Political rights are the only sure protection and guarantee of
economic rights. Every fool knows this. And yet, here in America
to-day we have people who tell Negroes that they ought not to agitate
for the ballot so long as they still have a chance to get work in the
south. And Negro leaders, hired by white capitalists who want cheap
labor-power, still continue to mislead both their own and other
people. The following facts will demonstrate the economic insecurity
of the Negro in the South.
Up to a few years ago systematic peonage was wide-spread in the South.
Now, peonage is slavery unsanctioned by law. In its essence it is more
degrading than mere chattel slavery. Any one who doubts this may look
to modern Mexico for proofs. This peonage in the South had reduced
many black men to slavery. And it isn't stamped out yet. It was on
January 3, 1911, that the Supreme Court, in the case of Alonzo Bailey,
declared unconstitutional the Alabama peonage law, which had been
upheld by the state Supreme Bench. About the same time W. S. Harlan, a
nephew of the late Justice Harlan of the United States Supreme Court,
and manager of a great lumber and turpentine trust, doing business in
Florida and Alabama, was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment
and fined $5,000 for peonage. He has since been pardoned and had his
fine remitted by President Taft.
One of the forms of this second slavery is the proprietary system,
according to which the Negro laborer or tenant farmer must get his
supply at the proprietor's store—and he gets it on credit. The
accounts are cooked so that the Negro is always in debt to the modern
slave-holder. Some of them spend a life-time working out an original
debt of five or ten dollars.
But peonage isn't all. The professional southerner is always declaring
that whatever else the south may not do for the Negro it supplies him
with work. It does—when he works for some one else. When he works for
himself it is very often different. For instance, there was the
Georgia Railroad strike of May, 1909. The Negro firemen were getting
from fifty cents to a dollar a day less than the white firemen, they
had to do menial work, and could not be promoted to be engineers. They
could be promoted, however, to the best runs by the rule of seniority.
But the white firemen, who had fixed the economic status of the black
firemen, objected to even this. They went on strike and published a
ukase to the people of the state in which they said: "The white people
of this state refuse to accept social equality."
On the eighth of March, 1911, the firemen of the Cincinnati, New
Orleans & Texas Pacific Railroad did the same thing. In the attacks
made on the trains by them and their sympathizers many Negro firemen
were killed. Occurrences of this sort are increasing in frequency and
they have a certain tragic significance. It means that the Negro,
stripped of the ballot's protection, holds the right to earn his bread
at the mere sufferance of the whites. It means that no black man shall
hold a job that any white man wants. And that, not in the South alone.
There is the case of the Pavers' Union of New York City. The colored
pavers, during the panic of 1907, got behind in their dues. The usual
period granted expired on Friday. On Monday they sent in their dues in
full to the national organization. The treasurer refused to receive
the dues and at once got out an injunction against them. This
injunction estopped them from appealing to the National Executive
Committee or to the national convention. They are still fighting the
case.
In January 1911 the several walking delegates of the Painters'
Plumbers', Masons,' Carpenters', Steam Fitters', Plasterers' and
Tinsmiths' Unions compelled the Thompson & Starrett Construction Co.,
the second largest firm of contractors in New York, to get rid of the
colored cold painters who were engaged on the annex to Stearns'
department store. They would not admit them to membership in the
union; they merely declared that colored men would not be allowed to
do this work. And these are the same men who denounce Negro
strike-breakers. They want them out of the unions and also want them
to fight for the unions. Presumably they would have them eating
air-balls in the meanwhile.
In February 1911 the New York Cab Company was dropping its Negro cab
drivers, because, it said, its patrons demanded it. In November 1911
the white chauffeurs of New York were trying to terrorize the colored
chauffeurs by a system of sabotage in the garage, because they, too,
believed that these jobs were white men's jobs.
It is but a short step from the denial of the right to work to the
denial of the right to own. In fact, the two are often linked
together, as in the next ease. In the latter part of 1910, land
speculators in Hominy Okla., sold some land for cotton farms to
Negroes. The Negroes paid for this land, took possession, and were
getting along splendidly when—"the local whites protested."
"Night-riders (i. e., Ku Klux) around Hominy, several days before,
served notice that all Negroes must leave the town at once, and to
emphasize the warning they exploded dynamite in the neighborhood of
Negro houses." So the Negroes fled, fearing for their lives. At
Baxterville, Miss., the same thing happened in March 1912. In November
1910, a colored man named Matthew Anderson in Kansas City was having a
fine $5,000 house built. But the jealousy of the white neighbors
prevented its completion. It was blown up by dynamite when it had been
almost finished. In Warrenton, Ga., notice was sent to three colored
men and one widow, who had prospered greatly in business, to the
effect that they must leave immediately because the white people of
Warrenton "were not a-goin' to stand for rich niggers." One of them
has been forced to sell out his business at a loss. Another never
answers a knock and never leaves his house by the front door. All
through these things Mr. Washington told his race that if it would
work hard, get property and be useful to a community it would not need
to strive for a share in the government!
III—Educational.
EDUCATION is the name which we give to that process of equipment and
training which, in our day, society gives the individual to prepare
him for fighting the battle of life. We do not confer it as a
privilege, but it is given on behalf of society for society's own
protection from the perils of ignorance and incompetence. It is a
privilege to which ever member of society is entitled. For without
some equipment of this sort the individual is but half a man,
handicapped in the endeavor to make a living. Here in America, we
subscribe to the dangerous doctrine that twelve million of the people
should receive the minimum of education. And in order to reconcile
ourselves to this doctrine, we deck it in the garments of wisdom.
Because of the serf idea in American life, we say that the Negro shall
have a serf's equipment and no more. It is the same idea that the
aristocracy of Europe evolved when the workers demanded that their
children should be trained better than they themselves had been.
"Why", said the masters, "if we give your children schooling they will
be educated out of their station in life. What should the son of a
carpenter need to know of Euclid or Virgil? He should learn his
father's vocation that he may be well equipped to serve in that
station of life into which it has pleased God to call him. We need
more plowmen than priests, more servants than savants."
In our own land, when Negroes demand education, we say, "Why, surely,
give them industrial education. Your race has a great opportunity—to
make itself useful. It needs trained craftsmen and workers and,
perhaps, a few parsons. Teach your sons and daughters to work. That is
enough." And we dexterously select leaders for them who will
administer the soothing syrup of this old idea with deftness and
dispatch. The General Education Board which disburses millions of
dollars annually in the South for education has, so far, given to
forty-one Negro schools the sum of $464,015. Only in two instances has
any money been given to a real college. Practically all of it went to
the labor-caste schools. Why? Because the dark degradation of the
Negro must be lightened by no ray of learning. That would never do. We
need them as "hewers of wood and drawers of water." And in the
meanwhile, this is what the richest country on earth offers to
ruthlessly exploited people as a training for life:
Before the Twelfth Annual Conference for Education in the South (1910)
Mr. Charles L. Coon, superintendent of schools in North Carolina, read
a paper on Negro Education in the South. His investigation extended
over eleven states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and
Tennessee. In these states the Negroes make up 40.1 per cent of the
population, but receive only 14.8 per cent of the school fund. He
showed that even if the school fund as disbursed were apportioned to
each race according to taxes paid the colored people of Virginia
should receive $507,305 instead of the $482,228 which they now
receive; in North Carolina they should get $429,127 instead of
$402,658, and in Georgia $647,852 instead of $506,170. So that these
three states expend for Negro education $93,278 less than what the
Negroes themselves pay for—and that sum is contributed by Negroes to
the white children of the state!
But, as a matter of fact, in no modern country is education made to
depend upon the tax-paying power of the parents. If that were so, the
children of 40,000,000 American proletarians would live and die
without schooling. So that the case is really much worse than it
seems.
South Carolina spent in 1910 $10.34 for the education of each white
child and $1.70 for the =education= of each colored child. In Lawrence
county the state gave to each colored child 97 cents worth of
education that year; in Lexington county, 90 cents; in Bamberg, 89
cents; in Saluda, 68 cents, and in Calhoun, 58 cents worth. The
smallest sum spent on a white child for education that year was $4.03.
In Georgia it was quite as bad. One county of this state owned 19 of
the 27 school houses for Negroes. The valuation of the entire 19 was
$2,500; that is, $131.58 for each school house for Negroes! =The
annual cost of the education of a Negro child in six counties of this
civilized state was 39 cents.= Meanwhile the whites of Baltimore were
protesting against the building of a new Negro school! In Louisiana
the report of the Department of Education shows that the average
monthly salary of white male teachers is $75.29, while that of colored
male teachers is $34.25. The average monthly salary of white female
teachers is $50.80 and that of the colored female teachers is $28.67.
The average length of the annual school term for white children is
eight months and a quarter; for colored children, four months and a
half.
In Wilcox County, Alabama, where there are 2,000 white children and
10,758 colored children, $32,660.48 is devoted to education. Of this
amount the 10,758 colored children receive one-fourth—$6,532.09, or
sixty cents each per annum—while the 2,000 white children receive the
remaining four-fifths—$26,128.13, or about $13 each per annum.
Mr. Booker Washington, who lives in this state sends his own children
to the best colleges and to Europe while advising the rest of his
people to "make your condition known to the white people of the
state." Now, if education—of any sort—is a training for life, is it
not evident here that black children are being robbed of their chance
in life? Why? Is it to be supposed that their fathers are so stupid as
to allow this if they could vote their own needs? Yet Mr. Washington
decries the agitation for the ballot as unwise and never loses an
opportunity of sneering at these who see something of value in it. But
to continue The number of white children of school age in Alabama is
364,266; the number of colored children of school age is 311,552. But
the teachers of the white children receive in salaries $2,404,062.54,
while the teachers of the colored children receive $202,251.13. The
value of all schoolhouses, sites and furniture for white children is
$6,503,019.57; for colored children, $273,147.50.
In South Carolina there are 316,007 Negro children of school age and
201,868 white children; but the state spends on its Negro children
$368,802, and on its white children $1,684,976. Thus does America keep
knowledge from Negroes. She is afraid of the educated black man. Of
such are the people who taunt Negroes with ignorance.
IV—Social.
When a group has been reduced to serfdom, political and economic, its
social status become fixed by that fact. And so we find that in "the
home of the free and the land of the brave" Negroes must not ride in
the same cars in a train as white people. On street-cars, certain
sections are set apart for them. They may not eat in public places
where white people eat nor drink at the same bar. They may not go to
the same church (although they are foolish enough to worship the same
god) as white people; they may not die in the same hospital nor be
buried in the same grave-yard. So far as we know, the segregation ends
here.
But why is segregation necessary? Because white Americans are afraid
that their inherent superiority may not, after all, be so very evident
either to the Negro or to other people. They, therefore, find it
necessary to enact it into law. So we had the first Ghetto legislation
in an American nation last year, in Baltimore. Hard on the heels of
this followed legislative proposals along the same line in Richmond
Va., Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Mo., and Birmingham, Ala. In
Memphis, Tenn., Negroes pay taxes for public parks which they are not
allowed to enter. A year ago they petitioned for a Negro park and were
about to get it when 500 white citizens protested against it. That
settled it with the park.
But discrimination goes even further and declares that Negroes shall
not possess even their lives if any white persons should want them.
And so we have the institution called the lynching-bee. The
professional southerner seems to love a lie dearly and continues to
assert that Negroes are lynched for rape committed upon white women.
Why not? It is perfectly American. If you want to kill a dog, call it
mad; if you want to silence a man, call him an Anarchist, and if you
want to kill a black man, call him a rapist. But let us see what the
facts actually are.
In the two decades from 1884 to 1904 there were 2,875 lynchings in the
United States. Of these 87 per cent, or 2,499 occurred in the South.
The national total was grouped as follows:
1. For alleged and attempted criminal assault, i. e., rape... 564
2. For assault and murder and for complicity................. 138
3. For murder............................................... 1,277
4. For theft, burglary and robbery.......................... 326
5. For arson................................................. 106
6. For race-prejudice (?).................................... 94
7. For unknown reasons....................................... 134
8. For simple assault........................................ 18
9. For insulting whites...................................... 18
10. For making threats......................................... 16
The causes for the remainder were: slander, miscegenation, informing,
drunkenness, fraud, voodooism, violation of contract, resisting
arrest, elopement, train wrecking, poisoning stock, refusing to give
evidence, testifying against whites, political animosity, disobedience
of quarantine regulations, passing counterfeit money, introducing
smallpox, concealing criminals, cutting levees, kidnapping, gambling,
riots, seduction, incest, and forcing a child to steal.
Yes, there are courts in the South; but not for black people—not when
the mob chooses to relieve civilization of the onus of law and order.
At Honeapath, S. C, a Negro was lynched in November 1911, charged, of
course, with "the usual crime." The charge had not been proven, or
investigated; but the man was lynched. The howling mob which did him
to death was composed of "prominent citizens" who had made up
automobile parties to ride to the affair. Among those present was the
=dis=-honorable Joshua Ashley, a member of the state legislature. He
and his friends cut off the man's fingers as souvenirs and were proud
of their work. Why shouldn't they? You see, it helps to keep "niggers"
in their place. And then, besides, isn't this a white man's country?
Gov. Blease of South Carolina was also proud of the event and said
that instead of stopping the horrible work of the mob he would have
resigned his office to lead it. In Okemeah, Oklahoma, last June, a band
of white beasts raped a Negro woman and then lynched her and her
fourteen-year-old son Nothing has been done to them. And it is not
that the facts are unknown. At Durant, Okla., and elsewhere, the
savages have posed around their victim to have their pictures taken.
One man, from Alabama sent to the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, of
Brooklyn, N.Y., a post-card (by =mail=) bearing a photograph of such a
group. "This is the way we treat them down here," he writes, and,
after promising to put Mr. Holmes' name on his mailing list declares
that they will have one, at least, each month.
In Washington, Ga., Charles S. Holinshead, a wealthy white planter,
raped the wife of T.B. Walker, a decent, respectable Negro. As his
wife returned to him dishevelled and bleeding from the outrage
perpetrated on her, Walker went to Holinshead's store and shot him
dead. For this he was tried and condemned and, while the judge was
pronouncing sentence, Holinshead's brother shot Walker in the
court-room. They held his head up while the judge finished the
sentence, Then he was taken out and lynched—not executed Nothing was
done to the other Holinshead.
The New York =Evening Post=, on October 23rd said in an editorial that
"there has hardly been a single authenticated case in a decade of the
Negroes rising against the whites, despite the growing feeling, among
them that there should be some retaliation since no tribunal will
punish lynchers or enforce the law." I am glad that the =Post= noticed
this. I had begun to notice it myself. When President Roosevelt
discussed lynching some years ago, he severely reprobated =the Negro=
for their tendency to shield their "criminals" and ordered them to go
out and help hunt them down. So was insult added to injury.
But, putting my own opinion aside, here are the facts as I have seen
them. In the face of these facts, the phrase, "the white man's
burden," sounds like a horrid mockery.