taught to jump a foot higher than the Whites. We will jump it, or we
will break our necks. (_Laughter._)
“Of course a great difference separates the Black from the White
still. And I don’t say that the white man hasn’t given us a chance.
If our positions had been transposed, and we had been masters and the
white folks had been the slaves, I’m not sure that we wouldn’t have
treated them worse than they have treated us. But the white folk make a
mistake when they think we’re not taking the chances they give us. We
are taking them. We are covering the ground that separates Black from
White. The white man is not outstripping us in the race. We are nearer
to him than we were—not farther away. We haven’t caught up, but we’re
touching. We are always doing things we never did before. (_Applause._)
“We shall not have cause to regret the time of persecution and
injustice and the higher standard of morality that has been set us.
Brothers, it’s all worth while. Our boys here have been to France and
bled and suffered for white civilization and white justice. We didn’t
want to go. We didn’t know anything about it. But it’s been good for
us. We’ve made the cause of universal justice our cause. We have taken
a share in world sufferings and world politics. It’s going to help
raise us out of our obscurity. We have discovered the French, and shall
always be grateful to them. We didn’t know France before, but every
colored soldier is glad now that he fought for France. If there is to
be a League of Nations, we know France will stand by us. And we shall
have a share in the councils of Humanity—with our colored brethren in
all parts of the world.” (_Sensation again._)
The orator spoke for two hours, and the above is only a personal
remembrance put down afterwards. His actual speech is therefore much
shortened. But that was the sense and the flavor of it. It was given
in a voice of humor and challenge, resonant, and yet everlastingly
whimsical. Laughter rippled the whole time. I shook hands with him
afterwards; for he was warm and eloquent and moving as few speakers I
have heard. He was utterly exhausted, for he had drawn his words from
his audience, and two thousand people had been pulling at his spirit
for two hours.
It was delightful to listen to a race propagandist so devoid of hatred,
malice, and uncharitableness. Some regard humor as the greatest
concomitant of wisdom, and this representative Negro certainly had
both. He never touched on the tragedy of race hatred and racial
injustice, but he saw the humor of them also. And the colored audience
saw the humor also. With the English there would have been anger, with
the French spontaneous insurrection, with the Jews gnashing of teeth,
but with the Negroes it was humor. There was no collective hate or
spite, but, manifest always, a desire to be happy, even in the worst
circumstances.
It is curious, however, that the Negro has a livelier sense of the
humor of tragedy than the white man. For two months I visited a Negro
theatre every week, and I was much struck by the fact that where
there was most cause to weep or feel melancholy, the colored audience
was most provoked to mirth. Negro companies, such as the Lafayette
Players, play “Broadway successes,” melodramas, classical dramas,
musical comedies, and indeed anything that would be staged in a
white man’s theatre. But the result is nearly always comedy. As upon
occasion white men burn cork and make up as Negroes, so the Negroes
paint themselves white and make up as white men and women. Watching
them is an entrancing study, because there is not only the original
drama and its interest, but superadded the interpretation by Africans
of what they think the white man is and does and says. Some of it is
like the servants’ hall dressed up as master and mistress and their
friends, but has remarkable felicity in acting. A large party, all
in full evening dress, is very striking—only the Negro women are on
the average so huge that when painted white and exposing vast fronts
of bosoms, they are somewhat incredible. A typical evening party on
the stage, with villain and hero, looks very handsome, but not in any
way Anglo-Saxon, if conceivably foreign American. The hero may have a
perfectly villainous expression. One’s mind is taken away from America
to the Mediterranean. Even when painted, it is impossible to look
other than children of the sun. The drama is played with a great deal
of noise. When the moments of passion arrive, everyone lets himself
go, and the stage is swallowed up in a hurly-burly of violent word and
action. There is never any difficulty in hearing what is being said.
But even the minor characters, such as butler and waiter, who should
be practically mute, insist on whistling and singing as they go about,
and serve the guests in a _pas de danse_. In one serious melodrama the
butler never appeared but he hummed resonantly the popular air: “Yakky,
Yekky, Yikky, Yokky Doola.” The villain or villainess is likely to act
the part with great verve, and generally I remarked a true aptitude for
acting, an ability which noise and violence could not hide. A white
drama is literally transformed on the Negro stage. The Negroes catch
hold of any childishness or piece of make-believe and give it a sort of
poetry. Thus, for instance, Miss Elenor Porter’s “Polyanna,” with its
gospel of “_Be glad_,” is a cloying sentimentalism in the hands of the
ordinary white company. But the Negroes make it into a sort of “Alice
in Wonderland,” very amusing, very sweet, and very touching—something
entirely delightful. The consciousness of the white person sitting in
the colored theater is, however, continually disturbed by ripples of
tittering whenever on the stage there is a suggestion of calamity.
When it is melodrama that is being played, the audience laughs all the
time like a collection of intellectuals who have visited a popular
theatre to watch “The Silver King” or “The Girl’s Crossroads.” The very
suggestion of disaster is funny.
This is an indication of difference in soul. There are many who would
see in these white-painted Negroes another instance of a passion for
the imitation of white people. But one could hardly point to anything
that shows more readily the sheer difference of black and white people
than the Negro stage such as it is to-day.
There is not as yet a Negro drama, but it certainly will arise. Ridgely
Torrence’s “Plays for a Negro Theatre” is perhaps the nearest approach
so far to a genuine Negro drama, but the author is white. The great
success of these plays when acted by Negroes only shows the glory that
awaits the awakening of a true Negro dramatist. Every large city in
America has its Negro theatre or music hall or cinema shows. The drama
could become an organ of racial self-expression, and could give voice
to the hopes and aspirations and sorrows of the colored people in a
very moving way. I think such a drama would prove highly original.
Comedy would be conceived in a different spirit. So far from the Negro
imitating the white man, we should all be found imitating him—as we
already imitate him in our dances and music. The new Negro humor would
infect the whole Western world.
It is generally called “the blues.” We say we have a fit of the blues
when we are feeling depressed. It is not at all a laughing matter, but
the Negro finds that state of mind to be always humorous. A hundred
new comic songs tell the humor of sorrows. All the gloomy formulas of
everyday life have been set to music. Telling one’s hard fortune and
howling over it and drawing it out and infinitely bewailing it, and
adding circumstantial minor sorrows as one goes along and infinitely
bewailing them—this is distinctively Negro humor.
I visited one evening a Negro theatre where a musical comedy was going
on—words and music both by Negroes. It opened with the usual singing
and dancing chorus of Negro girls. They were clad in yellow and crimson
and mauve combinations with white tapes on one side from the lace edge
of the knicker to their dusky arms. They danced from the thigh rather
than from the knee, moving waist and bosom in unrestrained undulation,
girls with large, startled seeming eyes and uncontrollable masses of
dark hair. A dance of physical joy and abandon, with no restraint in
the toes or the knees, no veiling of the eyes, no half shutting of
the lips, no holding in of the hair. Accustomed to the very æsthetic
presentment of the Bacchanalia in the Russian Ballet, it might be
difficult to call one of those Negro dancers a Bacchante, and yet
there was one whom I remarked again and again, a Queen of Sheba in her
looks, a face like starry night, and she was clad slightly in mauve,
and went into such ecstasies during the many encores that her hair fell
down about her bare shoulders, and her cheeks and knees, glistening
with perspiration, outshone her eyes. Following this chorus a love
story begins to be developed—a humorous mother-in-law of tremendous
proportions and deep bass voice, her black face blackened further to
the color of boots, reprimands and pets her scapegrace son, who is the
comic loafer. He confers with his “buddy” as to how to win “Baby,” the
belle of Dark City. The “buddy” is the lugubriously stupid and faithful
and above all comic Negro friend who in trying to help you always does
you an ill turn. “Baby” is the beautiful doll of the piece—“Honey
baby, sugar baby!” She is courted also by the villain, who is plausible
and well dressed and polite, but still provocative of mirth. The hero
and the villain do a competitive cake walk for the girl, posturizing,
showing off, approaching and retiring, almost squatting and dancing,
leaping and dancing, swimming through the air, throwing everything
away from them and falling forward, and yet never falling, blowing
out their cheeks and dilating their eyes, and, as it were, hoo-dooing
and out-hoo-dooing one another, pseudo-enragement, monkey-mocking of
one another, feigned stage-fright and pretended escapes. Seeing this
done on a first night, the whole theatre was jammed and packed with
Negro people, and they recalled the couple nine times, and still they
gave encores. One of them, the villain, gave up, but the other, the
hero, went on as if still matched, his mouth open and panting, and
perspiration streaming through the black grease on his face—for he
also had blackened himself further for fun. The wedding service was
danced and sung in a “scena” which would have enravished even a Russian
audience. I had seen nothing so pretty or so amusing, so bewilderingly
full of life and color, since Sanine’s production of the “Fair of
Sorochinsky,” in Moscow.
The most characteristic parts of the comedy, however, were to come.
It was very lengthy, for Negroes do not observe white conventions
regarding time. It would be tedious to describe in words what was
wholly delightful to see. But there were two crises when the audience
roared with joy excessively. First, when the young husband suspects
his wife of flirting with the villain, and second, when he wants to
make it up and every imaginable calamity descends upon his head. He
arrives at his home about midnight, wearing a terribly tight pair of
boots and a suit of old, dusty clothes. There is a party at the house;
everyone is in evening dress. He won’t go in to the dance room. He has
to sit down and take his boots off, and henceforth walks about holding
them in his hands. He sees his wife dancing with the villain, makes a
scene, and then dramatically leaves his wife for ever. Left behind, she
stares a moment in silence, and then throws herself full length on a
low table, kicks up her heels, and vents her unhappiness in a series
of prolonged howls and paroxysms which put the audience into a heaven
of delight. The tight boots and the limp they cause are _blues_; the
wife’s grief is a _blue_; and for the rest of the drama the melancholy
husband is seen tramping about in his socks, carrying his wretched
boots in his hands. His unhappiness is long-drawn-out, but when at last
he decides to forgive and comes back home, he is met by the lugubrious
“buddy” outside his house, who tells him all his wife has suffered in
his absence. The repentant husband looks very miserable.
“And then a little baby boy was born,” says Buddy.
The repentant husband cheers up.
“So like you, such a beauty.”
The husband waxes excited and happy, and asks a flood of questions.
“But the baby died,” says his lugubrious companion.
The poor hero yells with sorrow.
“How Baby wished you were there to see little baby,” says Buddy. “How
she talked of you!”
“The little darling—and she has quite forgiven me?”
“She forgave you, all right. Ah, she was a fine woman. You never
deserved such a woman as she was, so beautiful, so loving, so tender,
so devoted—always saying your name, counting the days you had been
away from her and moping and sighing. Ah, it ate into her heart!”
“Yes, Buddy, I am a worthless, miserable nigger, that’s what I am. I
didn’t deserve to have her.”
“She said: ‘Oh, for one kiss; oh, for one hug—— ‘”
“I’ll go in to her at once.”
“Stop!” says Buddy impressively.
“Wha’s the matter?”
“She died day after baby was born.”
“No?”
“Yassir. Stone dead. Sure’s I live.”
The poor hero breaks down and sobs and wails and howls and blubbers,
distraction in his aspect, his knees knock together, he throws his hat
in the dust—and all the while the audience is convulsed with laughter.
The Negro women in the stalls find their chairs too small for them and
all but fall on to the floor; the smartly dressed Negro youths in the
boxes are guffawing from wide-opened mouths and laughing as much with
their bodies as with their faces.
“Mother and I went to town to buy the coffin,” says Buddy. “Poor old
Mother!”
“Did Mother forgive me?”
“Oh, yes, she forgave you all right. Such a mother as she was. She knew
you were bad and wrong and a disgrace, but she loved you. Ah, how she
loved you!”
“I am glad there’s poor old Mother.”
“Mother and I arranged for the funerals, but we had to sell up the
home. Yes, every stick.”
More and more grief on the part of husband.
“I’ll go in and see her anyway,” says he, moving toward the door.
“Stop!” says Buddy.
“Wha’s the matter?”
“She’s dead ... run over by a trolley car as we were going to the
funeral ...” and so on, the dénouement of course being that when he is
about to go and hang himself he catches a glimpse of Mother, larger, if
possible, than life, and he realizes it is all a hoax, and then Baby
appears with her little baby—and all is joy.
Of course the play _par excellence_ for a Negro theatre is “Othello,”
or rather, for a Negro actor in a mixed cast. Unfortunately, no white
company in the United States will allow a Negro actor to take even a
subordinate role. Even “nigger” parts, humorous Negro parts, have to be
taken by white men. An anomaly to be remedied! The profession of acting
is too noble a one for color prejudice to lurk there. I fear, however,
that it will be long before mixed companies of white and colored
actors perform on the dramatic stage in the United States. “Othello”
apparently is seldom played, though the old tragedy of Shakespeare is
strangely of the time and _apropos_. The tragedy of _Othello_ exhibits
the same race prejudice existent in the sixteenth century as now, and
expresses itself in similar terms. The white woman is not for Moors or
Negroes on any terms. It is almost incredible that _Desdemona_ should
shun
The wealthy curled darlings of our nation, to incur a general mock,
Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom
Of such a thing as thou.
He must have used an enchantment on her. _Othello_ is the devil. He is
a black man. He is a Barbary horse—
You’ll have your nephews neigh to you.
You’ll have coursers for cousins and gennets for Germans.
There is little doubt that by _Othello_ Shakespeare intended a Negro,
or, in any case, someone whom the white denizens of New Orleans
would call a nigger. “Moor” or “Blackamoor” was the common name for
Negro, and the local detail of the play confirms the impression of
a thick-lipped, black-bosomed, rather repulsive physical type. The
psychology of _Othello_ is, moreover, that of the modern Negro. His
florid and sentimental talk, with its romantic yearning and its
exaggerations, is very characteristic.
I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth ‘scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travels’ history:
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak,—such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
And are not his last noble words, with his dramatic and romantic
gesture, and his suicide, the noble African set upon a pedestal!
Fanny Kemble in her diary tells how John Quincy Adams thought “it
served _Desdemona_ right for marrying a ‘nigger,’” and she imagines
the fine effect which some American actor in the rôle of _Iago_ might
obtain by substituting for “I hate the Moor” “I hate the nigger,”
pronounced in proper Charleston or Savannah fashion. “Only think,” says
Fanny Kemble, “what a very new order of interest the whole tragedy
might receive acted from this standpoint and called ‘Amalgamation, or
the Black Bridal.’”
The sympathy of a Southern audience would be almost exclusively with
_Iago_ and _Roderigo_ and the father. But could they tolerate it
without a lynching? No Negro company dare produce it south of the
Mason-Dixon line.
How the Negroes would perform tragedy in the vein of tragedy I do
not know. There is so much tragedy in their history, in their past,
that they have sought only comic relief. I believe the characteristic
Americanism of “Keep Smiling” or, as expressed in the song, “Smile,
Smile, Smile,” comes from the Negro. The colored people as a whole
seem to be serious only in church or at musical gatherings. Even
the eloquent pastor has no easy task to gain the attention of his
congregation. He must walk about and rage and flash, and with crashing
reverberations explode the wrath of God like the voice of the Almighty
in the storm. He must forget ordinary diction in forgetting himself,
and chant in ecstasy and rapture, lifting up his whole soul to the
Lord. If you talk to the Negro, he merely laughs; you must chant to
him to be taken seriously. In this possibly lies the vein for Negro
dramatic tragedy and prophetic poetry. Perhaps, however, the emotional
appeal of such will be too strong for Whites.
It is a great ordeal for a sensitive white person to take part in a
Negro revival or camp meeting. The emotional strain is tremendous.
Though it is difficult to move the Negro, once he is moved he can be
rapidly brought to a frenzy which surely has little enough to do with
the Christian religion. But even when he is not greatly moved it is
somewhat heart-searching for a white person present.
One day I went in at a chapel door. The building was full of Negroes;
every seat seemed taken. Perched high above the platform was a black
woman, all in black, with a large jet cross on her broad bosom. She was
reading from the First Book of Samuel in a great oracular voice which
never rose nor fell, but was like a pronouncement of eternal law. I was
taken right up to the front and given a seat under her throne. I knew
at once that there was likely to be an emotional storm in the audience.
It was throbbing on the heartstrings even as I listened to the reading,
and I wondered how I should combat it. After the Scripture the Lord’s
Prayer was said by a portentous Negro who had the frame of an African
warrior. When he went down on his knees he shook the beams of wood and
the seats. He prayed angrily, and clapped as he prayed, and interjected
remarks.
_Thy will be done!_ Yes, Lord, that’s it, that’s what we want,
certainly.
_Give us this day our daily bread!_ Yes, give us it (clap, clap, clap).
Give us our daily bread, Lord. Feed us! Feed us, Lord!
The congregation also on all hands interjected its remarks and clapped
and praised as the Lord’s Prayer went along.
The woman all in black was a famous mover of souls, and her sermon was
evidently the most looked-for religious excitement of the morning.
She was a plain woman with a powerful will, a great voice, and a rare
knowledge of the Bible. She preached from the text, “Saul hid himself
among the stuff.” First she told the story in a quiet voice and then
began to make the application. It was no use hiding from God, for He
would find you out.
So rousing were her simple words, and such was the atmosphere she was
begetting in the midst of her congregation, that I had to do everything
in my power to avoid breaking down under the influence and sobbing like
a child.
I went over in my mind the drama of “Macbeth,” and reconstructed
“Richard the Third,” and called to memory the speeches I had listened
to at the Bar dinner the night before, and what I had been doing during
the past week and month. But all the while I registered also in my
brain the whole of what the black priestess was saying.
Next to me a feminine voice kept crying out: “_Help her, Lord, help
her!_” and I back-pedalled for all I was worth. Presently the preacher
was lifted out of the ordinary, everyday voice into a barbaric chant,
which rose and fell and acclaimed and declaimed in rhythmical grandeur
and music. I dared not look at the woman at my side. But she now lisped
out, “She’s all right now, Lord; she’s all right now,” and I thought of
the relief of the Welsh when their preachers get into the strain they
call the _hwyl_.
I then very cautiously peered round at the woman. What was my
astonishment to see a girl of eighteen with a face like a huge, dusky
melon. Her jaws were perfectly relaxed, her eyes half shut, and her
upper lip, which was raised, exposed her smiling teeth and a layer of
sweet chewing gum.
Meanwhile the Reverend Norah up above was urging us all to come out
from behind the stuff. We were always hiding behind our business,
behind our families, behind our bodies.
“They are hiding behind their bodies, O Lord!
“Yes, O Lord, they say that they are sick, that they are ill,
“That they cannot do this and they cannot do that because they are
feeble in health.
“O come out from behind the stuff!
“You saw Saul hide behind the baggage, O Lord.
“Our Negro brothers and sisters are hiding there to-day.
“Hiding behind their wealth——
“Hiding behind their charity——
“Hiding behind their houses and their clothes and their cars,
“Yes, and their wives and their husbands,
“And other peoples’ opinions.
“But You see them, O Lord,
“You see them, and You’ll bring them out——”
“I’m hiding there right enough,” broke out from the congregation, and
“Lord, save us!” “Lord, help us!”
The whole mass of black humanity swayed under the power of the emotion
which the woman had kindled. They were about to stand in frenzy and
give the great gospel shout of repentance, when something happened; the
woman’s strength gave way, and she slipped out of the chant back into
her ordinary voice. At once the spell was broken.
The tiniest tots in the congregation then came out carrying little jam
jars which they bore to each individual for his collection, and we sang
a rolling and clamorous hymn, and all went home.
One note further in the sermon, and there would have been a great scene
of conversion at the close of the service, and everyone would have
decided to come out from behind his stuff, as the preacher recommended.
But it’s better for one’s religion not to be converted every Sunday.
Many white people would no doubt be so greatly amused by a sermon of
this kind that they would find difficulty in containing their laughter.
One laugh from a white stranger might have proved calamitous, and would
certainly have evoked hostility. On the other hand, there are Whites
who love psycho-physical religious emotionalism. Such a type is the
poet who wrote—
We mourned all our terrible sins away,
And we all found Jesus at the break of the day.
Blessed Jesus!