A frank statement of the virtues and failings of the race, indicating
very clearly the evils which must be overcome, and the good which must
be developed, if success is really to attend the effort to uplift them.
[Illustration: H.T. KEALING.]
The characteristics of the Negro are of two kinds--the inborn and the
inbred. As they reveal themselves to us, this distinction may not be seen,
but it exists. Inborn qualities are ineradicable; they belong to the
blood; they constitute individuality; they are independent, or nearly so,
of time and habitat. Inbred qualities are acquired, and are the result of
experience. They may be overcome by a reversal of the process which
created them. The fundamental, or inborn, characteristics of the Negro may
be found in the African, as well as the American, Negro; but the inbred
characteristics of the latter belong to the American life alone.
There is but one human nature, made up of constituent elements the same in
all men, and racial or national differences arise from the predominance
of one or another element in this or that race. It is a question of
proportion. The Negro is not a Caucasian, not a Chinese, not an Indian;
though no psychological quality in the one is absent from the other. The
same moral sense, called conscience; the same love of harmony in color or
in sound; the same pleasure in acquiring knowledge; the same love of truth
in word, or of fitness in relation; the same love of respect and
approbation; the same vengeful or benevolent feelings; the same appetites,
belong to all, but in varying proportions. They form the indicia to a
people's mission, and are our best guides to God's purpose in creating us.
They constitute the material to be worked on in educating a race, and
suggest in every case where the stress of civilization or education should
be applied in order to follow the lines of least resistance.
But there are also certain manifestations, the result of training or
neglect, which are not inborn. As they are inculcable, so they are
eradicable; and it is only by a loose terminology that we apply the term
characteristics to them without distinction between them and the inherent
traits. In considering the characteristics of the Negro people, therefore,
we must not confuse the constitutional with the removable. Studied with
sympathy and at first hand, the black man of America will be seen to
possess certain predominant idiosyncrasies of which the following form a
fair catalogue:
_He is intensely religious._ True religion is based upon a belief in the
supernatural, upon faith and feeling. A people deeply superstitious are
apt to be deeply religious, for both rest upon a belief in a spiritual
world. Superstition differs from religion in being the untrained and
unenlightened gropings of the human soul after the mysteries of the higher
life; while the latter, more or less enlightened, "feels after God, if
haply," it may find Him. The Negro gives abundant evidence of both phases.
The absolute inability of the master, in the days of slavery, while
successfully vetoing all other kinds of convocation, to stop the Negro's
church meetings, as well as the almost phenomenal influence and growth of
his churches since; and his constant referring of every event, adverse or
favorable, to the personal ministrations of the Creator, are things unique
and persistent. And the master class reposed more faith in their slaves'
religion ofttimes than they did in their own. Doubtless much of the
reverential feeling that pervades the American home to-day, above that of
all other nations, is the result of the Negro mammy's devotion and loyalty
to God.
_He is imaginative._ This is not evinced so much in creative directions as
in poetical, musical, combinatory, inventional and what, if coupled with
learning, we call literary imagination. Negro eloquence is proverbial. The
crudest sermon of the most unlettered slave abounded in tropes and glowing
tongue pictures of apochalyptic visions all his own; and, indeed, the
poetic quality of his mind is seen in all his natural efforts when the
self-consciousness of education does not stand guard. The staid religious
muse of Phillis Wheatley and the rollicking, somewhat jibing, verse of
Dunbar show it equally, unpremeditated and spontaneous.
I have heard by the hour some ordinary old uneducated Negro tell those
inimitable animal stories, brought to literary existence in "Uncle Remus,"
with such quaint humor, delicious conceit and masterly delineation of
plot, character and incident that nothing but the conventional rating of
Aesop's Fables could put them in the same class. Then, there are more
Negro inventors than the world supposes. This faculty is impossible
without a well-ordered imagination held in leash by a good memory and
large perception.
_He is affectionate and without vindictiveness._ He does not nurse even
great wrongs. Mercurial as he is, often furiously angry and frequently in
murderous mood, he comes nearer not letting the sun go down upon his anger
than any other man I know. Like Brutus, he may be compared to the flint
which,
"Much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again."
His affection is not less towards the Caucasian than to his own race. It
is not saying too much to remark that the soul of the Negro yearns for the
white man's good will and respect; and the old ties of love that subsisted
in so many instances in the days of slavery still survive where the
ex-slave still lives. The touching case of a Negro Bishop who returned to
the State in which he had been a slave, and rode twenty miles to see and
alleviate the financial distress of his former master is an exception to
numerous other similar cases only in the prominence of the Negro
concerned. I know of another case of a man whose tongue seems dipped in
hyssop when he begins to tell of the wrongs of his race, and who will not
allow anyone to say in his presence that any good came out of slavery,
even incidentally; yet he supports the widowed and aged wife of his
former master. And, surely, if these two instances are not sufficient to
establish the general proposition, none will gainsay the patience,
vigilance, loyalty and helpfulness of the Negro slave during the Civil
War, and of his good old wife who nursed white children at her breast at a
time when all ties save those of affection were ruptured, and when no
protection but devoted hearts watched over the "great house," whose head
and master was at the front, fighting to perpetuate slavery. Was it
stupidity on the Negro's part? Not at all. He was well informed as to the
occurrences of the times. A freemasonry kept him posted as well as the
whites were themselves on the course of the war and the issue of each
battle. Was it fear that kept him at the old home? Not that, either. Many
thousands _did_ cross the line to freedom; many other thousands (200,000)
fought in the ranks for freedom, but none of them--those who went and
those who stayed--those who fought and those who worked,--betrayed a
trust, outraged a female, or rebelled against a duty. It was love, the
natural wellings of affectionate natures.
_He has great endurance, both dispositional and physical._ So true is the
first that his patience has been the marvel of the world; and, indeed,
many, regarding this trait manifested in such an unusual degree, doubted
the Negro's courage, till the splendid record of the '60's and the equal,
but more recent, record of the '90's, wrote forbearance as the real
explanation of an endurance seemingly so at variance with manly spirit.
Of his physical powers, his whole record as a laborer at killing tasks in
the most trying climate in America speaks so eloquently that nothing but
the statistics of cotton, corn, rice, sugar, railroad ties and felled
forests can add to the praise of this burden-bearer of the nation. The
census tables here are more romantic and thrilling than figures of
rhetoric.
_He is courageous._ His page in the war record of this country is without
blot or blemish. His commanders unite in pronouncing him admirable for
courage in the field, commendable for obedience in camp. That he should
exhibit such excellent fighting qualities as a soldier, and yet exercise
the forbearance that characterizes him as a citizen, is remarkable.
_He is cheerful._ His ivories are as famous as his songs. That the South
is "sunny" is largely due to the brightness his rollicking laugh and
unfailing good nature bring to it. Though the mudsill of the labor world,
he whistles as he hoes, and no dark broodings or whispered conspirings mar
the cheerful acceptance of the load he bears. Against the rubber bumper of
his good cheer things that have crushed and maddened others rebound
without damage. When one hears the quaint jubilee songs, set to minor
cadence, he might suppose them the expressions of a melancholy people.
They are not to be so interpreted. Rather are they the expression of an
experience, not a nature. Like the subdued voice of a caged bird, these
songs are the coinage of an occasion, and not the free note of nature.
The slave sang of griefs he was not allowed to discuss, hence his songs.
This cheerfulness has enabled the Negro to live and increase under
circumstances which, in all other instances, have decimated, if not
exterminated, inferior peoples. His plasticity to moulding forces and his
resiliency against crushing ones come from a Thalian philosophy,
unconscious and unstudied, that extracts Epicurean delights from funeral
meats.
The above traits are inborn and fundamental, belonging to the race
everywhere, in Africa as well as America. Strict correctness requires,
however, that attention be called to the fact that there are tribal
differences among African Negroes that amount almost to the national
variations of Europe; and these are reflected in American Negroes, who are
the descendants of these different tribes. There is as much difference
between the Mandingo and the Hottentot, both black, as between the Italian
and the German, both white; or between the Bushman and the Zulu, both
black, as between the Russian and the Englishman, both white. Scientific
exactness, therefore, would require a closer analysis of racial
characteristics than an article of this length could give; but, speaking
in a large way, it may be said that in whatever outward conformity may
come to the race in America by reason of training or contact, these traits
will lie at the base, the very warp and woof of his soul texture.
If, now, we turn to consider his inbred traits, those the result of
experience, conditions and environments, we find that they exist mainly as
deficiencies and deformities. These have been superimposed upon the native
soul endowment. Slavery has been called the Negro's great schoolmaster,
because it took him a savage and released him civilized; took him a
heathen and released him a Christian; took him an idler and released him a
laborer. Undoubtedly it did these things superficially, but one great
defect is to be charged against this school--it did not teach him the
meaning of home, purity and providence. To do this is the burden of
freedom.
The emancipated Negro struggles up to-day against many obstacles, the
entailment of a brutal slavery. Leaving out of consideration the many who
have already emerged, let us apply our thoughts to the great body of
submerged people in the congested districts of city and country who
present a real problem, and who must be helped to higher things. We note
some of the heritages under which they stagger up into full development:
_Shiftlessness._ He had no need to devise and plan in bondage. There was
no need for an enterprising spirit; consequently, he is lacking in
leadership and self-reliance. He is inclined to stay in ruts, and applies
himself listlessly to a task, feeling that the directive agency should
come from without.
_Incontinence._ It is not to the point to say that others are, too.
Undoubtedly, example has as much to do with this laxity as neglect. We
simply record the fact. A slave's value was increased by his prolificacy.
Begetting children for the auction block could hardly sanctify family
ties. It was not nearly so necessary for a slave to know his father as his
owner. Added to the promiscuity encouraged and often forced among this
class, was the dreadful license which cast lustful Caucasian eyes upon
"likely" Negro women.
_Indolence._ Most men are, especially in a warm climate: but the Negro
acquired more than the natural share, because to him as a bondman laziness
was great gain, for he had no pecuniary interest in his own labor. Hence,
holidays were more to be desired than whole labor days, and he learned to
do as little as he might, be excused as often as he could, and hail
Saturday as the oasis in a desert week. He hails it yet. The labor
efficiency of the Negro has greatly increased since the emancipation, for
self-interest is a factor now. In 1865, each Negro produced two-thirds of
a bale of cotton; now he produces an average of one whole bale to the man.
But there is still woful waste of productive energy. A calculation
showing the comparative productive capacity, man for man, between the
Northern[B] and Southern laborer would be very interesting.
_Improvidence and Extravagance._ He will drop the most important job to go
on an excursion or parade with his lodge. He spends large sums on
expensive clothing and luxuries, while going without things necessary to a
real home. He will cheerfully eat fat bacon and "pone" corn-bread all the
week[C] in order to indulge in unlimited soda-water, melon and fish at the
end. In the cities he is oftener seen dealing with the pawn-broker than
the banker. His house, when furnished at all, is better furnished that
that of a white man of equal earning power, but it is on the installment
plan. He is loath to buy a house, because he has no taste for
responsibility nor faith in himself to manage large concerns; but organs,
pianos, clocks, sewing-machines and parlor suits, on time, have no terrors
for him. This is because he has been accustomed to think in small
numbers. He does not regard the Scotchman's "mickle," because he does not
stop to consider that the end is a "muckle." He has amassed, at full
valuation, nearly a billion dollars' worth of property, despite this, but
this is about one-half of what proper providence would have shown.
_Untidiness._ Travel through the South and you will be struck with the
general misfit and dilapidated appearance of things. Palings are missing
from the fences, gates sag on single hinges, houses are unpainted, window
panes are broken, yards unkempt and the appearance of a squalor greater
than the real is seen on every side. The inside of the house meets the
suggestions of the outside. This is a projection of the slave's "quarters"
into freedom. The cabin of the slave was, at best, a place to eat and
sleep in; there was no thought of the esthetic in such places. A quilt on
a plank was a luxury to the tired farm-hand, and paint was nothing to the
poor, sun-scorched fellow who sought the house for shade rather than
beauty. Habits of personal cleanliness were not inculcated, and even now
it is the exception to find a modern bath-room in a Southern home.
_Dishonesty._ This is the logic, if not the training, of slavery. It is
easy for the unrequited toiler in another's field to justify reprisal;
hence there arose among the Negroes an amended Commandment which added to
"Thou shalt not steal" the clause, "except thou be stolen from." It was no
great fault, then, according to this code, to purloin a pig, a sheep, a
chicken, or a few potatoes from a master who took all from the slave.
_Untruthfulness._ This is seen more in innocent and childish exaggeration
than in vicious distortion. It is the vice of untutored minds to run to
gossip and make miracles of the matter-of-fact. The Negro also tells
falsehoods from excess of good nature. He promises to do a piece of work
on a certain day, because it is so much easier and pleasanter to say Yes,
and stay away, than it is to say No.
_Business Unreliability._ He does not meet a promise in the way and at
the time promised. Not being accustomed to business, he has small
conception of the place the promise has in the business world. It is only
recently he has begun to deal with banks. He, who has no credit, sees[D]
no loss of it in a protested note, especially if he intends to pay it some
time. That chain which links one man's obligation to another man's
solvency he has not considered. He is really as good and safe a debt-payer
when he owes a white man as the latter can have, but the methods of the
modern bank, placing a time limit on debts, is his detestation. He much
prefers the _laissez-faire_ of the Southern plantation store.
_Lack of Initiative._ It was the policy of slavery to crush out the
combining instinct, and it was well done; for, outside of churches and
secret societies, the Negro has done little to increase the social
efficiency which can combine many men into an organic whole, subject to
the corporate will and direction. He has, however, made some hopeful
beginnings.
_Suspicion of his own race._ He was taught to watch other Negroes and tell
all that they did. This was slavery's native detective force to discover
incipient insurrection. Each slave learned to distrust his fellow. And
added to this is the knowledge one Negro has that no other has had half
sufficient experience in business to be a wise counsellor, or a safe
steward of another man's funds. Almost all Negroes who have acquired
wealth have entrusted its management to white men.
_Ignorance._ The causes of his ignorance all know. That he has thrown off
one-half of it in forty years is a wonderful showing; but a great incubus
remains in the other half, and it demands the nation's attention. What the
census calls literacy is often very shallow. The cause of this shallowness
lies, in part, in the poor character and short duration of Southern
schools; in the poverty that snatches the child from school prematurely to
work for bread; in the multitude of mushroom colleges and get-smart-quick
universities scattered over the South, and in the glamour of a
professional education that entices poorly prepared students into special
work.
Add to this, too, the commercialism of the age which regards each day in
school as a day out of the market. Boys and girls by scores learn the
mechanical parts of type-writing and stenography without the basal culture
which gives these callings their greatest efficiency. They copy a
manuscript, Chinese-like, mistakes and all; they take you phonetically in
sense as well as sound, having no reserve to draw upon to interpret a
learned allusion or unusual phrase. Thus while prejudice makes it hard to
secure a place, auto-deficiency loses many a one that is secured.
We have discussed the leading characteristics of the Negro, his inborn
excellencies and inbred defects, candidly and as they are to be seen in
the great mass whose place determines the status of the race as a whole.
It would, however, be to small purpose if we did not ask what can be done
to develop the innate good and correct the bad in a race so puissant and
numerous? This mass is not inert; it has great reactionary force,
modifying and influencing all about it. The Negro's excellences have
entered into American character and life already; so have his weaknesses.
He has brought cheer, love, emotion and religion in saving measure to the
land. He has given it wealth by his brawn and liberty by his blood. His
self-respect, even in abasement, has kept him struggling upward; his
confidence in his own future has infected his friends and kept him from
nursing despondency or planning anarchy. But he has laid, and does lay,
burdens upon the land, too: his ignorance, his low average of morality,
his low standards of home, his lack of enterprise, his lack of
self-reliance--these must be cured.
Evidently, he is to be "solved" by educational processes. Everyone of his
inborn traits must be respected and developed to proper proportion.
Excesses and excrescences must not be carelessly dealt with, for they mark
the fertility of a soil that raises rank weeds because no gardener has
tilled it. His religion must become "ethics touched with feeling"--not a
paroxysm, but a principle. His imagination must be given a rudder to guide
its sails; and the first fruits of its proper exercise, as seen in a
Dunbar, a Chesnutt, a Coleridge-Taylor and a Tanner, must be pedestaled
along the Appian Way over which others are to march. His affection must be
met with larger love; his patience rewarded with privilege; his courage
called to defend the rights of others rather than redress his own wrongs.
Thus shall he supplement from within the best efforts of good men without.
To cure the evils entailed upon him by an unhappy past, he must be
educated to work with skill, with self-direction, in combination and
unremittingly. Industrial education with constant application, is the
slogan of his rise from racial pauperism to productive manliness. Not that
exceptional minds should not have exceptional opportunities (and they
already exist); but that the great majority of awkward and unskilled ones,
who must work somehow, somewhere, all the time, shall have their
opportunities for training in industrial schools near them and with
courses consonant with the lives they are to lead. Let the ninety and nine
who must work, either with trained or fumbling hands, have a chance. Train
the Negro to accept and carry responsibility by putting it upon him. Train
him, more than any schools are now doing, in morals--to speak the truth,
to keep a promise, to touch only his own property, to trust the
trustworthy among his own race, to risk something in business, to strike
out in new lines of endeavor, to buy houses and make homes, to regard
beauty as well as utility, to save rather than display. In short, let us
subordinate mere knowledge to the work of invigorating the will,
energizing productive effort and clarifying moral vision. Let us make safe
men rather than vociferous mountebanks; let us put deftness in daily labor
above sleight-of-hand tricks, and common sense, well trained, above
classical smatterings, which awe the multitude but butter no parsnips.
If we do this, America will have enriched her blood, ennobled her record
and shown the world how to deal with its Dark Races without reproach.
[Footnote B: In the original, this was 'Northen'.]
[Footnote C: In the original, this was 'weeek'.]
[Footnote D: In the original, this was 'seees'.]
_Representative American Negroes_