The Rev. Charles Edward Stowe, the son of Harriet Beecher Stowe,
returning from a trip through the South, where he had been studying the
industrial conditions, said:
“Do you realize that the cotton crop is 1,000,000 bales a year
bigger than it was in the old slave days, and that as far back
as 1884 the negroes owned 1,000,000 acres of land in Georgia?
I saw a big negro shuffle into an Atlanta bank and say: ‘Boss,
ah wondah of ah has dat fahm of mine paid foh yet?’ The banker
looked up the darky’s account and found that he had not only
paid for his land by his remittances, but that he had $700 to
his credit.”
(2187)
* * * * *
Since the time the shackles were struck off the slaves,
the negroes of the United States have had to their credit
two Senators and seventeen Congressmen, besides scores of
representatives in the diplomatic service and in official life,
municipal, State and national. Negroes have won championships
as pedestrians, bicycle-riders, and prize-fighters. As evidence
of the intellectual endeavor and capacity of the race there are
to-day (1908) 1,200,000 black children in the public schools,
30,000 in the higher institutions of learning, and 200 in
northern and European colleges and universities. Over 2,000
have been graduated from colleges, and the professions show
30,000 school-teachers and professors, 2,000 lawyers, 1,500
doctors, dentists and pharmacists, and over 23,000 ministers
of the gospel. In addition to all this, the negroes have taken
out 500 patents, have published 400 books, composed numerous
songs, and now own and edit 12 magazines and 300 newspapers. In
a material way the negroes have also made noticeable progress.
Besides many industrial establishments, they own and manage
26 banks, own 2½ per cent. of the total valuation of the farm
property, produce six per cent. of the total farm products
of the United States, and own $900,000,000 worth of real and
personal property.--WILLIAM A. SINCLAIR, “The Aftermath
of Slavery.”
(2188)
* * * * *
Booker T. Washington, writing on “Negro Homes” in _The Century_, says:
The first negro home that I remember was a log cabin about
fourteen by sixteen feet square. It had a small, narrow
door, which hung on rusty, worn-out hinges. The windows were
mere openings in the wall, protected by a rickety shutter,
which sometimes was closed in winter, but which usually hung
dejectedly on uncertain hinges against the walls of the house.
Such a thing as a glass window was unknown to this house. There
was no floor, or, rather, there was a floor, but it was nothing
more than the naked earth. There was only one room, which served
as kitchen, parlor and bedroom for a family of five, which
consisted of my mother, my elder brother, my sister, myself and
the cat. In this cabin we all ate and slept, my mother being the
cook on the place. My own bed was a heap of rags on the floor
in the corner of the room next to the fireplace. It was not
until after the emancipation that I enjoyed for the first time
in my life the luxury of sleeping in a bed. It was at times, I
suppose, somewhat crowded in those narrow quarters, tho I do not
now remember having suffered on that account, especially as the
cabin was always pretty thoroughly ventilated, particularly in
winter, through the wide openings between the logs in the walls.
Probably there is no single object that so accurately represents
and typifies the mental and moral condition of the larger
proportion of the members of my race fifty years ago as this
same little slave cabin. For the same reason it may be said that
the best evidence of the progress which the race has made since
emancipation is the character and quality of the homes which
they are building for themselves to-day.
(2189)