the right ascension and declination of the satellites of her own drawing
room; but the rising and the setting of the pestilential or life-giving
orbs which seem to wander afar in space, all are governed almost wholly
through her magnetic polarity. The atmosphere of street cars and parks
and boulevards, of cafes and hotels and steamboats is charged and
surcharged with her sentiments and restrictions. Shop girls and serving
maids, cashiers and accountant clerks, scribblers and drummers, whether
wage earner, salaried toiler, or proprietress, whether laboring to
instruct minds, to save souls, to delight fancies, or to win bread,—the
working women of America in whatever station or calling they may be
found, are subjects, officers, or rulers of a strong centralized
government, and bound together by a system of codes and countersigns,
which, though unwritten, forms a network of perfect subordination and
unquestioning obedience as marvelous as that of the Jesuits. At the head
and center in this regime stands the Leading Woman in the principality.
The one talismanic word that plays along the wires from palace to
cook-shop, from imperial Congress to the distant plain, is _Caste_. With
all her vaunted independence, the American woman of to-day is as fearful
of losing caste as a Brahmin in India. That is the law under which she
lives, the precepts which she binds as frontlets between her eyes and
writes on the door-posts of her homes, the lesson which she instils into
her children with their first baby breakfasts, the injunction she lays
upon husband and lover with direst penalties attached.
The queen of the drawing room is absolute ruler under this law. Her pose
gives the cue. The microscopic angle at which her pencilled brows are
elevated, signifies who may be recognized and who are beyond the pale.
The delicate intimation is, quick as electricity, telegraphed down. Like
the wonderful transformation in the House that Jack Built (or regions
thereabouts) when the rat began to gnaw the rope, the rope to hang the
butcher, the butcher to kill the ox, the ox to drink the water, the
water to quench the fire, the fire to burn the stick, the stick to beat
the dog, and the dog to worry the cat, and on, and on, and on,—when
miladi causes the inner arch over her matchless orbs to ascend the
merest trifle, _presto!_ the Miss at the notions counter grows curt and
pert, the dress goods clerk becomes indifferent and taciturn, hotel
waiters and ticket dispensers look the other way, the Irish street
laborer snarls and scowls, conductors, policemen and park
superintendents jostle and push and threaten, and society suddenly seems
transformed into a band of organized adders, snapping, and striking and
hissing just because they like it on general principles. The tune set by
the head singer, sung through all keys and registers, with all qualities
of tone,—the smooth, flowing, and gentle, the creaking, whizzing,
grating, screeching, growling—according to ability, taste, and
temperament of the singers. Another application of like master, like
man. In this case, like mistress, like nation.
It was the good fortune of the Black Woman of the South to spend some
weeks, not long since, in a land over which floated the Union Jack. The
Stars and Stripes were not the only familiar experiences missed. A
uniform, matter-of-fact courtesy, a genial kindliness, quick perception
of opportunities for rendering any little manly assistance, a readiness
to give information to strangers,—a hospitable, thawing-out atmosphere
everywhere—in shops and waiting rooms, on cars and in the streets,
actually seemed to her chilled little soul to transform the commonest
boor in the service of the public into one of nature’s noblemen, and
when the old whipped-cur feeling was taken up and analyzed she could
hardly tell whether it consisted mostly of self pity for her own wounded
sensibilities, or of shame for her country and mortification that her
countrymen offered such an unfavorable contrast.
Some American girls, I noticed recently, in search of novelty and
adventure, were taking an extended trip through our country unattended
by gentleman friends; their wish was to write up for a periodical or
lecture the ease and facility, the comfort and safety of American
travel, even for the weak and unprotected, under our well-nigh perfect
railroad systems and our gentlemanly and efficient corps of officials
and public servants. I have some material I could furnish these young
ladies, though possibly it might not be just on the side they wish to
have illuminated. The Black Woman of the South has to do considerable
travelling in this country, often unattended. She thinks she is quiet
and unobtrusive in her manner, simple and inconspicuous in her dress,
and can see no reason why in any chance assemblage of _ladies_, or even
a promiscuous gathering of ordinarily well-bred and dignified
individuals, she should be singled out for any marked consideration. And
yet she has seen these same “gentlemanly and efficient” railroad
conductors, when their cars had stopped at stations having no raised
platforms, making it necessary for passengers to take the long and
trying leap from the car step to the ground or step on the narrow little
stool placed under by the conductor, after standing at their posts and
handing woman after woman from the steps to the stool, thence to the
ground, or else relieving her of satchels and bags and enabling her to
make the descent easily, deliberately fold their arms and turn round
when the Black Woman’s turn came to alight—bearing her satchel, and
bearing besides another unnamable burden inside the heaving bosom and
tightly compressed lips. The feeling of slighted womanhood is unlike
every other emotion of the soul. Happily for the human family, it is
unknown to many and indescribable to all. Its poignancy, compared with
which even Juno’s _spretae injuria formae_ is earthly and vulgar, is
holier than that of jealousy, deeper than indignation, tenderer than
rage. Its first impulse of wrathful protest and proud self vindication
is checked and shamed by the consciousness that self-assertion would
outrage still further the same delicate instinct. Were there a brutal
attitude of hate or of ferocious attack, the feminine response of fear
or repulsion is simple and spontaneous. But when the keen sting comes
through the finer sensibilities, from a hand which, by all known
traditions and ideals of propriety, should have been trained to
reverence and respect them, the condemnation of man’s inhumanity to
woman is increased and embittered by the knowledge of personal identity
with a race of beings so fallen.
I purposely forbear to mention instances of personal violence to colored
women travelling in less civilized sections of our country, where women
have been forcibly ejected from cars, thrown out of seats, their
garments rudely torn, their person wantonly and cruelly injured. America
is large and must for some time yet endure its out-of-the-way jungles of
barbarism as Africa its uncultivated tracts of marsh and malaria. There
are murderers and thieves and villains in both London and Paris.
Humanity from the first has had its vultures and sharks, and
representatives of the fraternity who prey upon mankind may be expected
no less in America than elsewhere. That this virulence breaks out most
readily and commonly against colored persons in this country, is due of
course to the fact that they are, generally speaking, weak and can be
imposed upon with impunity. Bullies are always cowards at heart and may
be credited with a pretty safe instinct in scenting their prey. Besides,
society, where it has not exactly said to its dogs “s-s-sik him!” has at
least engaged to be looking in another direction or studying the rivers
on Mars. It is not of the dogs and their doings, but of society holding
the leash that I shall speak. It is those subtile exhalations of
atmospheric odors for which woman is accountable, the indefinable,
unplaceable aroma which seems to exude from the very pores in her finger
tips like the delicate sachet so dexterously hidden and concealed in her
linens; the essence of her teaching, guessed rather than read, so
adroitly is the lettering and wording manipulated; it is the undertones
of the picture laid finely on by woman’s own practiced hand, the
reflection of the lights and shadows on her own brow; it is, in a word,
the reputation of our nation for general politeness and good manners and
of our fellow citizens to be somewhat more than cads or snobs that shall
engage our present study. There can be no true test of national courtesy
without travel. Impressions and conclusions based on provincial traits
and characteristics can thus be modified and generalized. Moreover, the
weaker and less influential the experimenter, the more exact and
scientific the deductions. Courtesy “for revenue only” is not
politeness, but diplomacy. Any rough can assume civility toward those of
“his set,” and does not hesitate to carry it even to servility toward
those in whom he recognizes a possible patron or his master in power,
wealth, rank, or influence. But, as the chemist prefers distilled H_{2}O
in testing solutions to avoid complications and unwarranted reactions,
so the Black Woman holds that her femineity linked with the
impossibility of popular affinity or unexpected attraction through
position and influence in her case makes her a touchstone of American
courtesy exceptionally pure and singularly free from extraneous
modifiers. The man who is courteous to her is so, not because of
anything he hopes or fears or sees, but because _he is a gentleman_.
I would eliminate also from the discussion all uncharitable reflections
upon the orderly execution of laws existing in certain states of this
Union, requiring persons known to be colored to ride in one car, and
persons supposed to be white in another. A good citizen may use his
influence to have existing laws and statutes changed or modified, but a
public servant must not be blamed for obeying orders. A railroad
conductor is not asked to dictate measures, nor to make and pass laws.
His bread and butter are conditioned on his managing his part of the
machinery as he is told to do. If, therefore, I found myself in that
compartment of a train designated by the sovereign law of the state for
presumable Caucasians, and for colored persons only when traveling in
the capacity of nurses and maids, should a conductor inform me, as a
gentleman might, that I had made a mistake, and offer to show me the
proper car for black ladies; I might wonder at the expensive
arrangements of the company and of the state in providing special and
separate accommodations for the transportation of the various hues of
humanity, but I certainly could not take it as a want of courtesy on the
conductor’s part that he gave the information. It is true, public
sentiment precedes and begets all laws, good or bad; and on the ground I
have taken, our women are to be credited largely as teachers and
moulders of public sentiment. But when a law has passed and received the
sanction of the land, there is nothing for our officials to do but
enforce it till repealed; and I for one, as a loyal American citizen,
will give those officials cheerful support and ready sympathy in the
discharge of their duty. But when a great burly six feet of masculinity
with sloping shoulders and unkempt beard swaggers in, and, throwing a
roll of tobacco into one corner of his jaw, growls out at me over the
paper I am reading, “Here gurl,” (I am past thirty) “you better git out
’n dis kyar ’f yer don’t, I’ll put yer out,”—my mental annotation is
_Here’s an American citizen who has been badly trained. He is sadly
lacking in both ‘sweetness’ and ‘light’_; and when in the same section
of our enlightened and progressive country, I see from the car window,
working on private estates, convicts from the state penitentiary, among
them squads of boys from fourteen to eighteen years of age in a
chain-gang, their feet chained together and heavy blocks attached—not in
1850, but in 1890, ’91 and ’92, I make a note on the fly-leaf of my
memorandum, _The women in this section should organize a Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Human Beings, and disseminate civilizing
tracts, and send throughout the region apostles of anti-barbarism for
the propagation of humane and enlightened ideas_. And when farther on in
the same section our train stops at a dilapidated station, rendered yet
more unsightly by dozens of loafers with their hands in their pockets
while a productive soil and inviting climate beckon in vain to industry;
and when, looking a little more closely, I see two dingy little rooms
with “FOR LADIES” swinging over one and “FOR COLORED PEOPLE” over the
other; while wondering under which head I come, I notice a little way
off the only hotel proprietor of the place whittling a pine stick as he
sits with one leg thrown across an empty goods box; and as my eye falls
on a sample room next door which seems to be driving the only wide-awake
and popular business of the commonwealth, I cannot help ejaculating
under my breath, “What a field for the missionary woman.” I know that if
by any fatality I should be obliged to lie over at that station, and,
driven by hunger, should be compelled to seek refreshments or the bare
necessaries of life at the only public accommodation in the town, that
same stick-whittler would coolly inform me, without looking up from his
pine splinter, “We doan uccommodate no niggers hyur.” And yet we are so
scandalized at Russia’s barbarity and cruelty to the Jews! We pay a man
a thousand dollars a night just to make us weep, by a recital of such
heathenish inhumanity as is practiced on Sclavonic soil.
A recent writer on Eastern nations says: “If we take through the earth’s
temperate zone, a belt of country whose northern and southern edges are
determined by certain limiting isotherms, not more than half the width
of the zone apart, we shall find that we have included in a relatively
small extent of surface almost all the nations of note in the world,
past or present. Now, if we examine this belt and compare the different
parts of it with one another, we shall be struck by a remarkable fact.
_The peoples inhabiting it grow steadily more personal as we go west._
So unmistakable is this gradation, that one is almost tempted to ascribe
it to cosmical rather than to human causes. It is as marked as the
change in color of the human complexion observable along any meridian,
which ranges from black at the equator to blonde toward the pole. In
like manner the sense of self grows more intense as we follow in the
wake of the setting sun, and fades steadily as we advance into the dawn.
America, Europe, the Levant, India, Japan, each is less personal than
the one before.... _That politeness should be one of the most marked
results of impersonality_ may appear surprising, yet a slight
examination will show it to be a fact. Considered _a priori_, the
connection is not far to seek. Impersonality by lessening the interest
in one’s self, induces one to take an interest in others. Looked at _a
posteriori_, we find that where the one trait exists the other is most
developed, while an absence of the second seems to prevent the full
growth of the first. This is true both in general and in detail.
_Courtesy increases as we travel eastward round the world, coincidently
with a decrease in the sense of self._ Asia is more courteous than
Europe, Europe than America. Particular races show the same concomitance
of characteristics. France, the most impersonal nation of Europe, is at
the same time the most polite.” And by inference, Americans, the most
personal, are the least courteous nation on the globe.
The Black Woman had reached this same conclusion by an entirely
different route; but it is gratifying to vanity, nevertheless, to find
one’s self sustained by both science and philosophy in a conviction,
wrought in by hard experience, and yet too apparently audacious to be
entertained even as a stealthy surmise. In fact the Black Woman was
emboldened some time since by a well put and timely article from an
Editor’s Drawer on the “Mannerless Sex,” to give the world the benefit
of some of her experience with the “_Mannerless Race_”; but since Mr.
Lowell shows so conclusively that the entire Land of the West is a
_mannerless continent_, I have determined to plead with our women, the
mannerless sex on this mannerless continent, to institute a reform by
placing immediately in our national curricula a department for teaching
GOOD MANNERS.
Now, am I right in holding the American Woman responsible? Is it true
that the exponents of woman’s advancement, the leaders in woman’s
thought, the preachers and teachers of all woman’s reforms, can teach
this nation to be courteous, to be pitiful, having compassion one of
another, not rendering evil for inoffensiveness, and railing in
proportion to the improbability of being struck back; but contrariwise,
being _all_ of one mind, to love as brethren?
I think so.
It may require some heroic measures, and like all revolutions will call
for a determined front and a courageous, unwavering, stalwart heart on
the part of the leaders of the reform.
The “_all_” will inevitably stick in the throat of the Southern woman.
She must be allowed, please, to except the ‘darkey’ from the ‘all’; it
is too bitter a pill with black people in it. You must get the Revised
Version to put it, “_love all white people_ as brethren.” She really
could not enter any society on earth, or in heaven above, or in—the
waters under the earth, on such unpalatable conditions.
The Black Woman has tried to understand the Southern woman’s
difficulties; to put herself in her place, and to be as fair, as
charitable, and as free from prejudice in judging her antipathies, as
she would have others in regard to her own. She has honestly weighed the
apparently sincere excuse, “But you must remember that these people were
once our slaves”; and that other, “But civility towards the Negroes will
bring us on _social equality_ with them.”
These are the two bugbears; or rather, the two humbugbears: for, though
each is founded on a most glaring fallacy, one would think they were
words to conjure with, so potent and irresistible is their spell as an
argument at the North as well as in the South.
One of the most singular facts about the unwritten history of this
country is the consummate ability with which Southern influence,
Southern ideas and Southern ideals, have from the very beginning even up
to the present day, dictated to and domineered over the brain and sinew
of this nation. Without wealth, without education, without inventions,
arts, sciences, or industries, without well-nigh every one of the
progressive ideas and impulses which have made this country great,
prosperous and happy, personally indolent and practically stupid, poor
in everything but bluster and self-esteem, the Southerner has
nevertheless with Italian finesse and exquisite skill, uniformly and
invariably, so manipulated Northern sentiment as to succeed sooner or
later in carrying his point and shaping the policy of this government to
suit his purposes. Indeed, the Southerner is a magnificent manager of
men, a born educator. For two hundred and fifty years he trained to his
hand a people whom he made absolutely his own, in body, mind, and
sensibility. He so insinuated differences and distinctions among them,
that their personal attachment for him was stronger than for their own
brethren and fellow sufferers. He made it a crime for two or three of
them to be gathered together in Christ’s name without a white man’s
supervision, and a felony for one to teach them to read even the Word of
Life; and yet they would defend his interest with their life-blood; his
smile was their happiness, a pat on the shoulder from him their reward.
The slightest difference among themselves in condition, circumstances,
opportunities, became barriers of jealousy and disunion. He sowed his
blood broadcast among them, then pitted mulatto against black, bond
against free, house slave against plantation slave, even the slave of
one clan against like slave of another clan; till, wholly oblivious of
their ability for mutual succor and defense, all became centers of
myriad systems of repellent forces, having but one sentiment in common,
and that their entire subjection to that master hand.
And he not only managed the black man, he also hoodwinked the white man,
the tourist and investigator who visited his lordly estates. The slaves
were doing well, in fact couldn’t be happier,—plenty to eat, plenty to
drink, comfortably housed and clothed—they wouldn’t be free if they
could; in short, in his broad brimmed plantation hat and easy
aristocratic smoking gown, he made you think him a veritable patriarch
in the midst of a lazy, well fed, good natured, over-indulged tenantry.
Then, too, the South represented blood—not red blood, but blue blood.
The difference is in the length of the stream and your distance from its
source. If your own father was a pirate, a robber, a murderer, his hands
are dyed in red blood, and you don’t say very much about it. But if your
great great great grandfather’s grandfather stole and pillaged and slew,
and you can prove it, your blood has become blue and you are at great
pains to establish the relationship. So the South had neither silver nor
gold, but she had blood; and she paraded it with so much gusto that the
substantial little Puritan maidens of the North, who had been making
bread and canning currants and not thinking of blood the least bit,
began to hunt up the records of the Mayflower to see if some of the
passengers thereon could not claim the honor of having been one of
William the Conqueror’s brigands, when he killed the last of the Saxon
kings and, red-handed, stole his crown and his lands. Thus the ideal
from out the Southland brooded over the nation and we sing less lustily
than of yore
‘Kind hearts are more than coronets
And simple faith than Norman blood.’
In politics, the two great forces, commerce and empire, which would
otherwise have shaped the destiny of the country, have been made to
pander and cater to Southern notions. “Cotton is King” meant the South
must be allowed to dictate or there would be no fun. Every statesman
from 1830 to 1860 exhausted his genius in persuasion and compromises to
smooth out her ruffled temper and gratify her petulant demands. But like
a sullen younger sister, the South has pouted and sulked and cried: “I
won’t play with you now; so there!” and the big brother at the North has
coaxed and compromised and given in, and—ended by letting her have her
way. Until 1860 she had as her pet an institution which it was death by
the law to say anything about, except that it was divinely instituted,
inaugurated by Noah, sanctioned by Abraham, approved by Paul, and just
ideally perfect in every way. And when, to preserve the autonomy of the
family arrangements, in ’61, ’62 and ’63, it became necessary for the
big brother to administer a little wholesome correction and set the
obstreperous Miss vigorously down in her seat again, she assumed such an
air of injured innocence, and melted away so lugubriously, the big
brother has done nothing since but try to sweeten and pacify and laugh
her back into a companionable frame of mind.
Father Lincoln did all he could to get her to repent of her petulance
and behave herself. He even promised she might keep her pet, so
disagreeable to all the neighbors and hurtful even to herself, and might
manage it at home to suit herself, if she would only listen to reason
and be just tolerably nice. But, no—she was going to leave and set up
for herself; she didn’t propose to be meddled with; and so, of course,
she had to be spanked. Just a little at first—didn’t mean to hurt,
merely to teach her who was who. But she grew so ugly, and kicked and
fought and scratched so outrageously, and seemed so determined to smash
up the whole business, the head of the family got red in the face, and
said: “Well, now, he couldn’t have any more of that foolishness.
Arabella must just behave herself or take the consequences.” And after
the spanking, Arabella sniffed and whimpered and pouted, and the big
brother bit his lip, looked half ashamed, and said: “Well, I didn’t want
to hurt you. You needn’t feel so awfully bad about it, I only did it for
your good. You know I wouldn’t do anything to displease you if I could
help it; but you would insist on making the row, and so I just had to.
Now, there—there—let’s be friends!” and he put his great strong arms
about her and just dared anybody to refer to that little
unpleasantness—he’d show them a thing or two. Still Arabella
sulked,—till the rest of the family decided she might just keep her
pets, and manage her own affairs and nobody should interfere.