THE NEGRO AND THE MUNICIPALITY
A capricious mood, varying with the individual, considerate today and
offensive tomorrow, this, as far as our observations have led us, has
been New York's attitude toward the Negro. Is it possible to find any
principle underlying this shifting position? The city expresses itself
through the individual actions of its changing four millions of people,
but also through its government, its courts of justice, its manifold
public activities. Out of these various manifestations of the
community's spirit can we find a Negro policy? Has New York any
principle of conduct toward these her colored citizens? This question
should be worth our consideration, for New York's attitude means its
environmental influence, and helps determine for the newly arrived
immigrant and the growing generation whether justice or intolerance
shall mark their dealings with the black race.
The first matter of civic importance to the Negro, as to every other New
York resident, is his position in the commonwealth; is he a participant
in the government under which he lives, or a subject without political
rights? The law since 1873 has been explicit on this matter, wiping out
former property qualifications, and giving full manhood suffrage.
Probably, even with a much larger influx of colored people, the city
will never agitate this question again. Since the death of the
Know-nothing Party, New York has ceased any organized attempt to lessen
the power of the foreigner, and the growing cosmopolitan character of
the population strengthens the Negro in his rights. Only in those states
where the white population is homogeneous can Negro disfranchisement
successfully take place.
With the vote the Negro has entered into politics and has maintained
successful political organizations. The necessity of paying for rent and
food out of eight or ten dollars a week is the Negro's immediate issue
in New York, and he tries to meet it by securing a congenial and more
lucrative job. The city in 1910 showed some consideration for him in
this matter. An Assistant District Attorney and an Assistant Corporation
Counsel were colored, and scattered throughout the city departments were
nine clerks making from $1200 to $1800 apiece, and a dozen more acting
as messengers, inspectors, drivers, attendants, receiving salaries
averaging $1275. Three doctors served the Board of Health, and there
were six men on the police force (none given patrol duty), and one first
grade fireman, while the departments of docks, parks, street cleaning,
and water supply employed 470 colored laborers. Altogether 511 colored
men figure among the city's employees.[1]
In her communal gifts the city acts toward the Negro with a fair degree
of impartiality. At the public schools and libraries, the parks and
playgrounds, the baths, hospitals, and, last, the almshouse, the blacks
have equal rights with the whites. Occasionally individual public
servants show color prejudice, but again, occasionally, especial
kindness attends the black child. The rude treatment awaiting them,
however, from other visitors keeps many Negro children, and men and
women, from enjoying the city's benefactions. Particularly is this true
with the public baths and with some of the playgrounds. The employment
by the city of at least one colored official in every neighborhood where
the Negroes are in great numbers would do much to remedy this condition.
One department of the city might be cited as having been an exception to
the rule of reasonably fair treatment to the colored man. Harshness, for
no cause but his black face, has been too frequently bestowed upon the
Negro by the police. This has been especially noticeable in conflicts
between white and colored, when the white officer, instead of dealing
impartially with offenders, protected his own race.
There have been two conflicts between the whites and Negroes in New York
in recent years, the first in 1900, on the West Side, in the forties,
the second in 1905, on San Juan Hill. Each riot was local, representing
no wide-spread excitement comparable to the draft riots of 1863, and in
each case the police might easily in the beginning have stopped all
fighting. Instead, they showed themselves ready to aid, even to
instigate the conflict.
The riot of 1900 was caused by the death of a policeman at the hands of
a Negro. The black man declared that he was defending his life, but the
officer was popular, and after his funeral riots began. Black men ran to
the police for protection, and were thrown back by them into the hands
of the mob.[2]
The riot of 1905 commenced on San Juan Hill one Friday evening in July
with a fracas between a colored boy and a white peddler; both races took
a hand in the matter until the side streets showed a rough scrambling
fight. Saturday and Sunday were comparatively quiet; men, black and
white, stood on street corners and scowled at one another, but nothing
further need have occurred, had each race been treated with justice.
The police, however, instead of keeping the peace, angered the Negroes,
urged on their enemies, and by Monday night found that they had helped
create a riot, this time bitter and dangerous. Overzealous to proceed
against the "niggers," officers rushed into places frequented by
peaceable colored men, whom they placed under arrest. Dragging their
victims to the station-house they beat them so unmercifully that before
long many needed to be handed over to another city department--the
hospital. Little question was made as to guilt or innocence, and some of
the worst offenders, colored as well as white, were never brought to
justice.[3] "If," as a colored preacher whose church was the centre of
the storm district pointed out, "the police would only differentiate
between the good and the bad Negroes, and not knock on the head every
colored man they saw in a riot, we should be quite satisfied. As it is,
there is no safety for any Negro in this part of the city at any
time."[4]
The result of these two riots was the bringing to justice of one
policeman and the placing of a humane and tactful captain on San Juan
Hill. But for some time the colored man felt little protection in the
Department of Police, finding that he was liable to arrest and clubbing
for a trivial offence. Often the officer's club fell with cruel force.
This, however, was before the administration of Mayor Gaynor, who has
commanded humane treatment, and the brutal clubbing of the New York
Negro has now ceased.
From the police one turns naturally to the courts. What is their
attitude toward the Negro offender? Is there any race prejudice, or do
black and white enjoy an impartial and judicial hearing?
As the Negro comes before the magistrates of the city courts, he learns
to know that judges differ greatly in their conceptions of justice. To
the Southerner, let us say from Richmond, where the black man is
arrested for small offences and treated with considerable roughness and
harshness, New York courts seem lenient.[5] To the West Indian,
accustomed to British rule, justice in New York is noticeable for its
variability, the likelihood that if it is severe tonight, it will be
generous tomorrow.
"Three months," the listener at court hears given as sentence to a
respectable-looking colored servant girl who has begged to be allowed to
return to her place which she has held for five years. "I never was up
for drinking before," she pleads; "I have learnt my lesson; please give
me a chance; I will not do this again."
"What should you two be fighting for?" another judge, another morning,
says to two very battered women, one white and one colored, who come
before him in court. And talking kindly to both, but with greater
seriousness to the Irish offender, his own countrywoman, he sends them
away with a reprimand.
How much of this unequal treatment comes from color prejudice or
caprice or temperament, the Negro is unable to decide, but he soon
learns one curious fact: while his black skin marks him as inheriting
Republican politics, it is the Democratic magistrate, the Tammany
henchman whose name is a byword to the righteous, who is the more
lenient when he has committed a trifling offence.
"Didn't I play craps with the nigger boys when I was a kid?" one of
these well-known politicians says, "and am I going back on the poor
fellows now?" Of course, the Negro is assured such men only want his
vote, but he believes real sympathy actuates the Tammany leader, who is
too busy to bother whether the man before him is black or white. The
reformer, on the other hand, big with dignity, at times makes him vastly
uncomfortable as he lectures upon the Negro problem from the eminence of
the superior race.
But whether Republican or Democrat, the Negro learns that it is well to
have a friend at court; that helplessness is the worst of all
disabilities, worse than darkness of skin or poverty. So he soon
becomes acquainted with his local politician, and if his friend is in
trouble, or his wife or son is locked up, pounds vigorously at the
politician's door. It may be midnight, but the man of power will dress,
and together they will turn from the dark tenement hall into the lighted
street and on to the police-station or magistrate's court to seek
release for the offender. That too often the gravity of the offence
weighs little in the securing of lenient treatment is part of the muddle
of New York justice. The Negro finds that he has taken the most direct
way to secure relief.
As far as we have followed, we have found the municipality of New York
generally ready to treat her black citizens with the same justice or
injustice with which she treats her whites. Exceptions occur, but she
does not often draw the color line. Perhaps, in this connection, it
might be well to stop a moment and see what return the black man makes,
whether by his vote he helps secure to the city honest and efficient
government.
Walking through a Negro quarter on election day, the most careful
search fails to reveal any such far-sighted altruism. With a great
majority of colored voters the choice of a municipal candidate is based
on the argument of a two-dollar bill or the promise of a job, combined
with the sentiment, decreasing every year, for the Republican Party--the
party that once helped the colored man and, he hopes, may help him
again. The public standing of the mayoralty candidate, his ability to
choose wise heads of departments, the building of new subways, the
ownership of public utilities, these are unimportant issues. The matter
of immediate moment is what this vote is going to mean to the black
voter himself.
Such a selfish and unpatriotic attitude, not unknown perhaps to white
voters, leads some of our writers and reformers to doubt the value of
universal manhood suffrage. Mr. Ray Stannard Baker tells us that the
Negro and the poor white in New York, through their venality, are
practically without a vote. "While the South is disfranchising by
legislation," he says, "the North is doing it by cash." "What else is
the meaning of Tammany Hall and the boss and machine system in other
cities?"[6] New York's noted ethical culture teacher argues against
agitation for woman's suffrage on the ground that so many of those who
now have the vote do not know how to use it. But looking closely at
these unaltruistic citizens, we see that after all they are putting the
ballot to its primary use, the protection of their own interests. The
Negro in New York has one vital need, steady, decent work. He dickers
and plays with politics to get as much of this as he can. It is very
insufficient relief for an intolerable situation, but it is partial
relief. In another city, Atlanta for instance, he might find education
the most important civic gift for which to strive. Atlanta is a
fortunate city to choose for an example of the power of the suffrage,
for since the Negro's loss of the vote in Georgia, educational funds
have been turned chiefly to white schools, and 5,000 colored children
are without opportunities for public education. 1885 saw the last school
building erected for Negroes, the result of a bargain between the
colored voters and the prohibitionists.[7] Should a colored teacher in
New York be refused her certificate, a colored consumptive be denied a
place in the city's hospital, a colored child meet with a rebuff in the
city park, the colored citizen would find his vote an important means
of redress. Then, too, while there are so many men to buy, it is
important to have a vote to sell, lest the other citizens secure the
morning's bargains. Venality in high and low places will not disappear
until we are dominated by the ideal of social, not individual
advancement. Before that time, it is well for the weak that they are
able, at least in the political field, to bargain with the strong.
The importance to the Negro of the vote is quickly appreciated when we
consider New York's attitude unofficially expressed. With the franchise
behind him the colored man can secure for himself and his children the
municipality's advantages of education, health, amusement, philanthropy.
He is here a citizen, a contributor to the city treasury, if not
directly as a taxpayer, as a worker and renter. But as a private
individual, seeking to use the utilities managed by other private
individuals, he continually encounters race discrimination. Private
doors are closed, and were the state not so wealthy and generous,
disabilities still graver than at present would follow.
A few examples will show the condition. A Negro applies by letter for
admission to an automobile school, and is accepted; but on appearing
with his fee his color debars his entrance. Carrying the case to court,
the complaint is dismissed on the ground that the law which forbade
exclusion from places of education on account of race and color is
applicable only to public schools. Private institutions may do as they
desire.
Again, a colored man tries to get a meal. At the first restaurant he is
told that all the tables are engaged; at the next no one will serve him.
Fearful of further rebuffs, he has to turn to the counter of a railway
station. He wants to go to the theatre. Like Tommy Atkins, he is sent to
the gallery or round the music halls. The white barber whose shop he
enters will not shave him; and when night comes, he searches a long time
before the hotel appears that will give him a bed. The sensitive man,
still more the sensitive woman, often finds the city's attitude
difficult to endure.
American Negroes have become familiar with racial lines, but the
foreigner of African descent, a visitor to the city, meets with rebuffs
that fill him with surprise as well as rage. Haytians and South
Americans, men of continental education and wide culture, have been
ordered away as "niggers" from restaurant doors, and at the box office
of the theatre refused an orchestra seat. English Negroes from the West
Indies, men and women of character and means, learn that New York is a
spot to be avoided, and cross the ocean when they wish to taste of city
life. In short, the stranger of Negro descent, if he be rash of temper,
hurls anathemas at the villainously mannered Americans; or, if he be
good-natured, shrugs his shoulders and counts New York a provincial
settlement of four million people.
Northern Negroes believe this discrimination in public places against
the black man to be increasing in New York. One, who came here fifteen
years ago, tells of the simple and adequate test by which he learned
that he had reached the northern city. Born in South Carolina, as he
attained manhood he desired larger self-expression, broader human
relations--he wanted "to be free," as he again and again expressed it.
So leaving the cotton fields he started one morning to walk to New York.
After a number of days he entered a large city and, uncertain in his
geography, decided that this was his journey's end. "I'll be free here,"
he thought, and opening the door of a brightly lighted restaurant
started to walk in. The white men at the tables looked up in
astonishment, and the proprietor, laying his hand on the youth's
shoulder, invited him, in strong southern accent, to go into the
kitchen. "I reckon I'm not North yet," the Negro said, smiling a bright,
boyish smile. Interested in his visitor's appearance, the proprietor
took him into another room, gave him a good supper, and talked with him
far into the night, urging the advantages of his staying in the South.
But the youth shook his head, and the next morning trudged on. At length
he reached a rushing city, tumultuous with humanity, and entering an
eating-house was served a meal. To him it was almost a sacrament. He
belonged not to a race but to humanity. He tasted the freedom of
passing unnoticed. But it is doubtful if the same restaurant would serve
him today.
Color lines, on these matters of entertainment as on others, are not
hard and fast. A few hotels, chiefly those frequented by Latin people,
receive colored guests; and while the foreign Negro meets with rudeness,
he is rebuffed less than the native. "I can't get into that place as a
southern darky," a black man laughingly says, pointing to a fashionable
restaurant, "I'll be the Prince of Abyssinia." But as Prince or American
his status is shifting and uncertain; here, preeminently, he is half a
man.
Discrimination against any man because of his color is contrary to the
law of the state. After the fifteenth amendment became a law, New York
passed a civil rights bill, which as it stands, re-enacted in 1909, is
very explicit. All persons within the jurisdiction of the state are
entitled to the accommodation of hotels, restaurants, theatres, music
halls, barbers' shops, and any person refusing such accommodation is
subject to civil and penal action. The offence may be punished by fine
or imprisonment or both.[8]
In 1888, the attempt to exclude three colored men from a skating-rink at
Binghamton, N. Y., led to a suit against the owner of the rink, and his
conviction. The case[9] reached the Court of Appeals, where the
constitutionality of the civil rights bill was upheld. "It is evident,"
said Justice Andrews in his decision, "that to exclude colored people
from places of public resort on account of their race is to fix upon
them a brand of inferiority, and tends to fix their position as a
servile and dependent people."
But despite the law and precedent, the civil rights bill is violated in
New York. Occasionally colored men bring suit, but the magistrate
dismisses the complaint. Usually the evidence is declared insufficient.
A case of a colored man refused orchestra seats at a theatre is
dismissed on the ground that not the proprietor but his employees turned
the man away. A keeper of an ice-cream parlor, wishing to prevent the
colored man from patronizing him, charges a Negro a dollar for a
ten-cent plate. The customer pays the dollar, keeps the check, and
brings the case to court. Ice-cream parlors are then declared not to
come under the list of places of public entertainment and amusement. A
bootblack refuses to polish the shoes of a Negro, and the court decides
that a bootblack-stand is not a place of public accommodation, and
refusal to shine the shoes of a colored man does not subject its
proprietor to the penalties imposed by the law.[10] This last case was
carried to the Court of Appeals, and the adverse judgment has led many
of the thoughtful colored men of the city to doubt the value of
attempting to push a civil rights suit. Litigation is expensive, and
money spent in any personal rights case that attacks private business,
whether the plaintiff be white or colored, is usually wasted. The civil
rights law is on the books, and the psychological moment may arrive to
insist successfully on its enforcement.
If there is an increase in discrimination against the Negro in New York
solely because of his color, it is a serious matter to the city as well
as to the race. Every community has its social conscience built up of
slowly accumulated experiences, and it cannot without disaster lose its
ideal of justice or generosity. New York has never been tender to its
people, but it has a rough hospitality, what Stevenson describes as
"uncivil kindness," and welcomes new-comers with a friendly shove,
bidding them become good Americans. After the war, the Negro entered
more than formerly into this general welcome. He was unnoticed, allowed
to go his way without questioning word or stare, the position which
every right-minded man and woman desires. But today New York has become
conscious that he is dark-skinned, and her attitude affects her growing
children. "I never noticed colored people," an old abolitionist said to
me, "I never realized there were white and black until, when a boy of
twelve, I entered a church and found Negroes occupying seats alone in
the gallery." As New York returns to the gallery seats, her boys and
girls return to consciousness of color and, from fisticuffs at school,
move on to the race riots upon the streets with bullets among the
stones.
The municipality, as we have seen, treats the Negro on the whole with
justice; its standard is higher than the standard of the average
citizen. It cherishes the ideal of democracy, and strives for
impartiality toward its many nationalities and races. And the New York
Negro in his turn does not allow his liberties to be tampered with
without protest. But the New York citizen can hardly be described as
friendly to the Negro. What catholicity he has is negative. He fails to
give the black man a hearty welcome. "Do you know where I stayed the
four weeks of my first trip abroad?" a colored clergyman once asked me.
I refused to make a guess. "Well," he said a little shamefacedly, "it
was in Paris. Paris may be a wicked city--any city has wickedness if you
want to look for it--but I found it a place of kindliness and good-will.
Every one seemed glad to be courteous, to assist me in my stumbling
French, to show me the way on omnibus or boat, or through the difficult
streets. It was so different from America; I was never wanted in the
southern city of my youth. In Paris I was welcome."
"How is it in New York?" I asked.
"In New York?" He stopped to consider. "In New York I am tolerated."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The total number of municipal employees is 55,006--Negro employees,
511--Percentage of Negro to whole, 0.9.
[2] "Story of the Riot," published by Citizens Protective League.
[3] New York _Age_, July 27, 1905.
[4] New York _Tribune_, July 24, 1905.
[5] A southern student says, "The Negro in Richmond is arrested for
small offences and fined in the city courts. He is treated with
considerable roughness and harshness in his punishment for these
offences. It looks as though he were being imposed upon as an individual
of the lower strata of society. But the Negro responds so impulsively to
what appeals, that constant fear, dread, and impressiveness of the
police act well as resistants to temptations."
[6] Ray Stannard Baker, "Following the Color Line," p. 269.
[7] The following story of Athens, Georgia, told by a Northerner
teaching in the South, illustrates this point. "The city of Athens was
planning to inaugurate a public school system, and also wished to 'go
dry.' It made a proposal to the colored voters promising that if their
combined vote would carry the city, two schools should be built, of
equal size and similar structure for each race. I visited Athens shortly
after the two buildings were built, and I found two beautiful brick
buildings very similar in all their appointments. At an interval of
several years I again visited the little city and again spent an hour in
the same brick school-house of the colored folk.
"At my third visit, I found my colored friends occupying a wooden
structure on the edge of the city, and not only inconveniently located,
but much less of a building than the one hitherto occupied. Upon inquiry
I found that in the growth of the school population of the whites, it
was cheaper to seize the building formerly occupied by the colored
children, and to build for them a cheap wooden structure on the
outskirts of the town.
"The colored school was still occupying this inadequate building at my
visit this last September, 1909. A second wooden structure has been
added to the colored equipment on the east side of the town."
This story of the Athenians well illustrates what will be done when the
Negro counts for something politically, and also what may be undone if
his value as a political asset is reduced.
[8] Civil Rights Law, State of New York. Chapter 14 of the Laws of
1909, being Chapter 6 of the Consolidated Laws.
"Article 4.--Equal rights in places of public amusement.
"Section 40.--All persons within the jurisdiction of this state shall be
entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities,
and privileges of inns, restaurants, hotels, eating houses, bath houses,
barber shops, theatres, music halls, public conveyances on land and
water, and all other places of public accommodation or amusement,
subject only to the conditions and limitations, established by the law
and applicable alike to all citizens.
"Section 41.--Penalty for violation. Any person who shall violate any of
the provisions of the foregoing section by denying to any citizen,
except for reasons applicable alike to all citizens of every race, creed
and color, and regardless of race, creed and color, the full enjoyment
of any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities or privileges in
said section enumerated, or by aiding or inciting such denial, shall,
for every such offence, forfeit and pay a sum not less than one hundred
dollars nor more than five hundred dollars to the person aggrieved
thereby, to be recovered in a court of competent jurisdiction in the
County where said offence was committed, and shall also, for every such
offence, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof
shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five
hundred dollars, or shall be imprisoned not less than thirty days nor
more than ninety days, or both such fine and imprisonment."
[9] People _vs._ King, 110 N. Y., 418, 1888.
[10] Burke _vs._ Bosso, 180 N. Y., 341, 1905.