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The Sex Question and Race Segregation
BY ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE, President.
Message of San Domingo to the African Race
BY THEOPHILUS G. STEWARD, U. S. A. (Retired)
Status of the Free Negro Prior to 1860
BY LAFAYETTE M. HERSHAW.
Economic Contribution by the Negro to America
BY ARTHUR A. SCHOMBURG.
The Status of the Free Negro from 1860 to 1870
BY WILLIAM PICKENS.
American Negro Bibliography of the Year
BY JOHN W. CROMWELL.
The above Papers were all read at the Nineteenth Annual Meeting
of the American Negro Academy, held in the Y.M.C.A.
Building, 12th Street Branch, Washington, D.C.
December 28th and 29th, 1915.
PRICE: 25 CTS.
Table of Contents
- Archibald H. Grimke. The Sex Question and Race Segregation
- Theophilus G. Steward. The Message of San Domingo to the African
Race
- Lafayette M. Hershaw. The Status of the Free Negro Prior to 1860
- Arthur A. Schomburg. The Economic Contribution by the Negro to
America
- William Pickens. The Constitutional Status of the Negro from
1860-1870
- John W. Cromwell. The American Negro Bibliography of the Year
Archibald H. Grimke. The Sex Question and Race Segregation
One wrong produces other wrongs as surely and as naturally as the seed
of the thorn produces other thorns. Men do not in the moral world gather
figs from a thorn-bush any more than they do in the vegetable world.
What they sow in either world, that they reap. Such is the law. The
earth is bound under all circumstances and conditions of time and place
to reproduce life, action, conduct, character, each after its own kind.
Men cannot make what is bad bring forth what is good. Truth does not
come out of error, light out of darkness, love out of hate, justice out
of injustice, liberty out of slavery. No, error produces more error,
darkness more darkness, hate more hate, injustice more injustice,
slavery more slavery. That which we do is that which we are, and that
which we shall be.
The great law of reproduction which applies without shadow of change to
individual life, applies equally to the life of that aggregation of
individuals called a race or nation. Not any more than an individual can
they do wrong with impunity, can they commit a bad deed without reaping
in return the result in kind. There is nothing more certain than the
wrong done by a people shall reappear to plague them, if not in one
generation, then in another. For the consummation of a bad thought in a
bad act puts what is bad in the act beyond the control of the actor. The
evil thus escapes out of the Pandora-box of the heart, of the mind, to
reproduce and to multiply itself a hundredfold and in a hundred ways in
the complex relationships of men within human society. And then it
returns not as it issued singly, but with its related brood of ill
consequences:
"But in these cases,
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which being taught return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips."
The ship which landed at Jamestown in 1619 with a cargo of African
slaves for Virginia plantations, imported at the same time into America
with its slave-cargo certain seed-principles of wrong. As the slaves
reproduced after their kind, so did these seed-principles of wrong
reproduce likewise after their kind. Wherever slavery rooted itself,
they rooted themselves also. The one followed the other with the
regularity of a law of nature, the invariability of the law of cause and
effect. As slavery grew and multiplied and spread itself over the land,
the evils begotten of slavery grew, and multiplied, and spread
themselves over the life of the people, black and white alike. The winds
which blew North carried the seeds, and the winds which blew South, and
wherever they went, wherever they fell, whether East or West, they
sprang up to bear fruit in the characters of men, in the conduct of a
growing people.
The enslavement of one race by another necessarily produces certain
moral effects upon both races, moral deterioration of the masters, moral
degradation of the slaves. The deeper the degradation of the one, the
greater will be the deterioration of the other, and vice versa. Indeed,
slavery is a breeding-bed, a sort of compost heap, where the best
qualities of both races decay and become food for the worst. The brute
appetites and passions of the two act and react on the moral nature of
each race with demoralizing effects. The subjection of the will of one
race under such circumstances to the will of another begets in the race
that rules cruelty and tyranny, and in the one that is ruled, fear,
cunning and deceit. The lust, the passions of the master-class, act
powerfully on the lust, the passions of the slave-class, and those of
the slave-class react not less powerfully on the master-class. The
greater the cruelty, tyranny and lust of the one, the greater will be
the cunning, deceit and lust of the other. And there is no help for this
so long as the one race rules and the other race is ruled, so long as
there exists between them in the state inequality of rights, of
conditions, based solely on the race-hood of each.
If two races live together on the same land and under the same
government as master and slave, or as superior and inferior, there will
grow up in time two moral standards in consequence of the two races
living together under such conditions. The master or superior race will
have one standard to regulate the conduct of individuals belonging to it
in respect to one another, and another standard to regulate the conduct
of those self-same individuals in respect to individuals of the slave or
inferior race. Action which would be considered bad if done by an
individual of the former race to another individual of the same race,
would not be regarded as bad at all, or at least in anything like the
same degree, if done to an individual of the latter race. On the other
hand, if the same offense were committed by an individual of the slave
or inferior race against an individual of the master or superior race,
it would not only be deemed bad, but treated as very bad.
With the evolution of the double moral standard and its application to
the conduct of these two sets of individuals in the state, there grows
up in the life of both classes no little confusion in respect to moral
ideas, no little confusion in respect to ideas of right and wrong. Nor
is this surprising. The results of such a double standard of morals
could not possibly be different so long as human nature is what it is.
The natural man takes instinctively to the double standard, to any
scheme of morals which makes it easy for him to sin, and difficult for a
brother or enemy to do likewise. And this is exactly what our American
double standard does practically in the South for both races, but
especially for the dominant race, for example, in regard to all that
group of actions, which grows out of the relation of the sexes in
Southern society.
What relations do the Southern males of the white race sustain to the
females of both races? Are these relations confined strictly to the
females of their own race? Or do they extend to the females of the black
race? Speaking frankly, we all know what the instinct of the male animal
is, and man after all, is physically a male animal. He is by nature one
of the most polygamous of male animals. There goes on in some form among
the human males, as among other males, a constant struggle for the
females. In polygamous countries each man obtains as many wives as he
can purchase and support. In monogamous countries he is limited by law
to one wife, whether he is able to maintain a plurality of wives or not.
When he marries this one woman the law defines his relations to her and
also to the children who may issue from such a union. But the man--I am
talking broadly--is at heart a polygamist still. The mere animal
instinct in his blood inclines him to run after, to obtain possession of
other wives. To give way to this inclination in monogamous countries he
knows to be attended with danger, to be fraught with sundry grievous
consequences to himself. He is liable to his wife, for example, to an
action for divorce on the ground of adultery. He is liable to be
prosecuted criminally on the same charge by the state, and to be sent to
prison for a term of years. But this is not the end of his troubles.
Public opinion, society, falls foul of him also in consequence of his
misconduct. He loses social recognition, the respect of his fellows,
becomes in common parlance a disgraced man. The one-wife country is
grounded on the inviolability of the Seventh Commandment. All the
sanctions of law, of morals, and of religion conspire to protect the
wife against the roving propensities of the husband, combine to curb his
male instinct to run after many women, to practice plural marriages.
There thus grows up in the breast of the race, is transmitted to each
man with the accumulated strength of social heredity, a feeling of
personal fear, a sense of moral obligation, which together war against
his male instinct for promiscuous sexual intercourse, and make for male
purity, for male fidelity to the one-wife idea, to the one-wife
institution. The birth of this wholesome fear in society is the
beginning of wisdom in monogamous countries. And unless this sense of
moral obligation is able to maintain its ascendancy in those countries,
the male sexual instinct to practice plural marriages will reassert
itself, will revert, if not openly, then secretly, to a state of nature,
to illicit relations. But every tendency to such reassertion, or
reversion, is effectively checked in a land where national morals are
sound, are pure, by wise laws which a strong, an uncompromising public
sentiment makes and executes impartially against all offenders.
This is the case in respect to monogamous countries inhabited by a
homogeneous population. In such countries where there exist no
differences of race, where there is no such thing as a dominant and a
subject race, the national standard of morals is single, the sexual
problem is accordingly simple and yields readily, uniformly, to the
single standard regulation or treatment. The "Thou shalt not" of the law
applies equally to all males in their relations to all females in
general, and to the one female in particular. No confusion ensues in law
or in fact in respect to the subject, to the practical application of
the rule to the moral conduct of individuals. Fornication, adultery,
marriage and concubinage are not interpreted by public sentiment to mean
one thing for one class of individuals, and another thing for another
class under the same law. There are no legal double standards, no moral
double standards. The moral eye of society, under these circumstances,
is single, the legal eye of the state is likewise single, and the eye of
the whole people becomes, in consequence, full of moral light. Marriage
is held to be sacred by the state, by society, and adultery or the
breach of the marriage-vow or obligation is held accordingly to be
sacrilege, one of the greatest of crimes.
The man who seduces another man's wife in such a society, in such a
state, is regarded as an enemy by society, by the state, and is dealt
with as such. Likewise the man who seduces another man's daughter. For
this crime the law has provided penalties which the wrong-doer may not
escape. And it matters not whether the seducer be rich and powerful, or
the girl poor and ignorant, the state, society respects not his wealth
nor his power. His status in respect to her is fixed by law, and hers
also in respect to him. While in the event of issue arising from such a
union, the law establishes certain relations between the child and the
putative father. It enables the mother to procure a writ against him,
and in case of her success he will be thereupon bound to support the
child during a certain number of years. The state, society, does not yet
compel him to give his name to the innocent offspring of his illicit
act, but it does compel him to provide for it proper maintenance. Thus
has the state, society, in monogamous countries restrained within bounds
the sexual activity of the human male, evolving in the process a code of
laws and one of morals for this purpose. These codes are administered
impartially, equally, by the state, by society, over all of the males in
their relation to all of the females.
In monogamous countries where two races live side by side, one dominant,
the other subject, the single legal standard, the single moral standard,
yields in practice if not in theory to the double standard in law and
morals in respect to the sexual question. In the ensuing confusion of
moral ideas, of moral obligations, the male instinct gains in freedom
from restraints of law, of social conventions, and reverts in
consequence and to that extent to a state of nature, of natural
marriage. The legal and moral codes which regulate the relations of the
males of one race with the females of the same race are not applicable
in regulating the relations of those self-same males with the females of
the other race. Marriage in such a country has regard to the males and
females of the same race, not to those of different races. The crime of
adultery or of fornication undergoes the same gross modification. For in
such a land the one-wife idea, the one-wife institution has reference to
the individuals of the same race only, not to individuals of opposite
races. The "Thou shalt not" of the law, public opinion interprets to
refer to the sexual conduct of the males and females of the same race in
respect to one another, _i. e._, a male member of the dominant race must
limit his roving propensities wherever the females of his own race are
concerned. He need not under this same law, interpreted by this same
public opinion, curb to the same extent those roving propensities where
the females of the other race are concerned. He may live in licit
intercourse with a woman of his own race and at the same time live in
illicit intercourse with a woman of the other race, _i. e._, without
incurring the pains and penalties made by the state, by society, against
such an offense in case the second woman be of his own race. Neither the
law nor public opinion puts an equal value on the chastity of the women
of the two races. Female chastity in the so-called superior race is
rated above that in the so-called inferior race. Hence the greater
protection accorded to the woman of the first class over that accorded
to the woman of the second class. The first class has well-defined legal
and moral rights which the men of that class are bound to respect,
rights which may not be violated with impunity. Here we encounter one of
the greatest dangers attendant upon race segregation, where the two
races are not equal before the law, where public opinion makes and
enforces one law for the upper race, and practically another law for the
under race.
Under these circumstances a male member of the dominant race may seduce
the wife of a member of the subject race, or a daughter, without
incurring any punishment except at the hands of the man wronged by him.
Such a wrong-doer would not be indicted or tried for adultery or
seduction, nor could the wronged husband or father recover from him
damages in a suit at law, nor yet could a bastardy suit be brought by
the girl against him with any show of success for the support of his
child, were issue to be born to her from such illicit union. The men of
the dominant race find themselves thus in a situation where the law,
public opinion, provides for their exclusive possession the women of
their own race, and permits them at the same time to share with the men
of the subject race possession of the women of that race. The sexual
activity of the men of the first class approaches in these conditions to
a state of nature in respect to the women of the second class. They are
enabled, therefore, to select wives from the stronger race, and
mistresses from the weaker one. The natural law of sexual selection
determines the mating in the one case as truly as in the other, _i. e._,
in the case of concubinage as in that of marriage. The men of the upper
class fall in love with the women whom they have elected to become their
wives, they also fall in love with the women they have elected to become
their concubines. They go through all those erotic attentions to the
women of each class, which are called courtship in the language of
sexual love. Only in the case of women of the first class this courtship
is open, visible to the eye of the upper world of the dominant race,
while in the case of the women of the second class it is secret,
conducted in a corner of the lower world of the subject race.
These men build homes in the upper world where are installed their
wives, who beget them children in lawful wedlock; they likewise build
homes in the lower world, where are installed their concubines, who
beget them children in unlawful wedlock. The wives move, have their
being in the upper world and sustain to their husbands certain
well-defined rights and relations, social and legal. The children of
this union sustain to those fathers equally clear and definite rights
and relations in the eye of the law, in the eye of society. The law,
society, imposes on them, these husbands and fathers, certain
well-defined duties and obligations in respect to these children, these
wives, which may not be evaded or violated with impunity. These men
cannot therefore disown or desert their wives and children at will.
Whereas, such is not the case, is not the situation, in respect to the
unlawful wives hidden away in a corner of the under-world, or of that of
the children begotten to those men by these unlawful wives, but quite
the contrary. For them the law, society, does not intervene, does not
establish any binding relations, any reciprocal rights between those
women and children and the men, any more than if the men and the women
were living together in a state of nature and having children born to
them in such a state, where the will of the natural man is law, where
his sexual passion measures exactly the extent and the duration of his
duties and obligations in respect to his offspring and the mother of
them. When he grows weary of the mother he goes elsewhere, and forgets
that he ever had children by her.
This is the case, is the situation, in the under-world of the under
race. For down there, there is no law, no public opinion, to curb the
gratification of the sexual instinct of the men of the upper world, such
as exists and operates so effectively to curb those instincts in that
upper world. In the upper world these men may have but one wife each,
but in the lower one they may have as many concubines as they like, and
a different set of children by each concubine. They may have these women
and children in succession, or they may have them at the same time. For
there is in that under-world no law, no effective power to say to those
men, to their lust of the flesh: "Thus far and no farther." In the upper
world they are members of a civilized society, amenable to its codes of
law and morals; in the lower one, they are merely male animals
struggling with other male animals for the possession of the females. On
the dim stage of the under-world this is the one part that they play. In
this one sensual role they make their entrances and their exits. They
may have in the upper world achieved distinction along other lines of
human endeavor, but in the lower one, they achieve the single
distinction of being successful male animals in pursuit of the females.
So much for the males of the dominant race. Now for those of the subject
race. How do they conduct themselves at this morally chaotic
meeting-place of the two races? What effect does this sexual freedom,
spawned under such conditions, produce on their life, on their actions?
Like the men of the upper race, they, too, live in a monogamous country.
But unlike their male rivals, these men of the under-world are not free
to seek their mates from the women of both races. The law restricts
them, public opinion restricts them, the men of the dominant race
restrict them in this regard to the women of their own race. Around the
women of the dominant race, law, public opinion, the men of that race,
have erected a high wall which the men of the other race are forbidden
to climb. What do these men see in respect to themselves in view of this
triply-built wall? They see that while they share the women of their own
race with the men of the other race, that these same men enjoy exclusive
possession of their own women, thanks to the high wall, built by law, by
public opinion, and the strong arms of these self-same men. What do the
men of the under world? Do they struggle against this sexual supremacy
of the men of the upper world, or do they succumb to circumstances,
surrender unconditionally to the high wall? We shall presently see.
This racial inequality generates heat in masculine breasts in the under
world. And with this heat there ensues that fermentation of thought and
feeling which men call passion. Those submerged men begin to think
sullenly on the subject, they try to grasp the equities of the
situation. As thought spreads among them, feeling spreads among them
also. About their own women they see no fence, about the women of the
other race they see that high wall. They cannot think out to any
satisfactory conclusion the justice of that arrangement, cannot
understand why the women of the upper race should belong exclusively to
the men of that race, and why these self-same men should share jointly
with the men of the lower race the women of this race.
The more they strike their heads against this one-sided arrangement, the
less they like it, the more they rebel against it. And so they come to
grope dimly for some means to oust their rivals from this
joint-ownership of the women of the lower race. And when they fail,
feeling kindles into anger, and anger into resentment. Against this
inequality of conditions a deepening sense of wrong burns hotly within
them. Dark questionings assail their rude understandings. Have the men
of the upper race their exclusive preserves, then ought not the men of
the lower race to have their exclusive preserves also? Is it a crime,
has law, public opinion, the men of the upper race made it a crime for
the men of the lower race to poach on those preserves? Then the law,
public opinion, the men of the lower race ought to make it equally a
crime for the men of the upper race to poach on the preserves of the
other race. But law, public opinion, refuses to make the two acts equal
in criminality and the men of the lower race are powerless to do so
without the help of equal laws and administration, and a just public
sentiment. Baffled of their purpose to establish equality of conditions
between them and their rivals, they thereupon watch the ways of these
rivals. They see them descending into the lower world in pursuit of the
women of that world by means that are crooked and ways that are dark. A
few of the men in that lower world profiting by that villainous
instruction, endeavor to ascend into the upper world by the same crooked
means, by the same dark ways. For they affect to believe that what is
sauce for one race's goose is sauce for the other race's gander. Thus it
is attempted craftily, but, in the main, futilely, to strike a sort of
primitive balance between the men of the two races in respect to the
women of the two races.
Now no such balance can be struck by the unaided acts of the men of the
lower race. Without the co-operation of the women of the upper race
these men are helpless to scale the high wall, or to make the slightest
breach in it. The law, public opinion, the men of the upper race, render
such co-operation very difficult, well-nigh impossible, did there exist
any disposition on the part of the women of the upper race to give aid
and comfort for such a purpose to the men of the lower race. But as a
matter of fact, and speaking broadly, there exists no such disposition.
The law of sexual selection does not operate under the circumstances to
make the men of the lower race sufficiently attractive to the women of
the upper race. It is possible that in a state of nature, and under
other circumstances, the case might be different. But under present
conditions the sexual gravitation of the women of the upper world toward
the men of the lower world may be set down as infinitesimally small,
practically a negligible quantity. Everything in the state, in society,
in deep-rooted racial prejudices, in the vastly inferior social and
economic standing of the lower race and the ineffaceable dishonor which
attaches to such unions in the public mind, together with the actual
peril to life which attends them, all combine to discourage, to destroy
almost any inclination in that direction on the part of the women of the
upper race.
Now, while this is true, speaking broadly, it is not altogether so. For
in scattered individual cases, in spite of the difficulties and dangers,
the law of sexual selection has been known to operate between those two
worlds. A few women of the upper world, on the right side of the high
wall have been drawn to a few men in the lower world, on the wrong side
of that wall. By the connivance, or co-operation of such women the men
of their choice have climbed into the upper world, climbed into it over
the high wall by means that were secret and ways that were dark. As one
swallow does not, however, make summer, neither can these scattered
instances, few and far between, be cited to establish any general
affinity between the women of the upper race and the men of the lower
race. On examination they will be seen to be exceptions, which only
prove the rule of a want of sexual affinity between them under existing
conditions at least. Practically a well-nigh impassable gulf, to change
the figure, separates the men of the lower world from the women of the
upper one. The men as a class can not bridge that gulf, and the women as
a class have no desire to do so. This, then, is the actual situation:
the men of the upper world enjoy practically exclusive possession of the
women of that world, while the men of the lower world do not enjoy
exclusive possession of the women of their world, but share this
possession with the men of the upper world.
The effect that is produced in consequence of this state of things on
the morals of the men of the lower world, is distinctly and decidedly
bad. Such conditions, such a situation, could not possibly produce a
different effect so long as human nature is what it is. And the human
nature of each race is essentially the same. The morals of the men of
the two worlds will be found at any given time to be almost exactly
alike in almost every particular. For the morals of the men of the lower
world are in truth a close imitation of those of the men of the upper
world--closest not where those morals are at their best, but where they
are at their worst. This will be found to be the case every time. So
that it happens that where the morals of the men of the upper world are
bad, those of the men of the lower world will not be merely bad, but
very bad. There follows naturally, inevitably, under these circumstances
and in consequence of these conditions, widespread debauchery of the
morals of the women of the lower race. And for this there is absolutely
no help, no remedy, just so long as the law and public opinion maintain
such a demoralizing state of things.
If there exists no affinity between the men of the lower world and the
women of the upper world, there does then exist a vital connection
between the masculine morals of the two worlds. These morals are in
constant interaction, one upon the other. When the moral barometer falls
in the upper world, it falls directly in the lower one also. And as the
storm of sensuality passes over both worlds simultaneously, its
devastating effects will always fall heaviest on the lower one where the
women of that world form the center of its greatest activity. Whatever
figure the moral barometer registers in the lower world, it will
register a corresponding one in the upper, and this whether the
barometer be rising or falling. If the moral movement be downward in the
lower world, it will be downward in the upper, and if it be upward in
the upper, it will be upward in the lower and vice versa.
In view of the vital connection then between the morals of the two races
the moral regeneration of either must of necessity include both. At one
and the same time the work ought to start in each and proceed along
parallel lines in both. The starting-point for each is the abolition of
the double moral standard, and the substitution in law and in public
opinion of a single one, applicable alike to the conduct of both.
Otherwise every reformatory movement is from the beginning doomed to
failure, to come to naught in the end. For the roots of the moral evil
which exists under present conditions and by virtue of them cannot be
extirpated without first changing those conditions.
The morals of the two races in default of such change of conditions must
sink in consequence from bad to worse. They cannot possibly rise in
spite of such conditions.
I have now discussed the subject of the contact of two races living
together on the same land and on terms of inequality, in its relations
to the morals of the men of those races. It yet remains to consider the
same subject in its relations to the conduct of the women. What is the
effect of such contact, to be specific, on the women of the two races in
the South? And first, what is it on white women? Do these women know of
the existence of the criminal commerce which goes on between the world
of the white man and that of the colored woman? And if so, are they
cognizant of its extent and magnitude. They do perceive, without doubt,
what it must have been in the past from the multitude of the mixed
bloods who came down to the South from the period before the war, or the
abolition of slavery. Such visible evidence not even a fool could refuse
to accept at its full face value. And the white women of the South are
not fools. Far from it. They have eyes like other women, and ears, and
with them they see and hear what goes on about them. Their intelligence
is not deceived in respect to appearance and underlying causes.
Certainly they are not ignorant of the fact that a Negro can no more
change his skin than a leopard his spots. When therefore they see black
mothers with light-colored children, they need not ask the meaning of
it, the cause of such apparent wonder. For they know to their sorrow its
natural explanation, and whence have come all the mulattoes and
quadroons and octoroons of the South. And to these women this knowledge
has been bitterer than death. The poisoned arrow of it long ago entered
deep into their souls. And the hurt, cruel and immedicable, rankles in
the breasts of those women today, as it rankled in the breasts of their
mothers of a past long vanished.
What, pray, is engendered by all of this widespread but suppressed
suffering transmitted, as a bitter heritage for generations, by Southern
mothers to Southern daughters? What but bitter hatred of the black woman
of the South by the white woman of the South. How is this hatred
expressed? In a hundred ways and by a hundred means. One cannot keep
down a feeling of pity for a large class of women in the South who
cannot meet in street, or store, or car, a well-dressed and comely
colored girl without experiencing a pang of suspicion, a spasm of fear.
For there arises unbidden, unavoidably, in the minds of such women the
ugly question, whose daughter is she, and whose mistress is she to be?
For in the girl's veins may flow the proudest blood of the South. And
this possibility, aye, probability, so shameful to both races, no one in
the South knows better than the Southern white woman. What happens? The
most natural thing in the world, but not the wisest. The hatred, the
suspicion, the fear of these women find expression in scorn, in active
ill-will, not only toward that particular girl, but toward her whole
class as well. They are all put under the ban of this accumulated
hatred, suspicion and fear.
A hostility, deep-seated and passionate as that which proceeds from
white women as a class toward black women as a class, shoots beyond the
mark and attacks indiscriminately all colored women without regard to
character, without regard to standing or respectability. It is enough
that they belong to the black race; ergo, they are bad, ergo, they are
dangerous. All this bitter hatred of the women of one race by the women
of the other race has borne bitter fruit in the South in merciless class
distinctions, in hard and fast caste-lines, designed to limit contact of
the races there to the single point where they come together as superior
and inferior. Hence the South has its laws against intermarriage, and
for separating the races in schools, in public libraries, in churches,
in hotels, in cars, in waiting rooms, on steamboats, in hospitals, in
poorhouses, in prisons, in graveyards. Thus it is intended to reduce the
contact of the races to a minimum, to glut at the same time the hatred
of the white women of the South toward the black women of the South, and
to shut the men of each race from the women of the other race. But how
foolish are all these laws, how futile are all these class distinctions!
Do they really effect the separation of the races? They do not, they
cannot under existing conditions. What then do they? They do indeed
separate the world of the white man and woman from the colored man and
woman, but they fail utterly to separate the world of the colored woman
from the white man.
The joint fear of the white woman and the white man is incorporated
today in every State of the South in laws interdicting marriage between
the races. But do these laws put an end to the sexual commerce which
goes on between the world of the white man and that of the colored
woman? Have they checked perceptibly this vile traffic between these two
worlds? They have not nor can they diminish or extinguish this evil. On
the contrary, because they divide the two worlds, because they uphold
this legal separation of the races, they provide a secret door, a dark
way between the two worlds, between the two races, which the men of the
upper world open at will and travel at pleasure. For they hold the key
to this secret door, the clue to this dark way. Such preventive measures
are in truth but a repetition of the fatal folly of the ostrich when it
is afraid. For then while this powerful bird takes infinite pains to
cover its insignificant front lines, it leaves unprotected its widely
extended rear ones, and falls accordingly an easy victim to the enemy
which pursues it. The real peril of an admixture of the races in the
South lies not in intermarriage, but in concubinage, lies through that
secret door which connects the races, the key to which is in the hands
of the white men of the South. It is they who first opened it, and it is
they who continue to keep it open. Were it not for the folly of the
white women of the South, it might yet be closed and sealed. The folly
of the white women of the South is their hatred, their fear of the
colored women of the South. They first think to rid themselves of the
rivalry of the second class by excluding them from the upper world, by
shutting them securely within the limits of the lower one. But these
women forget the existence of that secret door, of the hidden way. They
forget also the hand that holds the key to the one and the clue to the
other. That hand is the hand of the white man; it is certainly not the
hand of the colored woman.
Is it not the white woman of the South more than any other agency, or
than all other agencies put together, who are responsible for the
existence of a public sentiment in the South which makes it legally
impossible for a colored girl to obtain redress from the white man who
betrayed her, or support from him for his bastard child? The white woman
of the South thus outlaws, thus punishes her black rival. But what does
such outlawry accomplish, what such punishment? What do they but add
immensely to the strength of the white man's temptation by making such
illicit intercourse safe for him to indulge in? Thanks to the white
woman's mad hatred of the colored woman, to her insane fear of her
colored rival, the white man of the South is enabled to practice with
singular impunity this species of polygamy. For the penalties against
the adulterer, against the fornicator, which the law provides, which
public opinion provides, for him in the upper world, he well knows will
not be called down on his head were the acts of adultery or fornication
committed by him in the lower world. It is a sad fact and a terrible
one, sad for both races and terrible for the women of both races in the
actual and potential wickedness of it. No colored girl, however, cruelly
wronged by a white man in the South will be able to obtain an iota of
justice at the hands of that man in any court of law in any Southern
State, or to get the slightest hearing or sympathy for her cause at the
bar of Southern public opinion. Were she to enter the upper world of the
white woman with such a case against some white man, who but the
Southern white woman would be the first to drive her back into her
world? But unless she is not only allowed but encouraged to emerge out
of her world with the shameful fruit of her guilty life and love, and so
to confront her white paramour or betrayer in his world, how is the
lower world ever to rid itself of such as she, or the upper one of such
as he? In the segregation and outlawry of the black woman under such
conditions lie the white woman's greatest danger, lie the white race's
greatest danger from admixture of the races, lies the South's greatest
danger to its morals. For through such segregation and outlawry run the
white man's way to the black woman's world, and therefore to
miscegenation of the races, to their widespread moral degradation and
corruption. Amalgamation is not therefore made hard, but appallingly
easy.
But there is another aspect to this side of the subject which must not
be entirely ignored, and that is the existence in a few instances of
illicit relations between some white women and some colored men in the
South. That such relations have existed in the past and do actually
exist there at the present time, there is absolutely no doubt whatever.
In certain localities these relations, although known or suspected, have
been tolerated, while in general as soon as they are discovered or
suspected they have been broken up by mobs who murder the black
participants when they are caught, sometimes on trumped-up charges of
having committed the "usual crime." The existence of such relations is
not so strange or incredible as may be supposed at first hearing of
them. For it is a fact hardly less curious, if not so strange, that
there are men who while they would not think of marrying into a class
beneath them would nevertheless live readily enough in a state of
concubinage with women of that class. And in this upper class there are
women, not many, it is true, who would do the same thing. They care
enough for the men in the class beneath them to enter into illicit
relations in secret with them, but not enough to enter into licit
relations with these same men in the open, in the gaze of a scornful and
horrified world. Has it ever been seriously considered that like father
may occasionally produce like daughter in the South? And that such moral
lapses by a few white women of that section may be accounted for in part
at least by that mysterious law of atavism? The sons are like their
fathers in respect to their fondness for colored women, why may not one
daughter in, say, ten thousand, resemble those fathers in that same
shameful, though not altogether unnatural respect? Do not such
instances, few and far between at present though they be, furnish matter
for thoughtful people of the South regardless of sex, race or color?
Have the white women of the South considered that under existing
conditions they are deprived of effective influence, of effective power,
to reform the morals of the men of their race? And that unless the
morals of the men are reformed the morals of the whole white race will
eventually decline? If the women fail to lift the level of the moral
life of their men to their own higher plane, the lower morals of the men
will drag downward ultimately to their level that of the women. From
this inevitable conclusion and consequence there is no possible escape.
But the white women of the South are powerless to lift the morals of
their men without lifting at the same time the morals of the women of
the black race. If, however, they steadily refuse to do so in the
future, as they have refused to do so in the past, and as they refuse to
do so today by the only sure means which can and will contribute
mightily to effect such a purpose, viz., by making the black women their
equals before the law, and at the bar of an enlightened public
sentiment, and these women remain in consequence where they are today, a
snare to the feet of white men, when these men trip over this snare into
the hell of the senses, they will drag downward slowly but surely with
them toward the level of these self-same black women the moral ideals if
not the moral life of the white women of the South.
And now a final word about the black woman of the South: She holds in
her keeping the moral weal or woe, not only of her own race, but of the
white race also. As she stands today in respect to the white man of the
South, her situation is full of peril to both races. For she lives in a
world where the white man may work his will on her without let or
hindrance, outside of law, outside of the social code and moral
restraints which protect the white woman. This black woman's extra-legal
position in the South, and her extra-social status there, render her a
safe quarry for the white man's lust. And she is pursued by him for
immoral ends without dread of ill consequences to himself, either legal
or social. If she resists his advances, and in many cases she does
resist them, he does not abate his pursuit, but redoubles it. Her
respectability, her very virtue, makes her all the more attractive to
him, spurs the more his sensual desire to get possession of her person.
He tracks her, endeavors to snare her in a hundred dark ways and by a
hundred crooked means. On the street, in stores, in cars, going to and
from church, she encounters this man, bent on her ruin. Into her very
home his secret emissaries may attack her with their temptation, with
their vile solicitation. Nowhere is she safe, free from his pursuit,
because no law protects her, no moral sentiment casts about her person
the aegis of its power. And when haply dazed by the insignia of his
superior class, or his wealth, or the magic of his skin, or the creature
comforts which he is able to offer her, she succumbs to his embrace and
enters the home to which he invites her, she becomes from that time
outlawed in both worlds, a moral plague-spot in the midst of both races.
For she begins then to reproduce herself, her wretched history, her sad
fate, in the more wretched history, in the sadder fate of her daughters.
And so in her world of the senses, of the passions, she enacts in a sort
of vicious circle the moral tragedy of two races. If the white man works
the moral ruin of her and hers, she and they in turn work upon him and
his a moral ruin no less sure and terrible.
What is the remedy? It is certainly not the segregation of the races in
a state of inequality before the law. For such segregation exists today.
It has existed to the hurt of both races in the past. It is the fruitful
parent of fearful woes at the present time, and will be the breeder of
incalculable mischief for both races, for the South, and for the nation
itself, in the future. The remedy lies not then in racial segregation
and inequality, for that is the disease, but in interracial comity and
equality. The double moral standard has to be got rid of as quickly as
possible, and a single one erected in its stead, applicable alike to the
men and women of both races. The moral world of the white man and that
of the black woman must be merged into one by the ministers of law and
religion, by an awakened public conscience, and by an enlightened and
impartial public sentiment, which is the great promoter and upholder of
individual and national righteousness. The black woman of the South must
be as sacredly guarded as a woman by Southern law and public opinion
against the sexual passion and pursuit of the Southern white man as is
the Southern white woman. Such equality of condition, of protection, in
the South is indispensable to any lasting improvement in the morals of
its people, white or black. If that section persists in sowing
inequality instead of equality between the races, it must continue to
gather the bitter fruits of it in the darkened moral life, in the low
moral standard of both races. For what the South sows, whether it be
cotton or character, that it will surely reap.
Theophilus G. Steward. The Message of San Domingo to the African Race
"The mention of that name, San Domingo," says McMaster, "calls
up the recollection of one of the finest colonies, of one of the
noblest struggles for liberty, of one of the grandest men, and
of one of the foulest deeds in the history of revolutionary
France."[1]
[1] History of the American People, John Bach McMaster Vol. III, p.
215.
The part that the inhabitants of that island took in our war of
independence, I have related previously in a paper read before this
body. (No. 5.) I may quote in substance from that paper the following
facts.
The record given by Minister Rush secured in Paris in 1849, and
preserved in the Pennsylvania Historical Society states that a legion of
colored troops from San Domingo saved the American army from
annihilation by bravely covering its retreat in the disastrous repulse
which it met in Savannah in 1779. This legion was composed of about 800
freedmen, black and mulatto, and was known as Fontages' Legion. They had
freely volunteered, and had accompanied D'Estaing from Port-au-Prince,
and as the Haitian historians say, they came to our shores and covered
themselves with glory in the cause of freedom. Among the men named as
winning distinction in that critical action were: Andre Rigaud,
Beauvais, Villatte, Beauregard, Lambert and Christophe. How many of the
brave men of that legion gave up their lives in the cause of American
independence is not known; but we do know that some colored martyrs from
San Domingo, poured out their blood along with that of the colored
patriots of our own country as a libation to American freedom. The
meagre record states that Christophe received a dangerous gunshot wound;
how many others were wounded or even slain we do not know.
A few years later, and after the revolution in their own island, a
strong contingent went forth from there to the aid of Bolivar in
Venezuela, and by their timely and effective co-operation converted
Bolivar's overwhelming defeat into victory. But for the modesty and
state policy of Petion, his own name would have been associated with
that of Bolivar in the liberation of South America.[2] During Cuba's
recent struggles the Haitian people manifested the liveliest interest
and sympathy in the efforts of the Cuban patriots.
[2] A monument to Petion has been set up in the public square of
Caracas.