described in books, and generally speaking I would rather study the
Negro in his unperfumed haunts, where he is less disguised with
Northern culture. Perhaps one learns more of the needs and requirements
of the Negroes by visiting a poor school where the ordinary routine
of teaching is going on. I visited a high school named after Booker
T. Washington, and talked to the students in the classes. The young
lady who took me to the head master wore a low-cut, white blouse from
which her dainty neck and her head of kinky hair grew like a palm
tree. She had dog’s teeth for eardrops hanging from her ears, and
large, kind, questioning eyes. The head master was a quiet young man
from some Negro university, full of pent-up enthusiasm for his race
and for learning. He had boundless enthusiasm for the Negro people
and their possibilities. Was not the greatest French writer a colored
man, and the greatest Russian poet of Negro blood? We went into the
composition class. They were doing “Argumentation,” which is perhaps a
trifle dull, but we discussed brevity and the principle of suspense.
In the English class each child had read “Silas Marner” and was taking
it in turn to re-tell the story when called upon by the teacher. This
was pretty well done, though Americanisms were frequent, and the two
brothers were said to be “disagreeable” when it was meant that they
disagreed. In French the whole class was standing around the walls of
the room, writing French sentences on the blackboards fitted into the
panelling. French was very popular. Every child wanted to go to France
by and by. In the Latin class we discussed the merits of Cæsar, in the
cookery class whether they ate what they cooked, in the needlework,
invisible mending—when suddenly the fire bell sounded. Each class at
once got up and filed out in orderly manner. In one minute the whole
school of seven hundred black children was cleared. Then they marched
back in twos, shoulder to shoulder, in fine style, to the rub-a-dub-dub
of a kettledrum. It was a surprise alarm, called by a visiting fire
inspector. None, even of the teachers, had known whether the alarm was
real.
The teachers here were all black, and possessed of the greatest
enthusiasm; the children presented some hopeless types, but they were
mostly very eager and intelligent. The methods of teaching seemed to
be advanced, but there were many deficiencies, notably that of the
chemistry class, where all the apparatus was in a tiny cupboard, and
consisted of some bits of tubing, a few old test tubes, and some empty
bottles.
It was a grievance, and I thought a legitimate one, that whereas the
white schools were given good buildings with every latest convenience,
less was thought good enough for the Negro children. Though white
sympathizers with the ex-slave had been very generous in endowing Negro
education, their good work was more than neutralized by the Southern
local authorities, who held the point of view that education spoiled
the “nigger.” If it were not for the enthusiasm of the Negro teachers,
who carry on in any circumstances, it might easily have happened that
the colored people had a whole series of well-endowed universities and
colleges like Fisk and Hampton, but no elementary or secondary school
education worth the name.
Lack of good will toward the Negro thus expresses itself in many
ways; the failure to repair his roads, the failure to give him equal
facilities for education and self-improvement, and his exclusion from
the public libraries. The white man will not say “No” to grants of
money which give him handsome Carnegie library buildings for nothing
or will raise universities, even Negro universities, but he will not
fulfill his part of the unwritten contract—and honor all philanthropy
by indiscriminate good will.
After visiting the school I saw glimpses of Negro women at work in
characteristic places of earning a living. The management was always
very sensitive about strangers being present, so it was possible to
find out little about the conditions. One shop was full of girls
sewing ready-cut trousers on machines run by electricity. The trousers
were cut in Baltimore and sent down here to be sewn cheaply by local
colored labor. A Jew was in charge. A Negro woman was looking after
the “welfare” of the girls. Another was a tobacco factory, where girls
earned eleven dollars a week, working from 7:30 a. m. to 5:30 p. m.,
stripping tobacco leaf in airy and fragrant rooms. At piecework they
earned from six cents a pound.
I visited the publishing office of the _Journal and Guide_, where the
Negroes not only edit a paper but manufacture their own type and do
everything themselves—one of a hundred Negro newspapers published in
the United States. The average number of spelling errors in many of
these sheets seemed to be about three a paragraph, but that in no wise
renders them ridiculous or deters the pen of the ready writers. Negroes
have a passion for journalism which is out of proportion to their
present development and capacity.
As I came out of the publishing office with the editor we saw a hearse.
It was drawn by a motor, and it was a new idea to me, that of being
motored to one’s grave. The editor made a sign and the hearse stopped.
“Just a moment,” said he, and a lugubriously cloaked Ethiopian with
large, shining teeth stepped down.
“This is Undertaker Brown,” said the editor.
“Always at yo’ seyvice, sar,” said the undertaker. “Is yo’ thinking of
taking a ride with me?”
I said I was not meditating on that sad course yet.
“It’s a fine hearse,” said Brown—“and look, they is steel clamps to
keep the coffin steady (he swung open the rear doors) and speshal
receppacles fo’ the flowers.”
I thanked him, and we shook hands effusively.
All the Negroes took charge of me. It was no difficult task to see
their ways of life. It was impossible not to feel happy in the midst
of their childish vivacity and enthusiasm and make-believe. Their
grievances were almost lost sight of in the sunshine of prosperity in
Eastern Virginia. Miss M—— told me how in the Red Cross drives during
the war she “led the cullud folk over the top” and the vividness of
her story of Negro vying with Negro as to who should subscribe most
money, and how she defied the white “crackers” to continue lynching
and persecuting them in the face of such patriotism as they had
shown was not only instructive but extraordinarily amusing, and also
touching; how a large audience of white people was listening to a
combined “platform” of black and white orators, and Negro choirs were
singing “spirituals” while the collection plates rolled round, and Miss
M—— when she arrived at the hall was so dead-beat with rushing round
the town all day that she fell in a faint and she prayed, “Lord, if
I gain strength I’ll take it for a sign that I am to speak.” And she
came to herself and went on to the platform and told the white folk
straight—what she felt—how nine-tenths of her people could not spell
the word _Democracy_ and had indeed only just heard of it, and yet they
sent their children to wounds and death, and they themselves subscribed
their last dimes for patriotic causes. But what did America give in
return? And at the end she overheard one of the worst “crackers” remark
that he could not help admiring her, she was “so durned sincere.”
The last evening I spent in this corner of Virginia was at a resort
of colored soldiers and sailors, and I had a talk with a boy who had
held a commission in the Ninety-second Division, a black unit which
had covered itself with glory in France. He was a lieutenant, and
was at the taking of St. Mihiel. The Negro marines were also very
interesting—eager, serious, and sober fellows. They were proud of
being in Uncle Sam’s navy, but wanted a chance of advancement there,
did not wish to remain twenty years in the same grade, but hoped
desperately for a gold stripe in time, and the chance to become petty
officer. Soldiers and sailors surged in and out of the hall, smoked
cigarettes, drank soda, and chatted. I heard no foul talk, and I took
much pleasure in their appearance. I felt what a fine body of guardians
of their country could be made of them if once prejudice were finally
overcome. In this part of Eastern Virginia, the apex of the South,
the new black world seemed very promising and had gone far in its
fifty-seven years of freedom.
The way from Norfolk to Richmond is up the James River, and I continued
my journey on a boat that had evidently come from New York—redolent
as it was of long-distance passengers. There was a seat, however,
just under the captain’s lookout, and there was nothing before me but
the progressing prow and the silver expanse of the river. A classical
voyage this—for it was up the James River, named after James the
First, that the first pioneers of Raleigh’s virgin land made their way.
It is felt to be romantic, because they were not Roundheads nor Quakers
nor Plymouth Brethren nor other sober-liveried folk, but gentlemen of
sword and ruff, courtier-sailors who upon occasion would be ready to
throw their cloaks in the mud for a Queen to tread upon. The tradition
of courtier survives, and a rich man of Virginia is to-day a Virginian
gentleman, though there is scarcely another State in America where the
landed proprietors claim to be gentry. The James River is significant
for another reason. At little Jamestown, which never came to anything
as a city, the first Negro slaves were landed in America in 1618,
and from the small beginning of one shipload three hundred years ago
nation-wide Negrodom, with all its black millions, has arisen.
Virginia grew prosperous in the cultivation of tobacco, which remains
to-day the staple production of a comparatively poor State. It is
too far north for the cultivation of cotton, and though doubtless
possessing great mineral wealth, industrial research has not gone
so far as in Pennsylvania. It is essentially a conservative State.
Slavery is said to have depressed its economic life so that neighboring
Northern States, whose development began much later, easily overtook
it. A somewhat patriarchal settled state of life took possession of
Virginia, a new feudalism which was out of keeping with hustling
and radical America. It is remarkable, however, how many lawmakers,
administrators, soldiers, and Presidents Virginia has given to the
United States. Starting with gentry, it has bred gentry.
And with regard to the Negro, the State has a good record. Despite the
various inequalities of treatment and Jim-Crowism noticeable by anyone
who is observant, there is little or no brutality or nigger-baiting.
Lynching is rare, and it must be supposed the alleged Negro attacks
upon white women must be rare also. Such relatively good conditions
prevail in Virginia that the whole South takes shelter behind her. And
as the proud Virginian reckons himself _par excellence_ the Southerner,
he is often annoyed when he reads of the worse treatment of the Negroes
further south. Virginia should remember she is not the whole South, and
she does not exert even a moral influence upon Georgia and Mississippi.
In that respect she seems to be as helpless as New England and the
Puritans, to whom politically she has generally been in opposition.
The old Virginian families bound the Negroes to them with undying
devotion. They became part of the family, with all the license of pet
children. They fought for them and assisted them in the Civil War with
the creature-like devotion of clansmen for their chief. The “veterans”
who still survive, Negroes like Robert E. Lee’s cook, who was one
of many picturesque personalities at the Atlanta reunion, are of a
different type from the Negroes of to-day. They identified themselves
with their master and mistress’s estate and person in a way that
is truly touching. Surely of all beings the Negro is capable of the
strongest and most pathetic human attachments.
Freedom, however, and the new ideas blew autumnly over the Virginian
summer. All changed. The family retinues broke up. The affections
were alienated. The new race of Negro individualists arose. The old
“mammies” and “uncles” were a people apart, and are dying out fast
now. The new Negroes are with and for themselves. They make shift to
be happy and to amuse themselves without the white man. And they have
now their schools, their churches which are like religious clubs, their
political societies, theatres, and other segregated interests.
These segregated interests have produced and tend to produce an
ever-increasing Negro culture, and though that culture may be somewhat
despised because of its humble beginnings, there seems no reason why it
should not have a future which will compare with that of white America.
But south of Richmond and south of Virginia there is progressively less
of this Negro culture to be found. There are the oases of Tuskegee
Institute and Atlanta and Fisk Universities, but white opinion is
adverse to Negro education, and the black masses have been unable to
over-crow their neighbors. In Richmond and north of it, however, the
black man has leave to breathe awhile, and there are interesting
developments.
Richmond, which in 1853 reminded Olmsted of Edinburgh in its
picturesqueness, has now quintupled its population, and spread greatly.
It is still a handsome city, and its center of Grecian Capitol and
public gardens is very pleasant. It is the third blackest city in the
United States, between thirty-five and forty per cent of its population
being colored. A certain General Gabriel led an insurrection of Negro
slaves against Richmond in 1801, and the city has always adopted itself
as self-constituted warden of the white man’s safety. The city has,
however, been free enough from disturbance since the Civil War. It
has its well-endowed Negro colleges, and on the other hand its less
satisfactorily placed elementary and secondary schools. As in Norfolk,
Negro business is thriving, though it has deeper roots.
It is less promising west of Richmond. A duller economic life prevails,
and conditions are more normal, less affected by the prosperity of war
industrialism. I traveled by train to Lynchburg. As this was my first
experience of trains south of the Mason-Dixon line, I was interested
to observe the Jim Crow arrangements. The Negroes are kept to separate
waiting rooms, and book their tickets at other booking windows, and
they are put into separate carriages in the trains, and not allowed
promiscuously with white people, as in the North. They have not quite
so good accommodation, though they pay the same fare; sometimes there
is less space, sometimes there is no separate smoking compartment.
Drawing-room cars and “sleepers” are generally unavailable. Colored
people consider it a great grievance, but it is probably the insult
implied in their segregation that affects them most. There is not
an enormous disparity in the comfort. Inability to obtain food on
long-distance trains was often mentioned to me as the chief injustice,
but the personal aspect of the matter was always to the fore: “We don’t
want to mix in with white people, or with those who don’t want us. We
can get on very well by ourselves ...” they were always protesting.
In the North, promiscuously seated black and white passengers all seem
quite happy and at ease. Mixing them works well. There is never any
hitch. In the South, however, segregation seems to be for the Negro’s
good. The less personal contact he has with the white man the safer
he is from sudden outbursts of racial feeling. Of course, the railway
companies ought to give the Negro equal accommodation for equal fare,
but that is another matter.
Lynchburg is a beautifully situated little city beside the Blue Ridge
Mountains. It is a great market for dark tobacco. It manufactures iron
pipes, ploughs, boots and shoes, and a number of other articles, and
boasts of “ideal labor conditions and no strikes.” It is named after
the original planter, Charles Lynch, an Irish boy, who ran from home
and married a Quaker. It lapsed from Quakerism to a very sinful state,
and then is said to have been reformed by the Methodists. Now there is
nothing to trouble the mind unpleasantly at Lynchburg.
The public library seemed to have paused sick in 1905. It is called
the Jones Memorial Library, an impressive white building with an array
of white steps leading up to it. Jones himself, who was a business
man and served a very short while in the war of North and South, is
shown in full martial attire drawing his sword, halfway up the stone
steps—as it were in act of driving readers away. A cold cloister-like
air pervaded the building. Negroes were not permitted in, and white
people did not enter much. The librarian, however, was unusually kind
and obliging, and lent me a book without taking a deposit. This lady
said she would rather sit next to a decent black woman in a train than
to the average White.
“We all had our black mammies—they treated us as if we were their own
babies. Can you blame us if sometimes we love them as our own flesh and
blood? All the trouble we have is due to Northerners coming South. And
if a Negro gets lynched, what a fuss is made of it!”
I met the manager of a tobacco warehouse. He was not willing that I
should see his Negroes at work and talk to them, but he assured me in a
bland way, cigar in hand, that his pickers were a jolly crowd who knew
they were well paid and would never go on strike. He paid thirty to
thirty-five cents the hour for Negro labor.
“The war has played the devil with the niggers,” said he. “It has
spread about the idea of high wages. The North has been especially to
blame, luring the niggers up there with the bait of big money. It has
caused a rise in wages all over the South.”
His employees were unskilled. In his opinion no Negroes were ever
used for skilled work. What I had to tell him of Newport News and its
shipyards was beyond his comprehension. As for Hampton Institute, he
averred that he had never heard that it produced capable artisans. In
his opinion there had been some good Negro carpenters and wheelwrights
in slavery, but none since. Freedom had been very bad for the Negro.
Yes, he utterly approved of lynching. It was always justified, and
mistakes were never made. He had a water-tight mind.
A mile or so away was Virginia College, a red-brick structure in the
woods, where in happy seclusion a few hundred colored men and women
were being enfranchised of civilization and culture. A student took
me to his study-bedroom, hung with portraits of John Brown and Booker
T. Washington. The Bible was still the most important book, and it
occupied the pride of place, though it was interleaved with pages of
the Negro radical monthly, _The Crisis_. The student was an intense
and earnest boy with all the extra seriousness of persecuted race
consciousness. He said, in a low voice, that he would do anything at
any cost for his people. He said the present leaders of the Negro world
would fail, because of narrow outlook, but the next leaders would win
great victories for color. And he would be ready to follow the new
leaders. What a contrast they were!—the boss of the tobacco factory,
cigar in hand, “talking wise” on the nigger, and the quiet Negro
intellectual in his college, whetting daily the sword of learning and
ambition.
III
ORATORS AND ACTORS, PREACHERS AND SINGERS
The aspirations and convictions of the Negroes of to-day were well
voiced in a speech I heard at Harlem. I had been warned that I ought to
hear the “red-hot orator of the Afro-American race,” and so I went to
hear him. The orator was Dean Pickens, of Morgan College, Baltimore.
When he came to the platform the colored audience not only cheered him
by clapping, but stood up and cried aloud three times:
“_Yea, Pickens!_”
The chairman had said he would have to leave about half after five,
but the speaker must not allow himself to be disturbed by that, but
go right on. Pickens, who was one of the very black and very cheerful
types of his race, turned to the chairman and said:
“You won’t disturb _me_, brother! But if you’re going at half after
five, let’s shake hands right now, and then I can go straight ahead.”
And they shook hands with great gusto, and everyone laughed and felt at
ease. Pickens was going to speak; nothing could disturb Pickens; they
relaxed themselves to a joyful, anticipatory calm.
Just before the turn of Pickens to speak a white lady journalist
had rushed on to the platform and rushed off between two pressing
engagements, and had given the audience a “heart-to-heart” talk on
Bolsheviks and agitators, and had told them how thankful they ought to
be that they were in America and not in the Congo still. She gained a
good deal of applause because she was a woman, and a White, and was
glib, but the thinking Negroes did not care for her doctrine, and were
sorry she could not wait to hear it debated.
“Brothers, they’re always telling us what we ought to be,” said the
orator, with an engaging smile. “But there are many different opinions
about what ought to be; it’s what we are that matters. As a colored
pastor said to his flock one day—’Brothers and sisters, it’s not
the _oughtness_ of this problem that we have to consider, but the
_isness_!’ I am going to speak about the _is_ness. Sister S——, who
has just spoken, has had to go to make a hurry call elsewhere, but
I am sorry she could not stay. I think she might perhaps have heard
something worth while this afternoon. Sister S—— warned us against
agitators and radicals. Now, I am not against or for agitators. The
question is: ’What are they agitating about?’ ‘Show me the agitator,’ I
say. President Wilson is a great agitator; he is agitating a League of
Nations. Jesus Christ was a great agitator; He agitated Christianity.
The Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t like His agitating, and they fixed
Him. But He was a good agitator, and we’re not against Him. Then,
again, the Irish are great agitators; the Jews are great agitators;
there are good and bad agitators. (_Applause_.) But, brothers, I’ll
tell you who is the greatest agitator in this country ... the greatest
agitator is injustice. (_Sensation_.) When injustice disappears, I’ll
be against agitators, or I’ll be ready to see them put in a lunatic
asylum. (_Applause_.)
“Sister S—— was very hard on the radicals. There, again, show me the
radical, I say. A man may be radically wrong, yes, but he may also be
radically _right_. (_Laughter_.)
“As for the Bolsheviks, it’s injustice is making Bolshevism. It’s
injustice that changes quiet, inoffensive school teachers and
workingmen into Bolsheviks, just as it is injustice is stirring up
the colored people. Not that we are Bolsheviks. I am not going to say
anything against Bolsheviks, either. Show me the Bolshevik first, I
say, and then I’ll know whether I’m against him. People are alarmed
because the number of Bolsheviks is increasing. But what is making them
increase? If America is such a blessed country, why is she making all
these Bolsheviks? You know a tree by its fruits, and so you may know
a country by what it produces. These Bolsheviks that we read of being
deported in the Soviet Ark weren’t Bolshevik when they came to this
country. It comes to this: that we’ve raised a crop of Bolshevism in
this country and are exporting it to Europe, and now we’re busy sowing
another crop. Stop sowing injustice, and Bolshevism will cease growing.
(_Applause again._)
“But there is less Bolshevism among the colored people than among the
white, because the colored are more humble, more subservient, more used
to inequalities. We are always being told that we are backward, and we
believe it; bad, and we believe it; untrustworthy, and we believe it;
immoral, and we believe it. We are always being told what we ought to
be. But I’ll come back to what we are.
“We may be immoral; we may be a danger to the white women. But has
anyone ever honestly compared the morality of Whites and Blacks? They
will tell you there is not sufficient evidence to make a comparison, or
they will bring you pamphlets and paragraphs out of newspapers, records
of disgusting crimes; and we know very well that in twelve million
Negroes there are bound to be some half-wits and criminals capable
of terrible breaches of morality. But at best it is a paper evidence
against the Negro, while there is flesh-and-blood evidence against the
White. The moral standard of the Whites is written visibly in the
flesh and blood of three million of our race. (_Another sensation._)
Brothers, there’s one standard for the white man, and another for the
colored man. (_Sensation redoubled._) A colored man’s actions are not
judged in the same light as those of a white man.
“Well, I’m not against that. It is giving us a higher ideal. A colored
man has got to be much more careful in this country than a white man.
He’ll be more heavily punished for the same crime. If he gets into a
dispute with a white man he’s bound to lose his case. So he won’t get
into the dispute. (_Laughter._) Where a white man gets five years’
imprisonment, the Negro gets put in the electric chair. Where the
white man gets six days, he gets two years. If a white man seduces
a colored girl, she never gets redress. If the other thing occurs,
the Negro is legally executed, or lynched. What is the result of all
that inequality? Why, it is making us a more moral, less criminal,
less violent people than the Whites. Once at a mixed school they were
teaching the black and white boys to jump. The white boys jumped and
the black boys jumped. But when it was the black boy’s turn the teacher
always lifted the jumping stick a few inches. What was the consequence?
Why, after a while every colored boy in that school could jump at least
a foot higher than any white boy. (Renewed sensation, in which Pickens
attempted several times to resume.)