square they were with each
other, and how the union made them pull together regardless of
whether or not they liked each other. That is what she liked
about the unions: "They make you treat the other fellow right
regardless how you feel toward him."
Nellie W----, age thirty, doing clerical work in a large
mail-order establishment, said that "unions don't mean anything
to colored people. The only reason they let them in when they
do is so they can't become strike breakers." She didn't know
how her husband felt about unions, as they had never talked
about the matter, but she knew that she wouldn't join one.
O---- L----, thirty-eight years old, had migrated from Georgia
in the summer of 1917. To him unions are "the best thing that
ever came the colored man's way. Out here [in a box factory]
it doesn't make quite so much difference whether I'm in one or
not, but if I ever go back to my trade as plasterer, that's
the first thing I intend to try and do. You get protection,
you get more money, and then too the white man gets a chance
to see that you are not all for yourself, for when you are in
a union you work for everybody's good."
H---- has been a head waiter in a hotel. He believes the big
reason why Negroes are not strongly enthusiastic for unions
is because they feel they will not get square treatment. This
he based upon continual references to the 1903 waiters' strike.
The attitude of indifference or suspicion so frequently encountered among
Negro workers outside of the unions is attributed by white and Negro
labor leaders and union men to the following reasons: (_a_) traditional
treatment of Negroes by white men; (_b_) influence of racial leaders who
oppose unionism; and (_c_) influence of employers' propaganda against
unionism.
The traditional treatment of Negroes in the South, increasingly reflected
in the North, has made the Negro suspicious of the white man's sincerity.
Negroes, therefore, naturally feel that they will not get a "square deal"
in white unions. In support of this attitude the waiters' strike of 1903
is still cited as an instance of "double-crossing" by white unions.
This strike was so often referred to by Negroes as a justification for
their attitude toward labor-union policies that it seemed worth while
to attempt to learn the facts, even though seventeen years had elapsed
since the strike occurred.
Two organizers for the American Federation of Labor, a newspaper editor,
an officer of the Negro local during the strike, the head waiter of one
of the large hotels (all Negroes), and John Fitzpatrick, president of
the Chicago Federation of Labor, were asked to tell the facts.
Reports are conflicting in many instances. However, the explanations of
circumstances as presented to the Commission are as follows:
The union of cooks and waiters involved in the strike of 1903, affiliated
with the American Federation of Labor, had a membership of 20,000, of
whom over 2,000 were Negroes. The Negroes had only recently been taken
into the union as a separate local under their own officers. The strike
first centered on Kohlsaat's chain of restaurants. This lasted seven
weeks, during which time all of the union members were out. The strike
terminated in circumstances on which there is general disagreement.
Negroes state that the white unionists "double-crossed" them, and when
Kohlsaat refused to take back the Negro waiters who had walked out with
the whites the latter went back to work and left the Negroes without
jobs. It is known that during the general excitement the charter of
the Negro local was revoked, although no one appears to know how or by
whom this was done. The white union leaders have frequently attempted
to absolve the union of responsibility for this situation and place the
blame on the Kohlsaat restaurants and the _Chicago Herald_, controlled
by Kohlsaat. John Fitzpatrick, before the Commission, referred to the
incident thus:
_Commissioner_: Concerning the waiters' strike several years
ago, the Kohlsaat strike, were they unionized under your
direction in order to raise the scale of dinner men [they were
known as dinner men] to the union scale? What was the success
of it as far as the colored waiters were concerned?
_Mr. Fitzpatrick_: They weren't organized for financial
purposes. They were organized as workers. We felt they ought
to have our co-operation, so we went out to organize them. The
Kohlsaat newspaper was one of the instruments by which they
perpetrated the conspiracy, and some other papers went into
a scheme and tried to bring about an atmosphere of fear and
suspicion between the colored and white workers.
It was Sunday, and the charter of the colored workers was
in my possession. That night they met, and I was installing
officers at Twenty-third Street and Washington Avenue. That
morning the _Herald_ ran a front-page story, first column,
teeming with a set-up against organized labor and warning the
colored workers to beware.
When I got up on the platform I read the story to them and said,
"That sets up one side of the story, and there is a conspiracy
to destroy your rights. What do you want to do about it?"
They said, "We will go ahead. We know what the employers want
and you go ahead and instal us." They went ahead and got into
that strike. The employers said: "We are going to supplant
colored men with white union girls." We told them we wouldn't
permit union girls to go on the job. The Kohlsaats begged of
us to give them white union women, and we refused to do so.
Now then, while this was going on, the newspapers had different
reports out, and they went out and had the charter of this
local revoked. How they did it, I don't know. But I have my
own notions how a newspaper operates. I think that a newspaper
has influence and money and other things, and that is the
only way I can account for that thing happening. They went to
the international organization to revoke the charter of this
organization.
This whole situation was obscured by a mass of charges and
counter-charges, but the fact that the strike failed was evident enough.
Regardless of what the facts actually were, there is a widespread belief
among Negro workers that the colored waiters were "double-crossed" by
white unions in this strike. Since it is men's belief about facts which
determines behavior, it is not surprising to find that Negro strike
breakers could be found in large numbers to take the place of waiters
who went on strike in May, 1920.
The influence of some employers is also a factor in the attitude of
Negroes toward labor unions. In many open shops the employers and unions
are engaged in a continuous struggle. In such cases, if persuasion and
argument fail, there is an effective instrument in strike breakers. For
this purpose Negroes have frequently been used. Instances in Chicago
are found in the strikes in the steel industry, the Stock Yards, and
the culinary industry. Many labor leaders and union members believe
that welfare clubs, company Y.M.C.A.'s, glee clubs, and athletic clubs
are encouraged and supported by employers as a substitute for a form
of organization which they cannot control. The subsidizing of social
movements and churches is regarded as one of the means employed by large
employers to insure this reserve of strike breakers. The union organizer
in the steel strike, W. Z. Foster, stated at one of the conferences held
by the Commission that, after an address to the Negro steel workers at
a church in Pittsburgh, the Negro preacher had said to him: "It nearly
broke up the congregation, but we decided you were going to speak here
in this church." The organizer continued:
Then I got the underneath of all this thing and found that
this church had lost a donation of $2,500.00 from the Steel
Corporation for allowing me to speak. They had tried to block
my speech to these colored workers in Pittsburgh. Whenever
it's a question of a donation to a poor, struggling church
like that, we know what usually happens.
The statement made by George W. Perkins, president of the Cigarmakers'
International Union, was typical of the view of labor leaders:
If you go to the root, you will find that economic reason; the
employers, not all of them but many of them, in our industry
as well as others, will divide the workers if they can. That
is the history all along. They will divide them, not because
they are black and white, but to keep them divided so they
won't unite in the organization.
Another labor leader, acting as an organizer in large industries in
various cities, stated at another conference:
I want to tell you that a strike breaker is a very precious
animal for the employer, and if he thinks he has a great
body of colored workers in this country who are apt to learn
trades with very little practice, as an inexhaustible well of
strike breakers, he is not going to stop at a little thing
like propaganda. He will find plenty of excuses to keep men
out of the union. In the Stock Yards, in the steel industry,
he will find arguments and he will carry on propaganda.
The difficulties inherent in the whole question of organizing Negroes
were probably best brought out before the Commission by W. Z. Foster,
who took a leading part in organizing Negroes in the Stock Yards, the
most important industry in Chicago so far as Negroes are concerned:
We found in the steel industry that the colored worker was
very unresponsive to organization. The same was true in the
packing industry. Let me give you first what steps we took in
the packing industry in Chicago in 1917, the big campaign which
resulted in the organization of men. The first meeting we had
we sat around a table and talked it over, and we realized that
there were two big problems, the organization of the foreign
worker and the organization of the colored worker. We shortly
dismissed the problem of organizing the foreign worker, but
we realized that to accomplish the organization of the colored
worker was the real problem. When we went into the packing-house
situation we were determined to organize the colored worker
if it was humanly possible to do so, and I think I can safely
say that the men who carried on that campaign realized fully
the necessity for the organization of the colored worker, not
wholly, or at least not only, from the white man's point of
view, but from his own point of view to a certain extent. In
other words, we were not altogether materialistic. We like to
think that we were a little bit altruistic in the situation.
There was a total employment of twelve or fourteen thousand.
We found that we had tremendous opposition to encounter.
First of all it took this attitude, that the colored man
would not be allowed to join the unions at all. We met that
broadcast with such circulars as those already shown. I wrote
some of them up myself as secretary of the council, inviting
these men in such a way that these colored men could not help
but realize that there was nothing to this argument that they
would not be allowed to join the union.... The next argument
that developed was, "Sure, the white man will take you into
his union because you are in the minority." But we fought all
of these arguments, and we organized a local union on State
Street.
Then the argument was raised that it was a "Jim Crow"
proposition. It was quite general along State Street that it
was a "Jim Crow" proposition. It seemed to make no difference
what move we made, there was always an argument against it,
so we overcame the "Jim Crow" argument by combining the white
locals and the black. We said to the boys: "This is not a
colored local. This is a neighborhood local of miscellaneous
locals. Any colored man can belong to this local." We told the
white men: "You are free to come in here and join this union."
Well, we punctured that argument that there was discrimination
in the Stock Yards, and I would challenge anyone to show where
the unions in the Stock Yards campaign have discriminated
against the colored man. There may have been isolated cases of
an individual here and there, but I will say this, and I was
on the organizing committee and probably in closer touch with
the situation than anyone else here in the city with those
four or five thousand colored workers that we organized, I
dare say that 40 per cent of the total amount of grievances
that were presented by all the workers in the Stock Yards came
from these colored workers, and the standing instructions were
to look after them very carefully....
But the more we tried to help the colored worker the more
intense the opposition was, because there was a force working
against us, and we could not help but feel it. We got it from
the colored people themselves, and it is a fact that some of
the organizers were actually afraid to go around to some of
these saloons and poolrooms where they congregated because of
the agents of the packers, or whoever was responsible for that
propaganda, and they felt that their lives were in danger....
Out in the Stock Yards we could not win their support. It could
not be done. They were constitutionally opposed to unions,
and all our forces could not break down that opposition....
We tried to make our appeal quite general in scope. We got
the best organizers. A good colored organizer is very rare--a
man who is thoroughly qualified to represent the trade-union
point of view. We tried to find one and picked out a colored
member of the Engineers' Union, a man highly honored in all
the trade unions of Chicago.... The reason the colored man
gave for not joining you will find in the circular "Beware of
the White Man's Union," and that the only way that they can
ever make any headway in the industry is to stick in with the
boss and then when there is a strike to step in and take the
jobs that are left there....
Race prejudice has everything to do with it. It lies at the
bottom. The colored man as a blood race has been oppressed for
hundreds of years. The white man has enslaved him, and they
don't feel confidence in the trade unions. But there is more
real fraternal feeling among the black and white workers than
in any other grade of society.... As soon as the colored man
becomes a factor in industry, he is going to be organized,
providing he does not become a victim to the line of tactics
that are laid out by the employer. In the steel strike he
lined up with the bosses.
4. NEGRO WORKERS WITHIN THE UNIONS
Negro workers inside the ranks of such unions as the Stock Yards',
Janitors', and Hodcarriers', types of the unions which accept Negroes
with complete equality, feel, with very few exceptions, that they are
being given a "square deal" by the unions. By coming into the unions
they say they have been able to secure better working conditions and
higher wages. They express satisfaction with the treatment accorded them
by white unionists on the job and at meetings, where the grievances of
Negro members are given the same attention as the complaints of white
members. The situation in the unions mentioned has been so fully described
already in this report that there is no need for further details on the
friendly relationship which exists between white and colored members of
these unions. Many Negro unionists look to labor organization as one of
the most promising solutions of race problems.
VI. THE NEGRO AND STRIKES
The attitude of Negro workers during strikes is closely connected with
the attitude of Negroes toward union organization. As stated before,
there are many cross-currents at work, some tending to keep Negroes out
of unions and others impelling them toward the unions. All the forces
at work to prejudice the Negro against union organization are factors
which help to explain his willingness to take the place of striking white
workers. The loyalty of the Negro during strikes by white employees
was referred to by a number of the representatives of large employers
attending the industrial conferences held by the Commission.
Some of the most conspicuous cases coming to the attention of the
Commission in which Negroes have taken the place of white strikers or
have remained at work during strikes are the following:
The Stock Yards strike of 1904 lasted from July 4 to the middle
of September. The general superintendent of one of the plants in
the Yards, appearing before the Commission, said: "The strike
was called at 12:00 o'clock. Every employee practically that
we had went out. Within two or three days we had any number
of colored employees return to work.... I'd say Negroes helped
us to break the strike by coming to work. A number of Negroes
that we understand belonged to the union did not remain out
more than two or three days. Practically all the Negroes came
back before the strike was called off."
The strike in the Corn Products Refining Company plant at Argo,
where, in the summer of 1919, before the strike, 300 Negroes
were employed, during the strike 900, and when it was over
about 500.
The steel strike of 1919. Representatives of several of the
iron and steel plants stated that Negroes had helped to break
this strike. The _Inter-Church World Movement Report on the
Steel Strike of 1919_ (p. 177) lists the "successful use of
strike-breakers, principally Negroes, by the steel companies" as
the second cause of the failure of the steel strike. "'Niggers
did it' was a not uncommon remark among company officials."
The waiters' strike in 1920.
Less important cases were the following:
A clothing shop where Negro women broke a strike in 1916
and continued in the employ thereafter. A wool warehouse and
storage company which used Negroes at slightly higher wages
to replace striking Polish laborers in 1916, and have since
continued to employ Negroes.
The strike of Pullman-car cleaners about 1916. Negroes were
used as strike breakers and have since been employed in large
numbers, men cleaning the windows and outside of cars and
Negro women doing most of the inside cleaning.
Many other instances where Negroes have been used as strike
breakers could be cited.
During a strike, feeling runs high and the word "strike breaker" or
"scab" carries with it a decided stigma among the strikers. White workers
ordinarily do not try to understand why the Negro acts as he does. They
do not reason that the Negro is often loyal to the employer because he
feels that the employer, sometimes at considerable risk, has opened to
him industrial opportunities which, translated into wages, mean better
living conditions for himself and his family. If the white worker took
into account the struggle of the Negro to gain entrance into the fields
outside of personal service, the latter's eagerness to take advantage
of any opening, however created, might be better understood and regarded
with more tolerant spirit.
What bearing this use of Negro labor has on the attitude of white workers
toward Negroes depends upon whether the subject is approached from the
point of view of the employer or of the trade unionist. Representatives
of the packing companies emphasized the employers' appreciation of the
Negro's loyalty and discounted the antagonism caused by Negroes serving
as strike breakers, while trade-union leaders and others having the
workers' point of view emphasized the seeds of dissension that were sown
by such action and contended that the good will of the employer gained
at such a cost was in reality a handicap to the Negro. White workers
feel that Negroes who serve as strike breakers are helping to earn for
their race the stigma of being a "scab" race. This is especially serious
in the case of Negroes, because color identification makes it easy to
focus hatred for the "scab."
Union leaders and social workers who participated in the conferences
held by the Commission condemned the practice of some private employment
agencies in sending Negroes to plants as strike breakers without informing
them that a strike was in progress. Investigations in several states
have disclosed such practices of some private employment agencies,
"misrepresentation of terms and conditions of employment" being the
most frequent abuse, according to the report of the Federal Commission
on Industrial Relations: "Men are not informed about strikes that may
be on at places to which they are sent, nor about other important facts
which they ought to know."[77]
Private employment agencies following such practices try to do so against
colored as well as white workers, although with probably less success
because of the ability of the Negro to speak English. However, the part
played by private employment agencies in supplying Negro strike breakers
in Chicago appears to be of relatively little importance. Ordinarily
agents of employers find Negro strike breakers directly by going into the
Negro residence section with autos or trucks and recruiting the number
of men desired. The industrial secretary of the Urban League made the
following statement regarding Negro strike breakers:
According to all information available to the Chicago Urban
League, it does not appear that any of the private employment
agencies except the one conducted by R. G. Parker, editor of
the _Chicago Advocate_, who advertised for cooks and waiters
to break the strike of the Cooks and Waiters' Alliance during
the National Republican Convention in June, 1920, have been
instrumental in strike breaking.
The method used in the organization of strike breakers among
colored people is not well defined. Generally labor scouts
work directly for companies affected by strikes. These scouts
have frequently applied to our office for workers, but we
have refused assistance. The men are usually gathered from the
streets, poolrooms, or wherever they can be found. It is the
policy of the Chicago Urban League not to interfere in strikes
unless the striking unions have refused to admit colored workers
to their membership. The League is not opposed to unionism,
but is interested primarily in the welfare of colored workers.
VII. ATTITUDE AND OPINIONS OF LABOR LEADERS
From the eleven representative labor leaders attending the trade-union
conferences held by the Commission, from the various interviews by the
investigators with these and other union officials and members, and from
letters received from labor officials from various parts of the United
States, it was apparent that there were certain definite views held by
most of these leaders as to the relationship of organized labor to the
Negro. These views are summarized and set forth in the following pages:
1. GENERAL PUBLIC HAS RACE PREJUDICE
Race prejudice exists generally in all groups of the white race and
only changes slowly. The worker is just as much subject to it in the
beginning as are the members of all other groups.
2. UNIONS FAIRER TO NEGRO THAN ARE OTHER GROUPS
The unions have given the Negro a fairer deal than other social
institutions or groups, such as department stores, clubs, churches,
theaters, fraternal organizations, hotels, and railways.
3. UNIONS BLAMED FOR CONDITIONS THEY CANNOT CONTROL
Unions are many times blamed for situations in which Negroes are not
admitted to an occupation or industry over which the unions have no
control, the exclusion existing because the attitude of either the public
or the employer prevents the entrance of Negroes into the industry. For
example, Negroes are not employed in Chicago as motormen or conductors on
surface or elevated transportation lines, as telephone operators by the
telephone company, as sales clerks in department stores, as chauffeurs
by taxicab companies, nor as upholsterers and drapers by firms sending
such employees to work in private homes.
The position taken by the unions is that they cannot organize a
miscellaneous public, but that they can only organize those that have the
jobs, that as long as street and elevated lines do not employ Negroes
as motormen and conductors the unions cannot take them in. True, there
might be objection on the part of the members in these unions, but
the question has never come up. Also the traction companies are not
in business to reform public opinion and so, because the public might
object, do not engage Negroes in these jobs. In this their position is
similar to that of the large taxicab companies, which, however, employ
non-union workers. They have Negroes in the garages but not as chauffeurs,
probably because they believe that the general public would object if
Negroes were employed as chauffeurs. In such cases the unions feel that
they are not responsible, any more than they are accountable for the
policy of the telephone company which engages no Negro operators. Among
other large businesses must be listed the department stores, which have
no Negroes as sales clerks.
Exclusion of Negroes from a trade or industry results in inability to
join the unions in such trades. This fact is well illustrated by the
Upholsterers' Union, which has three branches--furniture upholsterers,
drapers, and mattress makers. Upholsterers and drapers are frequently
sent out by the large stores to residences of customers, and the stores
will not risk offending customers by sending a Negro into their homes.
Consequently there are no Negroes in these branches of the union. The
mattress makers' local, on the other hand, has more Negro than white
members, and the secretary of the union is a Negro. This situation would
not be possible if Negroes were excluded from employment in mattress
factories. In view of the fact that the Upholsterers' Union freely
admits Negroes into the mattress makers' local, Negroes would also, no
doubt, be admitted into the locals of the upholsterers and the drapers
if employers hired Negroes for such work.
4. EXCLUSION POLICY CONDEMNED
The policy, wherever it exists, of excluding Negroes from unions, whether
by direct or indirect means, is considered wrong and shortsighted by
the great majority of labor leaders. They believe that the small group
of "aristocratic and conservative" unions cannot long withstand the
American Federation of Labor policy of organizing Negroes in local and
federal unions, nor the policy of the more progressive national and
international unions. As the number of Negroes increases in the unions
now admitting them, as the number of Negro delegates to city centrals,
like the Chicago Federation of Labor, increases, and as the number of
delegates to conventions of the State Federation of Labor and to the
American Federation of Labor increases each year, more and more pressure
is being brought to bear on these unions from without and also by the
progressive leaders from within, so that gradually all barriers will
be swept aside. That a gradual change is taking place in the policy of
many unions is evidenced by the following instances:
_International Brotherhood of Firemen and Oilers._--"In 1902 a local
union of Negro stationary firemen in Chicago could not be chartered
because the white local union would not give its consent."[78] In 1920
the president of Local 7, Chicago, reported as follows:
The symbol of our organization is, "We shall not discriminate
against creed, color or nationality." The membership of our
organization is open to the Negro as much as to any other
man who earns his living by the sweat of his brow. I should
say, offhand, that we have approximately about 100 Negroes
who are members of our Chicago local and who take an active
part in all of our deliberations. So far as has come under my
observation the feeling towards these men has always been of
the most cordial nature.
I am, however, free to say that we have found that a great many
of the employers, who do not desire to play fair, use the Negro
to offset any high standard of wages which the organization
may deem proper and just, and I have found, in my experience,
an endeavor on the part of some of the employers to only use
the Negro when he would want to maintain a lower standard of
wages, but when compelled by force of circumstances to pay a
living rate of wages, immediately a request would be made on
the organization that the Negro be removed and a white man
furnished. This we emphatically refuse to do. If the Negro
was efficient and competent to perform his duties prior to
the establishment of a living wage he certainly should be
competent enough to perform the same duties afterwards.
_Metal Polishers' International Union._--The general secretary informed
the Commission:
At the last international convention held, the question of
Negroes entering our trade was taken up, and the delegates
anticipated that, at some future time, Negroes would be
employed, and we felt that, if the manufacturers were left under
the impression that we would refuse to accept them into the
organization, it would be an incentive to the Manufacturers'
Association to import Negroes or hire them, so a resolution
was passed that any skilled polisher, buffer, or plater, even
though a Negro, should be admitted to our organization.
_International Association of Machinists._--Although at its convention
at Rochester, New York, in 1920, this union again voted down the
proposition to strike out the word "white" from its ritual, there was
significance in the fact that seven resolutions were introduced at the
convention to remove the excluding provision. These resolutions came from
unions in the following cities: two from different locals in Chicago;
one from Columbia, South Carolina; one from Akron, Ohio; one from New
Haven, Connecticut; one from Tucson, Arizona. Resolutions opposing came
from Bakersfield, California; Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Whistler, Alabama;
and Savannah, Georgia. As an instance of enthusiastic appreciation of
the mutual advantage to whites and Negroes of joint effort in union
organization with no discrimination the following comment from an office
of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees' National Alliance was received
by the Commission:
We have one local union composed of white and colored
workers--that union is located in the city of Boston,
Massachusetts; roughly speaking, there are approximately 400
in a total membership of about 2,000; at our convention held
at Providence, Rhode Island, last August, one of the delegates
from that union was a colored man. Six years ago Boston colored
waiters woke up, and so did the whites, to the fact that for
decades they had been used one against the other by their
employers; they got together, and they affirm with considerable
emphasis that amalgamation has proved beneficial.
5. UNIONS INSTRUMENTAL IN REMOVING RACE PREJUDICE
Labor leaders emphasize the influence of contact in union meetings in
promoting a friendly understanding between white and colored members.
They point out the fact that the Negro ceases to be a stranger or an
object of prejudice when once he has identified himself with the union.
A common interest in common problems binds the members together, and
a spirit of loyalty to the union develops in the effort to realize the
aims of the group. White members come to have a more kindly feeling for
a Negro within the union group than they have toward a white man who
remains outside the union ranks. Said one union leader:
Some day the white worker is going to coax the black man to
line up with him; all that he needs is a crusader's heart
and a genuine desire to make the black man and himself free,
and when he succeeds there won't be, in the economic field at
least, the differences which now exist, due to this pitting
of one race against the other and both being walloped by the
action.
CHAPTER IX
PUBLIC OPINION IN RACE RELATIONS
The Negro in the United States: "A person of African blood (much
or little) about whom men of English descent tell only half the
truth, and because of whom they do not act with frankness and
sanity either toward the Negro or to one another--in a word,
about whom they easily lose their common sense, their usual
good judgment, and even their powers of accurate observation.
The Negro-in-America, therefore, is a form of insanity that
overtakes white men."--_The Southerner_ by Walter Hines Page.
The Stoic proverb, that "men are tormented by the opinions they have
of things rather than by the things themselves,"[79] applies as aptly
to the relations between the white and Negro populations as to other of
our problems. Because the "race problem" has been so vaguely stated, so
variously explained, and so little understood, discussions of it and the
conduct of whites and Negroes toward each other usually express feeling
rather than intelligence.
The public is guided by patterns of behavior and traditions generally
accepted, whether sound or unsound. False notions, if believed, may
control conduct as effectively as true ones. And pre-established notions
lose their subtle influence when it appears that their basis is in error.
White persons are generally uninformed on matters affecting Negroes
and race relations. They are forced to rely on partial and frequently
inaccurate information and upon traditional sentiments. This same
ignorance applies to Negroes, though not to the same degree; for they
know white people in their intimate personal and home relations and in
connection with their work in factories and stores. They read their books
and papers and often hear their discussions. Negroes are perhaps more race
conscious than whites because every day they must face situations which
remind them of their race. They are sensitive to moods and antagonisms
expressed in words and shown in manners. Their impressions from the white
group are subject to distortion as are those received by the whites from
them. Negroes manifest characteristics which, though the natural result
of their circumstances and experiences, are yet misunderstood and often
resented by the white group. For Negroes live and think in a state of
isolation which is almost complete; and no white group understands it,
or can fully understand it.
The riot of 1919 is an example of the effects of this isolation and
misunderstanding. The accumulated resentments, unchallenged mutual
beliefs and resultant friction, culminated in a surprising calamity and
wholesale bloodshed.
This chapter, therefore, has a thesis and a purpose. If these beliefs,
prejudices and faulty deductions can be made accessible for examination
and analysis, many of them will be corrected. If a self-critical
attitude toward these prejudices can be stimulated by typical examples,
a considerable step will have been taken toward understanding and harmony.
The study of public opinion in race relations attempted by the Commission
does not presume to set down definite laws of its working, or to tell all
about how it works. The aim is merely to make apparent and objective its
place and importance in race relations, to indicate some of the ways in
which it has developed; how it expresses itself, how it affects both the
white and Negro groups; how, in its present state, it is strengthened,
weakened, polluted, or purified by deliberate agencies or even by its
own action, and finally how it may be used to reduce, if not to prevent,
racial unfriendliness and misunderstanding.
The following plan is employed in presenting this branch of the subject:
1. Beliefs regarding Negroes, which greatly influence the conduct of
white persons toward them, are described as they apply in the local
environment, and their origin and background are traced suggestively to
their responsible literature and circumstances.
2. Types of sentiment which are variants of these basic beliefs are
presented with a view to making them intelligible, and to classifying
them according to resolvable factors of misunderstanding.
3. Since personal attitudes and beliefs are molded by traditions and
heritages apart from the exclusive influence of literature, material
collected through intimate inquiry is presented objectively to describe
the processes by which they appear to be created and to grow. Replies to
a searching questionnaire on attitudes and opinions express the result
of painstaking self-analysis.
4. Negro opinion on these same issues is described and illustrated with
a view to making it intelligible. Their views are listed and their
interpretations of current white sentiment are explained as far as
possible.
5. From the subjective aspect the study then turns to the instruments
by which these opinions are formed and perpetuated and the individual
attitudes created. The following are deemed the chief agencies: (_a_)
the press, (_b_) rumors, (_c_) myths, (_d_) propaganda. Conscious and
unconscious abuse of these instruments of opinion-making is pointed out
and explained.
6. Finally, means are suggested by which public opinion may, where it is
faulty, correct itself, and employ its own instruments in the creation
of wholesome sentiments among Negroes with respect to whites, and among
whites with respect to Negroes.
A. OPINIONS OF WHITES AND NEGROES
I. BELIEFS CONCERNING NEGROES
Literature concerning Negroes has been written chiefly by southern
students facing the problem in its most intense form and usually meeting
the most backward of Negroes. Negro habits have been objectively explained
and standards of judgment upon the entire group have usually been deduced
therefrom. This constitutes the bulk of serious literature on the subject
of the Negro; it is generally used in research into the problem.
In the North as in the South the assumptions regarding the Negro have
their basis in similar sources. The beliefs, in general, are the same,
though held by individuals in varying degrees. Though northerners do not
believe so firmly and with such emotional intensity all that southerners
believe about Negroes, yet they share these beliefs in proportion as
they have been influenced or informed by southerners. It may happen,
for example, that in a small northern town with but a handful of Negroes
there is no discernible distinction in the treatment accorded them. The
growth of the colony, however, can bring to the surface at first almost
undiscernible shades of the usual beliefs, and finally the identical
beliefs entertained by other communities.
There is, for example, no section of the country in which it is not
generally believed by whites that Negroes are instinctively criminal in
inclination. Some believe that they are criminal by nature and explain it
as a result of heredity; some feel that it is a combination of heredity
and environment; while others may feel that this inclination is due to
environment alone. How, indeed, may the belief be avoided? Crime figures
on Negroes are consistently unfavorable to any other conclusion. Students
have gone so far as to accept without question these figures and proceed
to explain that criminal tendency scientifically. This is also true as
to low mentality, sexual immorality, and a long list of other supposed
racial defects.
Below are presented some of the more important beliefs among whites about
Negroes that have become crystallized by years of unchallenged assumption.
They divide themselves into two general classes: (1) Primary beliefs, or
fundamental and firmly established convictions which have, all around,
the deepest effect on the attitude of whites toward Negroes. These are
usually presented as revealed by statistics, authorities, and research.
(2) Secondary beliefs, or the lighter modifications and variants of the
supposed attributes of Negroes included in the more important assumptions.
1. PRIMARY BELIEFS
_Mentality._--The chief of these is that the mind of the Negro is
distinctly and distinctively inferior to that of the white race, and so
are all resulting functionings of his mind.
This view is held by some to be due to a difference in species, by
others to more recent emergence from primitive life, and by others to
be due to backwardness in ascending the scale of civilization. For this
reason it is variously assumed as a corollary that the mind of the Negro
cannot be improved above a given level or beyond a given age; that his
education should be adapted to his capacities, that is, he should mainly
be taught to use his hands. Thus a teacher in one of the elementary
schools of Chicago finds that "colored children are restive and incapable
of abstract thought; they must be constantly fed with novel interests
and given things to do with their hands." Accordingly they are given
handicraft instead of arithmetic, and singing instead of grammar.
In seeking the opinion of white trades unionists on the admission of
Negroes to unions in Chicago, the Commission encountered in perhaps
the harshest form the conviction that Negroes were inherently unable to
perform tasks that white men did as a matter of course. A member of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers felt that no Negro had, or could
ever acquire, intelligence enough to run an engine. Employers frequently
expressed the belief that Negroes are incapable of performing tasks
which require sustained mental application. This view of their mental
weakness appeared in the following statement made before the Commission
by a school principal concerning her experience with Negro children:
So far as books are concerned there are set types of learning
which they take with great difficulty. Last Friday a colored boy
came to me and said, "I want to go back to the first grade." We
have gotten him in the third grade. He came to me and cried--a
great big boy--because he said the work was much too hard for
him, and he didn't want to study. His teacher was cross with
him and insisted he must get to work. It is an exception to
have a boy so frank. But I don't think the instance is far
from the truth. I have never had a white child complain that
he was graded too high and wanted to be put down. Sometimes
when they come in, they say to me: "I went to school in the
South, and I am in high fifth grade." "How long were you in
school in the South?" "Three sessions." Two months, and they
are in high fifth grade! I put them into the first or second
grade. Sometimes I can't fit them into the smaller grades, and
sometimes they resent it, but when they get into the actual
school work and find they can't do it, they can't complain. I
should say therefore that there is a certain amount of mental
backwardness found in colored children not found in whites.
A teacher in a Chicago public school said: "I believe like Dr. Bruner
[director of Special School, Board of Education] that when a Negro boy
grows a mustache his brain stops working."
A teacher in Moseley School said: "The great physical development of
the colored person takes away from the mental, while with the whites
the reverse is true. There is proof for this in the last chapter of
Ecclesiastes."
_Morality._--Another of these primary beliefs is that Negroes are not
yet capable of exercising the social restraints which are common to the
more civilized white persons. Sometimes it is said that they are unmoral
rather than immoral. This view, while charitably explaining supposed
innate defects of character, places them outside the circle of normal
members of society. Thus the assistant principal of a Chicago high school
attended by Negroes said:
When it comes to morality, I say colored children are unmoral.
They have no more moral sense than a very young white child.
Along sex lines they don't know that this is wrong and that
is wrong--that wrong sense isn't a part of them. Of course we
say they are immoral and a white child doing the same thing
under the same circumstances would be. The colored and white
children here don't get mixed up in immorality; they are too
well segregated. Not that we segregate them: the whites keep
away from the colored.
This belief appears in statements that there is no family life among
Negroes and but little respect, even in Chicago, for the ordinary
decencies; when serious students of society speak of the promiscuity
of colored women and men in sexual as well as social relations; and
when social institutions assume the impossibility of locating the real
father of children in a Negro family. Much public emphasis is given to
the subject of venereal disease among Negroes, and certain deductions
regarding this incidence of disease have resulted from comparative
statistics.
_Criminality._--The assumption back of most discussions of Negro crime
is that there is a constitutional character weakness in Negroes and a
consequent predisposition to sexual crimes, petty stealing, and crimes of
violence. Sexual crimes are alleged and frequently urged in justification
of lynching. Popular judgment takes stealing lightly, because Negroes
evidence a marked immaturity and childishness in it. It is supposed that
they appropriate little things and do not commit larger thefts. Crimes
of violence are thought to be characteristic of Negroes because crimes
involving deliberation and planning require more brains than Negroes
possess.
The president of a branch of the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs
thus explained the decision of that organization not to discuss the
Negro question in its meetings:
Most of the presidents expressed themselves as against
discussion of the Negro question because as women's names
come out as being against the Negroes these women and others
of the club would have to live in fear of Negro men. A woman
must be careful not to put herself in a position of causing
them to have a grudge against her, as you know a white woman
has to fear a colored man.
A resident in an exclusively white residential district said:
Mother, sister, and I lived here alone and we had a car which
we kept in a garage in the back yard. Whenever we came in
at night we never used the back door, but always went around
front. Several times in walking up the back steps to the porch
we had been frightened by colored men sitting on the steps or
lying on the porch, and so we couldn't use that way into the
house.
Another white woman, in the course of a discussion of housing indicated
this fear of Negro men:
When we came here this was a nice neighborhood. After some
years a colored family moved in, then two or three more, and
more and more, until you see what we have here now. I tell
you the white people right on this street have to be afraid
for their lives.
Another, living on Langley Avenue, near Forty-third Street, said:
I don't hold any conversations with Negroes. It's better to be
on the safe side when you've got grown-up daughters. I worry
a good deal about my two daughters as they go and come from
work, but they've never had anything happen.
The principal of a Chicago public school was questioned by a visitor
concerning the attitude of white parents toward the association of
their children with Negro pupils in that school. "The white parents
are cautious about stirring up trouble," he said, "for they know the
emotional tendency of the colored to knife and kill."
Petty thefts by Negroes, especially of food, are regarded as annoying
evils most easily dealt with by a sort of half-serious firmness. A white
resident of a district largely inhabited by Negroes said:
A white neighbor keeps chickens in her back yard. She gets the
burglar alarm from the hen house sometimes twice in a week,
and the running thief is always colored.... The colored buy
whatever they want; they'll spend their last cent and not
worry about the next day. If they want a chicken for dinner
and it's $1 a pound, they buy it or steal it.
_Physical unattractiveness._--Objections to contact are often attributed
to physical laws which, it is said, make the sight or other sensory
impression of the Negro unbearably repulsive. This attitude is found in
protests against indiscriminate seating arrangements in street cars.
The word "black" has long been associated with evil and ugliness, and
it is not always a simple task to disassociate the idea from impressions
given by a black man. Not merely is the color regarded as repulsive, but
it is the further belief that Negroes have a peculiar and disagreeable
body odor. A Christian Science practitioner in Chicago, giving her
opinion of Negroes, had an idea that they carried a "musky odor," and
were therefore to be avoided. A student at the University of Chicago
and a resident of Hyde Park, talking with an investigator, said: "It is
conceded that the Negro in Chicago must have some place to live, but to
permit promiscuous distribution through scattered sections of the city
would tend to increase the difficulties rather than mitigate them, partly
because a white man would shrink from having a Negro live near him."
In the spring of 1919 there appeared in one of the Chicago daily papers
a series of articles on the Negro question. In describing the relations
between Negroes and whites in Chicago, the writer said:
A second phase of the situation, and the one that causes more
inutile railing than any other, is the crowding into the street
cars of colored people. Well, they must ride on street cars,
if only for the reason that most of them live remote from
their work. Even the North State Street line, that used to be
considered the special conveyance for "the quality," has come
to be known as the "African Central." If you can't stomach
it, you'll have to walk. They won't.
Living in neighborhoods infrequently visited by Negroes and where, as
a general rule, their occupancy is effectively discouraged, some white
residents occasionally express objections as based on a "natural physical
opposition." Following is a typical statement:
I came here six years ago and there was a very noisy set of
white people living in the apartment house back of mine. Four
years ago the landlord put them all out and rented to colored
families. We were all up in arms then; but say, I never had
nicer, more quiet, and respectable neighbors. Their children
all behave well, and we can't kick. But at the same time, black
people aren't what one would pick out to have around--I guess
it's just because they are black.
_Emotionality._--This is commonly regarded as explaining features of
conduct in Negroes, some of which are beautiful in their expression while
others are ugly and dangerous. The supposed Negro gift of song is thus
an accepted attribute of his emotional nature. So with his religious
inclination. This same emotionalism is believed to lead him to drink
and is frequently made to account for "his quick, uncalculated crimes of
violence." The natural expression of Negro religious fervor is supposed
to be noisy and frenzied. This view of the _Chicago Tribune's_ special
writer is, roughly speaking, the view of thousands of Chicagoans:
I passed grand old stone churches, once the pride of rich and
powerful white congregations, whither I used to be sent as a
reporter not so many years ago, to hear some of the premier
pulpiteers of this town. They are colored people's churches
now, and beneath the arches, where a sedate gospel once was
expounded you hear today the jubilant yell of the dusky brother
who has found grace....
The service was, indeed, an incident in a three weeks' series
of revival meetings they have been holding at Olivet. The
principal performer was the Rev. S. E. J. Watson, a revivalist
from Topeka, a big man--mulatto, I should say, or perhaps
quadroon--with a powerful voice, a masterly platform style,
and enormous ardor. He spoke fluently, used no notes, and
demonstrated a free, wide skill in homely imagery, which,
however, included no slang nor vulgarities, but was racy
of the plantation and the cabin kitchen. His picture of God
"opening the front door of this good old world every morning
to let in the sun" was one of the most gorgeous flights in
primitive poetry I ever heard, and his narrative, accompanied
by the most vivid pantomime, of the Roman soldiers lifting up
the cross after they had nailed Jesus to it was hardly less
than terrifying--it certainly was terrific--in its sweep of
passion and its reality of detail.
And so he wrought them to a high emotional state. Many were
crying. Then came the direct personal appeal to "the unsaved,"
the threat of the everlasting fire, and the "lifting up" again
and again of the thought of the all-forgiving, all-saving Jesus.
The soft crying became heavy, convulsive sobbing. One by one
the unsaved who made the surrender to whatever it was that had
been holding them back, were led to the seats near the pulpit.
Those who did not surrender promptly were evidently in terrible
stress, or thought they were. They emitted shrieks that, truly,
made my heart stand still, and I would have trembled for the
sanity of the poor creatures except that I observed from the
corner of my eye that the "saved" in the assemblage took the
shrieks with perfect equanimity.
2. SECONDARY BELIEFS
In addition to the primary beliefs there are others supposedly not so
serious or significant in their effects. These are usually modifications
of primary beliefs, and are accepted as a consequence of frequent and
almost unvaried repetition. In this manner these secondary beliefs have
edged their way into the popular mind.
George Jean Nathan and H. L. Mencken in a recent volume, _The American
Credo_, point out fairly striking instances of this tendency of the
American mind. They have compiled a series of 435 commonly accepted
beliefs covering a wide range. Among these 435 listed American beliefs
there are some very real ones which involve and include the following
popular notions about Negroes:
1. That a Negro's vote may always be readily bought for a
dollar.
2. That every colored cook has a lover who never works and
that she feeds him by stealing the best part of every dish
she cooks.
3. That every Negro who went to France with the army has a
liaison with a white woman and won't look at a colored woman
any more.
4. That all male Negroes can sing.
5. That if one hits a Negro on the head with a cobblestone
the cobblestone will break.
6. That all Negroes born south of the Potomac can play the
banjo and are excellent dancers.
7. That whenever a Negro is educated he refuses to work and
becomes a criminal.
8. That every Negro servant girl spends at least half of her
wages on preparations for taking the kink out of her hair.
9. That all Negro prize fighters marry white women and then
afterwards beat them.
10. That all Negroes who show any intelligence are two-thirds
white and the sons of U.S. Senators.
11. That the minute a Negro gets eight dollars he goes to a
dentist and has one of his front teeth filled with gold.
12. That a Negro ball always ends up in a grand free-for-all
fight in which several Negroes are mortally slashed with razors.
The most usual of these secondary beliefs which figure in the experience
of Negroes and whites in Chicago are apparently of southern origin. This
is due, not so much to any deliberate effort of southerners to infiltrate
them into northern race relations, as that northerners largely regard as
authoritative the experience of the South which holds almost nine-tenths
of the total Negro population.
Some of the secondary beliefs are:
1. That Negroes are lazy; that they are indisposed to, though not
incapable of, sustained physical exertion.
2. That they are happy-go-lucky; that their improvidence is demonstrated
in their extravagance, and that their reckless disregard for their welfare
is shown in a lack of foresight for the essentials of well-being. It is
asserted that they do not purchase homes and do not save their money;
that they spend lavishly for clothes to the neglect of home comforts and
the demands even of their health; that they work by the day, and before
the week is ended confuse bookkeeping by demanding their pay.
3. That they are boisterous. Hilarity in public places and especially
in their own gatherings is thought to be common. They are considered
as rude and coarse in public conveyances and are believed to jostle
white passengers sometimes without thought and sometimes out of pure
maliciousness.
4. That they are bumptious; that when a Negro is placed in a position of
unaccustomed authority relative to his group he has an unduly exaggerated
sense of his own importance and makes himself unbearable.
5. That they are overassertive; that constant harping on constitutional
rights is a habit of Negroes, especially of the newer generation; that
in their demands for equal rights and privileges they are egged on by
agitators of their own race and are overinsistent in their demands; that
they resent imaginary insults and are generally supersensitive.
6. That they are lacking in civic consciousness. Absence of community
pride and disregard for community welfare are alleged to be the common
failing of Negroes. It is pointed out that the "Black Belt" has been
allowed to run down and become the most unattractive spot in the city.
To this fact is attributed the tolerance of vice within this region.
Negroes generally, it is still believed, can be bought in elections with
money and whiskey. They are charged with having no pride in the beauty
of the city, and with making it unbeautiful by personal and group habits.
7. That they usually carry razors. Whenever a newspaper reporter is in
doubt he gives a razor as the weapon used. Some time ago a woman was found
murdered in a town near Chicago. She had been slashed with a razor, and
the broken blade was left beside her body. The murder was particularly
atrocious, and the murderer left no other clew. Several Negroes were
arrested on suspicion but were released when a white youth confessed
the crime.
A Negro lawyer said:
During the riot a Negro was arrested for having a razor in his
pocket. I was his attorney, and the evidence showed that he
always shaved at work. After having shaved at this particular
time, he put his razor in his pocket and forgot it. He started
home and was accosted by two officers, who searched him
and found the razor. The judge heard the evidence and then
whispered to me that he was going to give the fellow ten days
because "you know your people do carry razors." He asked me
if I thought it all right and I said that I did not.
8. That they habitually "shoot craps." The Negro's supposed fondness
for gambling is a phase of the belief concerning his improvidence. It
is not unusual for whites, in conversation with any Negro whom they do
not know well, when they wish merely to be friendly, to refer to dice.
Employers frequently say that Negroes never keep money because as soon
as it is earned it is thrown away on gambling with dice. The state's
attorney believed that the riot of July, 1919, began over a beach craps
game.
Negroes are believed to be flashy in dress, loving brilliant and gaudy
colors, especially vivid red. Again, they are believed by white unionists
to be natural strike breakers with deliberate intentions to undermine
white living standards. Similarly they are believed to be fond of gin.
Pauperism among them is believed to be unduly high, and they are thought
to have no home life.
II. BACKGROUND OF PREVAILING BELIEFS CONCERNING NEGROES
Lying back of the current opinions about Negroes is a chain of
circumstances involving the history of divers racial groups over hundreds
of years. Slavery placed a stamp upon Negroes which it will require many
more years to erase. Probably there would have been no doubt at all in
the minds of Americans that essential inequalities existed between white
and Negro had not their emancipation developed numerous unsuspected
qualities. Thomas Jefferson is responsible for the observation that "a
Negro could scarcely be found who was capable of tracing and comprehending
the investigations of Euclid." John C. Calhoun asserted that if a Negro
could be found capable of giving the syntax of a Greek verb he would be
disposed to call him human. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to
the Constitution fixed the Negro's status by law, and as soon afterward
as his broader contacts with American institutions provided an outlet
for more human participation, serious questions concerning his fitness
for citizenship were put. The first studies that followed have been
accepted for many years as the standard of judgment.
_Mentality._--Regarding Negro mentality, Dr. Jeffries Wyman, anatomist
of Harvard University, about 1870, said: "It cannot be denied that the
Negro and ourang do afford the point where man and the brute, when the
totality of their organization is considered, most nearly approach each
other."
As a corollary he adds:
The Negro may be a man and a worker in some secondary sense;
he is not a man and a brother in the same full sense in which
every Western Aryan is a man and a brother. To me the Negro
is repulsive.
The Negro is not yet a man and he is not yet a brother to the
white. It will take generations, no man can say how many, to
bring him to the level of supreme Caucasian man. He will have
to reduce the facial angle and he will have to have a more
spacious cranium before he can come into brotherhood with the
more advanced species of mankind.
Professor A. H. Keane, author of _Man Past and Present_, at least gave
some sanction to the disposition to regard the Negro and Caucasian races
as having nothing in common. To quote from his book, published in 1890:
No historic or scientific reason can be alleged why these
races, black or white, should be grouped together under one
appellation if by such name it is meant to convey the idea
that the human type can have any sanguinary affiliation. In
the Negro groups it is absolutely shown that certain African
races, whether born in Africa or America, give an internal
capacity almost identical of 83 cubic inches. It is demonstrated
through monumental, cranial and other testimonials, that the
various types of mankind have ever been permanent; have been
independent of all physical influences for thousands of years.
Dr. J. C. Nott, scientist and author of _Types of Mankind_ said:
It is mind and mind alone which constitutes the proudest
prerogative of man, whose excellence should be measured by his
intelligence and virtue. The Negro and other unintellectual
types have been shown in another chapter to possess heads
much smaller, by actual measurement in cubic inches, than the
white races; and although metaphysicians may dispute about
causes which have debased their intellects and precluded their
expansion, it cannot be denied that these dark races are,
in this particular, greatly inferior to the others of fairer
complexion.
This school of anthropology very clearly belongs to the period of slavery
when it was necessary to rationalize the wishes of persons who, in
order to treat Negroes as if they were mentally different, had first to
convince, then justify, themselves in so doing.
Following them was another type of scientific writers who, while assuming
that Negroes possessed brains, denied that they were like those of white
persons or ever could be.
G. Stanley Hall thought that the Negro's development came to at least
partial standstill at puberty. E. B. Tylor, author of _Anthropology_,
assumed, from the accounts of European teachers who had taught children
of the "lower" races, that after the age of twelve the colored children
fell off and were left behind by the white children. Odum thought that
the Negro child's mental development ended at the age of thirteen. None
of these opinions, however, was the result of experimentation. A. T.
Smith, author of _A Study of Race Psychology_, is responsible for the
association and memory study of what he called a "typical" Negro boy of
sixteen years. He discovered that "the Negro child is psychologically
different from the white child, superior in automatic power but decidedly
inferior in the power of abstraction, judgment and analysis." A. McDonald,
author of _Colored Children--A Psycho-physical Study_, gave physical
and mental tests in 1899 to ninety-one Negro children and concluded
that dulness in colored children sets in between thirteen and sixteen.
M. J. Mayo, author of _The Mental Capacity of the American Negro_, in
1913 studied 150 white and 150 colored high-school pupils in the schools
of New York, and found the efficiency of colored pupils 76 per cent of
that of the white. His selection included a large number of emigrants
from the South, which, he explained, would increase the quality of the
colored group, since only the more ambitious Negroes would seek to better
their conditions by moving North. No account was taken of the defective
school system of the South. Phillips made a study of retardation in the
schools of Philadelphia and concluded that the course of study was not
suited to Negroes, since colored children showed a greater degree of
retardation than the whites.
Charles Carroll's book on the Negro points out by texts drawn from the
Bible that the Negro is a beast created with an articulate tongue and
hands in order that he may serve his white master. To bear out this
theory Carroll's book says that man has been created in the image of
God, but since, as everyone knows, God is not a Negro, it follows that
the Negro is not in the image of God; therefore he is not a man.
There is a plain explanation of the origin of these beliefs. The science
of anthropology itself has remarkably advanced during the past fifty
years. When Negroes emerged from slavery, illiterate and unaccustomed
to freedom, it was natural that their condition should be accepted as
evidence that they could neither learn nor absorb the standards of the
civilization around them. But although their illiteracy, for example,
has decreased from 98 to 27 per cent, the original beliefs persist.
_Morality._--The reputation of Negroes for immorality is based largely on
southern authority and is historically explained by reference to slavery,
in which state immorality is asserted to have been common between the
master and the woman slave. There are many authorities on this character
trait. Perhaps the most pretentious study on this subject is by Howard
O. Odum in "Studies in History, Economics and Public Law," Columbia
University, 1910. It is called _A Study in Race Traits, Tendencies and
Prospects_. Writing of immorality among Negroes, Odum says:
It has generally been assumed that the Negro is differentiated
by a distinct sexual development. It is affirmed that the
sex development crowds out the mental growth. It is affirmed
that the period of puberty in boys and girls is marked by
special manifestations of wildness and uncontrol. It is true,
too, that the practices of the Negroes leave little energy
for moral and mental regeneration. Their lives are filled
with that which is carnal; their thoughts are most filthy
and their morals are generally beyond description. Again,
physical developments from childhood are precocious and the
sex life begins at a ridiculously early period. But granting
these truths, it is doubtful if there is sufficient evidence
to warrant such a conclusion. The Negro reveals a strong
physical nature; the sex impulse is naturally predominant. But
its manifestations are probably no more violent and powerful
than are the expressions of other feelings already suggested.
The Negro's sensuous enjoyment of eating and drinking and
sleeping, relatively speaking, are no less marked than his
sexual propensities. Likewise lack of control and extreme
manifestations characterize the discharge of other impulses.
It is true, again, that the part played by sexual life among
the Negroes is large for a people; but to state that the
Negro is inherently differentiated and hindered by a sexual
development out of proportion to other physical qualities is
quite a different proposition. But whether the question here
raised is answered in the affirmative or not, it still remains
that in the practical life of the Negro his better impulses
are warped and hindered by his unreasonable abuse of sexual
license. And it is safe to suggest that the Negro need hope
for little development of his best qualities until he has
learned to regulate and control his animal impulses.
Statistics on illegitimate births and abortions are frequently quoted
as evidence of Negro immorality. It is further asserted, with rarely
an attempt at correction, that these immoral tendencies are responsible
for rape and attempted rape of white women.
Tradition maintains that it is a part of Negro nature to desire a white
woman and similarly a part of his nature to be lacking in those restraints
and inhibitions which might control this desire. C. H. McCord, author of
_The American Negro as a Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent_, said:
"The average Negro is a child in every essential element of character,
exhibiting those characteristics that indicate a tendency to lawless
impulse and weak inhibition."
Numerous magazine articles and written studies in the South on this
subject have given weight to this belief through sheer repetition.
It is now not necessary to prove assertions or present an array of
instances; they are taken for granted. Allusions to the "well-known
immoral character" of the Negro or his instinctive tendency to commit
sex crimes appear to carry as strong an impress of certainty as proved
conclusions.
_Other supposed social characteristics._--Discussions of each of the
characteristics mentioned and many others are found in the literature
on the subject. It will suffice here to give selections typical of the
trend of descriptions to indicate the manner in which the picture of
the Negro in practically every phase of his life has been set. Of his
industrial habits Odum, in the social study of the Negro, says:
In any discussion of the economic situation this (the question
of the efficiency of Negro labor) is an important consideration.
A portion of the Negroes wander about and seek to get a living
as best they can without working for it; they must necessarily
live at the expense of the other Negroes and the whites. The
number of vagrants in every community is surprisingly large.
They are naturally divided into several groups; those who never
work but wander from place to place, never fixed and without
a home, stealing, begging, and obtaining a living from any
source possible. Such men never work except when forced to do
so in little jobs or on the streets or in the chain gang.
Of the Negro's social affairs he says:
The description of one of these [Negro] dances would be
repulsive. The Negroes have "good times" on such occasions
and will go a long distance to attend. The whole trend of the
dance is toward physical excitation; they are without order
and the influence is totally bad.
Of the condition of the Negro's home:
It will be seen that there is little orderly home life among
the Negroes. Health conditions and daily habits are no better
than the arrangement of the house. Sometimes an entire family
consisting of father, mother, large and small children occupy
the same rooms. Nor do they ventilate, and especially when any
of the inmates are sick they are loath to let in the fresh
air. Physicians testify that three or four often sleep in a
bed together; they do not change clothing before going to bed
in many cases, and often go for many days without a change of
garments. It has been suggested that the personal habits of
the Negroes are filthy; such is the case. Filth and uncleanness
are everywhere predominant.
Of his religion:
In spite of pretentions and superficiality, there is nothing so
real to the Negro as his religion, although it is a different
"reality" from what we commonly expect in religion. The Negro
is more excitable in his nature, and yields more readily to
excitement than does the white man. The more a thing excites
him, the more reality it has for him....
The criminal instinct appears to overbalance any consciousness
which makes for righteousness, and the Negro has little serene
consciousness of a clean record; he is ready to rush at any
surprising or suspicious turn of affairs. The Negro does not
value his word of honor; he apparently cannot always tell
the truth. Only about one in every ten will keep an important
engagement made in seriousness.
The Negro's conception of heaven and hell, God and the devil
are very distinct. Heaven is an eternal resting-place where
he shall occupy the best place. He sings of his heavenly home
in striking contrast to his earthly abode. Perhaps for the
reason that the Negroes have little satisfactory home life,
they expect to have a perfect home in the next life.
Of his finer emotions:
While it is doubtful if there is enough evidence to warrant a
full statement concerning the affections of the Negroes, it is
apparently based on the gregarious impulse and upon a passive
sympathy rather than upon individual emotions intellectually
developed. The emotion is rarely of long duration.... The
Negro mother rarely mourns for her wandering child, or sits
up at night waiting for his return or thinking of him. The
father shows little care except that of losing a laborer from
his work.... The Negro has no loved ones. Numbers were asked
for the names of those whom they considered friends or whom
they loved or those who loved them. The question was put in
various ways with different subjects, but the returns were the
same.... But as a rule the Negro is without friendship among
his own people.
It may help to comprehend the range of conclusions found in the
literature on the subject of Negro traits of character to note the array
of descriptive adjectives employed, thus: sensual, lazy, unobservant,
shiftless, unresentful, emotional, shallow, patient, amiable, gregarious,
expressive, appropriative, childish, religious, unmoral, immoral,
ignorant, mentally inferior, criminal, excitable, imitative, repulsive,
poetic, irresponsible, filthy, unintellectual, bumptious, overassertive,
superficial, indecent, dependent, untruthful, musical, ungrateful, loyal,
sporty, provincial, anthropomorphic, savage, brutish, happy-go-lucky,
careless, plastic, docile, apish, inferior, cheerful.
Much might be said of influences which have operated to counteract the
opinion-making literature as to the utterly hopeless condition of Negroes.
The object of this study, however, is not to attack these conclusions,
but merely to cite them as indicating how certain attitudes detrimental
to racial friendliness and understanding have had their rise.
In academic circles the more balanced opinions of anthropologists are
gaining some headway. Franz Boaz, probably the foremost anthropologist
in the United States, in _The Mind of Primitive Man_, maintains:
Our considerations make it probable that the wide differences
between the manifestations of the human mind in various stages
of culture may be due almost entirely to the form of individual
experience, which is determined by the geographical and social
environment of the individual. It would seem that, in different
races, the organization of the mind is on the whole alike,
and that the variations of mind found in different races
do not exceed, perhaps not even reach, the amount of normal
individual variation in each race. It has been indicated that,
notwithstanding this similarity in the form of individual mental
processes, the expression of mental activity of a community
tends to show a characteristic historical development.
This author in an article in the _Nation_ for December, 1920, comments
thus on Lothrop Stoddard's book, _The Rising Tide of Color_:
Mr. Stoddard's book is one of the long series of publications
devoted to the self-admiration of the white race, which begins
with Gobineau and comes down to us through Chamberlain and,
with increasingly passionate appeal, through Madison Grant
to Mr. Stoddard. The newer books of this type try to bolster
up their unscientific theories by an amateurish appeal to
misunderstood discoveries relating to heredity and give in
this manner a scientific guise to their dogmatic statements
which misleads the public. For this reason the books must be
characterized as vicious propaganda, and gain an attention
not warranted by an intrinsic merit in their learning or their
logic.
Each race is exceedingly variable in all of its features, and
we find in the white race, as well as in all other races, all
grades of intellectual capacity, from the imbecile to the man
of high intellectual power. It is true that intellectual power
is hereditary in the individual, and that the healthy, the
physically and mentally developed individuals of a race, if
they marry among themselves, are liable to have offspring of a
similar excellence; but it is equally true that the inferior
individuals in a race will also have inferior offspring. If,
therefore, it were entirely a question of eugenic development
of humanity, then the aid of the eugenist would be to suppress
not the gifted strains of other races, but rather the inferior
strains of our own race. A selection of the intelligent,
energetic and highly endowed individuals from all over the
world would not by any means leave the white race as the only
survivors, but would leave an assembly of individuals who
would probably represent all the different races of man now
in existence.
Jean Finot, in _Race Prejudice_, says:
When we go through the list of external differences which appear
to divide men, we find literally nothing which can authorize
their division into superior and inferior beings, into masters
and pariahs. If this division exists in our thought, it only
came there as the result of inexact observations and false
opinions drawn from them.
The science of inequality is emphatically a science of white
people. It is they who have invented it and set it going, who
have maintained, cherished, and propagated it, thanks to their
observations and their deductions. Deeming themselves greater
than men of other colours, they have elevated into superior
qualities all the traits which are peculiar to themselves,
commencing with the whiteness of the skin and the pliancy of
the hair. But nothing proves that these vaunted traits are
traits of real superiority.
W. I. Thomas, in _Sex and Society_, concludes his discussion of relative
mentality with this statement:
The real variable is the individual, not the race. In the
beginning--perhaps as the result of a mutation or series
of mutations--a type of brain developed which has remained
relatively fixed in all times and among all races. This
brain will never have any faculty in addition to what it now
possesses, because as a type of structure it is as fixed as
the species itself, and is indeed a mark of species. It is
not apparent that we are greatly in need of another faculty,
or that we could make use of it even if by a chance mutation
it should emerge, since with the power of abstraction we are
able to do any class of work we know anything about.
III. TYPES OF SENTIMENTS AND ATTITUDES
In the South the relations between the white and Negro races are
determined by custom as well as law, which, however, permit the close
personal relationships of family servants. In the North, when these
relations become more impersonal and contacts are widened through change
of occupation from domestic service to industry, these close personal ties
are weakened. There is no established rule of conduct binding on whites
and Negroes in their relations with each other; and although traditional
beliefs may influence present relations in the North, they do not always
dominate them. So it happens that there are to be found shades of opinion
concerning Negroes varying from deliberate indifference to vituperative
abuse of Negroes, whatever the subject, depending on one's beliefs about
them. The selections of sentiment which follow are examples collected
at random over the city--through interviews and discussions, from group
publications, speeches and reports. They illustrate the real sentiments
that white persons express when brought into contact with Negroes, or
when their opinions are solicited.
1. THE EMOTIONAL BACKGROUND
_Hostile sentiment._--The refusal of Policeman Callahan to arrest Stauber,
a white youth accused of throwing stones which resulted in the drowning
of Eugene Williams, is regarded as the significant incident precipitating
the riot of 1919 (see p. 4). Callahan was dismissed from the force, but
reinstated. One year later, when questioned by an investigator for the
Commission, he gave his racial philosophy freely in the following remarks:
So far as I can learn the black people have since history began
despised the white people and have always fought them.... It
wouldn't take much to start another riot, and most of the white
people of this district are resolved to make a clean-up this
time.... If a Negro should say one word back to me or should
say a word to a white woman in the park, there is a crowd of
young men of the district, mostly ex-service men, who would
procure arms and fight shoulder to shoulder with me if trouble
should come from the incident.
The following is from a letter written by a white employee of Albert
Pick & Company:
Negroes in street cars refuse to double up with others of their
race, but seem to delight in sitting beside some dainty white
girl.
The Thirty-fifth Street cars are crowded by low-grade
"plantation niggers" who crowd on at Ashland Avenue via windows
and doors, then awkwardly step and fall over passengers; it is
maddening. About this time girls from Albert Pick & Company, the
Magnus Company, and the tailoring establishments are crowded
together breast to breast with Negroes. Often he falls asleep
and leans on his white seatmate's shoulder.
Laws should be urged preventing intermarriage.
Assaults upon white women are frequent, but hushed up by fear
of newspaper publicity, and the Negro is thus encouraged in
his felony.
In cases where a white girl is involved in an assault case
by a colored man, the white woman should be shielded, and her
name withheld from the newspapers and public, before and after
the trial. This will prevent race riots.
A movement is now afoot to declare a silent boycott against
employers of colored help.
A physician living on Oakwood Boulevard said: "The increasing amount
generally of sex immorality is being contributed to by mixing Negroes
and whites in schools and parks."
A teacher in the Felsenthal School said:
The colored people are coming from the South all the time,
for political purposes. It's propaganda for the colored man
to sit down by the white woman, and not to double up to make
room for the whites. Their papers tell them to do it. I was
the only white person in an empty car one day and a colored
man came in and took the seat beside me.
_Fear._--From _White Americans_ circulated in Chicago:
In the United States Negroes not only vote and hold office, but
the Negro vote is the deciding factor in the national elections,
and also in many of the northern cities, and they trade their
vote for jobs and offices and other privileges. The Negroes
control the great city of Philadelphia, and the press said the
Negro delegates at the Republican Convention in Chicago openly
offered to sell their support to the presidential candidate
who would pay the most money. Just think this thing over,
you sovereign United States citizens: the Negroes control the
elections, and thus your law-makers, judges, and officials;
and the Negroes have so much pull and confidence, that they
not only defend their political rights, but they start riots
and race wars, and openly threaten that they are going to make
the white folks stand around.
_Fear and pity._--A resident in the 6600 block on Langley Avenue said:
A colored family lives next door north of me, and you'll be
surprised when I tell you that I haven't been able to open my
bedroom window on that side to air that room for three years.
I couldn't think of unlocking the windows because their window
is so near somebody could easily step across into this house.
It's awful to have to live in such fear of your life.
When asked if she considered her neighbors so dangerous as that, she said:
Well, no, the woman seems pretty nice. I see her out in the back
yard occasionally and bid her the time of day out of charity.
You can't help but pity them, so I am charitable and speak.
Where the danger really is, is that you never know who's in
their house; they bring such trash to the neighborhood, even
if they are good and decent. How do I know what kind of people
this woman next door associates with? There's awful-looking
people sit on the front porch sometimes. Why, I couldn't sit
on my porch on the hottest day because I'd be afraid they
would come out any minute. And what white person will sit on
a porch next door to a porch with black ones on it? Not me,
anyhow, nor you either I hope.
_Hostile but resigned._--A resident near Dorchester Avenue and Sixtieth
Street said:
I have nothing against the black man as a black man. He comes
into my place of business (drug-store) and I sell him. Not
many come in, as there aren't a lot of colored people around
Sixty-third and Woodlawn or Dorchester. But I don't want to
live with niggers any more than you or any other white person
does. People who say, "I like the colored people and don't see
why others can't get along with them" don't talk practical
common sense. Theoretically all this talk is all right, but
you get a white man of this sort to come right down and live
with a nigger and he won't do it.
Niggers are different from whites and always will be, and that
is why white people don't want them around. But the only thing
we can do, it seems to me, is make the best of it and live
peaceably with them. The North can never do what the South
does--down there it is pure autocracy. I might say like Russia.
That might have worked here in the North from the start, but
can't be started now, and we wouldn't want such autocracy
anyway. They are citizens, and it is up to us to teach them to
be good ones. How it can be done I don't know--it will have to
come slow, and no one can give a solution offhand. Everybody
says, "We don't want the niggers with us." Well, here they
are, and we can't do anything. Must let them live where they
want to and go to school where they want to, and we don't want
to force their right away.
It is not uncommon to find in some circles and with many individuals
a resolute indisposition to discuss any phase of the Negro problem.
Convictions regarding the race are so firmly set and hostile that no
argument or appeal to fair-mindedness can alter their position.
"Eye Witness," a special writer for the _Chicago Tribune_, encountered
this state of mind in interviewing whites and Negroes for a series of
articles on the Negro question which appeared in the _Tribune_ in May,
1919. He characterized it as insensate and dangerous. His own statement,
published May 4, 1919, said:
Among men like publicists and administrators of large affairs,
who, when they discuss the problems and troubles of their
race, are wont to speak in a rational, or at least mannerly
way, there was often an unfeeling kind of don't-give-a-damn
cry when they talked on this subject that made one wonder how
they had managed so well in maintaining a human and successful
relationship with their white associates in business and with
their employees.
I heard more, far more, insensate language from the lips of
white men than of black men throughout the series of interviews.
The horrible part of that, to me, was that when a white employer
more or less accountable for the well-being of colored workmen,
or a publicist entrusted with a pen that forms and directs
opinions, had railed about "these damn niggers" they appeared
to think they had said something rather gallant and decisive,
for they would smile fatuously and expect acquiescence.
And more terrible than the language was the insensate state
of mind such language betrayed. The only way one could avoid
the suspicion that one was listening to a potential lunatic
or a desperately stupid person without a human or a community
sense, was to allow much for the vehemence of the American
tongue and to concede that these men don't mean one-tenth of
what they say. If they did they would be fomenters of race wars.
2. SENTIMENTAL RELATIONSHIPS
_Sentiment for the "old family servants."_--A white physician born in
the South said:
My father owned slaves. He looked out for them; told them what
to do. He loved them and they loved him. I was brought up during
and after the war. I had a "black mammy" and she was devoted
to me and I to her; and I played with Negro children. In a
way I'm fond of the Negro; I understand him and he understands
me; but the bond between us is not as close as it was between
my father and his slaves. On the other hand, my children have
grown up without black playmates and without a "black mammy."
The attitude of my children is less sympathetic toward the
Negroes than my own. They don't know each other.
_Paternal relationship._--In testimony before the Commission a witness
said:
The prejudice against the colored people in the South isn't as
strong in some instances as it is in the North. It's a queer
thing, but the white man in the South, and the white woman,
too, has a sort of paternal feeling that he must look after him
and that the colored man's interests are better in his hands
than if he is left to drift for himself. I don't state that
as an actual fact, but I believe it is true. That is their
point of view. They don't hate the colored man. They don't
dislike him, but I should say this, that they won't take him
into their homes. They don't dislike him, provided he keeps
his place. I believe the white people of the South think more
of the Negro than the white people of the North.
3. ABSTRACT JUSTICE
A trained nurse of Woodlawn said:
I meet colored people only on the cars. There are none anywhere
around here, I believe. I don't know how I would feel if they
came to Woodlawn to live. But they must live, and I hear their
quarters are getting too small. It seems that Chicago ought to
let them live somewhere. Some people treat Negroes terrible
and I think that is all wrong. Why can't we act respectably
toward colored people on the cars and treat them nice on the
street? We surely don't want to be like the people in the
South who make colored persons get off the walk when they come
along. But I see white people here almost that bad--can't see
a black man live.
The pastor of a church in Woodlawn said:
I have come to no final conclusion as to the best policy to
pursue in the adjustment of the race problem. I am thinking
about it a great deal and am deeply concerned over the whole
matter. In the present state of popular mind, there is no doubt
but property values are depreciated by the presence of Negro
tenants or property owners in residential sections. However,
if everyone felt as I do, it would not be so. I mean, provided
that the same general social standards were observed by all
nationalities in the city. It would be very fine, it seems to
me, to maintain certain standards in each neighborhood. Why
not bring pressure to bear on white landlords and make them
keep their property up to a given average standard in the
community, that only such a class of people will rent or buy
as are already there? I am very anxious that the Negro shall
be treated fairly. I do not want him to feel that I have stood
in the way of his opportunities and his rights.
A professor at the University of Chicago said:
The final solution, it seems to me, must come as a result of
honest and successful efforts for mutual understanding between
the races. There must be apparent on the part of the white
race an attempt to treat the Negro with justice, and I feel
sure that he will respond. I do not think the black race, as
a race, desires intermarriage more than the white race, yet
the assertion to the contrary is much overworked by the white
opposition in these neighborhoods.
A minister said:
All I want for the Negro is justice--then I think the economic
laws will settle this problem. Let the people interested try
justice; they will find it will solve the race problem faster
than any other course, just as it will solve any other problem.
Treat the bad Negro just as rough as you treat the bad white
man, but acclaim the good Negro after the same manner of your
acclamation of the good white man.
4. SENTIMENTS STRONGER THAN RACE PREJUDICE
_Class kinship stronger than race._--A Swedish employee in a department
store said:
We have quite a number of Negro neighbors where I live, and
several black men work with me, and I want to say I think
they are just as good as anybody. There are classes of people
in every race, and of course there is a rough element among
the blacks. Some highbrows try to make out that they are
representative, but I think opposition to the Negro in Chicago
comes from the "swell" class. I do not have any different
feeling for them than for the same kind of people in any other
race. I think race relations will get better in Chicago. The
workingman has learned that the Negro will treat him right
when he is treated right, and as soon as the other folks find
that out, things will be all right.
The secretary of the Cook County Labor Party said:
I have thought about this problem a good deal, and I think you
will find it is the so-called middle class that is making all
the trouble. The laboring-man does not care who his neighbor
is, so long as he is a good neighbor. I think you can trace
most of the racial activities to jealousy on the part of a
certain class of American citizens who are not any too wealthy
and feel constrained to maintain a sort of fictitious position
in life at the expense of anybody, in this case the Negroes.
You will find that the very well-to-do are not nearly so much
aroused over the problem.
A Japanese said:
I think it is simply a matter of race prejudice, which of course
means first of all that the color is not acceptable, while, in
the second place, they were imported to the United States as
slaves, and thus it always occurs in the American mind that
they are a lower class of people. Furthermore, as they were
slaves and the American does not like them, they don't have
equal opportunities to educate themselves up to such a degree
which means no more than environment. In the last place, they
want to keep away from them. I think it might be said that
they are willing to receive lower wages, which tends to lower
the wage system; thus the American worker suffers a good deal.
In the whole process the Negroes have been kept out of social
and political activities that would have given them a chance
to develop. Allow them to have these activities in the future
and they will make more rapid progress than they have even in
the past.
_General historical comparisons._--A Jewish resident of the West Side said:
I believe that the segregation movement is wrong because it
is unjust and because it is devoid of any principle whatever.
It has not risen out of the consideration of the needs of the
colored people, nor out of consideration of real advantages that
the whites might thereby gain. What is back of race prejudice?
Nothing more than the spirit of superiority and selfishness
which moves the aristocrats to move out of a neighborhood as
soon as a few common people move in. This is here too prevalent.
The segregation movement has its parallel in history. Who does
not remember the old Jewish Ghetto of Amsterdam, Frankfort,
etc., or the Pale of Russia? What has this segregation done
for the Jews? It curtailed their rise, depriving them of an
opportunity to develop, and I foresee the same result in the
new segregation movement, and therefore deem it a great public
evil and moral issue.
5. TRADITIONAL SOUTHERN BACKGROUND
A window dresser said:
I am from the South, and I am used to seeing the Negro kept
in his place. I would colonize them, every one of them, and
make them stay where they are put. I would colonize them in
Africa if I had to do it. There's where they came from and
there's where they belong. Of course, some few northern folks
say that they were taken away against their own wills, but I
say they ought to go back against their own wills.
The woman manager of a tailor shop, Fifty-fifth Street, said: "I am a
southerner, and I feel the way they all do about it. I guess you know
what I mean. I think the nigger should stay in his place."
6. GROUP SENTIMENTS
_Fear of social censure._--A property owner at Langley Avenue and
Fifty-fifth Street said:
"I am not proud to be living on the same street with Negroes,
so I never tell my friends--they would say: 'You must move
out.'"
George L. Giles Post of the American Legion is a Negro post with
headquarters at the South Side Branch of the Community Service.
Invitations to a musicale and dramatic entertainment for the benefit
of ex-service men were sent to all the local posts by the Community
Service. It was responded to by the adjutant of George L. Giles Post,
who received a reply from the executive secretary saying:
I am quite sure you will understand that our sending one to
the George L. Giles Post was a slip. Will you kindly let me
know if there are other Posts of colored men in the city?
Similar recognition of the force of public opinion may be found in
industry. The manager of a large industrial plant, speaking of Negro
workmen, said: "I have a feeling that white workers would object to
Negroes in any position but that of common laborers, although I have no
basis for this opinion." Another said: "I have heard whites remark that
they wouldn't want to work here if many colored were employed but none
left on that account."
7. ATTITUDES DETERMINED BY CONTACTS
_No contacts but a hostile attitude._--A resident at Drexel Avenue and
Sixty-fifth Street said:
I don't see many niggers around here; most of them are west
of Cottage Grove Avenue. I never had any dealings with them,
so can't tell you anything much. I know I don't want niggers
living next door to me, but I can't tell you why. Do you want
them next-door neighbors to you? There are some living down
in the next block--two families of them--between Sixty-fourth
and Sixty-fifth, and I guess they are pretty wild, but I have
never seen them. It's just what people tell me. I never had
any dealings with them.
_Generalization from a particular experience._--A teacher in the Wendell
Phillips High School said:
You can't trust the best of them. The minute you have your
back turned something disappears. They are the worst bunch of
little thieves I ever struck. A few weeks ago I had a colored
girl helping me fix costumes in my little office. During the
hour she was in there I was absent about five minutes. She
had hardly got out of the building before I discovered that a
dollar had disappeared out of my purse. I questioned her for
thirty minutes next morning, but not a word of confession.
Another time I had small change in the top drawer of my desk.
While I was teaching a class, two girls slipped into the office
and helped themselves to half of it. I surprised them when I
unexpectedly entered the office to get something. Everything
here that isn't tied or watched walks off. It didn't used to
be this way before the colored came in so thick; then I never
locked my office, and now I have everything under lock.
The proprietor of a woman's dress shop on Sixty-third Street said:
Little of my trade is colored, possibly 2 per cent. We do not
cater to colored trade. We do not want it. If colored people
come in, we will sell them if they buy quick and get out.
Our trade does not care to deal where colored people are also
accommodated.... You will find it pretty hard to be neutral in
Chicago. The more I know of niggers, the more I am convinced
that there is no good nigger but a dead one. I had a colored
helper who wanted tips every time he was asked to render
services outside of his recognized regular duties. I gave him
a good salary, $18 per week, and yet he was never satisfied,
and one day he got hold of the keys to the cash drawer and
ran away with $300.
_Exaggerated notion of prosperity._--A physician said:
I think that the solution of the race problem can come only by
recognition by white men of the Negroes' potential equality.
They are only fifty years out of slavery, and in that fifty
years they have progressed faster than the white race has
done in a hundred years. The Negro man of forty today is less
advanced than the white man of forty, but I expect his son
to be almost on a par with our sons, and his grandson will be
every whit as good. The husband of the colored woman who has
been getting our dinners for us for a number of years is making
more killing steers for Armour than I am. He makes $16 a day.
They have $12,000 worth of Liberty bonds. They are sending
all of their relatives through high school and declare they
will put them through the University of Chicago. In fact we
are compelling the Negro to get an education, and he cannot
help but progress. Colonizing the Negro is merely making him
bitter and postponing the day of settlement. Presently we shall
have with us under such a régime a race of comparative equals
very much disgruntled by the unfair treatment accorded them. I
think you will find that practically all the professional men
in this building, at least a very large percentage of them,
think as I do on this subject.
_Contact with servants._--A resident of Woodlawn said:
Practically my only contact with Negroes is with servants and
laundresses. I have had colored women working for me for many
years, and the majority of them I could not trust outside my
sight. By that I don't mean they would steal--they just weren't
dependable. It is all wrong for colored children and white
children to be in school together. There should be separate
schools, because the two races of children are as different
in everything as in their color.
The interviewing of hundreds of white persons, members of practically
every social class, reveals little information regarding the sources of
their beliefs about Negroes. Some think them instinctive; some hold that
their opinions are a result of observation; some, who make discernible
effort to stem the current of prejudiced views and remain fair, have
read the books of Negroes. But by far the greater number either admit
or otherwise give evidence of having absorbed their views from tradition.
Information by word of mouth, unquestioned statements, uncorrected
accounts, all continue to add credence to any current interpretation of an
act involving Negroes. The fault lies for the most part at the information
source. Fairly to judge the Negro group, or any member thereof, there
should be some unquestioned basis of fact, yet the assumption is common
that almost any Negro can be judged by what has been observed in the
conduct of the family cook or chauffeur, who no more represents the
whole or the majority of Negroes than a white cook or chauffeur can be
said to represent the whole or the majority of the white race.
IV. SELF-ANALYSIS BY FIFTEEN WHITE CITIZENS
To secure definite information upon this background twenty representative
white persons were selected at random, and eighteen carefully prepared
suggestive questions were put to each of them. The purpose was to draw
out the raw material of their unqualified opinions on the question
of the Negro, and to ascertain as far as possible the background in
their early experiences. The questions were suggestive in order to
compel a disclosure of mental attitudes. The only qualification in the
selection of persons was their probable capacity for self-analysis and
a willingness to answer. The length and difficulty of the questions put
made it necessary to limit the selection of persons to a few, who in
appreciation of the inquiry, could and would give it a careful study.
Fifteen of these persons entered into the spirit of the inquiry and
submitted the results of their self-scrutiny.
These fifteen include business and professional men and women, none
of whom, however, is actively associated with racial movements. They
represent probably a fair sample of sentiment and at the same time
ability to analyze accurately their own feelings and opinions.
The questions put were as follows:
1. Have you formed definite opinions about Negroes? Briefly,
what are they?
2. Do Negroes in your opinion possess distinguishing traits
of mentality or character?
3. As well as you can remember, on what facts, authorities,
information, sources, do you base your opinions?
4. What incidents or experiences involving Negroes either in
Chicago or elsewhere stand out in your memory?
5. As a child, did you have contacts of any kind with Negroes?
6. Can you recall any early prohibitions of association by
word or printed warnings of any sort, implied prohibitions in
institutional or social arrangements?
7. When were you first conscious of a racial difference?
8. Whom of your friends, acquaintances, favorite authors,
scholars, etc., do you regard as best fitted to speak with
authority on the question?
9. Do you ever inquire for information on this subject? Whom
do you ask? What Negroes do you know whom you would consider
leaders among colored people in Chicago? in the United States?
10. Did you ever read a Negro periodical? What did you think
of it?
11. What subjects of discussion most frequently lead to the
Negro?
12. In what circles is this subject most frequently discussed?
13. If it were in your power to make whatever social adjustment
you deemed wise, what disposition would you make of the Negro
population?
14. If Negroes obstinately objected to your plan and you still
had power, what would you do?
15. What do you think of the following propositions:
_a_) When you educate Negroes you increase their
demands. Either their education should be curtailed
or modified or their demands granted.
_b_) Prejudice has its principal basis in fear.
_c_) Isolating groups favors the unhampered
development of special group prejudices. Do prejudices
form a background of conflicts? The greater the
isolation, the greater the prejudices and, as would
naturally follow, the greater the chances of conflict.
_d_) A minority of the population should not expect
complete justice at the hands of an overwhelming
majority.
Their answers are given separately. The letters used to designate the
different persons are arbitrary.
A--
I have rather definite opinions of Negroes. As a class they
cannot be depended upon. They are shiftless and really must
be treated like children. I make allowance for the fact that
they have not the years of education back of them.
My opinions are based on visits made to the South and on
information obtained from relatives who live in the South
as well as from the colored help we have had. As a child my
contact with Negroes began with our Negro house servants,
and my first consciousness of a racial difference came while
visiting relatives in the South. I know but two persons who
might speak with authority on the race question. They are Edgar
A. Bancroft and Miss Mary McDowell. It is very seldom that I
inquire for information on this subject. People whom I know
are not interested in the problem.
The only Negroes whom I know are my present colored help and
those who have worked for me. I don't know whom to consider
leaders among the colored people either in Chicago or in
the United States. Concerning the Negro periodicals, I have
occasionally read copies of one of their newspapers which bore
out my opinion of their simple minds. Discussion of domestic
help and of newspaper articles about Negroes and sociological
conditions most frequently lead to the discussion of the
Negro in my circle. If it were in my power to do so, I would
segregate Negroes as to living quarters and do all possible
to help them educate and help themselves.
Concerning proposition (_a_) I agree that if you educate
Negroes, you increase their demands, but I also believe that
as they become educated, greater demands will arise in their
own groups.
In my opinion prejudice has its principal basis in the fact
that one can't depend upon Negroes.
I do not believe that it is necessarily true that a minority
of the population should not expect complete justice at the
hands of the majority if the proper appeal is made.
B--
I have more or less definite opinions about Negroes. I
believe that as a race they are entitled to more leniency and
consideration than we would give to adult whites because as a
race they are not as mature as whites. I think it is unfortunate
that we have such a race question to deal with, but we ought
to meet it squarely and insist that under the law Negroes
are entitled to equal protection and equal consideration. I
do not believe in any attempt at social equality because the
antipathy between whites and Negroes is so acute that such
attempt would not only break down itself but it would lead to
serious race difficulties. I think the Negro race has as much
right to protect its race purity as the white race. I believe
Negro women are entitled to the same protection from white men
that we demand on behalf of white women against black men. I
believe Negroes should have decent housing conditions, proper
social outlets and opportunities to earn a living at the same
wages paid white men for the same class and character of work.
They should share equally in the benefits of government, with
particular reference to schools, bathing-beaches, playgrounds,
parks, etc. They should be protected against exploitation by
employers, property owners, merchants, etc.
I do think Negroes possess distinguishing traits of both
mentality and character. For many years now I have come into
more or less personal contact with Negroes. I have been in
contact with them in public schools, in colleges, in politics
and in civic work. I cannot say that any particular incidents
or experiences stand out in my memory.
My opinions are based upon my personal observation, personal
contacts with Negroes and discussions with other white persons
having independent contacts. As a child I had practically no
real contact of any kind with Negroes. I don't recall now
any Negro children in any of my primary grades, and while
there were Negroes in my native city, they were few and in a
neighborhood far removed from my own home. I imagine that I
was first conscious of a racial difference when I first saw
a Negro.