one can only be appalled at the inadequacy of civilization. There is
nothing that is better than in the forlorn mining villages of the
Russian Ural. It makes a sort of Negro little better than a nigger, and
it is surprising that he does not run amuck more often than he does.
If the outlying settlements reminded of the Ural, the center of the
city reminded of nothing better than Omsk. Here on the main street,
at Eighteenth Street, is a very “jazzy” corner, resplendent with five
times too much light at night, vocal with noisy music, and swarming
with Negroes of all castes and colors. By day it is like a web of
gregarious larvæ; by night it is the entrance to wonderland. Here
is massed together the Negro enterprise of the city. Most of the
characters of Octavus Roy Cohen’s clever Negro stories are thought to
be derived from this corner—Mr. Florian Slappey, Lawyer Evans Chew,
and the rest. Do not their ways and doings divert a vast number of
readers to the _Saturday Evening Post_? I may have met some of them. I
cannot say. But I met their like.
The chief establishment is the savings bank building, a squat,
six-story erection in red brick. It is flanked by places of amusement,
but in itself it is an ark of professionalism and learning. It is a
hive of many cells or cabinets, and every cabinet has its special
occupant, a doctor here, a dentist there, a lawyer in the other,
another doctor, a professor, an agent, and so on. You may meet nearly
all who count in Birmingham Negrodom here. By the way, the local way of
pronouncing the name of the city is Bumming Ham; if you say politely,
Birmingham, pronouncing with lips and teeth in the front part of the
mouth, no one will understand what you mean. A Negro pastor whirled me
round to the hub of Bumming Ham in his brand-new car. He had lately
had a very successful revival, of which the motor was an outward and
visible sign. And I called on many of the notables. I met a short,
scrubby Negro of fifty, whose complexion seemed to have been drenched
in yellowness. He explained this by the statement that the blood of
Senator H—— flowed in his veins. The senator had taken a liberty
with his mother, who for her part was thoroughly black. He thanked the
senator, since probably he had given him some brains; his mother’s side
of the family was unusually hard-headed. He had become a professor.
His daughter was a remarkable public speaker, and as Senator H—— was
an orator, he used to tell his Sarah that _there_ was Senator H——
coming out in her. “The Negro has been mixed with the best blood in the
South,” said he; “the blood of the masters, the English aristocrats who
came first to the country.”
I did not think there was much in that.
“Are mulattoes increasing or decreasing in numbers?” I asked.
He thought they were increasing. But he did not deny the fact that
Negro children tend to revert to type. When two mulattoes marry, the
children are generally darker than the parents, and often real Negro
types. The white man’s strain is thrown out rapidly.
“How, then, is it that mulattoes and near Whites are on the increase?”
The professor thought for one reason there was still much illegitimacy,
and for another the Negro race under civilized conditions was getting
a little fairer on the whole. Some of the mulatto women were extremely
beautiful, and consequently more attractive to white men. The white
women of the South hated the mulatto women because they took their
husbands away from them. He thought a good deal of race hatred was
fostered by the white woman, who instinctively hated the other race.
“Did you ever hear of a union between a Negro woman and a white man
that was on other than an animal plane?” I asked him.
Professor M—— knew of several instances where an infatuation for
a Negro woman had inspired a white man to make good in life. It was
generally a tragedy, for they could not marry, and they were subject
to coarse suspicion and raillery and intrigue. It stood in the way of
the white man finding a white bride, and of the Negro woman finding
a Negro husband. Where a white man had become interested in a Negro
woman it was not good for the health of a Negro man to pretend to her
affections. The mob feeling against Negroes was so readily aroused
that it was the easiest thing in Alabama for a white man who had a
grudge against a Negro to “frame up” a crime or a scandal and make him
leave the neighborhood or remain constantly in danger of being roughly
handled.
Alabama has a bad record for lynching. It is about fifth in the list
of bad States. I understood that lynching was on the increase. The old
folk, the people who had been slave owners, the settled inhabitants of
places like Anniston and Montgomery, and of the country, knew all the
family history of their “niggers” from A to Z, and what they might do,
or could do, and they were friendly, compared with the “new sort.”
The poor Whites loved to be in mobs and feel in mobs. Over their meals
and at work and in the trolley cars they loved to talk in the way
of the mob. Individually they don’t understand the Negro—they are
afraid of him, like dogs that will only attack when in numbers. They
mostly came to America after the Civil War and the Emancipation found
the Negroes in possession of land or of work or of houses. They had
their grievances, and instead of visiting them upon God or the Devil
or Society in general, found the Negro a convenient fetish and visited
their discontent on him. It soon became a habit, then it became a sort
of lust and brutal sport.
The older and more solid people have been much annoyed by the growth
of this brutality, and something definite is being done to combat it
in Alabama. Committees have been formed, or were being formed in the
fall of 1919, in every county in the State, half white, half colored,
to inquire into racial strife and see what could be done for life and
freedom.
An old Negro said to me: “We had two clocks on the cabin wall, and one
was very slow and deliberate and always seemed to say:
“’_Take yo’ time. Take yo’ time!_’
“But the other gabbled to us:
“’_Get together, get together, get together!_’ That’s what we got to do
to-day, brothers—get together.”
The Negroes are fond of emphasizing the triviality of color
differences. They reprove the white man playfully. “Why get so excited
about difference in color? We believe in equality of rights for all
men,” I heard a leader say, “for all men of whatever color—white,
black, brown, or yellow, or blue.” And his audience laughed. “Two boys
go into a shop; one buys a red toy, the other a blue toy—but it is not
very important which color—the toy’s the same.”
But of course color prejudice or preference is not such a haphazard
matter, and prejudice against the Negro is prejudice against more than
color. The toy, so to speak, is different. It may be as good, but
it is different. The body, and especially the skull, of a Negro is
different from that of the white man. The nervous system, the brain,
the mind and soul, are different. I heard the theory put forward in
the name of Christian Science that in God’s perfect plan there were no
Negroes. Their dark skins were other men’s evil thought about them. All
men were really white, and the outward appearance of their skin could
be made to correspond to the white idea by concentrated true thought
about them. That is a charitable and beautiful faith to live by. But
what of the new line of Negroes who are proud of being black, who
abhor pallor as nausea? There are many Negroes now who have a religion
of being black. The new generation of children is being brought up
to glorify Negro color. It is told of the princes and warriors from
which it is descended, learns with the geography of the United States
the geography of Africa, and delights in the cognomen—Afro-American.
The color issue will never be settled by all Negroes becoming Whites.
It seems clear also that it cannot be solved by all men becoming
mulattoes. There seems to remain just one obvious solution, and that
is in distinct and parallel development, equality before the law, and
mutual understanding and tolerance.
IX
THE SOUTHERN POINT OF VIEW
Shoemaker: No, my lord, they don’t hurt you there.
Foppington: I tell thee, they pinch me execrably.
Shoemaker: Well, then, my lord, if those shoes pinch you, I’ll be
d—— d.
Foppington: Why, wilt thou undertake to persuade me I cannot feel?
Shoemaker: Your lordship may please to feel what you think fit; but
that shoe does not hurt you.
—(“A Trip to Scarborough.”)
The Southern point of view can be gathered together in a very short
chapter. Its expression has so crystallized that it can be set down in
a series of paragraphs and phrases. Whosoever doth not believe, without
doubt he shall be damned everlastingly. Wherever you meet a Southerner,
be it in the remotest corner of the earth, it is the same as in native
Alabama. I was talking to the Mother Superior of a convent one day in
a genial English countryside. Although I did not know it, she derived
from Mississippi. I mentioned the subject of the Negro, and from her
quiet face, meager with fasting and pale with meditation, there flashed
nevertheless the Southern flame—like lightning across the room.
You have only to mention the Negro sympathetically in a public meeting
and some one of Southern extraction will be found opposing to you a
statement of the Southern creed. Thus, after speaking one morning at
Carnegie Hall, some one came up to me and said very emphatically: If
you had lived among the Negroes you would not speak of them as you
do—the inevitable Southerner.
This is his creed:
1. We understand the niggers and they like us. When they go North
they’re crazy till they get back to us. The North does not understand
the nigger, pets him and spoils him, and at last dislikes him more than
any Southerner.
2. We have occasionally race riots in the South, but they are generally
caused by Yankees who have come South. In any case the worst riots in
recent years have taken place in the North—at Washington, right under
the President’s nose, and at Chicago.
3. Few Northerners or Englishmen understand or can understand the Negro
problem. Those who understand, agree with us. Those who do not agree,
do not understand.
4. The nigger is all right as long as he is kept in his place. You must
make him keep his distance. If once you are familiar with him, you are
lost. He will give himself such airs that it will be impossible to get
on with him.
5. The nigger is an animal. The male of the species we generally call a
“buck nigger.” Like the animals, he is full of lust. Like the animals,
also, he does not feel pain. When he is burned it is not the same as a
white man burning. Like the animals, he has no soul either to lose or
to save, and Christianity and education are alike wasted on him. The
polished Negro is merely disgusting, like an ape in evening dress. You
clothe him and dress him and put him at table, but he’s an animal all
the same and is bound to behave like one. You can’t trust him.
6. Under the influence of alcohol the Negro becomes a wild beast. He
goes out of control. No fear of consequence can stop him. That is why
some of the Southern States have been so ardently prohibitionist.
7. If you had to live with them you’d understand how terrible it is.
8. The nigger is a liar. He will say anything to your face to please
you, or anything he thinks you want him to say. He’ll tell you stories
of lynchings that would make you think we lynched a nigger every week,
instead of it’s being the rarest occurrence.
9. When we lynch ‘em it’s for a very good reason—to protect our white
women. Ask any of your English or Northern friends, who pity the Negro,
whether they’d be willing to let their daughters marry a Negro. It’s a
horrible thought. But that is what the Negro is always after—the white
woman. His fancy runs to her, and if it were not for the terror of
being lynched we should never be able to leave our wives and daughters
in security. The R in the middle of the Negro’s name stands for his
favorite proclivity. We burn ‘em alive, yes, and do it slow, because
killing’s too good for them, and we get just so mad that everyone wants
to be there, and have his part in putting them to death. In the North
they do not lynch the Negro, but if one commits a crime they blame the
whole Negro race. In the South we find the guilty man and punish him.
10. When the white man goes to the Negro girl, it’s different. He ought
to be ashamed of himself, but there, it’s human nature, and you can’t
be too stern with him.
11. The white man is master, and must remain master. But you do not
realize how precarious his position is, outnumbered as he is, ten to
one, in many districts. If the niggers joined hands against us we might
be all killed in a night.
12. They have votes. By the greatest injustice ever committed in
this country, the Constitution of the United States was amended to
give these people votes and give them power over us. It is true we
prevent them using their votes, and override the Constitution at
every election. But political agitation goes on all the time. Every
Negro would vote Republican if he had a chance, just because we vote
Democrat. The Republican party knows that, and is always conspiring to
restore to the Negro his lost power of voting. It will never succeed,
but you can see the anxiety it causes us.
13. As for education, it’s bad for the nigger almost every way, and
every new educated nigger makes it more difficult to keep ‘em down. But
kept down they must be.
14. Justice? Well, you ask any nigger which he’d prefer, a Southern
court of justice and a Southern judge, or a Northern one. He would
always prefer the Southern one, because in the South we understand
him. And we’re very fond of them and they of us. We get on very well
together.
* * * * *
Southern belief rarely strays out of this codified expression of
thought. Get into converse with a Southerner on the subject of the
Negroes, and you will almost always be able to refer his talk to 1 or 6
or 10 or some other paragraph of the foregoing. It is sufficiently pat
and parrot-like to be amusing at last. The Negro himself is amused and
pained by it. It amounts to this: The Southerner has made the Negro a
pair of boots and he says they fit very well. The Negro says they don’t
fit. But the Southerner says he’ll risk his salvation on it—he made
the boots, and he knows his trade. The Negro, however, has to wear them.
Perhaps if it were merely opinion, the idleness of the spoken word,
the Southern point of view would merit less attention. Talk might be
discounted, as mere talk is discounted by responsible minds. But it has
unfortunately a remarkable counterpart in action. It is the concomitant
of mob murder and torture. It is expressed not only in narrow and
bitter phrase, but in actual flesh twisting; not only in the flames of
fanaticism, but in real flames.
Lynching is a popular sport in the South. It is perhaps popular in idea
all over the world. Even in Great Britain, where the policeman is on a
sort of moral pedestal, and is paid immense respect, how often among
the masses does one hear the sentiment that such and such a person
should be put against a wall and shot. Even in a nation that has such
a phrase as “the majesty of the law” the idea of taking the law into
one’s own hands is generally popular. In Russia, _samosudi_, as they
are called, are frequent, and there is a short and terrible way with
pickpockets when the crowd finds them out. France’s passion for _la
lanterne_ does not need to be enlarged upon.
It is said that in countries where the laws are badly administered
and the police held in little respect, lynchings are the more
frequent. This is so. And while lynching can have a moral sanction
at first, it may, if unchecked, grow to be a popular sport, a means
of “national” holiday, like the shows of Rome, the _auto-da-fé’s_ of
Spain, bullfights, and boxing competitions. When sufficient cause for
a lynching is lacking, cause may have to be invented, just to let
the folk have some “fun.” In the United States to-day there are not
sufficient crimes committed by the Negroes to satisfy the hunger of
the crowd for lynchings. So inevitably many innocent black men are
sacrificed just for sport’s sake.
Last year seventy-seven Negroes were lynched in America; fourteen of
them were burned alive. Burning appears to be on the increase, and
is an obvious indication of growing mob lust. This form of brutality
has long ago ceased in the Europe from which perhaps it was derived.
Spaniards burned the Indians. Indians burned the settlers. Settlers
burned their runaway slaves. And still to-day in comparatively large
numbers the white Southern mob burns its Negro victims. It has its
historical background. The thought of burning supposed delinquents
alive is common in Southern minds. “Make ‘em die slow” is even a
watchword.
The Southern half of the United States is fond of saying that the North
is now quite as bad in its treatment of the Negro. Happily, that is
untrue. Seventy-two out of the seventy-seven lynchings occurred south
of the Mason-Dixon line, and the rest occurred in the Western States.
The North was immune. Unfortunately, this good record was marred by
some bad race riots in Northern cities.
Of all the States, Georgia had the worst record for lynching. During
last year she lynched twenty-two persons, almost twice as many as the
next worst, Mississippi. Two of these were for alleged attacks on white
women. The rest were for a variety of crimes and misdemeanors. Thus, in
April, a soldier was beaten to death at Blakely for wearing his uniform
too long. In May, at Warrenton, Benny Richards was burned to death for
murder. In the first week in August a soldier was shot for refusing to
yield the road, and another was hanged for discussing the Chicago race
riots. At Pope City another soldier was lynched for shooting. In the
belief that the Negroes were planning a rising, Eli Cooper was taken at
Ocmulgee and publicly burned at the stake. On September 10th, in the
Georgian city of Athens, another Negro, Obe Cox, was burned for murder.
In Americus, in October, Ernest Glenwood was drowned as a propagandist.
On October 5th, Moses Martin was shot for incautious remarks. Next
day, at Lincolnton, one Negro was shot for misleading the mob, and two
others were burned alive for committing murder. Next day another was
shot at Macon for attempted murder. Two were hanged at Buena Vista for
intimacy with a white woman, and before the end of the month three more
met their end from the mob for shooting and manslaughter.
As far as Georgia is concerned, this record disposes of the theory
that lynching only takes place when white women have been attacked.
As a matter of fact, the commonest motive for lynching of Negroes
throughout the United States has been shown to be mob condemnation, of
violence—not of lust. By far the greatest number of lynchings are for
supposed murder. The mob lynches the Negro as a man shoots his dog when
the latter has turned on him. Formerly, attacks on women provided the
greater number of cases. If the Negro were fool enough ever to make
eyes at a white woman, he risked his life. Many innocent admirations
and misunderstandings have resulted in lynchings. As for rape, the
Negro who commits it is bound to come to a violent end. Very few escape
lynching, and the South claims that whatever immunity it enjoys from
Negro sexual crimes is due to the deterrent of lynch law. It claims
that if the criminals were merely dealt with according to the law,
sexual crimes would speedily multiply.
White people with the white-race instinct are generally ready to
condone lynching when it is proved that it thus acts as a deterrent.
Perhaps they are right, and they ought not to put it to themselves
from the black man’s point of view. But there is the other point of
view, and there is the collective opinion of the colored people on the
subject, and that opinion is being organized and will make itself felt.
It is worth attention and sympathy.
Granted that the black man is the under man as far as the Whites
are concerned, is he not entitled to some protection for his _own_
women? One of these Georgia lynchings which occurred last year was a
characteristic affair. It occurred at the town of Milan. Two young
white fellows tried to break into a house and seize two colored girls
living there with their mother. They ran screaming to a neighbor’s
home. The Whites tore down a door, ripped up flooring, fired a gun, and
made a great disturbance. One old Negro woman was so frightened she
jumped into a well, and a worthy Negro grandfather of seventy-two years
came out with a shotgun and fired in defence of the women. One of the
white men fired on him. The Negro fired back and killed him. The other
white man fled. Now, for that deed, instead of being honored as a brave
man, the Negro was seized by the white mob and hanged on a high post,
and his old body was shot to pieces. This man was a good and quiet
citizen who went to chapel every Sunday, and had performed his duty at
peace with God and man for a lifetime. The man who led the lynchers was
a “Christian” preacher. Sworn evidence on the matter was taken, but the
officers of the law in the county refused to act.
This lynching was by no means exceptional in its character. To cite
an exceptional affair, one might well take the happenings in Brooks
and Lowndes Counties, Georgia, in May, 1918. Here a white bully with a
pronounced spite against Negroes had been in court and paid the fine of
thirty dollars for gambling which had been pronounced against a certain
colored man called Sidney Johnson, and the latter had been sent to his
estate to work off the debt. This is an example of the abuse of the
law for keeping Negroes still in a state of slavery—a characteristic
example of peonage.
Johnson did the work to pay off the fine, but the farmer held him to
do a great deal more. Eventually the Negro feigned sickness as an
excuse for not doing any more. The farmer then came to his house and
flogged him. It must be supposed this roused the devil in Johnson; he
threatened the farmer, and he paid a return visit to the white man’s
house, fired on him through the window, killing the man himself and
dangerously wounding his wife. At once the usual lynching committee was
formed, and for a whole week they hunted for Johnson, who had gone into
hiding. During that time they lynched eleven Negroes, of whom one was a
woman.
The white farmer had given cause for much hatred. He had constantly
ill-treated his colored laborers. On one occasion he had flogged a
Negro woman. Her husband had stood up for her, and he had him arrested
and sentenced to a term of penal servitude in chains. The white mob
concluded that he must have shot the farmer for revenge, and they
accordingly lynched him. He was shot to death. His wife would not be
quieted, but kept insisting that her poor husband had been innocent.
The mob therefore seized her. It tied her upside down by her ankles to
a tree, poured petrol on her clothing, and burned her to death. White
American women will perhaps take note that this colored sister of
theirs was in her eighth month with child. The mob around her was not
angry or insensate, but hysterical with brutal pleasure. The clothes
burned off her body. Her child, prematurely born, was kicked to and fro
by the mob and then—— Well, that is perhaps sufficient. There are
many details of this crime which cannot be set down in print. But all
these facts were authenticated and submitted to the governor of the
State. The point that struck me was the pleasure which was taken by the
mob in the sufferings which it was causing. It was drunk with cruelty.
Here was little idea of a deterrent. Here was no question of racial
prudence. From the point of view of the natural history of mankind, it
put those white denizens of Georgia on a lower level than cannibals.
It was America’s glorious May, when she was pouring troops into Europe
and winning the war; hundreds of thousands of Negroes were clad in the
uniform of the army and were fighting for “freedom and justice” in
Europe. The moral eloquence of the President was in all men’s minds.
America had the chance to take the moral leadership of the world.
But away back in Georgia the mob pursued its horrible way. At length
it found the original Johnson who had committed the murder, and he
defended himself to the last in a house with gun and revolver, and died
fighting. His dead body was dragged at the back of a motor car through
the district, and then burned.